Celts descended from Spanish fishermen, study finds

Don't tell the locals, but the hordes of British holidaymakers who visited Spain this summer were, in fact, returning to their ancestral home.A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. DNA analysis reveals they have an almost identical genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between 4,000 and 5,000BC.
The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of Britishness.
People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish."



Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our genetic roots.Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were originally descended from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.
The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic clan, which Professor Sykes has called "Oisin". After that, the next most widespread originally belonged to tribes of Danish and Norse Vikings. Small numbers of today's Britons are also descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman clans.
These DNA "fingerprints" have enabled Professor Sykes to create the first genetic maps of the British Isles, which are analysed in Blood of the Isles, a book published this week. The maps show that Celts are most dominant in areas of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But, contrary to popular myth, the Celtic clan is also strongly represented elsewhere in the British Isles.
"Although Celtic countries have previously thought of themselves as being genetically different from the English, this is emphatically not the case," Professor Sykes said.
"This is significant, because the idea of a separate Celtic race is deeply ingrained in our political structure, and has historically been very divisive. Culturally, the view of a separate race holds water. But from a genetic point of view, Britain is emphatically not a divided nation."
Origins of Britons
Oisin
Descended from Iberian fishermen who migrated to Britain between 4,000 and 5,000BC and now considered the UK's indigenous inhabitants.
Wodan
Second most common clan arrived from Denmark during Viking invasions in the 9th century.
Sigurd
Descended from Viking invaders who settled in the British Isles from AD 793. One of the most common clans in the Shetland Isles, and areas of north and west Scotland.
Eshu
The wave of Oisin immigration was joined by the Eshu clan, which has roots in Africa. Eshu descendants are primarily found in coastal areas.
Re
A second wave of arrivals which came from the Middle East. The Re were farmers who spread westwards across Europe.
Roman
Although the Romans ruled from AD 43 until 410, they left a tiny genetic footprint. For the first 200 years occupying forces were forbidden from marrying locally.



Who were the Saxons and where were they from? Were the Celtics (or is it Celts) from Ireland? 

Is Norman, Franc and Gallic the same thing or are they the French but from different time periods?
Celtic and Gallic tends to be interchangeable--is that right?
Who are the English (in medieval times). Are they only people who lived in Britain?
Was there really a place called Mercia--that's just an extra I thought I'd throw in :)

The best thing you can do to sort out the confusion is read the early chapters of 1066 and all that :-)

Bare essentials (I'm sure more knowledgeable people will leap in with more detail):

Celts, broadly speaking, were the people living in the British Isles at the time of the Roman conquest. They spoke languages that were the ancestors of modern Breton, Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish.

Saxons (and their neighbours the Angles and Jutes) started arriving in the British Isles from about the 5th century AD. They came from what is now Denmark, North Germany and Friesland, though they probably lived further East before that. They spoke Germanic languages. These languages (usually lumped together as "Old English" or "Anglo-Saxon") became dominant in most of England and southern Scotland, while Cornwall, Ireland, Wales and northern Scotland remained largely Celtic-speaking.

Gallic is a tricky word: the Romans called most of north-western Europe "Gallia", so it gets used in several different ways, generally to refer to people or languages of Celtic origin. Nowadays, we tend to use "Gaelic" (pr. "gallic") for the Celtic languages of Scotland and Ireland; and "Gauls" for the Celtic people living in France during Roman times.

Franks were Germanic people who became dominant in most of NW Europe around the 6th century. They originally spoke a Germanic language, but those living in what is now France later became French-speaking. Clovis and Charlemagne were Franks. Confusingly, Muslims in the medieval period tended to refer to all Western Christians as Franks.

Normans were from Normandy, in northern France. They seem to have been a mixture of local people (Franks/Gauls/whatever) with Vikings who came there from Norway around the ninth century. They spoke a dialect of French (a Romance language). Normans later spread to England (1066!), South Wales, Ireland, Sicily, and quite a few other places, taking their language with them.

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England - at its greatest extent it stretched from the Thames and Severn to the Ribble and Humber. Offa was the most famous Mercian king.

The term English tends to be used (more-or-less) for the period after the Norman conquest (1066), when England became a single political unit. The English were a mixture of Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Danes, and Normans. Anglo-Saxon gradually merged with Norman French to become a language called "Middle English" (Chaucer, etc.), and that evolved into modern English