Fine Scale Population Structure in the British Population

[Greying Wanderer]

Caesar

http://www.mytimemachine.co.uk/caesar.htm

The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself: the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgae for the purpose of plunder and making war; almost all of whom are called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the lands.

Tacitus

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/tac/ag01010.htm

Who were the original inhabitants of Britain, whether they were indigenous or foreign, is, as usual among barbarians, little known. Their physical characteristics are various, and from these conclusions may be drawn. The red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia point clearly to a German origin. The dark complexion of the Silures, their usually curly hair, and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to them, are an evidence that Iberians of a former date crossed over and occupied these parts. Those who are nearest to the Gauls are also like them, either from the permanent influence of original descent, or, because in countries which run out so far to meet each other, climate has produced similar physical qualities. But a general survey inclines me to believe that the Gauls established themselves in an island so near to them.

also interesting separately

The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic customs. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

@Angela, Vallicanus

Indeed, an interesting little mystery.

 

[JS Bach]

That’s cool that the (South and Central) English form such a clear homogeneous cluster – even at 24 clusters. I wouldn’t have thought that before, but I can see reasons for it now. I guess out-breeding within the bounds of a nation can contribute to such an effect. It seems like it would be easy to identify if someone belongs to that cluster. I hope 23andMe utilizes those results in their ancestral composition calculator. Some of my ancestry traces back to those Northern England clusters as well, so I hope I can someday get my ancestral breakdowns for that too.

 

[Arame]

9600 BC Last Ice Age ends and land is colonised by hunter-gatherers

2500 BC Influx of settlers from east and western coastal routes

54 BC Julius Caesar invades Britain and defeats the British tribal chief Cassivellaunus
410 AD Collapse of Roman rule in Britain, which descends into the chaos of a failed state
400-500 AD Large influx of Angles and Saxons
600-700 AD Anglo-Saxon rule throughout much of Britain – Welsh kingdoms successfully resist
865 AD Large-scale invasion by Danish Vikings
1066 AD Norman invasion

A brief timeline of settlements in Britain from here

What are Your opinions. Who are the people at 2500 BC?
Are there the R1b people?
Are there pre-IE or this is the IE influx?
In my opinion it is little bit too early for IE.
Whoever there are I think it is quite probable that they are the builders of Stonehenge complex.

 

[Aberdeen]

A brief timeline of settlements in Britain from here

What are Your opinions. Who are the people at 2500 BC?
Are there the R1b people?
Are there pre-IE or this is the IE influx?
In my opinion it is little bit too early for IE.
Whoever there are I think it is quite probable that they are the builders of Stonehenge complex.

My own personal view is that the people who arrived in Britain from the sea about 4500 years ago were the Bell Beaker R1b folk. However, here at the Europe Forum, such a point of view is considered to be heretical by most of the people who regularly post here.

 

[JS Bach]

My own personal view is that the people who arrived in Britain from the sea about 4500 years ago were the Bell Beaker R1b folk.

That's probably close to my view as well now. I've been doing linear regression analyses of the Ancient DNA samples of the Bell Beakers, Corded Ware, and Hinxton Celts and Anglo-Saxons, using the Eurogenes 15 populations spreadsheet, and without including the Corded Ware samples got the following results:

	R-Squared	Hinxton Anglo-Saxons	Hinxton Celts	Bell Beakers	Intercept
Southeast_English	0.992643	0.09091	0.586855	0.32388	-0.01117
Southwest_English	0.987226	0.291528	0.172233	0.548788	-0.0828
West_Scottish	0.997614	0.035514	0.883953	0.092273	-0.077
Danish	0.995665	0.57223	-0.02596	0.452749	0.006023
North_Dutch	0.995606	0.672777	-0.1185	0.450742	-0.03299

I then added the Corded Ware average, and got negative coefficients for the Corded Ware attribute in the British Samples:

