What Are You?

[Speaker to Animals]

I read somewhere that some historians suspect they were not Celt but the original inhabitants or something like that, but all this new genetic data that shows Britons really haven't changed since the end of the Ice Age makes me doubt it.

It is pretty much Celtic in the British Isles with some German, Vikings, and Normans all mixing it up.

That's just it. No, it's not. Genetically, Britons have not changed much since the stone age. The invasions do register in the genetics, but more than 80% of the genetics of native Britons has remained the same since the Ice Age.

For instance, we think of the Saxons, historically, migrating or invading in to replace the Romano-Celts, right? That's how history (what little of it exists of that period on the island) tells us. But when we were able to conduct massive genetic surveys, we could see that a fairly small population of Saxons actually came over and merged with a much, much larger indigenous population. There was a cultural shift, but not really a genetic one. Normans left very little mark at all. Danes a little, etc. Yet the genetic makeup of the Britain remains more than not what it was when our paleolithic ancestors migrated there as the glacier retreated after the Younger Dryas.

In fact, we have more in common with the Basque people than any of those invading peoples, because our ancestors and the ancestors of the Basque came from the same area.

[Penner]

I read somewhere that some historians suspect they were not Celt but the original inhabitants or something like that, but all this new genetic data that shows Britons really haven't changed since the end of the Ice Age makes me doubt it.

It is pretty much Celtic in the British Isles with some German, Vikings, and Normans all mixing it up.

That's just it. No, it's not. Genetically, Britons have not changed much since the stone age. The invasions do register in the genetics, but more than 80% of the genetics of native Britons has remained the same since the Ice Age.

For instance, we think of the Saxons, historically, migrating or invading in to replace the Romano-Celts, right? That's how history (what little of it exists of that period on the island) tells us. But when we were able to conduct massive genetic surveys, we could see that a fairly small population of Saxons actually came over and merged with a much, much larger indigenous population. There was a cultural shift, but not really a genetic one. Normans left very little mark at all. Danes a little, etc. Yet the genetic makeup of the Britain remains more than not what it was when our paleolithic ancestors migrated there as the glacier retreated after the Younger Dryas.

In fact, we have more in common with the Basque people than any of those invading peoples, because our ancestors and the ancestors of the Basque came from the same area.

Yeah, we knew this for some time. Also when I took my DNA test it came back Balkan, Southern European, and some Slavic, even though my mother is like half-Serbian (and edit to clarify- and it's usually believed to be the same situation as with the Native Brits versus the Anglo/Saxon invasion of Britain where it's believed to have been to believe that they wiped out the native population and then took over).

[Speaker to Animals]

We Americans really are all mixed up, though. Britons not so much. The real ones, anyway.

[Penner]

We Americans really are all mixed up, though. Britons not so much. The real ones, anyway.

I am it's not surprising that Europeans would be more homogeneous than us Americans (and that would also include places like Canada and Mexico). We literally are a place where you can find people from everywhere. Plus I would bet that if you really wanted to, you could possibly find at least someone who can speak in some language.