Settlement of Great Britain and Ireland

Research into the prehistoric and historic settlement of Great Britain and Ireland is controversial, with differences of opinion from many academic disciplines.

The British Isles have a long history of migration from across Europe. Over the millennia successive waves of immigrants have come to the Isles.

Modern humans first arrived in what would become the British Isles during the Palaeolithic when they all formed part of the European landmass. Traditionally they are thought to have been followed by Neolithic farmers (5th millennium BC), Beaker people (3rd millennium BC), Celts (2nd millennium BC), Belgae (1st millennium BC). Parts of the Islands became part of the Roman Empire (1st century BC), and Anglo-Saxons (c. 5th century AD) and Norsemen (Vikings)(8th century AD) also settled in the Islands. In 1066, the Normans successfully conquered what had become England and, in subsequent years, there was some migration from France. The Normans gradually expanded their conquest into other regions of the Islands.

Paleolithic
Cro-Magnons (the first anatomically modern humans) are believed to have arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago. They are known to have had a presence in the geographical region that was to become Great Britain by 27,000 years ago due to the discovery of the skeletal remains of the Red Lady of Paviland. This is the skeleton (lacking the skull) of a young man of the Aurignacian culture, and may be the oldest modern human remains yet discovered in Great Britain and Ireland. During the following Ice Age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)) northern Europe may have been completely depopulated of humans. Humans probably returned to the region of the British and Irish peninsula about 14,700 years ago as the Ice Age started to end, after an absence of about 10,000 years.

The Beaker people
Defined by a style of pottery from the 3rd millennium BC found across most of Europe in archæological digs the Beaker people represent early immigration to the United Kingdom during the Bronze Age, although not as a mass migratory group.

It was originally thought that the settlers that came with these beakers also had other defining features that show they are distinctive from earlier dwellers of the British Isles, such as the development of metalworking and the mode of burial of the dead that came into use at about this time. However, it is generally accepted by archaeologists today that the beakers and other artefacts found across Europe that are attributed to the Beaker people are indicative of the development of particular manufacturing skills that spread independently of any population movement, possibly by the influence of neighbouring peoples, rather than as a result of mass migrations.

Therefore, although this represents the earliest known migration of people to the United Kingdom, this migration was on a much smaller scale than other migrationary groups that came later.

Celtic settlement
The Celts were a number of interrelated peoples in central Europe sharing a branch of Indo-European languages indicative of a common origin in a Proto-Celtic language. The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as keltoi or hidden people, is by the Greek Hecataeus of Miletus in 517 BC. It is traditionally estimated that the Celtic people arrived in Britain between 1500 BC and 400 BC during the Bronze Age or Iron Age - but other prominent scholars, among them Barry Cunliffe, see Proto-Indo-Europeans exploring the Atlantic façade as early as the Neolithic.

The linguistic evidence can, at this point, be used to support either timeframe, as the date for Proto-Indo-European is still debated.

Of great importance is that recent typological studies of Proto-Indo-European (Tamaz Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov), and subsequent studies of Insular Celtic (Winfred P. Lehmann), have demonstrated that the verbal system of the latter retains more features of the former than does any other living Indo-European dialect, and thus an earlier than the traditionally calculated split (of Proto-Celtic from Proto-Indo-European) appears likely.

The conventional historical view was that the Celtic influence in the British Isles was the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries. This view is now generally discredited.

The nature of their interactions with the indigenous populations of the isles is unknown. However, by the Roman period most of the inhabitants of the Isles were speaking Goidelic or Brythonic languages with close counterparts to Gaulish languages spoken on the European mainland. The degree to which the spread of Celtic languages was due to peaceful cultural interaction, or to military conquest, is a debated point among historians. Yet, unlike their continental neighbours, none of the known peoples of the Isles ever referred to themselves as Celts, nor were they so called in any surviving works by contemporary foreign writers.

Roman Empire
The first Roman invasion of the British Isles was led by Julius Caesar in 55 BC; the second, a year later in 54 BC. Although no territory was taken for the Roman Empire on either occasion, this was the start of Roman settlement of Britain. The Romans had many supporters among the Celtic tribal leaders, who agreed to pay tributes to Rome in return for Roman protection.

