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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2006-10 > 1159773520


From: "John McEwan" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Galloway-NW Irish
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 20:18:40 +1300
In-Reply-To: <562.779dc8c.3251caf5@aol.com>


Dear John, Alan and Peter,

Peter summarized the thrust of the current thread well
.......
Regarding the Scots I think it important to remember
that there is so much in common between Islay, Kintyre,
Arran, etc. and north east Ireland going back thousands
of years that they basically were the same people. The
difference likely being more related to subsequent
leadership and/or overlordship. I see no reason for
one faction of the Irish side to emerge dominant after
the Romans left. Genes would still be the same with
just the dynasty being changed.
.......

I actually have some sympathy with the line of thinking based on
considerably less research into historical accounts. In particular
regards just what language Western Scotland spoke prior to 500AD:
probably Q-Celtic is my guess, but the evidence for any conclusion in
this regard is extremely thin.

However, the rain on the parade is the distribution of R1b haplotypes
and what little we can accept as given facts. If they "were basically
the same people" going back thousands of years we would expect the same
distribution of haplotypes in North East Ireland and Argyll. This should
hold especially R1b, which most accept is likely to have been the
predominant haplotype when the region was repopulated after the LGM.

However, based on STR haplotype clustering and SNPs this is not the
case. The level of R1bSTR47Scots is markedly (manyfold) lower in Ireland
and on the converse R1bSTR19Irish aka M222+ is higher than the rest of
Britain, but is still markedly lower in Western Scotland than Ireland.
This has been discussed on the list many times. Other less well studied
groups also contribute to the picture. See

www.geocities.com/mcewanjc/p3origin.htm

This pattern is simply not compatible with people travelling back and
forth for thousands of years and settling down on either side of the
sea. I can believe the travelling/trading, but as not the settling of
MALES. Now you may raise the point that the resolution of the current
studies and information is inadequate. It certainly needs to be
improved, but I cannot see it reversing the above conclusion.

IMHO once agriculture meant people "owned" land, such transfers would
have been limited and usually accompanied by some recourse to force. I
am a farmer's son and all my forebears back on both sides were
farmers/tenants/crofters as far as history has records. They travelled
from Ireland, and (Islay) Scotland to New Zealand for one reason: LAND.
Although I am the first generation not to farm I know of the almost
obsessive land hunger my farming ancestors had. When I spent a year
working in the west of Ireland in the 1980s, even a casual glance at the
countryside and all my discussions with local farmers (I am an
agricultural research scientist) suggested that the attachment of the
locals was even more obsessive to the point of being close to
pathological. If you have ever seen the film The Field (1990) directed
by Jim Sheridan you will get the drift. Remember people did not get
married unless they could support a family, to support a family, they
needed access to land to farm. Almost all people lived as largely
subsistence farmers. Land was tightly held and not given away willy
nilly to foreigners. So with the exception of genocide and convoluted
invasions with subsequent "apartheid" structures and differential
reproductive success of the "castes" I think there was a marked
geographical stasis in Y chromosome movement once farming commenced. If
there was evidence of admixture, aka R1bSTR47Scots and M222+ in Western
Scotland, then there must have been an event to create it.

So we have this pattern of current haplotypes in Ireland and Scotland
that does not concord with the "one big happy family across the seas"
explanation, and which based on my comments above does not surprise me.
The question though is just what caused the current observed pattern and
when did it happen? One explanation is the Dal Riadic "invasion" around
500-1000AD containing a proportion of M222+ to the extent that they
contributed 30-50% of the current genes, another is an "invasion" of
R1bSTR47Scots displaced from Northern England and southern Scotland
around Roman times diluting the existing inhabitants of the Western
Highlands which had a largely "Irish composition" prior to that time. I
am sure other theories could be advanced as well. Many will have some
element of truth. Given available historical records I plump for the
former hypothesis, but a lot more evidence has yet to be assembled.

Cheers

John McEwan


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