First Britons

[1798]

There was a documentary about the first Britons on the TV last night. The Mesolithic people used fire to clear woodland which makes sense and they did it long before the first farmers arrived. Cutting trees with a stone axe would not be the cleverest method. I think that the program showed that the dna of the Mesolithic people still lives on in the modern Britons.

[kevinduffy]

There was a documentary about the first Britons on the TV last night. The Mesolithic people used fire to clear woodland which makes sense and they did it long before the first farmers arrived. Cutting trees with a stone axe would not be the cleverest method. I think that the program showed that the dna of the Mesolithic people still lives on in the modern Britons.

How did they show that the DNA of Mesolithic Britons still lives on in modern Britons?

[MMaddi]

How did they show that the DNA of Mesolithic Britons still lives on in modern Britons?

It's probably not based on anything the show's narrator actually stated. It's probably because 1798 believes that, as he's always believed. If you read his threads about the DNA of Western Europe, the British Isles and, especially Ireland, you'll see that there's a lot of supposition and strong beliefs expressed, without much in the way of scientific evidence.

[1798]

How did they show that the DNA of Mesolithic Britons still lives on in modern Britons?

Look, Listen and Learn.

[1798]

[QUOTE=MMaddi;416461]It's probably not based on anything the show's narrator actually stated. It's probably because 1798 believes that, as he's always believed. If you read his threads about the DNA of Western Europe, the British Isles and, especially Ireland, you'll see that there's a lot of supposition and strong beliefs expressed, without much in the way of scientific evidence.[/QUOTE]

Have you got evidence that shows that the Mesolithic and Neolithic Irish were wiped out?

[kevinduffy]

Look, Listen and Learn.

Wouldn't it just be easier to answer my question?

[kevinduffy]

Have you got evidence that shows that the Mesolithic and Neolithic Irish were wiped out?

Who is making that claim?

[1798]

Who is making that claim?

You and others.

[MMaddi]

You and others.

I'm calling "straw man" argument on 1798, one of the many times he's resorted to putting words in the mouths of other posters to suit his arugment. Or perhaps he actually believes that someone wrote what he's claiming.

[1798]

I'm calling "straw man" argument on 1798, one of the many times he's resorted to putting words in the mouths of other posters to suit his arugment. Or perhaps he actually believes that someone wrote what he's claiming.

So finally you are coming around to the idea that people living in Ireland today are descended from the Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples.

[kevinduffy]

So finally you are coming around to the idea that people living in Ireland today are descended from the Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples.

Are there any DNA samples from Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples to compare to the modern Irish population?

[MMaddi]

So finally you are coming around to the idea that people living in Ireland today are descended from the Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples.

Some are, but I think the consensus is that, while northern Europe has more Mesolithic European DNA than southern Europe, most of the DNA in modern Europeans comes from the Neolithic and Bronze Age migrations into Europe. And that includes the British Isles.

I never claimed that Mesolithic European DNA was wiped out in any part of Europe. I don't recall that anyone else made that claim either. That's why you misrepresent the views of others when you post otherwise - your "straw man" argument.

Who knows? Maybe some day you'll come around to admitting that a good deal, if not most of modern European DNA came into Europe during the Bronze Age. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

[GST]

Have you got evidence that shows that the Mesolithic and Neolithic Irish were wiped out?

No one has claimed that they were entirely wiped out, but they were mostly replaced by Neolithic and Bronze age immigrants. Based on mtDNA haplogroups probably less than the 5% of modern Irish mtDNA is typical of Mesolithic European mtDNA.

[1798]

No one has claimed that they were entirely wiped out, but they were mostly replaced by Neolithic and Bronze age immigrants. Based on mtDNA haplogroups probably less than the 5% of modern Irish mtDNA is typical of Mesolithic European mtDNA.

My Eurogenes K7 show that I have 64% WHG/UHG dna not 5%.

[GST]

My Eurogenes K7 show that I have 64% WHG/UHG dna not 5%.

Quoting some text from the Eurogenes ANE K7 blog page:

Western European/Unknown Hunter-Gatherer (WHG-UHG): this essentially looks like a West Eurasian forager component, and includes the forager-like stuff carried by Neolithic farmers (Oetzi the Iceman has 40% of it).


Some of you might be wondering why this test doesn't offer an Early European Farmer (EEF) cluster. But the answer to that should be obvious by now. EEF is not a stable ancestral component. It's actually a composite of at least two ancient components, including the so called Basal Eurasian and WHG-UHG. If it really was a genuine ancestral component, like ANE, then I'm pretty sure I'd be able catch it with ADMIXTURE. But I can't.

Indeed, a really important thing to understand about the Lazaridis et al. study is that it doesn't actually attempt to estimate overall WHG-UHG ancestry in Europeans, but rather the excess WHG-UHG on top of what is already present in the EEF proxy Stuttgart.

Also worth noting is that this K7 can be a bit noisy. That's mainly because it's very difficult to correctly assign proportions of ancient ancestry to present-day samples.

With multiple waves of migration that we don't yet and may never fully understand, K7 is not a very precise indicator of the survival of western European hunter-gatherers.

mtDNA haplogroup U5 is typically thought of as a European hunter-gatherer haplotype, but much of the U5 in Europe today is derived from eastern European U5 that migrated to western Europe from the east during the Bronze and Iron ages, in what Jean Manco calls the "revenge of the hunter-gatherers". There is no doubt that higher fractions of western European hunter-gatherers survived in the periphery of northwestern Europe, but their average contribution based on mtDNA is quite low. So you need to reconcile the uncertainty in K7 results with the fact that we see mostly farmer and steppe migration mtDNA in Europe today.