In Britain surnames are paternally inherited and they are thus analogous to the paternally inheri... more In Britain surnames are paternally inherited and they are thus analogous to the paternally inherited Y chromosome. Therefore, males who share surnames might be expected to share Y-chromosomes. However, this simple relationship is complicated by the multiple origins of many surnames, non-paternity, and mutations on the Y chromosome. Y-chromosomal DNA polymorphisms provide us with a set of tools to directly test, at a molecular level, this hypothetical link. Since surnames are highly geographically localized, local geographical patterning of Y haplotypes is a potential confounding factor: genetic structure within names could arise as a result of geographical structure within Britain, rather than due to descent. Geographical structure was examined using samples from this research but little evidence of such structure was found. Then, to ask if a signal of haplotype sharing exists within surnames, 150 pairs of men were recruited, each sharing a British surname, and Y-haplotype sharing a...
Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to ap... more Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to apparent contradictions between studies of contemporary genetic variation and ancient DNA. It seems clear that farming was introduced into central, northern, and eastern Europe from the south by pioneer colonization. It is often argued that these dispersals originated in the Near East, where the potential source genetic pool resembles that of the early European farmers, but clear ancient DNA evidence from Mediterranean Europe is lacking, and there are suggestions that Mediterranean Europe may have resembled the Near East more than the rest of Europe in the Mesolithic. Here, we test this proposal by dating mitogenome founder lineages from the Near East in different regions of Europe. We find that whereas the lineages date mainly to the Neolithic in central Europe and Iberia, they largely date to the Late Glacial period in central/eastern Mediterranean Europe. This supports a scenario in which the genetic pool of Mediterranean Europe was partly a result of Late Glacial expansions from a Near Eastern refuge, and that this formed an important source pool for subsequent Neolithic expansions into the rest of Europe.
This article introduces some early data from the Leverhulme Trust-funded research programme, ‘The... more This article introduces some early data from the Leverhulme Trust-funded research programme, ‘The Impact of the Diasporas on the Making of Britain: evidence, memories, inventions’. One of the interdisciplinary foci of the programme, which incorporates insights from genetics, history, archaeology, linguistics and social psychology, is to investigate how genetic evidence of ancestry is incorporated into identity narratives. In particular, we investigate how ‘applied genetic history’ shapes individual and familial narratives, which are then situated within macro-narratives of the nation and collective memories of immigration and indigenism. It is argued that the construction of genetic evidence as a ‘gold standard’ about ‘where you really come from’ involves a remediation of cultural and archival memory, in the construction of a ‘usable past’. This article is based on initial questionnaire data from a preliminary study of those attending DNA collection sessions in northern England. It ...
Page 1. SURNAMES , DNA, 65* Family H istory GEORGE REDMONDS, TURI KING AND 'E&am... more Page 1. SURNAMES , DNA, 65* Family H istory GEORGE REDMONDS, TURI KING AND 'E' DAVID HEY \ égx Page 2. SURNAMES, DNA, 6 Family H istory GEORGE REDMONDS, TURI KING AND DAVID HEY Page 3. Surnames, DNA, and Family History Page 4. ...
... Turi E. King2, Fabrício R. Santos1, Paul G. Taylor2, Kumarasamy Thangaraj3, Lalji Singh3, Mar... more ... Turi E. King2, Fabrício R. Santos1, Paul G. Taylor2, Kumarasamy Thangaraj3, Lalji Singh3, Mark A. Jobling2 and Chris Tyler-Smith1* 1 ... enzyme digestion, gel electrophoresis and hybridisations using 50f2 (Guelläen et al, 1984), and the major satellite probes (Oakey and Tyler ...
Chan and colleagues in their paper titled “Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and... more Chan and colleagues in their paper titled “Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and first migrations” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1714-1) report 198 novel whole mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences and infer that ‘anatomically modern humans’ originated in the Makgadikgadi–Okavango palaeo-wetland of southern Africa around 200 thousand years ago. This claim relies on weakly informative data. In addition to flawed logic and questionable assumptions, the authors surprisingly disregard recent evidence and debate on human origins in Africa. As a result, the emphatic and high profile conclusions of the paper are unjustified.
Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historica... more Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere.
The influence of Viking-Age migrants to the British Isles is obvious in archaeological and place-... more The influence of Viking-Age migrants to the British Isles is obvious in archaeological and place-names evidence, but their demographic impact has been unclear. Autosomal genetic analyses support Norse Viking contributions to parts of Britain, but show no signal corresponding to the Danelaw, the region under Scandinavian administrative control from the ninth to eleventh centuries. Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1 has been considered as a possible marker for Viking migrations because of its high frequency in peninsular Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden). Here we select ten Y-SNPs to discriminate informatively among hg R1a1 sub-haplogroups in Europe, analyse these in 619 hg R1a1 Y chromosomes including 163 from the British Isles, and also type 23 short-tandem repeats (Y-STRs) to assess internal diversity. We find three specifically Western-European sub-haplogroups, two of which predominate in Norway and Sweden, and are also found in Britain; star-like features in the STR networks of these lin...
Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to ap... more Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to apparent contradictions between studies of contemporary genetic variation and ancient DNA. It seems clear that farming was introduced into central, northern, and eastern Europe from the south by pioneer colonization. It is often argued that these dispersals originated in the Near East, where the potential source genetic pool resembles that of the early European farmers, but clear ancient DNA evidence from Mediterranean Europe is lacking, and there are suggestions that Mediterranean Europe may have resembled the Near East more than the rest of Europe in the Mesolithic. Here, we test this proposal by dating mitogenome founder lineages from the Near East in different regions of Europe. We find that whereas the lineages date mainly to the Neolithic in central Europe and Iberia, they largely date to the Late Glacial period in central/eastern Mediterranean Europe. This supports a scenario in whi...
In Britain surnames are paternally inherited and they are thus analogous to the paternally inheri... more In Britain surnames are paternally inherited and they are thus analogous to the paternally inherited Y chromosome. Therefore, males who share surnames might be expected to share Y-chromosomes. However, this simple relationship is complicated by the multiple origins of many surnames, non-paternity, and mutations on the Y chromosome. Y-chromosomal DNA polymorphisms provide us with a set of tools to directly test, at a molecular level, this hypothetical link. Since surnames are highly geographically localized, local geographical patterning of Y haplotypes is a potential confounding factor: genetic structure within names could arise as a result of geographical structure within Britain, rather than due to descent. Geographical structure was examined using samples from this research but little evidence of such structure was found. Then, to ask if a signal of haplotype sharing exists within surnames, 150 pairs of men were recruited, each sharing a British surname, and Y-haplotype sharing a...
Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to ap... more Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to apparent contradictions between studies of contemporary genetic variation and ancient DNA. It seems clear that farming was introduced into central, northern, and eastern Europe from the south by pioneer colonization. It is often argued that these dispersals originated in the Near East, where the potential source genetic pool resembles that of the early European farmers, but clear ancient DNA evidence from Mediterranean Europe is lacking, and there are suggestions that Mediterranean Europe may have resembled the Near East more than the rest of Europe in the Mesolithic. Here, we test this proposal by dating mitogenome founder lineages from the Near East in different regions of Europe. We find that whereas the lineages date mainly to the Neolithic in central Europe and Iberia, they largely date to the Late Glacial period in central/eastern Mediterranean Europe. This supports a scenario in which the genetic pool of Mediterranean Europe was partly a result of Late Glacial expansions from a Near Eastern refuge, and that this formed an important source pool for subsequent Neolithic expansions into the rest of Europe.
