Origins of the British/Irish: a genetic detective story

Dub13

Over the last few weeks I have been reading Stephen Oppenheimer's recent book on the origins of the British (for a brief synopsis, see his article in Prospect magazine - http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/a...ls.php?id=7817)

Basically, Oppenheimer challenges some of the traditional views on Celts, Saxons, Vikings etc -The vast majority of British ancestry can be traced back to settlers expanding from Iberia into north-west Europe after the last ice age.

Although recent books have rubbished the concept of a cohesive 'Celtic' people, such an ethnic group did actually exist, except their continental homeland was originally France and Iberia, not southern Germany.

The Anglo-Saxon contribution to England's gene pool was small (5%) - the Anglo-Saxon invasions were an elite takeover, not mass migration or ethnic cleansing (fits with the archaelogy, which shows no signs of a major population upheaval at the time, but doesn't fit with the linguistic evidence, i.e. lack of Celtic loanwords in English - could a stable population suddenly switch to a new language and culture!?)

The reason the English language wholly replaced Celtic in eastern Britain following the Anglo-Saxon invasions was that a Germanic language was already spoken here in Romano-British times (Oppenheimer claims that the dominant tribe in the south east, the Belgae, were Germanic - unfortunately for his argument, on the continent the Belgae all had Celtic personal names...)