Blood of the Isles

by Bryan Sykes

  The pockets of ancient Wodans in mid-Wales and the ‘Pictland’ regions of Grampian and Tayside are, I believe, the echoes of the very first Mesolithic settlers who arrived from continental Europe, perhaps even travelling by foot while there was still a land connection. They look old to me, and for an apparently contradictory reason. That is because they are all very similar. The same applies to the Oisins. And yet the customs of genetics state that the longer a gene has been in a place, the more diversity should have accumulated. That was how I was able to fix the homelands of the seven European clan matriarchs. Using that rule I placed them at the locations where the present-day diversity was highest, and thus where they had had longest to accumulate mutations away from the original.

  But this rule does not seem to work with the paternal lines delineated by the Y-chromosome. The very striking thing about the clan of Oisin throughout the Isles is how very similar they all are. Or at least, how there are very large clusters of very similar chromosomes in one location, and not in others. For instance, the Ui Neill chromosome reaches a very high frequency in north-west Ireland but is rare elsewhere, and the Somerled chromosome is common in the Highlands and the Hebrides, but virtually unknown elsewhere – unless carried by a member of Clan Donald or Clan Dugall. This dramatically reduces the genetic diversity, and leads to very recent settlement dates, sometimes obviously incorrect. This has been noticed before with the Y-chromosome but has been attributed to what is called ‘patrilocality’. This is the practice of men staying put, while the women move to marry. However, I don’t think

  this works well enough to explain the amazing similarity in the Oisin chromosomes. The explanation is less cosy.

  This is the ‘Genghis effect’ and it is not confined to the Mongol Empire. In the Isles very large numbers of men, perhaps all of them in the clan of Oisin, are descended from only a few genetically successful ancestors. All the conditions are here in the Isles. From the Iron Age onwards, and certainly during the first millennium AD, which we have covered here in such detail, the past is filled with the continual feuding between rival clans. One of the genetic consequences of the rise of powerful men is that they monopolize the women and have more children. I have even argued in Adam’s Curse that therein lies the motivation for their procreative ambition. We can see the evidence in the Isles in the Scottish clans of Macdonald and Macleod and in the Irish Ui Neill. These are very dramatic examples of a process which has percolated throughout the history of the Isles. That is why the diversity has been lost. It is because only comparatively few men have left patrilineal descendants. So, the longer a clan has been in a place like the Isles, the more similar the Y-chromosomes become. That is the reason our Celtic Y-chromosomes are so alike.

  It is also the reason why most of the Wodan chromosomes are the opposite. They are usually very diverse indeed in the Isles. Not because they have been here a long time, but because they are comparatively recent. There are pockets of ‘old’ Wodans in Wales and Pictland, but in the east and in the north above the Danelaw line, the Wodans, which reach 31 per cent in East Anglia, are extremely varied. I scarcely found any two the same when I looked at the detailed fingerprints, unless they had the same surname and were thus related to a common ancestor through that route. The clan of Oisin still predominates in every part of England, but the bedrock is substantially overlaid in the east. Because of the genetic similarity of Saxon, Dane and Norman, I cannot discriminate so easily between them. But I estimate that approximately 10 per cent of men now living in the south of England are the patrilineal descendants of Saxons or Danes, while above the Danelaw line the proportion increases to 15 per cent overall, reaching 20 per cent in East Anglia. Only a few of these men have surnames of Norman origin and, taking this into account, I estimate the Norman Y-chromosome legacy at 2 per cent or below even in the south of England.

  From this evidence the succession of Saxon/Danish invasions during the turbulent centuries after the Romans departed did leave a mark on the stubbornly Celtic indigenous bedrock of parts of England. It is a real presence, but it is by no means completely overwhelming. The gory chronicles of Gildas do contain a grain of truth. The roughly twofold excess of Saxon/Danish Y-chromosomes compared to their maternal counterparts hints at a partially male-driven settlement with some elimination or displacement of the indigenous males. But the slaughter, if slaughter there was, was not total and still there are far more people with Celtic ancestry in England, even in the far east, than can claim to be of Saxon or Danish descent.

  I have tried to find Roman Y-chromosomes, but they left very few traces that I can be sure were theirs. Only one very rare patrilineal clan, without even a name, may be the faint echo of the first legions. It is found in southern Europe, including Italy. What makes me think, as well as this link to Italy, that it might be linked to the Romans is that it is entirely restricted to England. There are no traces beyond the borders with Wales or Scotland. There may be others, but as was pointed out, the tradition of recruiting legionaries and auxiliaries from Gaul and other parts of the Empire, as well as from Britannia itself, makes them very difficult to spot among the descendants of later arrivals from the same areas. But true Roman genes are very rare in the Isles.

  Overall, the genetic structure of the Isles is stubbornly Celtic, if by that we mean descent from people who were here before the Romans and who spoke a Celtic language. We are an ancient people, and though the Isles have been the target of invasion and opposed settlement from abroad ever since Julius Caesar first stepped on to the shingle shores of Kent, these have barely scratched the topsoil of our deep-rooted ancestry. However we may feel about ourselves and about each other, we are genetically rooted in a Celtic past. The Irish, the Welsh and the Scots know this, but the English sometimes think otherwise. But, just a little way beneath the surface, the strands of ancestry weave us all together as the children of a common past.

  This genetic history has been read mainly from the surviving genes passed on by generations of ancestors who lived through the events described in Blood of the Isles and whose descendants carry them today. It is a new history, reconstructed from thousands of fragments from the past. The general conclusions in this and other chapters have been distilled from the DNA of hundreds of people from each region of the Isles. But to the people concerned, and to everyone else in the Isles, it is our own genetic ancestry that is the most important. It is the thread that goes back to our own deep roots that means the most. The proportions of one clan or another are vital and the detailed genetic comparisons are essential for arriving at any sort of general conclusion, but it is our own ancestry that understandably, and quite rightly, holds the most interest. Now that we know what the overall patterns mean and now that we can identify with confidence surviving DNA with the different ancestral signatures, it is open to anyone to find their place in this amazing story. For this is not the history told by fading manuscripts in dimly lit libraries, or by rusting weapons in glass cases. It is a living history, told by the real survivors of the times: the DNA that still lives within our bodies. This really is the history of the people, by the people.

  APPENDIX

  Within this appendix I have compressed just a small fraction of the genetic data from the Oxford Genetic Atlas Project that forms the foundation for Blood of the Isles. More details appear at www.bloodoftheisles.net.