The Romans returned in AD 44, led by Claudius, this time establishing control, and establishing a province Britannia. Initially an oppressive rule, gradually the new leaders gained a firmer hold on their new territory which at one point stretched from the south coast of England to Wales and as far away as Scotland (though they did not hold the latter for long).

Over the approximately 350 years of Roman occupation of Britain, the majority of settlers were soldiers garrisoned on the mainland. It was with constant contact with Rome and the rest of Romanised Europe through trade and industry that the native Britons themselves adopted Roman culture and customs.

Scots, Attacotti and Déisi
Extensive raids and settlement of the west coast of Britain by a number of peoples from Ireland took place during much of the 4th and 5th centuries, leading to serious warfare between the Romano-British and the Irish, called Scotti by the Romans. One of the most notable of these wars was the Great Conspiracy of 367. While the Attacotti had entered Roman military service by the 370s, the Déisi and Laigin founded kingdoms in what is now the north, west and south of Wales. There is strong evidence that the Ulaid occupied the Isle of Man over much of this era, while the Dál Riata, began settlement leading to what would become Scotland.

Angles, Saxons and Jutes
Germanic (Frankish) mercenaries were employed in Gaul by the Roman empire and it is speculated in a similar manner, the first Germanic immigrants to Britain arrived at the invitation of the ruling classes. The traditional division into Angles, Saxons and Jutes is first seen in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by Bede, however historical and archaeological research has shown that a wider range of Germanic peoples from the coast of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jutland and Southern Sweden also moved to Britain in this era.

After the withdrawal of the last legions from Britain by Honorius in the early 5th century, the number of newcomers increased, and it is speculated that relations with the ruling Romanised Britons became strained. By about 449, open conflict had broken out, and the immigrants began to establish their own kingdoms in what would eventually become the Heptarchy.

Vikings
The earliest date given for a Viking raid of Britain is 789 when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Portland was attacked. A more reliable report dates from June 8, 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne on the east coast of England was pillaged by foreign seafarers. These raiders, whose expeditions extended well into the 9th century, were gradually followed by settlers who brought a new culture and tradition markedly different from that of the prevalent Anglo-Saxon society. These enclaves rapidly expanded, and soon the Viking warriors were establishing areas of control to such an extent that they could reasonably be described as kingdoms.

The Danelaw, established through the Viking conquest of large parts of England, was formally established, as a result of the Treaty of Wedmore in the late 9th century, after Alfred the Great had defeated the Viking Guthrum at the Battle of Edington. The Danelaw represented a consolidation of power for Alfred; the subsequent conversion of Guthrum to Christianity underlines the ideological significance of this shift in the balance of power. The Danelaw was gradually eroded by Anglo-Saxon raids in later years, until England was completely taken by Vikings in 1016.

In parts of England today, the influence of the Vikings can still be seen, particularly in place names in the East Midlands and the north.

Genetic research
Despite these great movements of people, some early investigations have shown that the biological influence of pre-20th century immigration on Britain may have been smaller than previously thought, marked more by continuity than change. The Oxford archaeologist David Miles states that 80% of the genetic makeup of native Britons probably comes from "just a few thousand" nomadic tribesmen who arrived 12,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age. This suggests later waves of immigration may have been too small to have significantly affected the genetic homogeneity of the existing population. However, Miles acknowledged himself that the techniques used to explore genetic ancestry are still in their infancy and that many more samples are needed to fully understand the origins of the British people. Geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer has recently argued that neither Anglo-Saxons nor Celts may have had much impact on the genetics of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and that British ancestry can be traced back to ancient peoples similar to the modern-day Basques instead. Current estimates on the contribution of Anglo-Saxon migrants range from less than 10,000 to as many as 200,000, although some recent Y-chromosome studies posit a considerably higher continental (Germanic) contribution to the modern English gene pool. A recent study by a team from the Department of Biology at UCL based on computer simulations indicate that an apartheid-like social structure in early Anglo-Saxon England provides a plausible explanation for a high-degree of continental male-line ancestry in England.

