Y-DNA similarity between England and neighbouring countries

39 comments
  1. Spain is higher than I thought it would be, thought the Scandinavian countries would be more similar

  2. This about matches the time I did 23andMe, it was pretty dull because I’m basically the most bog standard white British person template possible.

    I was hoping for something more interesting but I was like 80% UK/Irish, 18.5% French/BeNeLux/German area, and the obligatory 1.5% soupçon of Scandinavian thanks to those pesky vikings pillaging the place. Not a hint of Spanish though contrary to the chart.

  3. Would be cool if you could plot this over time. Talking hundreds of years, and see the % changes.

  4. Fascinating stuff. Some observations:

    – Similarity with Italy is quite low, despite 400 years of Roman rule. Presumably because most of the governing class and legions came from elsewhere in the empire? Which might also explain why somewhere like Switzerland is so high?

    – Germany surprisingly low, despite the Anglo-Saxon connection. This seems to support the thinking that much of the ‘native’ Celtic population stayed put during the A-S migration period, hence why Wales, Scotland and Ireland are so similar.

    – Scandinavia surprisingly low, despite the Vikings and then Normans. The Vikings were mostly confined to the north-eastern areas. The Normans were simply a small ruling elite, bossing over the existing pre-Conquest population.

    – Spain surprisingly high. Is this perhaps the Celtic / Iberian connection?

    – Belgium and the low countries very high, which presumably reflects the close trade connection, a relationship also reflected in the similarity between the English and Frisian languages, for example.

  5. Massive caveat here this is only talking about Y-DNA. This is just one chromosome which is only passed along male lineage. It’s interesting but this is not the ultimate guide to relatedness of European countries.

    You could have an “English” Y chromosome and yet that relative is incredible distant and make up very little of your overall genetic make up.

    Lots (about 30%) of black Americans have European Y chromosomes for example. Probably for not so nice reasons sadly but that’s another topic.

  6. There’s the hypothesis that the ‘Saxon’/Germanic settlement of southern England actually took place much earlier than thought, and that the Belgae and other tribes of Southern England/Northern France/Belgium already spoke an old western germanic language (as opposed to a Celtic/Brythonic language) prior to the Roman occupation of Britain.

    So there would be an ancestry link between England and Benelux/N France 500-1000 years’ older than with Saxony/Angeln…

    I can’t remember the name of the book I read on this – if anyone can jog my memory it’ll be much appreciated! Not sure if I buy the arguments but would be interested to re-read.

  7. I heard from a guy from Hull that after the Spanish Armada sunk in the violent storm, alot of the survivors made it to shore and settled. Wonder if that explains the relatively high number for Spain.

  8. Oh God, don’t tell the Nationalists up here that their Y-DNA is 90-99% the same as the English, there’ll be riots I tell you…

  9. Hmm, not sure of the intricate details, and depending on the time frames it might not be valid, but as far as I was aware one is unable to loose their Belgian citizenship unless they gained it through migration. So if your parent got their citizenship through birth and have a way to proof that (birth certificate or such) they can ask the embassy to start a passport procedure.

    It was a bit of a discussion point when they debated removing citizenship from terrorism suspects who have a second nationality in Belgium and the outcome was they couldn’t, not really if it was given at birth or something like that. Also one is unable to officially revoke their own Belgian citizenship through getting a second or even third nationality. You are always able to get a new passport as you never loose your citizenship in Belgium.

    Not sure of all the exact details, but if you haven’t actually tried before, and you really want it, I would have a look into it, because by the sound of it by the you never loose citizenship thing, your parent might be able to claim it, and that should give you all the claim you need for yours. Possibly, don’t trust me, not financial advice, do your own research.

  10. That’s some dodgy colour coding….

    “How can we *really* make sure we don’t look like those pesky Easterners….”

    Like it really didn’t need to be two toned, it could just have been degrees of blue.

    There’s only a few percentage points between Austria and Hungary but there’s a huge leap from blue to orange.

  11. Don’t forget that Celts went from Iberia (North Portugal and Spain) to England and not the other way around.

  12. Fyi, the reason Iceland has such a hugh similarity is because the Scandinavians that went to settle it couldn’t find enough women who wanted to come with, so they just kidnapped women from the Northern British Isles (same thing happened with the settling of the Faroe Isles I believe). It’s kind of amusing in a really horrifying sort of way.

  13. As a Welsh/English man im surprised by those results. Everyone from where im from has some Welsh here xD.

  14. I’d like to find more information on R-U106 l, which is my own paternal haplogroup. It’s often claimed to be a Germanic haplogroup, but I’ve seen this claim easily disputed. So what’s its origin? Bell-Beaker?

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