Fine Scale Population Structure in the British Population

[giuseppe rossi]

Thing is there are two small components: SFS31 and FRA12 which show the clearest links to Iberia and the Mediterranean. It would have been interesting to see if the E1b was connected to one or both of those.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/---rAR5GpV...AKBM/G6E-D3ZT034/s1600/ContinentalSources.jpg (h/t dionekes)

The Iberian link is only with Catalans and Basques who are not proper Iberians per se.

 

[MOESAN]

Thing is there are two small components: SFS31 and FRA12 which show the clearest links to Iberia and the Mediterranean. It would have been interesting to see if the E1b was connected to one or both of those.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/---rAR5GpV...AKBM/G6E-D3ZT034/s1600/ContinentalSources.jpg (h/t dionekes)

your hypothesis for Y-E1b is very possible but FRA12 ? I'm not sure I understand well the map but this "component" doesn't seem 'mediterranean' by force? could you explain in a deeper way?

 

[Vallicanus]

your hypothesis for Y-E1b is very possible but FRA12 ? I'm not sure I understand well the map but this "component" doesn't seem 'mediterranean' by force? could you explain in a deeper way?

Indeed component FRA12 might be called "Core French" or "Core Gallic" as it is found in many parts of France with an overspill into NW Italy down to NW Tuscany.

 

[Aberdeen]

The thing about Danish DNA is that there is a clear British Isles group with a lot of affinity to Scandinavia: Orcadians. And the Orcadians, as a result, are the greatest outlier among British populations. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing that they used Danes as a reference population, only Norwegians and Swedes, but nonetheless, it seems that they're drawing their conclusions about the effects of the Danelaw based on reference population affinity.

Naturally, drawing specific conclusions about much of anything based on modern reference populations is highly problematic. There's no real temporal aspect in doing so, so there may be other explanations for why Orcadians are much closer to Scandinavians than the rest of the British. But at least this study can count as evidence.

It was the Norwegians, not the Danes, who settled in Orcadia. It was the Danes who settled in the English Danelaw, and I suspect that their DNA was closer to that of the Anglo-Saxons than the Norwegians prior to the medieval political union between Denmark and Norway. If you look at the map, the red dots that supposedly represent Anglo-Saxons match very closely a combination of the Anglo-Saxon heartland and the Danelaw (which did overlap to some extent). There just doesn't seem to be any separation between the two and I suppose one could assume, as the authors seem to, that the Danes just disappeared, presumably after King Canute's last descendent was replaced by an Anglo-Saxon type in 1042. But, when one considers such things as the continuing influence of Old Danish on the accents of people in modern northeastern England, it seems possible that Danish DNA was more like Anglo-Saxon DNA than Norse 1000 years ago, especially given that the Angles appear to have come in part from what is now southern Denmark.

 

[Angela]

I'm having some trouble deciphering the below graphic. FRA17 has blue bars, but the arrow is pointing to teal colored circles. Or am I color blind?

It's the teal colored circles which appear in Piemonte, Liguria and down the coast into Toscana. So is it FRA 17 which is in Italy or FRA12?

The teal circles also appear in what looks like Provence, the coastal Loire?, Orleans? and southern Poitou?
Is there something which ties those regions together, particularly?

This is what they have to say about these clusters in the Supplement:
The pattern in North Wales, North Pembrokeshire, South Pembrokeshire: "Absence of GER3 and FRA17, presence of FRA12, and relatively higher proportions of GER6 and FRA14."

A second general pattern is shared by a number of other UK clusters(from north to south: Northumbria; Cumbria; W Yorkshire, Cent./S England; Welsh Borders; Devon; Cornwall): Significant presence of GER3, absence of FRA12, relatively higher contributions from groups FRA17 and DEN18, and relatively lower contributions from FRA14.

As to FRA17, they have this to say:
"presence/absence pattern (notably its absence from Wales) strongly suggests that it results from a migration or migrations later than those of the earliest migrations which contributed DNA to the modern UK population (GER6, BEK11, FRA14: internal migration has spread the DNA from these early immigrants across the UK, so that if the migrations represented gy FRA17 were earlier than or contemporaneous with these, then the same migrations should also have spread the resulting(FRA17 like)DNA through out the UK, including Wales. We also argue that the FRA17 contribution is unlikely to reflect any of the known movements in histori(i.e.since the Roman invasion of Britain)


Their main argument for the last statement is that none of those invasions were large enough to effect such a wide spread of alleles.

