OneGuyFromBarlick

I received the results from my Ancestry DNA test last week, which at first I found unsurprising and fairly boring....just your average northerner. A bit of investigation shows that I'm much more British than average though. The average for anyone in the UK is around is about 60% and I am 82% Northern England and the Midlands and 7% Irish/Welsh/Scottish. At only 4% Scandinavian I'm way below the average for anyone born in the North of England which seems to about 20%...there goes any hope of Viking blood!

Wendyf - have you come across this website? Lost Cousins

They send a news letter periodically, and the information I've seen there on DNA sounds quite deep and authoritative to me. I think you need to register to get the information, and they specifically ask you not to copy any of it. Frankly much of it is beyond my level, but I'm sure you would get it. It's all free.

Did your DNA result in any matching connections to actual relatives?

Thanks for the link Tripps, I'll have a look at that. My DNA didn't throw up any close relatives but I now have nearly 280 possible third, fourth and fifth cousins!
I haven't put my family tree online yet, but I'm just about to make a start. Once that gets linked to my DNA profile I might find more relatives.

Your matriarchal line must have been able to run faster than the Vikings......

Equally British Gloria!
More British now I come to look again....

Here is a link to an Ancestry blog about the average percentages of Scandinavian DNA found in GB.

https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/201 ... -the-room/

That takes some reading Wendy, I'll have another do at it later.
I remember when I got my DNA results being a bit disappointed with what I was told. I'm not sure just what I expected but it was more in depth than what I got, if that makes sense.

It's strange that the blog article doesn't mention that the Normans were descended from Scandinavians, so Scandi genes came with them, not just with the Vikings. And that raises the question "What exactly is meant by `Scandinavian ethnicity'? Is it distinguished from Norman ethnicity? it's a fascinating but confusing subject!

Very confusing Tizer.

This is exciting news on the archaeology front...
`Ancient Britons 'replaced' by newcomers' LINK
`The ancient population of Britain was almost completely replaced by newcomers about 4,500 years ago, a study shows. The findings mean modern Britons trace just a small fraction of their ancestry to the people who built Stonehenge. The astonishing result comes from analysis of DNA extracted from 400 ancient remains across Europe. The mammoth study, published in Nature, suggests the newcomers, known as Beaker people, replaced 90% of the British gene pool in a few hundred years. Lead author Prof David Reich, from Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, US, said: "The magnitude and suddenness of the population replacement is highly unexpected." The reasons remain unclear, but climate change, disease and ecological disaster could all have played a role.'

The article refers to these newcomers by the traditional title of the Beaker people but they're important for more than just their beakers! We could also call them the Metal people - this is the shift from stone working to metal working, first with copper then bronze. And they were farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. A deterioration in climate is one suggested reason for them replacing the Neolithic Britons. Another is that they may have been plague carriers, people who were resistant to, but carried with them, the plague bacteria or some other dangerous infection. In other words, their arrival in the British Isles would have been like the Spanish arriving in South and Central America centuries ago.

We still have so much to learn about our ancestors. One thing we are fairly certain about is that all Europeans originated from African stock via India and that any differences that followed were the result of local evolution. So looking at that the Beaker People are from the same stock as the original Britons and perhaps our overall description of them as Celts is as good as any. When does a Scandinavian translated to Normandy morph into a Gaul? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

And now we have to admit that neanderthals enjoyed a bit of artistic expression. Perhaps they're the ones who invented wallpaper?
`Neanderthals were capable of making art' LINK

I heard that report as well Tiz and to be honest it doesn't surprise me. I have never been convinced by the theories that some humans were intelligent and some inferior. So little evidence to go on.

A friend of mine in the US sent me this LINK about the improvements in DNA and the evidence for changing population in The Isles.

Later, I heard this report on new discoveries about African Elephants. (LINK) It transpires that the two variants have never interbred. Another revelation via DNA studies.

The Harvard article is very good. I'd say a keyword in that article is granularity, with new techniques we're starting to see much more fine detail and what we find is often startling and needs archaeologists to set aside old ideas. Another example of technology opening up new ideas is the use of magnetometry. Dorset has many hillforts and only a few have been examined in detail. Other than the earthworks there isn't much to see on the surface but a recent project has applied magnetomtery to scan complete hillforts. It has revealed that they were packed with roundhouses, hearths, pits, roads etc. The study is described here: LINK

Another recent change in thinking is that what we'd thought were battle sites between the Romans and Brits are often no such thing. The battle idea came about because of ballista bolts and other weaponry scattered about - and also because battles make a good story! But now advances in technology have been showing that some of these sites were training grounds.

I remember telling a dirt archaeologist once in the 1970s that I could see the day when advanced detection methods would enable us to scan the ground back to the level of individual footprints in antiquity and he laughed at me.....

Sometimes the footprints are there, fossilised in the mud that was turned into rock as on Formby beach.