Extraordinary Diversity of Scottish DNA

[MacSpadger]

It's also been a 6 part BBC Scotland radio series over here. Linked up with this book and radio series, there's also been a television series, Digging For Britain, in which old bones are DNA tested. You may be able to hear an interview with Alistair Moffat here.

It seems to be another nail in the coffin for the old Victorian "Celtic" stories, we are all the decendants of immigrants from a wide and varied source, (although our immigration began just after the ice age, so records are patchy ), and it's where we are born and raised that gives us our cultural aspects.

However, DNA can back up some old stories once dismissed as myth. There was an earlier project over here called "Face of Britain", (although it included all of Ireland :confused: ). It was a large 5 year experiment where 2000 people in each area/town/city was tested for their DNA by Bryan Sykes, an Oxford University professor.

People from Shetland, Orkney and even Lewis had absolutely no Briton/Pictish male DNA whatsoever, but there was a surviving line of Pictish female DNA. This supported what both history and folklore tells us, that the islands were inhabited by Picts, then the Vikings arrived and massacred all the Pictish males, forcing their women and daughters into slavery/partnership. Chilling.

On the north mainland around 60% of the Scottish men have Norwegian Viking DNA, with the remaining 40% having markers similar to the Ancient Britons, with no evidence of Anglo-Saxon or Danish influences. In the Hebrides, the figure for Norwegian Viking DNA was around 30%, so obviously Norwegian Viking colonised the Orkneys and the north of Scotland in a heavier manner because they were nearer and didn't have Somerled to contend with.

The North of England also had Norwegian Viking DNA incursion, but southern England had a similar R1b-L21 input as the population of mainland Scotland and Ireland, showing that not only were the English never "homogenous Anglo-Saxons", but neither were the Scots or Irish predominantly or exclusively "Celtic".