This leads me to think FRA17 is not the one in Italy. FRA14 is, according to the authors, mostly found in northwest France (although it appears in other places on the French map.) Therefore, does it seem more likely that it is FRA12 which is present in Italy?

If that is correct, it's interesting that it is basically only present in Wales. I hesitate to ascribe it to Roman legionnaires (many of whom came from northern Italy and Gaul) as per the thread on E-V13. If they impacted the genetics of Wales, why not that of the area around Hadrian's Wall, or on the Saxon Shore? The authors maintain that the most widespread components are oldest. I'm not so sure that would always be the case. Couldn't the oldest component have been pushed into Wales by subsequent invasions?

As to the presence in Italy there are numerous explanations, from shared Neolithic ancestry to the documented Gallic migrations in the first millennium BC into Piemonte and Liguria specifically from the west.

 

[MOESAN]

I think that all this talk of the differences between the "clusters" obscures the fact that all the people of the British Isles are incredibly homogenous. Those are amazingly small Fst differences.

That said, it's still interesting.



I think it's important to keep this in mind whenever people are talking about migrations of conquering male elites; they can change the culture and the language, but their genetic heritage can disappear from the autosomes, if not the yDna, no matter how many wives they took. You need large numbers of men and women, a "folk migration" to make lasting change. The only exception might be if they brought diseases with them, diseases which wiped out large numbers of the indigenous inhabitants. That's why I'm always very skeptical in studies of my own country about claims that the Normans left an autosomal impact on western Sicily, or some quartering of troops around a "Lombard" castle in the south changed the genetic make-up to some large degree.

Angela, male elites colonizations without any female are very seldom - perhaps the maritime ones (as Vikings) were roughly of this sort but NOT ALWAYS after first conquest, females could come to colonize too - scientists shew the Vikings colonizations had different ratio of ethnic males/females different origins ratio, the differences are clear when comparing Hebrides/Western Isles, Caithness, Orkney , Shetland, Iceland, Faroe - (for Ireland I don't read anything) -
I think as you a male elite conquest leads to desequilibrium between the ratio of different Y-DNA haplos and the ratio of autosomes in a population but let's keep in mind all the way that when a male passes a 100% Y not recombining heritages to his sons (the girls are not serious, they don't keep the Y haplo of Papa !!! (LOL) he passes also a 50% set of autosomes to them AND to their daughters - so in this theorical only males conquest even if the males autosomes tend to be "washed", a, say, hand full of new males excluding autochtonous males of the mating and taking 100 autochtonous females can passe 50% of the autosomes of the new generation and if they keep the strong side in this figure the subsequent generations will roughly keep this 50% ratios - only drift/mutations can changes it in this example - so, taken in account that some "colon" females accompanied the colonizators and that the males conquerors kept some advantages upon local males, the loss of original conquerors autosomes is not always so quick we can aspect: a first brutal loss at first crossing generation, but low evolution in following generations -
that said, all that is theory: not always all the autochtonous males were discarded of reproduction... you' re right when you write elite males can loose some part of their autosomes but we cannot be sure of the loss speed - surely you were aware of all that, but the way you wrote could give way to misunderstanding to someones
and Sicilia is not so uniform concerning DNA at fine scale I think (even if roughly homogenous compared to other greater regions -
buona sera -

 

[MOESAN]

en vrac

Recall of theoriccolonization of the region - I hope I don't forget the principalones -
before Neolithic :unknown for the most
Neolithic : thefirst ones not well known + the Long Barrows period : Atlanticmegalithers with some elements maybe coming from far EastMerditerranea (partially « Sumerianlike » for Coon, maybeS-Caucasus people not far from Black Sea at some stage ? See dolmens in Abkhazia region NW-Caucasus about the 3000 BC? - alreadyY-R1b ? To be checked)
Chalcolithic-Eneolithic :Bell Beakers from the Rhine mouth and maybe Westphaly
Bronze Age : ?maybe some continental Celts ?
Urnfields period: ?seemingly some people (Celts) seemingly from EasternFrance/Switzerland
Iron Age ther Celts ( ?), Picts ? and Belgae / then : Romans
450-650 :Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisons colonization
later :Norwegian and Dane Vikings with different places of settlements
1066 : Williamthe Bastard and « Normans » plus W-Armoric Bretons andFlemings (Preceltic-Celtic-Germanics mix)
later : nocolonization but infiltration of Western French nobility


