\'The myth of Celtic and Roman Britain\'

[authun]

What my point is, is that it would be very hard to find Celtic DNA outside of Wales, Ireland and Scotland because England now has Germanic DNA as a result of the Saxon (and other) invasions, so the Belgic and Gallic DNA that was in England has effectively been wiped out.

The problem, as you might imagine, is that of identifying indigenous 'celtic' yDNA and germanic yDNA. Both share a mix of several haplogroups quite common in north west europe, R1b for example is shared by over 110 million people. Early studies were more or less limited to comparing the relative mix of these haplogroups, eg. comparing the 'welsh mix' with the 'north germanic mix'. Although a major group such as R1b has since been separated into many smaller sub groups, eg. R1b1b2a1a2, with the exception of a small number, it has not been possible to identify most of these groups with specific peoples at particular points in time.

Whilst Mike Weale did find that genetically, the yDNA Wales basket of haplogroup frequencies did look very different from the basket of haplogroup frequencies found in the part of england that he studied, ie central england, he could be no more specific than claiming that the english mix contained between 50% - 100% of immigrant yDNA. Whilst that is a lot, there is still a huge difference between 50% and 100%.

Cristian Capelli later studied the British Isles and found that the haplogoup mix for England was more variable. He found that Weale's study was broadly correct for central England, around 50%, but that other areas varied between 25% and 70%. By one set of analyses, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, the mean for England, was 54% immigrant paternal lineages. Both studies however stress the importance of identifying the source and host populations correctly and it remains a matter of considerable debate amongst geneticists as to whether it is possible or not to use a modern population as a proxy to represent an ancient population in anything other than the most basic terms. Hence the very wide bracketing - between 50% and 100%.

But 'celtic' yDNA did survive in England. Placenames such as Eccles suggest british enclaves and the Laws of Ine make frequent references to 'walhs' living amongst the english. Bede too, writing on the present state of the english nation (Book V), states of the Britons:

"... though in part they are their own masters yet elsewhere they are also brought under subjection to the English."

which is taken to mean that they live under their own kings in Wales but also under english kings in England.

If identifying 'germanic yDNA' is proving difficult, identifying welsh 'celtic' yDNA lineages is also not a straightforward matter. The two studies mentioned above sampled four centres, Haverfordwest, Llanidloes, Llangefni and Abergele. Two of these four, Llanidloes and Abergele are not typically 'welsh' and Abergele is not typical of any other 'celtic' population ever studied. Llanidloes showed a higher proportion of the germanic mix than it did of the 'welsh' mix, around 57%. This was later attributed to miners being located there, from Derbyshire as far as I recall. Abergele on the other hand shows a very high frequency of the haplogroup Eb3, between 10 and 20 times higher than any other study centre in Britain and Ireland which all show similar low frequencies typical of western europe. The high frequency of this haplogroup in this part of north Wales may possibly be associated with the copper mining and thus have its origins back to the bronze age. It is not typical of any continental celtic group but is found in high frequencies in the Balkans.

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