The above article, based on analysis of the Y chromosomes of men currently living in Britain, the Western Isles, Orkney, Shetland, Friesland, Denmark, North Germany, Ireland, Norway and the Basque Country, is consistent with the presence of some indigenous component in all British regions. For the sake of this study samples from the Basque Country were considered indigenous (a putative paleolithic Y chromosome). These studies cannot distinguish between Danish, Frisian and German (Schleswig-Holstein) Y chromosomes. Within England areas with the highest concentration of Germanic (Danish-Viking/Anglo-Saxon) Y chromosomes occurred in areas associated with the Danelaw and Danish-Viking settlement, especially York and Norfolk. In these areas, about 60% of Y chromosomes are of Germanic origin. It should be noted that this indicates an exclusively male component. The extent of Danish/Anglo-Saxon contribution to the entire gene pool of these areas is also dependent on the migration of women. For example, if it is assumed that few or no Germanic women settled in these areas, then the Germanic contribution to the gene pool is halved to 30%, and in turn if greater numbers of women did settle, the contribution could be even higher than 60%.

In two recently published books, Blood of the Isles, by Bryan Sykes and The Origins of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer, both authors state that according to genetic studies (mainly Haplogroup R1b as well as E3b, I, J (Y-DNA) and Mtdna), most Britons descend mainly from ancient populations of the Iberian Peninsula, as a result of different migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic, which laid the foundations for the present-day populations in the British Isles, indicating an ancient relationship among the populations of Atlantic Europe. Both Authors claim that there is evidence for this on both the y-chromosomes and maternal dna. Stephen Oppenheimer is even able to date when migrations to the British Isles took place and where exactly within the Iberian peninsula these different migrations originated. Stephen Oppenheimer also claims that there were neolithic invasions to Scotland from Norway prior to Norwegian Viking invasions and that the Vikings would take the same invasion routes as their previous neolithic invaders.

In Origins of the British (2006), Stephen Oppenheimer states (pages 375 and 378):


 * By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory…


 * …75-95% of British Isles (genetic) matches derive from Iberia...Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the British Isles have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples…

In page 367 he also states in relation to Rossers's pan-European genetic distance map:


 * In Rosser's work, the closest population to the Basques is in Cornwall, followed closely by Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, East Anglia and then northern France"

Bryan Sykes, in his book Blood of the Isles (2006), states (p.280):


 * –the presence of large numbers of Jasmines’s Oceanic clan, says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic sea board north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. The number of exact and close matches between the maternal clans of western and northern Iberia and the western half of the Isles is very impressive, much more so than the much poorer matches with continental Europe.

Pages 281-82.


 * The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or the same time as farming reached the Isles.


 * The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus………. This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland.

Page 283.


 * Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantic chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes. The sea routes of the atlantic fringe conveyed both men and women to the Isles.

England
The percentage of the R1b haplotype on the Y chromosomes of English males, at about 64%, indicates that they may be descended primarily from the earliest Paleolithic peoples thought to have recolonised western Europe from a western Ice Age refuge after the end of the last major glaciation (LMG) some 10-12 thousand years ago.

There are thought to have been three separated pockets of human habitation in Europe during the last major glaciation (the end of the Paleolithic and the Pleistocene), on the Iberian peninsula, in the Balkans and in what is now the Ukraine (north of the Black Sea). The Y chromosome haplogroups from these populations are thought to correspond to R1b (Iberian), I (Balkans) and R1a (Ukraine), these three haplogroups occur all over Europe, but their frequencies are not spread uniformly.

Y chromosome analysis of men from Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Friesland and the Basque Country of Northern Spain and South Western France has revealed that the Germanic (Danish/North German/Frisian) component in the male line of descent is higher in some areas of England than others. It is highest in York and Norfolk, where the Germanic Y chromosome occurs in about 60% of men, while indigenous Y chromosomes comprise about 40%. The research cannot distinguish between Danish (the presumed source of Danish-Viking settlers to East and Northern England), North German (Schleswig-Holstein, modern era) and Frisian (Anglo-Saxon) Y chromosomes. It concludes "these data are consistent with the presence of some indigenous component in all British regions". Also, this research cannot make reference to the extent of settlement by Anglo-Saxon/Danish-Viking women. Therefore even in places like York, the total genetic contribution of these peoples would be less than 60% if fewer women than men migrated, and conversely it would be greater if more women than men settled.