the clusteringsystem is a problem to me : I suppose it searches close andpeculiar frequencies of genes among individuals leading to thepossibility to create some geographical groupings : it impliessome arbitrary statement ? Where are the true limits ? Themost precise and fine scaled the cluster is, the most exposed torecent drift it is, unrelated to ancient historical events -
Not the samedepth (number of typical sets of genes leading to the separationfrom others clusters)?
Theses clusters arenot compared to distributions of known pooled componants, ancient orcurrent -
here I would haveprefered a global genetic distance table for all the regions of theIsles ti this clustering system-
2 small branches ofa same population, sharing the same ancestors, and colonizing 2different small regions and isolated for some reason, can haveglobally the same % of genes of every ancient component butpresent a kind of « complementary » (opposed)distribution of some of these genes ; this plus subsequent driftcan create 2 well defined distinct clusters was could not beproduced by greater populations (greater mating circle) – globallythese 2 « distinct » populations shows nevertheless greatressemblance so short distance when the whole genome isconsidered – (it's the problem I evocated concerning metricsvariations among Amerindians in compartimented mountains of Peru).


ancient regionalfacts :
BBs more in Southernand Eastern England, a bit in Eastern Scotland, modified by other« BBs » =
the Food Vesselpeople from Ireland, with a common element but lack of the otherselements of British BBs, these last ones picked in Preceltic oralready Celtic Germany (it is not so evident) – according tosomeones, BBs pushed back the precedent Long Barrows people wherethey take foot -
+ possibly peoplefrom East-France-Switzerland in Urnfields period, in Kent and maybeEastern Scotland : 'alpine » regions
Belgae settled forthe most in South-East and East England, very few elsewhere but itdoesn't esclude a shift towards West fleeing the Germanics -
Romans settled intowns or on boundaries, with them foreign legions from everywhere inthe Empire, Celts among them : surely few remnants after the450... LOOK DATES
the Anglo-Saxons andFrisons/Jutes settled at first the eastern coastal region of todayEngland : possibility : they absorbed the Brittons/Belgaepeople (or only their females) OR they pushed back the most of themtoward West, principally Wessex (look at some S-W english dialects?S/Z-F/V phenomenon , known in celtic Cornish and some Breton dialectstoday, not without some tendancy among Germanics of West : thisphenomenon generalized by the late progression of german, doesn'tseem genuine in North nor East : Frisons, Englishmen,Scandinaviasn ignore it as seemingly all ancient germanic languages :here a study of old germanic dialects phonetics is needed, I'm notsure, only speculation for east-german history)
Norse settlements :Ireland, Hebrides islands, Orkney/Shetland, Western Scotland shoresand Isle of Man, West Lancashire, some traces in South-Pembroke andSomerset


Middle Ages Vikingssettlements in Wirral-W-Lancashire shew some big drift concerningY-DNA by instance : their Y-DNA is absorbed for the most now ( alesson!) - it is the problem of colonizations by small groups,humans as animals – and here we have too the question ofpre-Anglo-Saxon regional clusters : the most of the regionsconsidered as more Celtic are refuge areas with small density sincelong time ago and so more exposure to drift– so it's hard tomeasure the DNA they shared between them some centuries ago – whatdoes not push me to think it's only recent drift that explainthe today differences in these refuges – the Neolithic people camesurely in more than a wave and from diverse places even if LongBarrows people seem having had an heavy rôle – the Celts came fromdifferent places (maybe since the « British » BBs?) atdifferent times.
And we know Celtswere for the most pushed back into refuges of Preceltic people (anold law of History)- the Bretons and Belgae living in Central Englandand East or North England before the Saxons were surely not exactlythe same ones as the today Neo-Celts of the Occident shores -
the differencesbetween these refuge zones are maybe due not to the differencebetween Celts only but due more to the differences between Precelticstettlers. So small distances but clear restricted clusters ?
The clusterS-Central England seems to me very too largely and uniformly spred to be « sincere » - he doesn't reflect what anthropologynor Y-Haplos shew us – it ressemble an « average » or« mean » english citizen type (completely unrelated tovariations in Y-DNA haplos) where is smelt Anglo-Saxons + Celts +some Precelts : a cities new populations ? Or genuine localtypes, but with erased differences by the clustering system appliedto big populations or not isolated small populations (famouscontinuum concept ???)
as you know thereare some studies about the different systems to appreciatedifferences in distributions of traits in population(s) and theclustering : not so simple... THE method can give THE result ?I 'll try to learn but maths explanations with maths « ogams »or « runes » are a punition to me...


