« Holy Crap | Main | Ridiculous...and so telling »
March 6, 2007
The Origins of the Species
The NY Times has an interesting article summarizing recent genetic and linguistic evidence regarding the origins of the peoples of the British Isles. Before proceeding to its major points, let me briefly and roughly summarize my understanding of the traditional story of the peopling of the British Isles:
In the beginning, a few Neolithic types wandered in from God knows where when the glaciers retreated from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Then came the Celts, who may or may not have completely replaced that original population, but certainly displaced their culture. It is not clear whether the Celts came before, during or after the introduction of agriculture. It is also not clear just what the heck was a Celt.
Then came the Romans, who had some influence on the native gene pool but not much (and then only in the places they succeeded in subduing, and it turns out that back then the Irish and Scots were tough nuts to crack). Hence, modern English people really do not look like Italians, except when they do (that's how it goes with "stylized facts" on this subject).
Then came catastrophe: the Angles and the Saxons. They came from Scanda...etherlands and largely displaced the native population of Britain. Perhaps even more tragically, they displaced the beautiful Italian culinary heritage the Romans had planted in Britain, in the process laying the foundation for that atrocity known today as English cuisine.
They had little effect on the peoples of the places where the Romano Celtic types found secure refuge from them (namely Scotland, Ireland and Wales). There is, and believe me when I say this, a direct link from the status quo that emerged at this time to the music today of bands ranging from The Cranberries to the Dropkick Murphys. This is the only possible explanation for The Clash.
Another important aspect of the Anglo-Saxon invasion was the birth of English, which was clearly a hybrid of the languages the Angles and Saxons spoke. Uhhh, wherever it is they came from and whatever it is they spoke, the linguistic evidence is obviously as a clear as day on this point. Obviously.
Next were the Vikings, who made the Angles and Saxons seem civilized. These were angry people. (Today we would say that they had fundamental self-esteem problems that could only be solved with Ritalin.) However, after laying the cultural foundation for the Mosh Pit and sprinkling their seed throughout the British Isles, they turned their attention to building the Ikea empire and the military (if not ergonomic) threat they presented largely subsided.
Finally, the Normans came. The Normans were kind of like the Anglo-Saxons, but after a semester or two at Wharton. They were vicious. They were ferocious. They were ruthless in their acquisition of wealth. They would have embraced spreadsheets, had they been available. Above all, they were corporate.
The Normans brought many Romance words (but little of the structure or romance of the Romance languages) into English. They also laid the foundations for a political order that has proven remarkably resilient: in one form or another, by one pathway or another, it has wended down through history to eventually form the basis of my neighborhood's Homeowners Association (we even have our own Magna Carta, ominously referred to as the Covenant). They contributed to the native gene pool as well, but did not undertake the kind of genocide we associate with the Angles or Saxons. That would have been sub-optimal from a profit maximization perspective.
Put this all together, toss in a dash of the odd African slave, captured Moor, fleeing Spaniard, disgruntled Dutchman, etc. etc., shake well and you get: the Spice Girls.
This old consensus story is starting to crumble, and this article highlights many major recent findings:
1. The Irish, English, Welsh and Scots are overwhelmingly similar in their genetic origins.
2. The bulk of their roots trace to Iberians who arrived at the end of the last Ice Age, possibly 16,000 years ago (but likely no more recently than the early Neolithic period).
3. The invaders (Celts (?), Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans) left some, but not much, genetic legacy beyond this base. Even in the most heavily invader-trodden areas of the British Isles, the population today overwhelmingly traces its roots back to these early settlers. (And even in those areas, the debate is really over how small a minority of the genetic ancestry of today's inhabitants come from post-Roman invaders.)
4. English may not be from Western German (the branch to which the Angle and Saxon languages supposedly belonged) after all. It may in fact have branched off from the German tree before Roman times, making it a pre-Roman language already present in the British Isles. At the time of Julius Caesar, an early proto-English may have been spoken in some parts of what we today call England, with Celtic (whatever that means) languages prevailing elsewhere.
5. Rosie O'Donnell's genes cannot be linked to any known modern human lineage. The only conclusion one can reach is that she is that result of some horribly botched experiment based on the early work of Watson and Crick. It would seem that back then our scientific reach exceeded our scientific grasp.
Posted by dag at March 6, 2007 9:48 AM