Ancient British Isles

[ABNARTY]

Pretty cool stuff. 

I think the DNA mapping (still starting out as a science) will reveal some neat stuff over the next decades. 

So far it has shown a very complex story. Lots of waves of migrations from different places going to different locations. Time line is getting more fluid with every discovery. 

My wife will tell you I am 98% Neanderthal but what does she know?

My son is not "98% Neanderthal", but he DOES have more Neanderthal DNA than 91% of the rest of the population. I only have more than 82% of the population, which I suppose says something about his ma...



Yes, the DNA mapping will tell some neat tales regarding migrations. Via the modern miracle of ancient DNA extraction from long dead people, my own DNA (mine, because I don't have anyone else's - they'll have to investigate their own)  Links in a direct line to ancient DNA from Copper Age Germany, Bell Beaker Folk in the British Isles, "Boat Axe" Scandanavians. back to Scythian Steppe Herders from what is now the Russian Steppes. But beneath that, I have a direct link to Neolithic "Cheddar Man" in England, already there when the Bell Beaker invasions occurred. My maternal (mitochondrial) DNA, in a direct maternal line, goes all the way back to the Western Hunter Gatherers in Europe, Paleolithic "Old Stone Age", I have a direct link to a roughly 45,000 year old thigh bone found in a river bank in Siberia (Ust-Ishim), the oldest "modern human" remains found north of the Levant.

My paternal DNA, in a direct paternal line, traces back to Thracia, between Greece and the Balkans. The same people that spawned Spartacus.

Beneath that, there is a crap ton of Neanderthal remnants in my DNA. It's actually one of those Neanderthal remnants that gives me my covid resistance, according to the science behind it. Not that Neanderthals had a covid resistance, but something they developed a resistance to must have had a resemblance to modern covid.

More recently, I have direct connections to 6 out of 7 "gladiators" unearthed near York in the UK, from the Roman period, around 250 AD. They were Britons, and it's anyone's guess how they wound up gladiating for Roman amusement, or, really, even IF they did. Just headless bodies found in a presumed glatiatorial cemetery. Could just as easily have been northern rebels killed by Roman legions and dropped in holes in the ground.

The Saxon invasions of the UK show up in my DNA, with a direct link to a Saxon from 720 AD, and another from 780 AD.

Hot on the heels of that time frame, the Viking invasions is represented pretty strongly in my DNA by a couple of individuals from the St. Brice's Day massacre at Oxford in 1002 AD, and 5 of the 10 Vikings tested from a massacre of 50 or so in Dorset. Those latter ones, from Dorset, apparently have connections to the Jomsvikings. Several of the first Scandanavian settlers in Iceland link directly to me.

That's just the DNA, hard science that can be tested and verified, and not even counting the "paper trail" unsupported by DNA, that claims several august personages which can never be proven - Boudicca is one that shows up in my paper trail, as well as a claim (spurious no doubt) to Jesus Christ himself through an alleged daughter with Mary Magdalene, and even a character dubiously named "Odin" from a place claimed to be named "Asgard" in what is now Denmark, around the time of Christ. All only on paper though, no DNA evidence, since we have no ancient DNA from those persons to test against. Also showing in that paper trail from later days are Charles Martel (Karl the Hammer, who routed the Muslim invaders at Tours), William the Bastard (took over England at Hastings, just another invader), and some character named "Clovis". There are a couple of lines going to Ragnar Lothbrok, one through Ivar the Boneless, and another through another son of his, Bjorn Ironside. The paper trail shows connections to both the Vikings invading England, and Alfred, the Saxon king fighting against them.

Statistically, every single person of European ancestry living today should be able to trace directly back to Charlemagne.

My personal DNA profile tells a tale of violent folk from the Russian Steppes, and people who invented bronze weapons both invading Europe from different directions and sweeping across it to replace a more peace oriented population already living there, and BOTH sides of that millennia long conflict are represented. They are all still represented in modern DNA, descendants still walking around among us.

When the descendants of those folks invaded America, they displaced a population already here as well, and both sides of that conflict are in my DNA. The wars go on, and always will, so long as one people have something another people wants. Now, it is Hispanics invading America to displace the people already here. 500 years from now, all of that DNA will show up in generations yet unborn, as it always has.

The point is, I doubt that any of us are "pure" anything. We are all representatives of a maelstrom of immigrations and re-immigrations, a swirling mass of humanity that randomly comes together and then parts again, often apparently either violently or as non-violent replacements of a dying population.

And there is more and more of that ancient DNA being extracted for comparisons every day.

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A maelstrom is a good way to put it.