5 ms·

Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry

70 points by wglb 4y ago

truthexposed 4y ago
[flagged]
GauntletWizard 4y ago
I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. Their greater success though, was getting the people to want to be Roman. And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the simple words "Civis romanus sum" were an effective passport through an empire that stretched months of travel? When it opened commercial opportunities with a large and relatively effective bureaucracy? A nation that built roads and exported consumer goods, spices and wines and finery, like none had ever before it? Most of Europe is still interconnected by the roads the Romans paved. They've been repaved with macadam, but the lines are the same. People imitated the Romans because they were powerful. They formed alliances and married their daughters off to Romans who would keep them in relative luxury. The conquest was equally about minds as of arms. This has been true in all conquests. Some have been more brutal about instilling their culture than the Romans, and to that end, they were more effective at suppressing or destroying the previous culture. But ultimately, it is the conquered people taking on the aspects of their conqueror more than genocide and recolonization that has succeeded in spreading cultures throughout history.
- Kamq 4y ago
  > The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population. Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3. Those tactics, admittedly, work quite well when you only have to deal with the friendliest 1/3 of a population.
  - consilient 4y ago
    > For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. This is probably a misremembered quote from Plutarch: > For although it was not full ten years that he waged war in Gaul, he took by storm more than eight hundred cities, subdued three hundred nations, and fought pitched battles at different times with three million men, of whom he slew one million in hand to hand fighting and took as many more prisoners. The total population of Gaul was certainly higher - contemporary estimates range from 5 (assuming very high mobilization and highly exaggerated Roman numbers) to 20 (taking the highest ancient numbers at face value) million.
    - Kamq 4y ago
      My source was an episode of Hardcore History. I believe the population estimate he gives is 6 million (which would make sense if there were 3 million men) with 2 million deaths and two million slaves. I'll give it a re-listen to see if I can find the source he was quoting from, but if anyone's heard the episode, it's the part where he's explaining why it's sometimes called the "Celtic Holocaust".
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    No, certainly not one third of the population in Gaul.
  - slater 4y ago
    > For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3. And that one small, pesky village of Gauls the Romans just could NOT conquer, try as they might.
    - Kamq 4y ago
      More like the third that were already most likely to be their allies (or to be receptive to being roman clients). Hence the comment about the tactics working on the "1/3 of the friendliest population".
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. > This has been true in all conquests. You lost it at the end there. Compare the United States. Some conquests are a small group installing themselves at the top of society. Others are a large group installing themselves at all levels.
  - prottog 4y ago
    I mean, all conquests are about the victors being at the top. What kind of conqueror would put themselves at the bottom?
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      The kind who's part of a group so large that all top positions are already filled.
- virgulino 4y ago
  The Romans built a wall (the Great Pict Wall) bisecting Britain because they were so afraid of the Picts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall
  - KMag 4y ago
    And later, the Antonine wall a bit further north. Though, it's probably more accurate to say the walls were built to reduce the costs of Pictish raids. I doubt the governor in Londinium woke in a cold sweat fearing Pictish invasion, even prior to Hadrian's wall being built.
    - virgulino 4y ago
      I bet the governor had enough on his plate managing the Brittunculi. 8-)
- philwelch 4y ago
  > I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans… …are a singular example. I can name a singular counterexample: the R1 Y-chromosome haplotype completely replaced the preexisting indigenous Y-chromosome haplotypes across Europe, indicating that the male population was replaced wholesale. In more recent history, North American and Australian populations were also predominantly replaced with settlers, as were parts of South America.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    But your later day examples were caused mostly by disease, not strategy. The deaths caused by europeans arriving in the americas (without fighting) are estimated at 10% of all living humans of that era.
    - philwelch 4y ago
