Sorry to be moving off-topic, but in connection
with Jens' point, how are the genes transmitted?
By male descent, by female descent, or both?
There have been reports that the Ireland and UK
gene pool has a large male component in the east
of England which can plausibly be linked with
mainland Europe, and therefore putatively with
the 'Anglo-Saxon conquests', but there is little
evidence of that component in Ireland or Wales,
or in parts of the Welsh marcher counties and
parts of Scotland, while it distinctly less
frequent in what was once Wessex (which has an
overlap with the marcher counties) than in the
rest of England. The notion underlay a BBC TV
series called 'The Blood of the Vikings' which
may have been referred to on this list.
The marcher counties concerned (Herefordshire,
parts of Shropshire, Worcestershire and
Gloucestershire, as I understand it) have of
course been mostly English-speaking since the
seventh and eighth centuries CE
In terms of the appropriate topics on this list,
perhaps this is beginning to conflate colour and
extension.
Gordon
<
gordonselway@...>
At 10:16 last night Jens Elmegård Rasmussen wrote:
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jdcroft@...> wrote:
> >Certainly M17 appears to be the Indo-European
>marker, whilst M343 R1b appears to be the
>marker >of the pre-Indo-European substrate in
>Western Europe.
>
>This seems to be incompatible with the
>widespread view that the IE languages did not
>spread by massive migrations, but merely by the
>take-over of a new elite that imposed its
>language on the local population.
>Can that be true? Did the locals not propagate
>their genes? Did the IEs just wipe them out?
>Interesting questions - any answers?
>
>Jens