British Basques?
Researchers at the University of Sheffield are running around north Wales popping cotton buds into the mouths of local men. It is not some strange religious ritual, but an attempt to discover where the men came from!
The team are looking for men born in north Wales and whose paternal grandfathers came from the same area. A previous much smaller genetic survey revealed the surprising fact that a fairly high percentage of north Wales men had a particular DNA marker that is commonly found in Spain and the Balkans, but which is very uncommon among the Celts.
The new survey is both an attempt to establish how many people in north Wales have this marker, and also to try and calculate when the foreign DNA might have been introduced into the population. The hope is that by discovering how many mutations have accumulated in this stretch of DNA compared with the standard in Spain and the Balkins, they will be able to make a rough estimate of when it was separated from the population which carry it.
Once they know the date, the researchers hope to be able to link the immigration to some event in history. One possibility is that the DNA may have been inherited from Roman soldiers, for we know that among the legions garrisoned in Britain there were soldiers from all over the Roman empire. Soldiers and local girls make a volatile mix and what more likely than that the lonely soldiers introduced their genes into the British population?
However the researchers have another theory, and that is that the immigrants arrived as much as 2,000 years before the Romans and were, in fact, miners looking for copper. Parry's Mountain at the far west of Anglesey and the Great Orme near Llandudno were both copper mines back in the Bronze Age.
Of course, it is also possible that the Sheffield University people may be barking up the wrong tree entirely. Two books published fairly recently - Blood of the Isles by Bryan Sykes and The Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer draw on genetic studies conducted since the 1990s to claim that most Britons are descended from the original inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula.
This is an interesting result, because Nennius, the 8th century historian, has been often castigated for incorporating untrustworthy legends into his "British Chronicles". Not only does he include a lengthy paragraph about the legendary King Arthur but he also asserts that the British came from Spain.
After an interval of not less than eight hundred years, came the Picts, and occupied the Orkney Islands: whence they laid waste many regions, and seized those on the left hand side of Britain, where they still remain, keeping possession of a third part of Britain to this day.
Long after this, the Scots arrived in Ireland from Spain. The first that came was Partholomus, with a thousand men and women, these increased to four thousand; but a mortality coming suddenly upon them, they all perished in one week. The second was Nimech, the son of ... who, according to report, after having his ships shattered, arrived at a port in Ireland, and continuing there several years, returned at length with his followers to Spain. After these came three sons of a Spanish soldier with thirty ships, each of which contained thirty wives; and having remained there during the space of a year, there appeared to them, in the middle of the sea, a tower of glass, the summit of which seemed covered with men, to whom they often spoke, but received no answer. At length they determined to besiege the tower; and after a year's preparation, advanced towards it, with the whole number of their ships, and all the women, one ship only excepted, which had been wrecked, and in which were thirty men, and as many women; but when all had disembarked on the shore which surrounded the tower, the sea opened and swallowed them up. Ireland, however, was peopled, to the present period, from the family remaining in the vessel which was wrecked. Afterwards, others came from Spain, and possessed themselves of various parts of Britain.
It would seem that Nennius was preserving a genuine tradition - and there may even be truth in his tale of the glass tower if we think of the ships from the invasion fleet crashing into a iceberg and being destroyed in a disaster from which only one ship survived.
Nennius' claim is borne out by the existence of stone burial chambers which can be found all across the southern Mediterranean, up into Spain and across into Britain. (Visit NWTV to see one of these stone burial chambers in south Wales.) This also points to links between Britain and Spain. If so, it would indicate that the Bronze Age was a good deal more adventurous than hitherto thought, for the Spanish did not come to Britain by creeping up the coast to Calais and then spotting these mysterious islands in the misty distance. Instead they sailed across the Bay of Biscay direct to southern England and to Ireland, which argues not only seamanship of a high order, but also ships rather larger than dugout canoes!
the legendary King Arthur This is what Nennius says:
At that time, the Saxons grew strong by virtue of their large number and increased in power in Britain. Hengist having died, however, his son Octha crossed from the northern part of Britain to the kingdom of Kent and from him are descended the kings of Kent. Then Arthur along with the kings of Britain fought against them in those days, but Arthur himself was the military commander ["dux bellorum"]. His first battle was at the mouth of the river which is called Glein. His second, third, fourth, and fifth battles were above another river which is called Dubglas and is in the region of Linnuis. The sixth battle was above the river which is called Bassas. The seventh battle was in the forest of Celidon, that is Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth battle was at the fortress of Guinnion, in which Arthur carried the image of holy Mary ever virgin on his shoulders; and the pagans were put to flight on that day. And through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the power of the blessed Virgin Mary his mother there was great slaughter among them. The ninth battle was waged in the City of the Legion. The tenth battle was waged on the banks of a river which is called Tribruit. The eleventh battle was fought on the mountain which is called Agnet. The twelfth battle was on Mount Badon in which there fell in one day 960 men from one charge by Arthur; and no one struck them down except Arthur himself, and in all the wars he emerged as victor. And while they were being defeated in all the battles, they were seeking assistance from Germany and their numbers were being augmented many times over without interruption. And they brought over kings from Germany that they might reign over them in Britain, right down to the time in which Ida reigned, who was son of Eobba. He was the first king in Bernicia, i.e., in Berneich.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
