From: tgpedersen
Message: 43204
Date: 2006-02-01
>They are usually mixed, but if one wants to trace male or female
> 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
>