So Angela is rightwhen she speak about global short distances between British people,even if it is true too for all the Euroasians – except that thespotting of individuals in some tables show a span from Irishmen toNorth Frenches, Normands or Bretons, to N-W Germans (so :Belgians and Dutch people) until Norwegians !
By the way the« french » elements present in the Isles is for a partsince Middle Ages, but I think a lot is representative of more than aCeltic/Celtized people wave. I tried ti buy the paper but I had somedifficulty, I 'll try again : maybe I 'll change my thoughts ?


A conclusion ?Perhaps a TOO FINE scale for clustering is not accurate to show realdistances between human groups and to illustrate History? Butdifferent adjustments of the magnifying glass can help to devinedifferent depths of History too so...

 

[Angela]

Angela, male elites colonizations without any female are very seldom - perhaps the maritime ones (as Vikings) were roughly of this sort but NOT ALWAYS after first conquest, females could come to colonize too - scientists shew the Vikings colonizations had different ratio of ethnic males/females different origins ratio, the differences are clear when comparing Hebrides/Western Isles, Caithness, Orkney , Shetland, Iceland, Faroe - (for Ireland I don't read anything) -
I think as you a male elite conquest leads to desequilibrium between the ratio of different Y-DNA haplos and the ratio of autosomes in a population but let's keep in mind all the way that when a male passes a 100% Y not recombining heritages to his sons (the girls are not serious, they don't keep the Y haplo of Papa !!! (LOL) he passes also a 50% set of autosomes to them AND to their daughters - so in this theorical only males conquest even if the males autosomes tend to be "washed", a, say, hand full of new males excluding autochtonous males of the mating and taking 100 autochtonous females can passe 50% of the autosomes of the new generation and if they keep the strong side in this figure the subsequent generations will roughly keep this 50% ratios - only drift/mutations can changes it in this example - so, taken in account that some "colon" females accompanied the colonizators and that the males conquerors kept some advantages upon local males, the loss of original conquerors autosomes is not always so quick we can aspect: a first brutal loss at first crossing generation, but low evolution in following generations -
that said, all that is theory: not always all the autochtonous males were discarded of reproduction... you' re right when you write elite males can loose some part of their autosomes but we cannot be sure of the loss speed - surely you were aware of all that, but the way you wrote could give way to misunderstanding to someones
and Sicilia is not so uniform concerning DNA at fine scale I think (even if roughly homogenous compared to other greater regions -
buona sera -

I don't disagree with much of what you have posted.

My comment was in response to the following quote from the paper (which appeared in my post).
"He said: 'It's important to emphasise that when you get that mixture it's very much a question of the ratio of the people who come in and the indigenous population."

If, as in the scenario they were describing, which involved, to my recollection, Roman administrators, soldiers, merchants etc., these men were admixing into a population of over two million people, their yDna might remain, through chance, but the autosomal contribution could disappear. Simulations in various genetics papers indicate it could disappear in six generations.

The supposed "Indo-European" migration into India is a perfect example of an elite male migration. There is minimal if any sign of a movement of steppe related or eastern European related mtDna into India. There is a lot of R1a of the Z93 variety. If the R1a Z93 was indeed brought from the steppe, the number of men must have been small in relation to the indigenous population, and continual marriage into that indigenous population wiped out the autosomal component, because the amount of "Northern European" even in Northwest Indians is miniscule.

Even if there is a folk migration of sorts, the impact autosomally depends on that ratio. The Lombard invasion of Italy involved less than 100,000 people, although they came as families. However, if we try to measure their impact by yDna and we look at lineages like U-106 and I1, their impact was minimal. That's because they were migrating into a country whose population numbered in the millions. Their strongest impact is, in so far as I can tell, in the north east and center north of Italy. We have a lot of Lombard castles in my particular area, but the amount of I1 is small. I would speculate that these castles were garrisoned by men who didn't necessarily bring their own women with them. Of course, we really need autosomal analysis using ancient genomes to get a clearer picture, but what has been done so far in regard to the Lombards is underwhelming to say the least.

