Even the genetic map of Britain is a sort of Invader Feast Pizza going back to Cheddar Man’s time. The waves break short of the far coast and no particular group ever established total homogeneity. However, my recollection of that news was that the Normans made virtually no mark, which was somewhat expected, but also that the Vikings didn’t either, which was somewhat surprising. This has led to new interest in what the few non-elite texts (recipes, folk magic and whatnot) we have suggest about the locals.
tldr, nothing made much of an impact outside of local salients since the Celts, with the sole exception of the Anglo-saxons, who made a big one.
Barely visible on this map is the one green box in Hastings, an isolated coastal area of the southeast. Sadly Hastings is not quite a village of idubitable gauls, it’s just a boring isolated town whose museum photos of the pre-rail age are distinctly suggestive of pedigree collapse.
Look at other markers, and you’ll get similar (but different) maps…
Well, actually no. There were a large number of different peoples living in iron age Britain who may or may not have been genetically diverse. The incredibly limited written sources (all Roman) describe at least some of them as appearing different – Silurians as dark and curly haired, while the Calidonii were tall and red-headed.
So while I would heartily agree that there is every reason to believe that there were pasty Britons two thousand years ago, there were also darker skinned ones. But how any of them were related, either to each other or to our friend Mr Cheddar I cannot say.
But the cheese gets its name from the village. I believe they used the caves to store and mature the cheese in. (There may or may not be a citation somewhere but it’s late…)
@KathyPartdeux - the gene mutation for blue eyes happened earlier than the gene mutations for white skin. This man looks like other members of the earliest groups of humans in north western Europe, with dark skin and blue eyes. Very little is known about them.
Blimey, mate, if you aren’t descended from the original thirty Nemedians who were chased out of Ireland by the children of Danú you aren’t really English, now are you? Just a johnny-bull-come-lately, what?
This does not jibe with my research… especially since the Normans and the Vikings are the same people (Hrólfr the Ganger was William of Normandy’s greatx3 grandpappy). Norman is literally a corruption of North Man.
You are certainly not kidding! Even the archeology is not particularly abundant.
The fragments of Posidonius is out of my price range, but I have English translations of most of the other really early works that reference Britain.
There’s a bit of a weird there. Apparently when ancient sources. Including the roman’s. Say “dark and light” they were apparently referring mostly to hair color. Rather than skin. So while today (and especially in the 18th and 19th century) we see that and assume it refers to skin tone. It often doesn’t. That’s part of the source of your 19th century psuedo science. Along with the racist assumption that since black peoples were primitive. Then all primitive cultures must have been darker. With lighter skin coming with advancement in civilization.
And the different “peoples” your referring to are different cultural blocks. And different polities. But for the most part those are tribal distinctions within brythonic Celts. As identified by roman’s. We aren’t sure if those descriptions are accurate, or a result of Roman categorization. In many cases those names aren’t the names these people identified themselves by. It isn’t clear that the blocks identified by the romans are actual blocks. A lot of the descriptions and accounts are second or even third hand.
The picts go a step further. They don’t neccisarily get identified as a group of Celts in old reports. What we (may) have of their language may or may not be Celtic. And what we have of their material culture may or may not be Celtic. They’re identified as picts by the romans. And it may not have been an actual group. There are other tribes or kingdoms in northern Europe that are similarly vague. And other groups that are clearly no Celtic. But for the bulk of the groups mentioned in the British isles they’re pretty clearly Celtic.
We do have physical remains though. Bodies sometimes with hair or skin left. And for the British isles from around that period onward, you see pretty much what you see today with the people descended from them. Remarkably similar occurrences of hair and skin tones.
Interesting to see that the folks who created Far Cry: Primal were right about the look of it’s early Europeans. Now I’m just waiting for evidence that they used double shot arrows, Obsidian throwing knives, and rode Mammoths into battle.
But are we related? After all, with each generation, there’s only a 50% chance of each gene coming from a particular parent. After so many generations, what’s the chance that any genes made it?
It’s a miracle that we’re related to any of our ancestors!
I went to high school with one such a guy, transfer student who rode my bus. He was very popular with the ladies, despite being very introverted and not outgoing at all.
All human pre-neolithic european fossils have this phenotype of dark skin and blue eyes. Things commonly associated with European, light skin, the languages (indo-european, except for Basque and Finn), cultures, mythos came from the near east with the neolithic/agricultural shift.
I had the opportunity once to get really close to a gorilla. Through a pane of glass. Up close you could see through the hair, which is surprisingly sparse in places. Its skin was mostly mottled pink and black. A lot like this:
Couldn’t find a gorilla. So Chimp it is. Primates. Including apes seem to have varied skin tones. Both between, and within, species or population groups. And that seems to be true of Bonobo, who we’re most closely related to.
Apparently apes very often have mottled skin. Humans don’t. I don’t think there’s very much good information about how far back that goes. If its basil for apes, or hominids. But if it is we probably started out a little bit paisley. And as several others have pointed out there’s some good evidence that many stone aged peoples the world over were quite a bit darker than we’d assume, though not neccisarily as dark as that may imply.
Well, I’m not familiar with the provenance of those maps, but remember “Viking” is a job, an avocation, not a people. Most Vikings were Scandinavian, but some were Irish and Faroese; Vikings were very much not racist as we use the term today. The tens of thousands of Vikings who ended up permanently setting in England in the 9th and 10th centuries were primarily Danish and Norwegian as I recall.
And Vikings really got around, you know - Cnut the Great was a Dane, a Viking, and an English king (also King of Denmark, Norway, and chunks of Sweden). There’s futhark graffiti in the Hagia Sophia that says “Hafdan was here” and Russia gets her name from the Kievan Rus, who were Vikings that conquered indigenous Slavic peoples.
Anyway, my daughter and I have been doing various “send your spit away for DNA analysis” things, and my aunt spent decades tracing my paternal lineage. I’m descended from the Norman English, according to my aunt, and according to DNA I’m pretty much indistinguishable from a Dane.
The clue’s in the name: England – Angland – Land of the Angles.
I wonder what the Jutes did wrong that only the Angles and Saxons get remembered these days?
As mitochondrial DNA is inherited unchanged from our mother, we all have some genetic material that’s been passed directly from the most recent common female ancestor of all humans. This ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ is thought to have lived in Africa, about 150,000 years ago.
The tens of thousands of Vikings who ended up permanently setting in England in the 9th and 10th centuries were primarily Danish and Norwegian as I recall.