British and Irish category in Northern Italians

[Michelstaedter]

Just wondering if anybody on 23andMe with Northern Italian ancestry has found that the British and Irish category shows up on their ancestry composition. My X chromosome, which it would seem came only from my moms mom who is northern Italian (there was no recombination with her paternal x) shows up as 75 percent British and Irish...

[John McCoy]

Curiously, there was a recent news story on the BBC web site about a village called Gurro, in the Piemonte, that claims to have been settled by Scottish mercenary soldiers who fought (and were defeated) at Pavia under Francois I of France in 1525. See Gurro in the Wikipedia. Whether anyone has done genetic testing of any sort to compare the residents of this village with neighboring villages, I don't know. I hope someone will undertake such a study.

[Michelstaedter]

Curiously, there was a recent news story on the BBC web site about a village called Gurro, in the Piemonte, that claims to have been settled by Scottish mercenary soldiers who fought (and were defeated) at Pavia under Francois I of France in 1525. See Gurro in the Wikipedia. Whether anyone has done genetic testing of any sort to compare the residents of this village with neighboring villages, I don't know. I hope someone will undertake such a study.

Oh man I LOVE stories like that! They are at the heart of what makes genalogy so enticing!