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the north – substantial in terms of numbers, but really only denting the Celtic substructure.
Lastly, I have found a tiny number of very unusual clans in the southern part of England. Two of
these are from sub-Saharan Africa, three from Syria or Jordan. These exotic sequences are found
only in England, with one exception, and among people with no knowledge of, or family
connections with, those distant parts of the world. I think they might be the descendants of Roman
slaves, whose lines have kept going through unbroken generations of women. If this was the genetic
legacy of the Romans, they have left only the slightest traces on the female side. I have not found
any in Wales, or in Ireland and only one in Scotland. This is an African sequence from Stornoway
in the Western Isles, for which I have absolutely no explanation. These exotic dustings, and the
more substantial layers of Viking maternal lines, are the exception. Everything else in the Isles, on
the maternal side, is both Celtic and ancient. But what about the men?
Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which
dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantis
chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with
other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction
that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes. The sea
routes of the Atlantic fringe conveyed both men and women to the Isles. I can find no evidence at
all of a large-scale arrival from the heartland of the Celts of central Europe among the paternal
genetic ancestry of the Isles, just as there is none on the maternal side.
The pockets of ancient Wodans in mid-Wales and the ‘Pictland’ regions of Grampian and
Tayside are, I believe, the echoes of the very first Mesolithic settlers who arrived from continental
Europe, perhaps even travelling by foot while there was still a land connection. They look old to
me, and for an apparently contradictory reason. That is because they are all very similar. The same
applies to the Oisins. And yet the customs of genetics state that the longer a gene has been in a
place, the more diversity should have accumulated. That was how I was able to fix the homelands
of the seven European clan matriarchs. Using that rule I placed them at the locations where the
present-day diversity was highest, and thus where they had had longest to accumulate mutations
away from the original.
But this rule does not seem to work with the paternal lines delineated by the Y-chromosome.
The very striking thing about the clan of Oisin throughout the Isles is how very similar they all are.
Or at least, how there are very large clusters of very similar chromosomes in one location, and not
in others. For instance, the Ui Neill chromosome reaches a very high frequency in north-west
Ireland but is rare elsewhere, and the Somerled chromosome is common in the Highlands and the
Hebrides, but virtually unknown elsewhere – unless carried by a member of Clan Donald or Clan
Dugall. This dramatically reduces the genetic diversity, and leads to very recent settlement dates,
sometimes obviously incorrect. This has been noticed before with the Y-chromosome but has been
attributed to what is called ‘patrilocality’. This is the practice of men staying put, while the women
move to marry. However, I don’t think
this works well enough to explain the amazing similarity in the Oisin chromosomes. The
explanation is less cosy.
This is the ‘Genghis effect’ and it is not confined to the Mongol Empire. In the Isles very large
numbers of men, perhaps all of them in the clan of Oisin, are descended from only a few
genetically successful ancestors. All the conditions are here in the Isles. From the Iron Age