	R-Squared	Corded Ware Average	Bell Beaker Average	Hinxton 2, 3 and 5 Average	Hinxton 1 and 4 Average	Intercept
Southeast_English	0.99727	-0.1809	0.534825	0.173386	0.451567	0.140614
Southwest_English	0.997056	-0.26069	0.852778	0.410384	-0.02273	0.135932
West_Scottish	0.998428	-0.07898	0.184374	0.071524	0.824885	-0.01073
North_Dutch	0.995713	0.027794	0.418332	0.660106	-0.09772	-0.05631

The Corded Ware did make a reasonably good showing in the Norwegian and Swedish samples:

	R-Squared	Corded Ware Average	Bell Beaker Average	Hinxton 2, 3 and 5 Average	Intercept
Norwegian	0.983373	0.200697	0.032122	0.762082	0.034933
Norwegian	std err :	0.104949	0.22862	0.171303	0.574305
Swedish	0.972284	0.271106	0.027215	0.702293	-0.00382
Swedish	std err :	0.134317	0.292596	0.219239	0.735015

And to a lesser extent in the North Germans:

	R-Squared	Corded Ware Average	Bell Beaker Average	Hinxton 1 and 4 Average	Intercept
North German	0.993364	0.100407	0.490937	0.403744	0.032947
North German	std err :	0.060915	0.181092	0.147057	0.341062

The North Dutch, however, came out as about a 40-60 split of the Bell Beakers and Hinxton Anglo-Saxons:

	R-Squared	Bell Beaker Average	Hinxton 2, 3 and 5 Average	Intercept
North_Dutch	0.995576	0.405466	0.596296	-0.01119
North_Dutch	std err :	0.102244	0.083744	0.276286

I realize this analysis method is far from perfect, but I guess it's something with what we have for estimating those proportions.

It may well also be the case that the Bell Beakers in question had some Yamna influence, as noted particularly by their West Asian proportions in Eurogenes 15.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

A brief timeline of settlements in Britain from here

What are Your opinions. Who are the people at 2500 BC?
Are there the R1b people?
Are there pre-IE or this is the IE influx?
In my opinion it is little bit too early for IE.
Whoever there are I think it is quite probable that they are the builders of Stonehenge complex.

I think the sequence was

1) Doggerland HGs
2) Atlantic Megalith from southern Portugal (megalithic structures start with them)
3) Bell Beakers spreading as a minority artisan/trading population along the various trade routes including the Atlantic Megalith ones
4) megalithic structures reach their peak - Stonehenge plus others
5) one or more "Celtic" waves - Belgae last (IE?)
6) Romans
etc

so from the timing I'd guess Stonehenge (and various other peak megaliths in Ireland, Brittany etc) were the result of the high point of Atlantic Megalith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalith#European_megaliths

However given the timing the next question would be how important were the Bell Beakers in creating that high point?

Imma gonna guess very important and probably something to do with copper.

http://www.greatormemines.info/

So (just my opinion) the most likely option is BB originally started some place early copper working developed and then spread as an artisan/trading group along the trade networks in various directions and when they found a region that had copper those regions got an economic / cultural boost from mining / crafting copper that lead to things like Stonehenge (and possibly to dudes with axes coming to take their stuff).

So to answer your question
- I think the base of the people who built Stonehenge were already there before 2500BC i.e. Atlantic Megalith (my guess mostly ydna E and maybe some J) possibly mixed with doggerland HGs (ydna C or I)
- combined with copper working BB people (my guess R1b or at least one branch of it and not necessarily the most common ones now).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture

edit: the next question would be if BB spread as minority artisans then you can see how they might still have a large cultural or economic impact but how could they have become a big deal demographically in some regions but not others?

 

[Arame]

Well I agree that it was Bell Beaker folk who enter at 4500 BP.
Where they R1b? Now I start to think that yes there were R1b. Because there is no any other major genetic event in this timeline. If not R1b who else?
In my opinion R1b appearance was not accompanied by mass killing of males. They just had a better farming technic, better axes to cut the forest and open a space for farming. Better axes also means boats. Boats means also fishing. All this combined means more food, more R1b population.
Is this map corect that shows spread of Beaker from Germany?

