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Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

phys.org

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Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#31

Post by KMag »

BirAdam wrote: post #18

Genetics are weird. I have received next to nothing from certain ancestors, and quite a bit from others as far as DNA testing is concerned. Likewise, in a lithograph of one I can see an ancestor who looks nearly identical to a half brother of mine. Shit is so weird.

It's not so weird. My understanding is that genes migrating across chromosomes (translocation) isn't that common. So, to a first approximation, genes are inherited as 46 indivisible units. Every generation, a given chromosome has a 50/50 chance of getting dropped. You have exactly 23 chromosomes from your mother, an expected value of 11.5 chromosomes from your maternal grandmother, expected 5.75 chromosomes from her mother... another 3 generations back and you've got less than a 50% probability of getting any chromosomes from that particular relative.

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#32

Post by KMag »

virgulino wrote: post #11
GauntletWizard wrote: post #3

I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. Their greater success though, was getting the people to want to be Roman. And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the…

The Romans built a wall (the Great Pict Wall) bisecting Britain because they were so afraid of the Picts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall

And later, the Antonine wall a bit further north. Though, it's probably more accurate to say the walls were built to reduce the costs of Pictish raids. I doubt the governor in Londinium woke in a cold sweat fearing Pictish invasion, even prior to Hadrian's wall being built.

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#33

Post by csomar »

yosito wrote: post #21

I realize that there's real research being done here. But as a layman, I read this and only understand that Scottish, Welsh and Irish people are descended from the people who lived in those regions before. This seems obvious. So what am I missing, as a layman?

I think people (researchers? Historians?) overestimated the effects of human migration. Genetics might be showing that most people really moved nowhere for the last 3000 year or so.

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#34

Post by csomar »

Kamq wrote: post #7
GauntletWizard wrote: post #3

I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. Their greater success though, was getting the people to want to be Roman. And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the…

> The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population. Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slave…

There are (and will be) no clear proof of that. In my opinion, these conquests concerns the elite of society. These get replaced. The commoners (ie: farmers?) they just show up to market again with a new ruler.

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#35

Post by virgulino »

KMag wrote: post #32
virgulino wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Romans built a wall (the Great Pict Wall) bisecting Britain because they were so afraid of the Picts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall

And later, the Antonine wall a bit further north. Though, it's probably more accurate to say the walls were built to reduce the costs of Pictish raids. I doubt the governor in Londinium woke in a cold sweat fearing Pictish invasion, even prior to Hadrian's wall being built.

I bet the governor had enough on his plate managing the Brittunculi. 8-)

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#37

Post by RansomStark »

alistairSH wrote: post #8
naikrovek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, I'm Scottish, but I was born in America, so shouldn't it also say American ? /s omission from the title does not mean that the unmentioned nation has zero Pictish ancestry.

The opening of the article explicitly lists “Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Northumbria” despite leaving Northumbria (which resides mostly in northern England) out of the title.

This is due to the politics of the UK. in the UK, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are first class citizens, along with England.

It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland.

Northumbria, however, does not exist anymore, its now a bunch of English counties, and the southern half of Scotland (south of the Firth of Forth).

Without more details on which part of Northumbria is meant it's impossible to know if Enlgand should be included, it may also be wrong to include England if its only a small part and its most / all of Scotland, Wales, and Northen Ireland

The author may be getting confused with the similarly named modern county of Northumberland. You'd be surprised how often the border region between England and Scotland is confused, misplaced, or forgotten about.

[Source: I'm from Northumberland, technically Tyne and Wear, but thats splitting an already split hair]

Edited for clarity

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#38

Post by samus »

csomar wrote: post #34
Kamq wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population. Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slave…

There are (and will be) no clear proof of that. In my opinion, these conquests concerns the elite of society. These get replaced. The commoners (ie: farmers?) they just show up to market again with a new ruler.

Even if it it is brief, a siege usually had very detrimental effects on the surrounding areas as the invading army "forages" for supplies. Also, the Romans were not beyond indiscriminately slaughtering (not only plundering) or deporting populations that put up formidable resistance. E.g. Siege of Avaricum. Such depopulated areas were often awarded to other tribes or to retiring soldiers for resettlement.

Caesar recorded it himself in his annals. They are not entirely reliable, but the essential points are probably true.

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#39

Post by biorach »

DFHippie wrote: post #26
yosito wrote: post #21

I realize that there's real research being done here. But as a layman, I read this and only understand that Scottish, Welsh and Irish people are descended from the people who lived in those regions before. This seems obvious. So what am I missing, as a layman?

First, this conflicts with stories ascribing more exotic origins to the Picts. Second, that it demonstrates that there is some continuity between the pre-Indo-European population of the British Isles and today; i.e., they weren't totally replaced. Third, that the particular sub-populations having this ancestry, and similar to the Picts, are in Wales, Northumbria, Northern Ireland, and Western Scotland, not in Sussex,…

> It was known that there were people in the British Isles before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. It was not known that these were the Picts

I don't think that the article supports the theory that the Picts were descended from the pre Indo European population. It's actually somewhat unclear on this

> The analysis revealed that Picts descended from local Iron Age populations, who lived across Britain before the arrival of mainland Europeans.

Iron age populations on the British Isles and Ireland are generally associated with Celtic, Indo European, cultures. The Iron Age in Scotland is generally considered to have lasted from around 700BC to the start of the Medieval Era.

The pre-Indo-European populations would date from the Bronze age and the Mesolithic - which the article makes no mention of, so it's not clear what relationship the Picts had with the populations before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.

In any case it's not widely believed that there was an "Indo-European" invasion, or arrival. Instead the genetic and archiological evidence points to a diffusion of small groups across Europe which seem to have spread their culture and language by "elite capture" rather than by wholesale population replacement.

The general consensus until now is that the Picts spoke a variety of, or something closely related to Brittonic, the Celtic, Into-European language spoken across the rest of Britain at the time, ancestral to modern Welsh.

Re: Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

#40

Post by alistairSH »

RansomStark wrote: post #37
alistairSH wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opening of the article explicitly lists “Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Northumbria” despite leaving Northumbria (which resides mostly in northern England) out of the title.

This is due to the politics of the UK. in the UK, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are first class citizens, along with England. It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland. Northumbria, however, does not exist anymore, its now a bunch of English counties, and the southern half of Scotland (south of the Firth of Forth). Without more details on which part of Northumbr…

That’s a good explanation. I’m from Blairgowrie originally.

I thought it odd to include Northumbria in one list, but leave it (or England) off the other. But then including a historic county along with countries is odd anyway. I assumed they meant northern England because the parts within Scotland wouldn’t need to be called out again within a list.

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