 

[Angela]

It was the Norwegians, not the Danes, who settled in Orcadia. It was the Danes who settled in the English Danelaw, and I suspect that their DNA was closer to that of the Anglo-Saxons than the Norwegians prior to the medieval political union between Denmark and Norway. If you look at the map, the red dots that supposedly represent Anglo-Saxons match very closely a combination of the Anglo-Saxon heartland and the Danelaw (which did overlap to some extent). There just doesn't seem to be any separation between the two and I suppose one could assume, as the authors seem to, that the Danes just disappeared, presumably after King Canute's last descendent was replaced by an Anglo-Saxon type in 1042. But, when one considers such things as the continuing influence of Old Danish on the accents of people in modern northeastern England, it seems possible that Danish DNA was more like Anglo-Saxon DNA than Norse 1000 years ago, especially given that the Angles appear to have come in part from what is now southern Denmark.

Have you taken a look at page 11 of the Supplement?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/extref/nature14230-s1.pdf

 

[Greying Wanderer]

your hypothesis for Y-E1b is very possible but FRA12 ? I'm not sure I understand well the map but this "component" doesn't seem 'mediterranean' by force? could you explain in a deeper way?

It's only that FRA12 extends more into the France/Italy/Liguria region than the rest of the components - so not much of a reason.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/---rAR5GpV...AKBM/G6E-D3ZT034/s1600/ContinentalSources.jpg

(h/t dionekes)

My thinking was
- Romans said Wales had darker people
- Wales has more ydna E1b
- SFS31 and FRA12 are the two components furthest towards the mediterranean

so not exactly watertight

As FRA12 only appears in low amounts and only in Wales and SW Scotland I think that points at it being an old layer pushed back to the primary refuge zones but maybe before Atlantic Megalith?

Thinking about it more my guess is the Iberian (or coastal Iberian for those who prefer) SFS31 seems like the most likely candidate for E1b.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

I'm having some trouble deciphering the below graphic. FRA17 has blue bars, but the arrow is pointing to teal colored circles. Or am I color blind?

View attachment 7153

It's the teal colored circles which appear in Piemonte, Liguria and down the coast into Toscana. So is it FRA 17 which is in Italy or FRA12?

The teal circles also appear in what looks like Provence, the coastal Loire?, Orleans? and southern Poitou?
Is there something which ties those regions together, particularly?

This is what they have to say about these clusters in the Supplement:
The pattern in North Wales, North Pembrokeshire, South Pembrokeshire: "Absence of GER3 and FRA17, presence of FRA12, and relatively higher proportions of GER6 and FRA14."

A second general pattern is shared by a number of other UK clusters(from north to south: Northumbria; Cumbria; W Yorkshire, Cent./S England; Welsh Borders; Devon; Cornwall): Significant presence of GER3, absence of FRA12, relatively higher contributions from groups FRA17 and DEN18, and relatively lower contributions from FRA14.

As to FRA17, they have this to say:
"presence/absence pattern (notably its absence from Wales) strongly suggests that it results from a migration or migrations later than those of the earliest migrations which contributed DNA to the modern UK population (GER6, BEK11, FRA14: internal migration has spread the DNA from these early immigrants across the UK, so that if the migrations represented gy FRA17 were earlier than or contemporaneous with these, then the same migrations should also have spread the resulting(FRA17 like)DNA through out the UK, including Wales. We also argue that the FRA17 contribution is unlikely to reflect any of the known movements in histori(i.e.since the Roman invasion of Britain)


Their main argument for the last statement is that none of those invasions were large enough to effect such a wide spread of alleles.

This leads me to think FRA17 is not the one in Italy. FRA14 is, according to the authors, mostly found in northwest France (although it appears in other places on the French map.) Therefore, does it seem more likely that it is FRA12 which is present in Italy?

If that is correct, it's interesting that it is basically only present in Wales. I hesitate to ascribe it to Roman legionnaires (many of whom came from northern Italy and Gaul) as per the thread on E-V13. If they impacted the genetics of Wales, why not that of the area around Hadrian's Wall, or on the Saxon Shore? The authors maintain that the most widespread components are oldest. I'm not so sure that would always be the case. Couldn't the oldest component have been pushed into Wales by subsequent invasions?

As to the presence in Italy there are numerous explanations, from shared Neolithic ancestry to the documented Gallic migrations in the first millennium BC into Piemonte and Liguria specifically from the west.

Yes I think it is FRA12 extending into Italy. FRA17 is pointing at the wrong color.

Also the more I squint the more widespread a lot of the colors are.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

@Moesan

The clusterS-Central England seems to me very too largely and uniformly spred to be « sincere »

I wonder if that might relate to the hajnal line marriage system and low levels of cousin marriage?

 

[Angela]

Yes I think it is FRA12 extending into Italy. FRA17 is pointing at the wrong color.

Also the more I squint the more widespread a lot of the colors are.