This article introduces some early data from the Leverhulme Trust-funded research programme, ‘The... more This article introduces some early data from the Leverhulme Trust-funded research programme, ‘The Impact of the Diasporas on the Making of Britain: evidence, memories, inventions’. One of the interdisciplinary foci of the programme, which incorporates insights from genetics, history, archaeology, linguistics and social psychology, is to investigate how genetic evidence of ancestry is incorporated into identity narratives. In particular, we investigate how ‘applied genetic history’ shapes individual and familial narratives, which are then situated within macro-narratives of the nation and collective memories of immigration and indigenism. It is argued that the construction of genetic evidence as a ‘gold standard’ about ‘where you really come from’ involves a remediation of cultural and archival memory, in the construction of a ‘usable past’. This article is based on initial questionnaire data from a preliminary study of those attending DNA collection sessions in northern England. It ...
Page 1. SURNAMES , DNA, 65* Family H istory GEORGE REDMONDS, TURI KING AND 'E&am... more Page 1. SURNAMES , DNA, 65* Family H istory GEORGE REDMONDS, TURI KING AND 'E' DAVID HEY \ égx Page 2. SURNAMES, DNA, 6 Family H istory GEORGE REDMONDS, TURI KING AND DAVID HEY Page 3. Surnames, DNA, and Family History Page 4. ...
... Turi E. King2, Fabrício R. Santos1, Paul G. Taylor2, Kumarasamy Thangaraj3, Lalji Singh3, Mar... more ... Turi E. King2, Fabrício R. Santos1, Paul G. Taylor2, Kumarasamy Thangaraj3, Lalji Singh3, Mark A. Jobling2 and Chris Tyler-Smith1* 1 ... enzyme digestion, gel electrophoresis and hybridisations using 50f2 (Guelläen et al, 1984), and the major satellite probes (Oakey and Tyler ...
Chan and colleagues in their paper titled “Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and... more Chan and colleagues in their paper titled “Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and first migrations” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1714-1) report 198 novel whole mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences and infer that ‘anatomically modern humans’ originated in the Makgadikgadi–Okavango palaeo-wetland of southern Africa around 200 thousand years ago. This claim relies on weakly informative data. In addition to flawed logic and questionable assumptions, the authors surprisingly disregard recent evidence and debate on human origins in Africa. As a result, the emphatic and high profile conclusions of the paper are unjustified.
Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historica... more Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere.
The influence of Viking-Age migrants to the British Isles is obvious in archaeological and place-... more The influence of Viking-Age migrants to the British Isles is obvious in archaeological and place-names evidence, but their demographic impact has been unclear. Autosomal genetic analyses support Norse Viking contributions to parts of Britain, but show no signal corresponding to the Danelaw, the region under Scandinavian administrative control from the ninth to eleventh centuries. Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1 has been considered as a possible marker for Viking migrations because of its high frequency in peninsular Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden). Here we select ten Y-SNPs to discriminate informatively among hg R1a1 sub-haplogroups in Europe, analyse these in 619 hg R1a1 Y chromosomes including 163 from the British Isles, and also type 23 short-tandem repeats (Y-STRs) to assess internal diversity. We find three specifically Western-European sub-haplogroups, two of which predominate in Norway and Sweden, and are also found in Britain; star-like features in the STR networks of these lin...
Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to ap... more Important gaps remain in our understanding of the spread of farming into Europe, due partly to apparent contradictions between studies of contemporary genetic variation and ancient DNA. It seems clear that farming was introduced into central, northern, and eastern Europe from the south by pioneer colonization. It is often argued that these dispersals originated in the Near East, where the potential source genetic pool resembles that of the early European farmers, but clear ancient DNA evidence from Mediterranean Europe is lacking, and there are suggestions that Mediterranean Europe may have resembled the Near East more than the rest of Europe in the Mesolithic. Here, we test this proposal by dating mitogenome founder lineages from the Near East in different regions of Europe. We find that whereas the lineages date mainly to the Neolithic in central Europe and Iberia, they largely date to the Late Glacial period in central/eastern Mediterranean Europe. This supports a scenario in whi...
Uploads