MEN living in Wales are genetically distinct from men living in England.
The surprising finding reveals the true extent of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of ancient Britain around 1500 years ago. After the invaders arrived, they effectively 鈥渆thnically cleansed鈥� the Celts from what is now England, replacing at least half the indigenous men. The genetic barrier that this created survives to this day.
Mike Weale from University College London and his team analysed the Y chromosomes of men living in England, Wales and Friesland, a province of the Netherlands from which many Anglo-Saxons are thought to have migrated.
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They found that English and Friesian men are genetically indistinguishable. But there is a large difference between Welshmen and those living in five widely spaced English towns mentioned in the Domesday book of AD 1086. More strikingly, the genetic barrier coincides with Offa鈥檚 Dyke, the 250-kilometre-long medieval border between England and Wales. 鈥淭his study shows the Welsh border was more of a genetic barrier鈥han the North Sea,鈥� say the researchers this week in Molecular Biology and Evolution (vol 19, p 1008).
The Y chromosome passes relatively unchanged from father to son, and contains slowly evolving markers that mean family histories can be constructed over thousands of years. The team鈥檚 simulations showed that a mass migration is the most likely explanation for the similarity between the English and the Friesian men. The Anglo-Saxons are likely to have displaced at least 50 per cent of indigenous Celtic men, and possibly all of them.