The Welsh are the true pure Britons, according to the research that has produced the first genetic map of the UK. Scientists were able to trace their DNA back to the first tribes that settled in the British Isles following the last ice age around 10,000 years ago.
The Britons (*Pritanī, Latin: Britanni), also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the people of Celtic language and culture who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons (among others).
Natives from Wales and Cornwall could hold the title for the "purest" Britons, a scientific study suggests. Scientists drew up a map of the British Isles revealing the genetic ancestry of people from different rural areas across the UK.
Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Normans.
The inhabitants of Wales, like those of Cornwall and the Old North, are depicted as the descendants of the original Britons who remained in Britain.
It's thought by scientists in recent years that the Welsh might be Britain's most ancient people on the island! The reason for this theory is that many Welsh remain genetically distinct from English and Scottish people, with a genetic mutation present from the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago.
Homo heidelbergensis
Tall and imposing, this early human species is the first for whom we have fossil evidence in Britain: a leg bone and two teeth found at Boxgrove in West Sussex. Living here about 500,000 years ago these people skilfully butchered large animals, leaving behind many horse, deer and rhinoceros bones.
In fact, across Great Britain there is a clear pattern: the highest Scandinavian genetic ethnicity is found in northeast England, decreasing as you get further from that region. And in Ireland, the average Scandinavian ethnicity varies rather widely, with a high of 5.3% in Ulster and a low of 2.0% in Munster.
Although it was once thought that the Britons descended from the Celts, it is now believed that they were the indigenous population and that they remained in contact with their European neighbours through trade and other social exchanges.
They found the Stone Age Briton had dark hair - with a small probability that it was curlier than average - blue eyes and skin that was probably dark brown or black in tone.
Some of the first modern settlers of Britain from 10,000 years ago had dark skin and curly hair, according to new analysis of a historic skeleton. The “Cheddar Man” fossil was discovered in 1903 in a cave in the village of Cheddar in Somerset, southwest England.
:: Much of 'white British' DNA can be traced to people who colonised the island soon after the end of the Ice Age. :: From the south coast to Yorkshire there is a distinct genetic pattern of the Angles - people who came from the southern Danish peninsula - and the Saxons, who came from North West Germany.
The Deceangli, the Ordovices and the Silures were the three main tribe groups who lived in the mountains of what is today called Wales. However, in prehistory Wales, England and Scotland did not exist in anyway as distinctive entities in the ways they have done so for the last 1000 years.
White British is an ethnicity classification used for the native white population identifying as English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, or British in the United Kingdom Census.
Simply put, the welsh hate the Saxons because the Saxons were effectively the Danes to the Welsh two centuries earlier. When the Roman Empire collapsed in the 3rd-4th century, Britain was left completely un defended and un governed.
The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians who settled in Southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans, and the partially Romanised Celtic Britons who already lived there.
The study shows the genetic history of Scandinavia was influenced by foreign genes from Asia and Southern Europe before the Viking Age. Early Viking Age raiding parties were an activity for locals and included close family members. The genetic legacy in the UK has left the population with up to six per cent Viking DNA.
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland.
Who was a Viking? If we are speaking ethnically, the closest people to a Viking in modern-day terms would be the Danish, Norwegians, Swedish, and Icelandic people. Interestingly though, it was common for their male Viking ancestors to intermarry with other nationalities, and so there is a lot of mixed heritage.
While people from Ireland, Britain, or Scotland tend to be genetically similar, genetic clusters show that even within countries, there are distinct regional differences, and this update captures some of that.
Vikings are still running rampant through Scotland as, according to the researchers, 29.2 per cent of descendants in Shetland have the DNA, 25.2 per cent in Orkney and 17.5 per cent in Caithness. This compares with just with 5.6 per cent of men in Yorkshire carrying Norse DNA.
The oldest human remains so far found in England date from about 500,000 years ago, and belonged to a six-foot tall man of the species Homo heidelbergensis. Shorter, stockier Neanderthals visited Britain between 300,000 and 35,000 years ago, followed by the direct ancestors of modern humans.
Dating to around 480,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene, the Boxgrove fossils are the oldest human remains discovered in the UK and were identified as most likely belonging to the ancient human species Homo heidelbergensis.
The British population (pre immigration) was an amalgam of the Celtic and Germanic. Now a component of the British population is from outside Europe and generally darker and tanned. Many Brits now have South and West Asian ancestry.