Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives

[Viggen]

Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations. The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the entire human genetic makeup, or genome. Although it provides relative genetic contributions of one group to another, rather than timings, it confirms how the first modern humans came out of Africa 50,000 years ago, mostly from a group in southern Africa called the San. But the subsequent movements around the world, via the near east, central Asia and then Europe, turned up some surprises including a strong similarity between the Sindih, a people who once lived in Pakistan, and Orkney Islanders, or Orcadians. In turn, the Orcadians are closely related to the people who first colonised Siberia...

 

full article at the Telegraph

[Northern Neil]

The identity of the Pictish language has always been controversial - it is assumed to be a variant of Celtic, but neither Brythons nor Dalriads understood a word of it. Oppenheimer (Origins of the British) simply states that it was likely to be non-indo-european. I have long held a pet theory that the picts may have spoken a Uralic language, similar to Finnish or Sami, and that they hopped to Britain from Scandinavia before the Ice melted. Maybe this new finding suggests this could be the case?

[Faustus]

The identity of the Pictish language has always been controversial - it is assumed to be a variant of Celtic, but neither Brythons nor Dalriads understood a word of it. Oppenheimer (Origins of the British) simply states that it was likely to be non-indo-european. I have long held a pet theory that the picts may have spoken a Uralic language, similar to Finnish or Sami, and that they hopped to Britain from Scandinavia before the Ice melted. Maybe this new finding suggests this could be the case?

 

It seems that in ways, living conditions are key. People move around in comfort within climactic conditions they do well in, even to ever more extreme or dangerous conditions like the Nunavut into Eastern North America, or South Sea Islanders across the huge expanse of the Pacific, the Norse to Greenland and North America. They do best in their comfort zone; not to suggest, however that they don't become inventive and go a different way when opportunities arise. But if they are not hemmed in they will push the envelope for freedom of movement.

 

The study of the global spread of modern humans has "Traditionally . . . been the preserve of anthropologists but geneticists are now starting to make an important contribution." It's like suddenly having a new and more complete view of these patterns.

[ASCLEPIADES]

As in so many other ares, Genetics have became the Gold standard for demographics too.

 

Commonly, the presence of the same biomarkers in geographically distant and apparently unrelated highly isolated populations sugests that they all came from a quite ancient and widely distributed ancestor group that was eventually displaced from better suited-for-living areas by more successful competitors .