 

[Aberdeen]

Well I agree that it was Bell Beaker folk who enter at 4500 BP.
Where they R1b? Now I start to think that yes there were R1b. Because there is no any other major genetic event in this timeline. If not R1b who else?
In my opinion R1b appearance was not accompanied by mass killing of males. They just had a better farming technic, better axes to cut the forest and open a space for farming. Better axes also means boats. Boats means also fishing. All this combined means more food, more R1b population.
Is this map corect that shows spread of Beaker from Germany?



View attachment 7178

There are various maps and various theories about who the Bell Beaker folk were and where they came from. If you explore this site, you'll find Maciamo's views on the matter. I believe he sees BB as largely being a cultural phenomenon, whereas some of us think it involved major population movements, perhaps initially mainly by sea. Regardless, the earliest "Maritime" style bell beakers are found on the Iberian peninsula.

 

[MOESAN]

There are various maps and various theories about who the Bell Beaker folk were and where they came from. If you explore this site, you'll find Maciamo's views on the matter. I believe he sees BB as largely being a cultural phenomenon, whereas some of us think it involved major population movements, perhaps initially mainly by sea. Regardless, the earliest "Maritime" style bell beakers are found on the Iberian peninsula.

I'm afraid I 'll repeat myself but we have some clues to estimate BB was a speedy phenomenon at the scale of History, and shew different aspects according to regions, different depths of penetration too, and different physical types, even if 'dinarids' of the old school seem the first ones, everywhere (males for the most, I think) - strontium teeth stories and other non metric researches shew some foreign intruders in some diverse places with some mating with local females (non BB at first then) but apparently the different phases of BBs didn't began nor dead at the same time everywhere. the recent origin of the most of British BBs seem without doubt in the Netherlands-Germany Rhine (anthropology + archeology) and seem having been already the result of a mixture of populations and cultural influences (Corded by instance)- the Germany BBs DNA we have seem confirming a Northern Europe stage too, not very akin to southern Portugal populations of ancient time nor today - Hubert had the impression the BRITISH BBs could have been the ancestors of the celtic Gaels... the BBs of Ireland, physically (#not the supposed Gales here!), shew more ties with Iberia (Coon), scottish ones between Britain and Ireland - Y-R1b? I don't know, yes, but at what stage? very possible if we accept that BB played a booster role - NO HOMOGENEITY WHEN WE GO IN DETAILS. A BROAD NET OF MATERIAL ACCULTURATION BASED ON METALLURGY SKILLS FINALLY TRANSMITTED TO OTHER ELITES
big movements of populations? pretty sure, but not the demic result of first BBs bearers - I think they seriously helped Celtic and proto-Germanic and Italic tribes to do a step or more forwards, and help the Atlantic megalithers too to get closer to these central Europe first I-Eans (final result: celtization of Iberia?)
&: we suppose always Gaels took foot on Ireland just after leaving the Continent. it's very possible they stayed a long enough time in Britain; their supposed passage to ireland at Iron time could be related to Brittonic impulses from the Continent -

 

[MOESAN]

concerning Vikings, when speaking of Iceland it seems the Norwegians were the core of the colonizators, and coming FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF NORWAY, NOT ONLY WEST, and some Swedes and Danes took foot there too -
In and abstract of the Bodmer paper, it's said that when anlaysing with ADMIXTURE and not his FINESTRUCTURE he found roughly a cluster with all Welshes, Western Scots, some Northern irishmen at first + some other men of Scotland places N-East and South, and here and there some Enlishmen - cluster opposed to the remnant of all England
it seems confirming some links within "celtic" regions and my analysis about depth of his FINESTRUCTURE (small clusters can reflect old story or recent drift when you have not more details about them)-

the supposed "franch" components can very easily reflect Neolithic people mixed with Mesolithic ones before Celts, and Celts themselves mixed with the 2 precedent groups (+ some fully Middle Ages introgression? not sure of a great imput here) - the Doggerland hypothesis seems to me a bit overrated on the demic aspect -

 

[Vukodav]

There are four French clusters in this study: FRA12, FRA14, FRA17 and SFS31.