Computer simulations have shown that it is theoretically possible for a small Anglo-Saxon population that was politically and economically dominant to support larger families, which in turn could have resulted in a faster population growth for the dominant class. This model has been likened to apartheid in South Africa. These data assume that there is a 50% Anglo-Saxon Y chromosome occurrence through England, though this assumption has been contested by more recent genetic surveys. In some areas, notably Cornwall (and to a lesser extent Cumbria and Lancashire), some people claim a stronger ethnic connection to the ancient Britons, consequently some historians claim that Cornish people are distinct from English people.

Ireland
Current genetic research supports the idea that the Y-chromosomes and mtDNA of people living in Britain and Ireland are mainly descended from the indigenous European Paleolithic (Old Stone Age hunter gatherers) population, with a smaller Neolithic (New Stone Age farmers) input particularly with the Y-chromosomes and mtDNA from people of the Celtiberians or Galicians of Galicia (Spain). Paleolithic Europeans seem to have been a homogenous population, possibly due to a population bottleneck (or near-extinction event) on the Iberian peninsula, where a small human population is thought to have survived the glaciation, and then expanded into Europe during the Mesolithic period. The assumed genetic imprint of Neolithic incomers is seen as a cline, with stronger Neolithic representation in the east of Europe and stronger Paleolithic representation in the west of Europe. The frequencies of Y-chromosome haplotypes in the Irish population are similar to that of most other populations of Atlantic Europe, especially the Basques of northern Spain and southern France. Y-chromosome analysis also seems to indicate that the Vikings that settled in Dublin came from Norway rather than Denmark. Mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited through the female line, shows part of the maternal ancestors of the Irish to be of broad north European origin, while confirming the Atlantic link.

There is genetic evidence that a majority of Irish maternal and paternal lineages descend from Paleolithic and Mesolithic west Europeans who arrived after the end of the last Ice Age, noting the high presence of the genetic marker known as Atlantic Modal Haplotype (AMH) among the Irish. This is associated with haplogroup R1b and is the most common R1b haplotype in western Europe. R1b averages 90% amongst Irish Y-Chromosomes, and 90% amongst Y-Chromosomes of Basques people. The AMH+1 haplotype has a frequency of 53% in central Ireland (Castlerea) and 60% in the Basque Country, it also achieves a greater than 50% frequency in other regions of the British Isles, namely Pitlochry, Oban, Morpeth, Penrith, Isle of Man, Llangefni, Haverfordwest, Midhurst and Cornwall. Curiously, the Irish samples of Castlerea and Rush (Dublin) have some of the highest frequencies of haplogroup R1xR1a1 (37% and 45% respectively), with the Scottish samples of Durness and Stonehaven being the only others that surpass 30%.

Wales
The tribes the Romans encountered in their time in Britain were known to the Romans as Ordovices, the Demetae, the Silures and the Deceangli, speaking Brythonic, a Celtic language, these tribes are traditionally thought to have arrived in Britain from Europe over the preceding centuries. However, some archaeologists argue that there is no evidence for Iron Age migrations into Great Britain. The claim has also been made that Indo-European languages may have been introduced to the British and Irish Isles as early as the early Neolithic (or even earlier), with Goidelic and Brythonic languages developing indigenously. Current genetic research supports the idea that people living in the British and Irish Isles are likely mainly descended from the indigenous European Paleolithic (Old Stone Age hunter gatherers) population (about 80%), with a smaller Neolithic (New Stone Age farmers) input (about 20%). Paleolithic Europeans seem to have been a homogeneous population, possibly due to a population bottleneck (or near-extinction event) on the Iberian peninsula, where a small human population is though to have survived the glaciation, and expanded into Europe during the Mesolithic. The assumed genetic imprint as a consequence of the demic diffusion of the Neolithic era incomers is seen as a cline, with stronger Neolithic representation in the east of Europe and stronger Paleolithic representation in the west of Europe. The consensus in Wales today is that they regard themselves as Celtic, claiming a heritage back to the Iron Age tribes, which themselves, based on modern genetic analysis, would appear to have had a predominantly Paleolithic and Neolithic indigenous ancestry. When the Roman legions departed Britain around 400, a Romano-British culture remained in the areas the Romans had settled, and the pre-Roman cultures in others.

