Are You Guessed Wrong?

[Tacitus]

It still surprises me that people are surprised when I tell them I'm Italian/fully Italian (at least in the states).

[frankhammer]

The worst has been asking if I am South African Otherwise no one questions European ethnicity here. Unless you have an unusual accent.

[Etelfrido]

And what caused such heterogeneity among the Welsh? I suppose those from Southern Wales are the isolated ones but which population would be necessary in the mixing to make the ones from the North occupy the other extremity of the plot?

[Tooting Carmen]

It still surprises me that people are surprised when I tell them I'm Italian/fully Italian (at least in the states).

Hello mate. Where have you been all this time?

[Creoda]

And what caused such heterogeneity among the Welsh? I suppose those from Southern Wales are the isolated ones but which population would be necessary in the mixing to make the ones from the North occupy the other extremity of the plot?

From what I've gathered (South) Wales has been largely genetically isolated from the rest of the British Isles for thousands of years, stretching back to the late Bronze Age.

From the same paper (Genomic Compendium of an Island)

Isolation at the British Peripheries
Several of the major principal components (PCs) identified explain little of the variation present in the ancient dataset. This includes the first and third PCs (Fig. 4.6A), which respectively segregate the populations of Orkney and Wales, while compressing the remainder of modern and ancient variation. The presence of strong haplotypic differentiation between these populations and the rest of Britain was reported in the original publication of the dataset (Leslie et al. 2015), and, in the case of Orkney, has been explained as the result of isolation and of Norse settlement. Notably, PC5 also solely describes Orcadian variation, and, alongside PC1, is not considered in further results and discussion. The driving factor behind haplotypic divergence of Welsh populations is less clear. However, we note here that, alongside modern individuals from the border regions of Wales, the entire Irish Early Bronze Age population (several southwestern samples excluded) is also pulled away from the main cluster and in the direction of Welsh individuals on PC3 (Fig. 4.6A), suggesting they possess some haplotypic variation found in Wales that is absent in the remainder of the dataset. Surprisingly, the same increased affinity is not seen for the Iron Age Britons of Yorkshire and southeastern England, as may have been expected given both the persistence of Brittonic Language and culture in Wales after the Anglo-Saxon migrations, and the previously demonstrated affinity of the Yorkshire individuals to the modern Welsh population (Martiniano et al. 2016). This could indicate that the prolonged regional isolation of Wales, aided by its mountainous geography, stretches into the Bronze Age period, allowing the build up of the extensive haplotypic diversity seen in PC3.

Haplotypic diversification after the Iron Age
PC6 shows the reverse trend to PC4, compressing ancient variation along the zero line, while allowing modern variation from all populations to fan out across the axis (Fig. 4.6B). This spread of modern haplotypic diversity shows something of a north-south trend, as identified in Byrne et al. (submitted). South Welsh and Cornish populations exhibit the largest amount of haplotypic variation and are followed on the axis by populations from southern Ireland, Devon and Border regions of Wales. Populations from the northern regions of Wales, England and Ireland, as well as Scottish groups, form the other extreme of PC6, with compression of the eastern populations of both islands apparent due to the homogenising effects of Anglo-related admixture (Byrne et al. submitted). The clustering of ancient samples along the zero line suggests that, in Ireland at least, the majority of the geographical variation captured by PC6 postdates the Iron Age period. That said, a subtle shift towards northern groups is apparent in the Irish Iron Age, relative to both the preceding Bronze Age and British Iron Age. This is particularly apparent for individuals falling further towards Irish modern variation on PC2, and suggests some of the diversification captured by PC6 was already underway at this point in time. Two early modern Irish individuals from the Plantation period, postdating the Late Iron Age by roughly a millennia, are also plotted here and show extremely similar placement to modern individuals from the same regions, falling further ‘north’ and ‘south’ of the preceding axis of Iron Age samples. Further sampling of the British Iron Age and Medieval periods, specifically in Wales, will be required to interpret how such patterns are related to the clear divergence of northern and southern Celtic-speaking populations on the neighbouring island of Britain. Indeed, this novel preliminary analysis highlights the powerful temporal anchors ancient genomes can provide to spatial trends of regional genetic variation.

[Anglo-Celtic]

It still surprises me that people are surprised when I tell them I'm Italian/fully Italian (at least in the states).

Don't be *too* surprised. They probably think that all Italians look like Sicilians.

[Anglo-Celtic]

The worst has been asking if I am South African Otherwise no one questions European ethnicity here. Unless you have an unusual accent.

I don't doubt it. All of your posts just scream "Afrikaner".

[alnortedelsur]

I have several times been wrongly guessed as Russian.

[Anglo-Celtic]

That's a simple way of putting it, culturally true, and genetic studies have said something similar:


But there is also the Pictish element in Scotland that the English and Irish don't have. Many Scots have unique distinct looks within the British Isles, English-Irish mixes don't look particularly Scottish IRL, even if they might on a PCA.

Aren't the Picts Britons? My guess is that the enigma is prosaic just like the Melungeons (descendants of Black slaves who had White wives). By the way, did you take a 23andMe test? I've never seen someone who was literally almost half English and half Irish.

[Anglo-Celtic]

I have several times been wrongly guessed as Russian.

It's not surprising. I can't count the times that I've guessed Latin Americans as Ukrainians.