WHO ARE WE

WHO ARE WE

Just who exactly are we, where did we come from and are we deserving of any great interest?

Written histories, which are the main source of information on our ancient ancestors, are notoriously inaccurate if not downright lies. Remember that these histories were written from the point of view of the conqueror and the ruling aristocracy. History has been manipulated from time immemorial by politicians as they still do so today.

History as accepted until recently.
The Celts originally came from Central Europe, and swept into the archipelago of islands off the coast of northwest Europe, where they slaughtered the resident inhabitants and secured the islands for themselves. And, except for myth and legend, we know little of who the original inhabitants were.
The earliest known historical reference to the inhabitants of the Isles comes from records of the voyage of Pytheas, a Greek geographer. He is said to have made a voyage of exploration around the Isles between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas called the islands collectively the ‘Brittanic Isles’ and the peoples were called the ‘Pritani’. The group of islands included ‘Prettanike’ (island of the Albions) and ‘Ierne’ (island of the Hiberni). The peoples of these Isles later became known as the Celts or the ancient Britons.
In 43AD, the mighty Roman Empire invaded the island of the Prettanike. After a brief and bloody resistance, the Celtic Britons, as they were now known, settled down to Roman rule. The main resistance was led by one of the most famous female warrior of ancient times, Boudica. She led her Celtic tribe, the Iceni, in the overwhelming devastation of the Roman cities of Colchester, London and St Albans. When the Romans left ‘Prettanike’ in 410AD, these Romano-British Celts had to fight off Germanic raiders from Northern Europe, who became known to history as the Anglo-Saxons. A full scale invasion of ‘Prettanike’ by the Anglo-Saxons occurred in 449AD. These marauding Germanic tribes massacred the Britons, and the survivors fled to the extremities of Britain; Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland.
The next set of newcomers was the Vikings, first arriving in the Isles in the late 8th century AD, and who first fought against, and finally settled alongside, their Germanic cousins the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts. Then in 1066, another group of immigrants from France, the Normans, arrived to add their genetic input to the melting pot of the main island and 100 years later they extended their conquest across the Irish Sea to the smaller island.
This then, is the accepted account of who the people of the Isles are. A people forged by successive waves of immigration: The original indigenous people, the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans.

History as exposed by science.
The above version of events concerning who the peoples of the isles are has become canon. But is it true? The relatively new science of DNA analysis has revolutionised the way we untangle the truth about the peoples of the world and where they came from. And an examination of the DNA of the people of the Isles by prominant geneticists from Oxford University has revealed a history distinctly at odds with the accepted version of our origins.
Recent genetic studies have shown that far from being a genetic hotchpotch, the people of the Isles are extremely homogeneous (meaning all from the same genetic line.) These studies show that 75% of the inhabitants can trace their ancestry back to the end of the last Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago.
As most of Europe was uninhabitable during the Ice Age, the original European people retreated into three areas of refuge: the Ukraine, Italy and the Balkans and the area that is now the Basque region, comprising Southern France and Northern Spain, along the Atlantic coast. And it was these people from Southern France and Northern Spain (the area known as the Iberian Peninsula) who were our main ancestors. When the ice began to melt, they moved up the Atlantic coast, arriving in the Isles around 15,000 years ago.
As a whole, these Ice Age Iberians account for 75% of our indigenous ancestors. When you look at the different areas of the Isles, these ancestors account for 88% of the Irish, 81% of the Welsh, 79% of the Cornish, 70% of Scots and 68% of the English. So these figures clearly show that the people are all very similar and share a common genetic heritage.
The remaining 25% of the gene pool has its origin in the Ukrainian and Balkan Ice Age refuges. As the ice thawed, these people moved through what is now Russia and on up to Scandinavia, and it is from Scandinavia that the remaining quarter of the people of the Isles can trace their forefathers. Starting at the end of the Ice Age and continuing through the Neolithic period (about 10,000 years ago) these Scandinavians settled on the Eastern coast of what is now England, while the more numerous Iberians occupied the Western part of the Isles.
Many people say that Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man and Ireland are ‘Celtic’ whereas England is ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘Germanic’ because the English were supposed to have come from northern Germany and southern Denmark. But through the scientific testing of DNA, we find that the ‘Celtic’ people of the West of Britain and the ‘Germanic’ people of the East were settled here many thousands of years before the supposed split between Celt and Anglo-Saxon, caused by the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Celtic Britain in 450AD.
So what of these historic invasions, or mass immigrations, which everyone seems to think is so important to our history? The DNA evidence shows that these invasions were on a far smaller scale than previously thought and mainly consisted of invasions and settlement by a ruling elite as opposed to a full-scale takeover. The Celtic invasion story has no genetic evidence and the Roman occupation brought virtually no genetic material to the gene pool.
Likewise, England’s Germanic heritage did not come from the Anglo-Saxon and Danish invasions but from those Scandinavians already present in the Isles for thousands of years. The Anglo-Saxon invasion and settlement only accounts for 5% of our ancestors as a whole, whilst the Normans were a ruling aristocracy who produced barely a ripple in our gene pool.
The people of the Isles then are a homogeneous people, of predominantly very old Celtic stock with an invigorating dash of slightly later Scandinavian blood, who have been here for 15,000 years. Our ancestors were the first inhabitants of these islands, and through our direct ancestry from these ancient men and women, we are the true indigenous people of the Isles.
You are unique. You are a ??? (what name do you wish to give yourself? I can't do it for you in the politically correct world in which we now live). You, your family and all of your ancestors have a history in these Isles that goes back thousands upon thousands of years. You should be proud of whom you are and proud to say “this is my home.” Your people, the people of the Isles, have given the world some of the most important inventions and the greatest ideas in human history.


For more information click on;
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/10/mythsofbritishancestry/

For further study refer to;
"Blood of the Isles" by Dr. Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics and "The Origins of the British" by Professor Stephen Oppenheimer.