Genetic evidence suggests that most Welsh people descend from the population of an ancient Paleolithic western Ice Age refuge, which was situated in northern Spain and southern France, roughly surrounding the Pyrenees. As the result of different migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and Neolithic, these laid the early foundations for the present-day populations in the British Isles and may indicate an ancient relationship between the populations of Atlantic Europe. According to Stephen Oppenheimer 96% of lineages in Llangefni in north Wales derive from Iberia. Genetic research on the Y-chromosome has shown that Welsh men, like Irish men share many lineages with men from the Basque Country of northern Spain and south-western France, Welsh men may have more descent from Neolithic people than either Irish or Basque men. Haplogroup R1b averages from 83-89% amongst Welsh men.

Scotland
Genetic research has demonstrated that, in the Scots populations sampled, the R1b marker is common. R1b averages 75% in Scotland, although east Scotland has lower levels of R1b. This marker is also common in most populations of Western Europe reaching highest frequencies in the west of Ireland and in the Basque Country of northern Spain and southern France.

In two recently published books, Blood of the Isles, by Bryan Sykes and The Origins of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer, both authors state that according to genetic studies (mainly Haplogroup R1b as well as E3b, I, J (Y-DNA) and Mtdna), most Scots, along with the rest of the population of the British Isles descend mainly from ancient populations of the Iberian Peninsula, as a result of different migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic, which laid the foundations for the present-day populations in the British Isles, indicating an ancient relationship among the populations of Atlantic Europe. Both Authors claim that there is evidence for this on both the y-chromosomes and maternal dna. Stephen Oppenheimer is even able to date when migrations to the British Isles took place and where exactly within the Iberian peninsula these different migrations originated. Stephen Oppenheimer also claims that there were neolithic invasions to Scotland from Norway prior to Norwegian Viking invasions and that the Vikings would take the same invasion routes as their previous neolithic invaders.

In Origins of the British (2006), Stephen Oppenheimer states (pages 375 and 378):

''By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory...''

''...75-95% of British Isles (genetic) matches derive from Iberia...Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the British Isles have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples...: ''

On the other hand, a team of geneticists lead by Santos Alonso, does not observe any particular link between Basques and Celtic populations beyond that provided by the Paleolithic ancestry common to European populations.

Genetic Peculiarities
Geneticists have found that seven men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a genetic signature previously found only in people of African origin. All the men tested positive for haplogroup A1, a y-chromosome genetic marker which is highly west African specific. Haplogroup A1 is extremely rare and has only ever been found 25 times amongst people of whom all were African. Haplogroup A1 is a subclade of Haplogroup A which geneticists believe originated in Eastern or Southern Africa.

The individuals had no knowledge of any African heritage in their family. The researchers hypothesized that the presence of this haplogroup in Yorkshire could stem from the recruitment of Africans for the construction of Hadrian's Wall by the Romans or result from intermarriage with an African slave, some of whom rose quite high in society.

In the North Welsh town of Abergele there is a very high percentage of haplogroup E3b1 (33%), which originated in Northeast Africa 26 Ky ago (Cruciani 2007).

Geneticists have shown that former American president Thomas Jefferson who was of Welsh descent along with 2 other British Males out of 85 British Males with the surname Jefferson carry the rare Y-chromosome marker K2 which is typically found in East Africa and the Middle East. Haplogroup K2 is extremely rare in Europe but phylogenetic network analysis of its Y-STR (short tandem repeat) haplotype shows that it is most closely related to an Egyptian K2 haplotype, but the presence of scattered and diverse European haplotypes within the network is nonetheless consistent with Jefferson's patrilineage belonging to an ancient and rare indigenous European type.