[guide.chat] news are scotish really scottish
- From: vanessa <qwerty1234567a@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "GUIDE CHAT" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:27:55 +0100
Scottish people's DNA study could 'rewrite nation's history'
Evidence of African, Arabian, south-east Asian and Siberian ancestry in
Scotland, says author of book tracing genetic journey
Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 August 2012 01.24 BST
Scotland is one of the most diverse nations on earth, claims Alistair Moffat,
author of the book The Scots: A Genetic Journey. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for
the Guardian
A large scale study of Scottish people's DNA is threatening to "rewrite the
nation's history", according to author Alistair Moffat.
Scotland, he told the Edinburgh international book festival, despite a
long-held belief that its ethnic make-up was largely Scots, Celtic, Viking and
Irish, was in fact "one of the most diverse nations on earth".
"The explanation is simple. We are a people on the edge of beyond; on the end
of a massive continent. Peoples were migrating northwest; and they couldn't get
any further. We have collected them."
He and his colleagues have found West African, Arabian, south-east Asian and
Siberian ancestry in Scotland. "The West African ancestry mostly originates in
the 18th century, so it is almost certainly to do with the slave trade," he
said.
David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, whose immediate ancestors are from the
Caribbean, also revealed at the festival this week that DNA analysis had shown
he has Orcadian ancestry ? also likely to relate to British involvement in the
Atlantic slave trade.
One per cent of all Scottish men, said Moffat, have Berber ancestry ? why, he
says, remains a mystery, though he believes that the penetration of people from
the medieval caliphate of Cordoba "must have been immensely important". Moffat
said his colleagues had also discovered DNA originating from Roman-period
Illyria, the area occupied by modern Croatia, which may relate to Roman
occupation of lowland Scotland.
Many of Moffat and Wilson's findings are laid out in their book The Scots: A
Genetic Journey. But research continues apace, and most recent finding suggests
that porridge has been a crucial factor in the nation's early history, Moffat
said.
Until recently, he said, it had been believed that farming arrived
incrementally in Scotland, around 3,000 years ago, by a process of slow and
gradual adoption, by women, of new techniques. But their recent DNA research
suggests something quite different, he said: that it arrived quickly via young
male immigrants from what is now Germany.
These young men, he said, brought brand-new techniques with them, planting
grass-derived crops that could be turned into porridge and fed to young
children. This new improved food production reduced the period, argued Moffat,
that the hunter-gatherer mothers had to devote to breast-feeding, and thus
increased their fertility. This led to a population explosion, he said, laying
the seeds of a recognisable society in northern Britain. "It is a revelation.
Porridge, and I'm not joking about this, is absolutely crucial to our history."
Not every analysis of DNA has delivered welcome results. DNA analysis on Moffat
himself ? a proud Scottish Borders man ? showed that his ancestry was English.
"We don't offer counselling for that," he said.
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