[stadiaKab]

Really interesting article this. For the longest time it has been thought that British were a mix of a celtic gene base with lots of anglo-saxon and french thrown in, with a bit of Roman and Viking for good measure.

Now that so much more is known about genes and so forth, this has now been refuted.

It turns out that the celts had nothing to do with anything, not even the Irish or Scots.

The British gene pool has essentially remained unchanged since the last Ice Age, despite the masses of invasions the Islands have had.

It is thought that the British are of Basque origin. The Basque region is a small area in the very north of Spain, between Spain and France.

Most likely the Basques crossed over and settled Britain over 10,000 years ago.

Most interesting is that it seems as tho the British, Irish, Scots and Welsh all come from the same stock. The notion of Scottish and Irish people being of Celtic origin seems to have been made up in the 17th and 18th centuries as they tried to differentiate themselves from the English, but this doesn't appear to be the case at all.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ishgene_2.html