The last one has also some Northern Spanish samples, mostly from Catalonia, while FRA12 has some Italians samples.

 

[JS Bach]

One thing I’m having a hard time reconciling is how the analysis in this study can conclude that Anglo-Saxons are so much more homogeneous than the Celts, yet how Bryan Sykes, Stephen Oppenheimer and others can be so adamant in their conclusions that the English are overwhelmingly Celtic. If you assume that the English are, say, 75% Celtic and 25% Anglo-Saxon, then wouldn’t the Celtic population in England that the Angles and Saxons mixed with have had to be very homogeneous? If that is the case, then how likely is it that the red area of the graph here http://www.dienekes.blogspot.ca/2015/03/british-origins-leslie-et-al-2015.html covering the large majority of England would have had such a genetically homogeneous population of Celts, compared to the rest of the Island, before the Anglo-Saxons came? If the newer study is more accurate, then it looks more like an invasion than a melting pot to me. (note the red colour depicting the English cluster)


Addendum – This kind of contradicts the linear regression analysis I posted earlier in this thread which had the ancient Hinxton Celts as being the most significant variable, and the Hinxton Anglo-Saxons as the least significant variable for predicting the SouthEast English sample I used - with the Bell Beakers being in the middle in terms of significance. Well, the Hinxton samples were small (2 and 3) ...

 

[sparkey]

One thing I’m having a hard time reconciling is how the analysis in this study can conclude that Anglo-Saxons are so much more homogeneous than the Celts, yet how Bryan Sykes, Stephen Oppenheimer and others can be so adamant in their conclusions that the English are overwhelmingly Celtic. If you assume that the English are, say, 75% Celtic and 25% Anglo-Saxon, then wouldn’t the Celtic population in England that the Angles and Saxons mixed with have had to be very homogeneous? If that is the case, then how likely is it that the red area of the graph here http://www.dienekes.blogspot.ca/2015/03/british-origins-leslie-et-al-2015.html covering the large majority of England would have had such a genetically homogeneous population of Celts, compared to the rest of the Island, before the Anglo-Saxons came? If the newer study is more accurate, then it looks more like an invasion than a melting pot to me. (note the red colour depicting the English cluster)

To begin with, Sykes and Oppenheimer are not reliable on the topic. They worked with a much more limited dataset, and jumped to false conclusions. One assumption that they made is that the percentage of haplogroups from a source population corresponds to the percentage of autosomal DNA from the same source population, which is not a good assumption in many cases. They also assumed that maximum haplogroup frequency tends to correspond to point of origin, which it does not. And although I don't recall that they ever used this assumption themselves, I think it would also be incorrect to assume that population diversity corresponds to diversity of haplogroups. The Anglo-Saxons probably brought a mix of R1b, I1, I2-M223, R1a, etc., while the native Celts were more dominantly R1b, but that doesn't imply that the Celts were more homogenous.

One of the more thoroughly addressed points in the PotBI paper is the correspondence of clusters to one another and to continental populations. It's tough to argue that the red cluster is much more than 50% Anglo-Saxon when it matches more closely to certain other British populations than it does to continental populations. Based on this study, it does indeed seem that there was a large group of relatively homogenous Celts in southern Britain, which I don't think should be that surprising, considering that the geography of those parts of southern Britain allows a lot of population movement. So, we see a large, relatively homogenous Celtic substratum spanning the red cluster, as well as the Devon cluster, Cornish cluster, Welsh Marches cluster, etc; the differences between those being partly the amount of Anglo-Saxon influence.