Richard wrote

> If you don't want to count the Neanderthals (extinct), look at
> Table 5 in it suggests that the Basques, Scandinavians, Balts,
> Finns and Russians are the most native, with the West Europeans
> (excluding the Italians) the least native. By the lax American
> standards, all but recent or long-standing unintegrated immigrants
> count as 'Native Europeans'.
>
> The earliest *recorded* tribes in England are generally reckoned to
> be Celtic, and thus their linguistic heirs are the Welsh, but the
> English, high and low, now have a high proportion of British (i.e.
> pre-English) blood in them. 'England', of course, means the land
> of the Angles, though the Romans and our Celtic neighbours called
> us Saxons. Torsten has, if I understand him correctly, proposed on
> Cybalist that the Anglo-Saxons themselves were largely of
> (continental) Celtic ancestry.
>
> Incidentally, I understand that the Cornish aren't convinced that
> Cornwall is part of England.
>
> The key point is that there isn't really a separate group
> of 'native Europeans', and probably hasn't been since the Neolithic
> reached Scotland and Northern Scandinavia.

Professor Byran Sykes and Oxford University researchers in England
sequencing the DNA of a Paleolithic man from a nearby site found a
woman in their office was his lineal descendant. Equally Cheddar
Man, of 9-10,000 years ago has a descendant still living in Cheddar,
in England. Couldn't get much more "Native" than that. Sykes traces
all European women of Europe to one of 7 "native women" as follows

*Helena: Her clan lived in the ice-capped Pyrenees. As the climate
warmed, Helena's descendants trekked northward to what is now
England, some 12,000 years ago. Members of this group are now present
in all European countries.

*Jasmine: Her people had a relatively happy life in Syria, where they
farmed wheat and raised domestic animals. Jasmine's descendants
traveled throughout Europe, spreading their agricultural innovations
with them.

*Katrine: Members of this group lived in Venice 10,000 years ago.
Today most of Katrine's clan lives in the Alps.

*Tara: Sykes' maternal ancestry goes back to this group, which
settled in Tuscany 17,000 years ago. Descendants ventured across
northern Europe and eventually crossed the English Channel.

*Ursula: Users of stone tools, Ursula's clan members drifted across
all of Europe.

*Valda: Originally from Spain, Valda and her immediate descendants
lived 17,000 years ago. Later relatives moved into northern Finland
and Norway.

*Xenia: Her people lived in the Caucasus Mountains 25,000 years ago.
Just before the Ice Age, this clan spread across Europe, and even
reached the Americas. [As Dr. Wallace discovered, the X pattern is a
rare European lineage and is also among the northern Native Americans
such as the Ojibwa and Sioux.]

This certainly shows that the diversity between groups is far greater
than the homogeneity within national groups. "In the Blood" gives an
intriguing story of two neighbours from the isolated outer Shetland
Islands, who have a genome which originated in Northern Siberia.
Tracing the ancestry of this genome in one case showed it travelled
westwards amongst Samoyyed reindeer herders to Lapland, where it was
picked up by Norse Vikings, who carried this gene to the Shetlands.
In his neighbour, also a Shetland islander a very different route was
taken. From Northern Siberia it travelled down through the Americas
with the Amerindian natives to Brazil, where it entered a Portugese
bloodline being carried to Europe, and then with the Spanish Amada
being carried to the Shetlands where one wrecked sailor married a
local girl.

We are truly brothers and sisters under the skin!

Regards

John