MY PEOPLE–NOT CONQUERORS.

MY PEOPLE—NOT CONQUERORS. Jim Arrowsmith sent me this article concerning what DNA tells us about the prehistory of Britain. The first post on this blog marveled at what we know about our distant beginnings. It’s good to begin the year by marveling at how far back into our ancestors’ lives we are able to go. What I found most interesting is the estimate that three quarters of the ancestors of the British population came to Britain as hunter-gatherers between 15,000 and 7000 years ago. Also, “Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else.” I am mostly Irish and Danish, and my father told us often his theory that what my ancestors had in common was that they were not conquerors. They had moved to places where nobody else wanted to go. I take the figure of 12 per cent for the Irish as being some confirmation from DNA of my father’s theory.