The FRA12 being the group present in northwestern Italy as well as in France, and being present in Wales but not other parts of Britain sort of supports the Hellenthal et al results finding a link between northern Italy/Tuscany and Wales, yes? However, what's the time period? What group could have fed into Wales from northwest Italy, or, conversely, what group could have fed into both areas?

 

[Vallicanus]

The FRA12 being the group present in northwestern Italy as well as in France, and being present in Wales but not other parts of Britain sort of supports the Hellenthal et al results finding a link between northern Italy/Tuscany and Wales, yes? However, what's the time period? What group could have fed into Wales from northwest Italy, or, conversely, what group could have fed into both areas?

It is significant that FRA12 is found in Wales and in both Northern Ireland and Scotland categories and in Orkney1. We may have traces of an ancient substratum of people from prehistoric Gaul here.

 

[giuseppe rossi]

It's only that FRA12 extends more into the France/Italy/Liguria region than the rest of the components - so not much of a reason.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/---rAR5GpV...AKBM/G6E-D3ZT034/s1600/ContinentalSources.jpg

(h/t dionekes)

My thinking was
- Romans said Wales had darker people
- Wales has more ydna E1b
- SFS31 and FRA12 are the two components furthest towards the mediterranean

so not exactly watertight

As FRA12 only appears in low amounts and only in Wales and SïW Scotland I think that points at it being an old layer pushed back to the primary refuge zones but maybe before Atlantic Megalith?

Thinking about it more my guess is the Iberian (or coastal Iberian for those who prefer) SFS31 seems like the most likely candidate for E1b.

No only the Silures were said to be swarthy, not the whole Wales.

The Iberian connection is only with Basques and Catalans and is like 1% at max.

 

[Aberdeen]

Have you taken a look at page 11 of the Supplement?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/extref/nature14230-s1.pdf

I guess I don't know enough about that kind of thing to interpret the map very well. I was going mainly by what Dienekes said about the paper, and the way he illustrated one of the maps from it. But mostly I'm looking at the wording of the paper. After admitting that the Jutes and some of the Angles actually came from what is now Denmark and stating "Definitively separating Saxon and Danish Viking inputs is impossible", they try to do just that, apparently by making the questionable assumption that Danish DNA of 1000 years ago more closely resembled modern Norse DNA than modern German DNA. And they greatly understate the size of the Danelaw and don't even mention that the whole of England was ruled by Danes for a few decades. In fact, there are a number of what I think are questionable assumptions they make throughout the paper in order to arrive at the conclusion that there is more old DNA in England than had been assumed.

 

[Aberdeen]

No only the Silures were said to be swarthy, not the whole Wales.

The Iberian connection is only with Basques and Catalans and is like 1% at max.

Actually, Julius Caesar said that the Britons were smaller and darker, on average, than the Romans, although he also said that the Celts who ruled Britain were quite tall and strongly built, with light coloured hair (at least partly because of the use of hair dye). So Caesar seems to have distinguished the Celtic ruling class from the majority of Brits.

 

[giuseppe rossi]

???

No I don't think so. I've read his whole book.

 

[MOESAN]

Actually, Julius Caesar said that the Britons were smaller and darker, on average, than the Romans, although he also said that the Celts who ruled Britain were quite tall and strongly built, with light coloured hair (at least partly because of the use of hair dye). So Caesar seems to have distinguished the Celtic ruling class from the majority of Brits.

I lost the Caesar 's book (translated in french) long time ago and can no more check details - I've no remembrance of Britons smaller than Romans (these ones 1m62 as mean, for I red in Coon but ?) even when speaking about the curly black haired Siluri(ans) -
what I remember for others authors is Britons (not Belgae ones) as a whole were described as slightly higher but a bit slender than Gauls, and a bit darker for head hairs, but with as light skins - Gauls were a bit lighter haired (same remark concerning bleaching) and a bit more stocky -
at Iron times, I red 1m70 for Gaels, and 1m67 as a mean for Gauls (no precision for British Celts, except the famous descriptions of "red haired" and high and long bodied Caledonians - surely all Britons were not pure Celts and some regional places shew different types and Caesar was not anthropologist, nor were the other Ancients -
but perhaps, Abderdeen, have you the passage where Caesar spoke of these anatomic details concerning different Britons? ( I can have passed over there long time ago)

 

[elghund]

I can see three hotspots in France for FRA 17. Could the arrow be pointing at the teal blob because the teal blob is setting in the middle zone of the three FRA 17 spots?