      Yes but the disease and resulting depopulation was probably a necessary precondition to European settlement nonetheless. Even as it was, European settlers themselves often assimilated into indigenous communities; this is the most likely explanation for the lost colony of Roanoke, and smaller scale instances of this sort of thing were well-known late enough that Benjamin Franklin wrote about the phenomenon. Without disease and depopulation, there would have likely been no good uncontested sites to colonize in the first place, and the American Indians would have likely been able to resist colonization far more effectively. At any rate, there’s no generalization to be made either way. In some cases, conquest involves an existing population accepting foreign rule; in other cases, it involves population replacement. Even counting which cases count which way is difficult and controversial.
bbg2401 4y ago
Shouldn't the title read "Modern Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English people found to have Pictish ancestry"?
- naikrovek 4y ago
  well, I'm Scottish, but I was born in America, so shouldn't it also say American? /s omission from the title does not mean that the unmentioned nation has zero Pictish ancestry.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    The opening of the article explicitly lists “Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Northumbria” despite leaving Northumbria (which resides mostly in northern England) out of the title.
    - naikrovek 4y ago
      ok. again, headlines omit details. that's a normal thing for a headline to do.
    - RansomStark 4y ago
      This is due to the politics of the UK. in the UK, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are first class citizens, along with England. It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland. Northumbria, however, does not exist anymore, its now a bunch of English counties, and the southern half of Scotland (south of the Firth of Forth). Without more details on which part of Northumbria is meant it's impossible to know if Enlgand should be included, it may also be wrong to include England if its only a small part and its most / all of Scotland, Wales, and Northen Ireland The author may be getting confused with the similarly named modern county of Northumberland. You'd be surprised how often the border region between England and Scotland is confused, misplaced, or forgotten about. [Source: I'm from Northumberland, technically Tyne and Wear, but thats splitting an already split hair] Edited for clarity
naikrovek 4y ago
this stuff is so fascinating. I hope that after I die I go into spectator mode, but with the added ability to move myself through time so I can see all kinds of stuff like this play out. There are so many historical questions that I want better answers to. The Picts are one of those historical questions, for me.
BirAdam 4y ago
Genetics are weird. I have received next to nothing from certain ancestors, and quite a bit from others as far as DNA testing is concerned. Likewise, in a lithograph of one I can see an ancestor who looks nearly identical to a half brother of mine. Shit is so weird.
- KMag 4y ago
  It's not so weird. My understanding is that genes migrating across chromosomes (translocation) isn't that common. So, to a first approximation, genes are inherited as 46 indivisible units. Every generation, a given chromosome has a 50/50 chance of getting dropped. You have exactly 23 chromosomes from your mother, an expected value of 11.5 chromosomes from your maternal grandmother, expected 5.75 chromosomes from her mother... another 3 generations back and you've got less than a 50% probability of getting any chromosomes from that particular relative.
yosito 4y ago
I realize that there's real research being done here. But as a layman, I read this and only understand that Scottish, Welsh and Irish people are descended from the people who lived in those regions before. This seems obvious. So what am I missing, as a layman?
- defrost 4y ago
  Modern North Americans largely are not descended from those that lived in North America two thousand years ago - the original locals were swamped by immigrants from elsewhere. Modern England is largely made up from those descended from earlier immigrantion waves of mostly European origin that displaced original iron age occupants. The "fringes" (for want of a better word) of the modern UK and Republic of Ireland (Scotland, Wales, the island of Ireland) still retain populations that are largely descended from OG occupants.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    > the original locals were swamped by immigrants from elsewhere. Not swamped. They first had up to 80% of their existing population eliminated by diseases that early european explorers bought with them.
    - yosito 4y ago
      IIRC it was likely more than 80% that were wiped out by disease, giving later European settlers the ability to promote the idea of the Americas as a largely unsettled wilderness scattered with savages, though just a couple decades before Native American civilizations had rivaled Europe.
  - yosito 4y ago
    > Modern England is largely made up from those descended from earlier immigrantion waves of mostly European origin This I didn't know. Thanks. I guess I need to brush up on my knowledge of English history.
    - 4y ago
fuzzfactor 4y ago
There's always this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Several_Species_of_Small_Furry_Animals_Gathered_Together_in_a_Cave_and_Grooving_with_a_Pict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Several_Species_of_Small_Furry... >Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict

70 points by wglb 4y ago

[flagged]

I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. Their greater success though, was getting the people to want to be Roman. And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the simple words "Civis romanus sum" were an effective passport through an empire that stretched months of travel? When it opened commercial opportunities with a large and relatively effective bureaucracy? A nation that built roads and exported consumer goods, spices and wines and finery, like none had ever before it? Most of Europe is still interconnected by the roads the Romans paved. They've been repaved with macadam, but the lines are the same. People imitated the Romans because they were powerful. They formed alliances and married their daughters off to Romans who would keep them in relative luxury. The conquest was equally about minds as of arms. This has been true in all conquests. Some have been more brutal about instilling their culture than the Romans, and to that end, they were more effective at suppressing or destroying the previous culture. But ultimately, it is the conquered people taking on the aspects of their conqueror more than genocide and recolonization that has succeeded in spreading cultures throughout history.

Kamq 4y ago
> The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population. Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3. Those tactics, admittedly, work quite well when you only have to deal with the friendliest 1/3 of a population.
- consilient 4y ago
  > For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. This is probably a misremembered quote from Plutarch: > For although it was not full ten years that he waged war in Gaul, he took by storm more than eight hundred cities, subdued three hundred nations, and fought pitched battles at different times with three million men, of whom he slew one million in hand to hand fighting and took as many more prisoners. The total population of Gaul was certainly higher - contemporary estimates range from 5 (assuming very high mobilization and highly exaggerated Roman numbers) to 20 (taking the highest ancient numbers at face value) million.
  - Kamq 4y ago
    My source was an episode of Hardcore History. I believe the population estimate he gives is 6 million (which would make sense if there were 3 million men) with 2 million deaths and two million slaves. I'll give it a re-listen to see if I can find the source he was quoting from, but if anyone's heard the episode, it's the part where he's explaining why it's sometimes called the "Celtic Holocaust".
- ekianjo 4y ago
  No, certainly not one third of the population in Gaul.
- slater 4y ago
  > For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3. And that one small, pesky village of Gauls the Romans just could NOT conquer, try as they might.
  - Kamq 4y ago
    More like the third that were already most likely to be their allies (or to be receptive to being roman clients). Hence the comment about the tactics working on the "1/3 of the friendliest population".
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. > This has been true in all conquests. You lost it at the end there. Compare the United States. Some conquests are a small group installing themselves at the top of society. Others are a large group installing themselves at all levels.
- prottog 4y ago
  I mean, all conquests are about the victors being at the top. What kind of conqueror would put themselves at the bottom?
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    The kind who's part of a group so large that all top positions are already filled.
virgulino 4y ago
The Romans built a wall (the Great Pict Wall) bisecting Britain because they were so afraid of the Picts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall
- KMag 4y ago
  And later, the Antonine wall a bit further north. Though, it's probably more accurate to say the walls were built to reduce the costs of Pictish raids. I doubt the governor in Londinium woke in a cold sweat fearing Pictish invasion, even prior to Hadrian's wall being built.
  - virgulino 4y ago
    I bet the governor had enough on his plate managing the Brittunculi. 8-)
philwelch 4y ago
> I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans… …are a singular example. I can name a singular counterexample: the R1 Y-chromosome haplotype completely replaced the preexisting indigenous Y-chromosome haplotypes across Europe, indicating that the male population was replaced wholesale. In more recent history, North American and Australian populations were also predominantly replaced with settlers, as were parts of South America.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  But your later day examples were caused mostly by disease, not strategy. The deaths caused by europeans arriving in the americas (without fighting) are estimated at 10% of all living humans of that era.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    Yes but the disease and resulting depopulation was probably a necessary precondition to European settlement nonetheless. Even as it was, European settlers themselves often assimilated into indigenous communities; this is the most likely explanation for the lost colony of Roanoke, and smaller scale instances of this sort of thing were well-known late enough that Benjamin Franklin wrote about the phenomenon. Without disease and depopulation, there would have likely been no good uncontested sites to colonize in the first place, and the American Indians would have likely been able to resist colonization far more effectively. At any rate, there’s no generalization to be made either way. In some cases, conquest involves an existing population accepting foreign rule; in other cases, it involves population replacement. Even counting which cases count which way is difficult and controversial.

bbg2401 4y ago

Shouldn't the title read "Modern Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English people found to have Pictish ancestry"?

naikrovek 4y ago
well, I'm Scottish, but I was born in America, so shouldn't it also say American? /s omission from the title does not mean that the unmentioned nation has zero Pictish ancestry.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  The opening of the article explicitly lists “Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Northumbria” despite leaving Northumbria (which resides mostly in northern England) out of the title.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    ok. again, headlines omit details. that's a normal thing for a headline to do.
  - RansomStark 4y ago
    This is due to the politics of the UK. in the UK, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are first class citizens, along with England. It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland. Northumbria, however, does not exist anymore, its now a bunch of English counties, and the southern half of Scotland (south of the Firth of Forth). Without more details on which part of Northumbria is meant it's impossible to know if Enlgand should be included, it may also be wrong to include England if its only a small part and its most / all of Scotland, Wales, and Northen Ireland The author may be getting confused with the similarly named modern county of Northumberland. You'd be surprised how often the border region between England and Scotland is confused, misplaced, or forgotten about. [Source: I'm from Northumberland, technically Tyne and Wear, but thats splitting an already split hair] Edited for clarity

naikrovek 4y ago

this stuff is so fascinating. I hope that after I die I go into spectator mode, but with the added ability to move myself through time so I can see all kinds of stuff like this play out. There are so many historical questions that I want better answers to. The Picts are one of those historical questions, for me.

BirAdam 4y ago

Genetics are weird. I have received next to nothing from certain ancestors, and quite a bit from others as far as DNA testing is concerned. Likewise, in a lithograph of one I can see an ancestor who looks nearly identical to a half brother of mine. Shit is so weird.

KMag 4y ago
It's not so weird. My understanding is that genes migrating across chromosomes (translocation) isn't that common. So, to a first approximation, genes are inherited as 46 indivisible units. Every generation, a given chromosome has a 50/50 chance of getting dropped. You have exactly 23 chromosomes from your mother, an expected value of 11.5 chromosomes from your maternal grandmother, expected 5.75 chromosomes from her mother... another 3 generations back and you've got less than a 50% probability of getting any chromosomes from that particular relative.

yosito 4y ago

I realize that there's real research being done here. But as a layman, I read this and only understand that Scottish, Welsh and Irish people are descended from the people who lived in those regions before. This seems obvious. So what am I missing, as a layman?

defrost 4y ago
Modern North Americans largely are not descended from those that lived in North America two thousand years ago - the original locals were swamped by immigrants from elsewhere. Modern England is largely made up from those descended from earlier immigrantion waves of mostly European origin that displaced original iron age occupants. The "fringes" (for want of a better word) of the modern UK and Republic of Ireland (Scotland, Wales, the island of Ireland) still retain populations that are largely descended from OG occupants.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > the original locals were swamped by immigrants from elsewhere. Not swamped. They first had up to 80% of their existing population eliminated by diseases that early european explorers bought with them.
  - yosito 4y ago
    IIRC it was likely more than 80% that were wiped out by disease, giving later European settlers the ability to promote the idea of the Americas as a largely unsettled wilderness scattered with savages, though just a couple decades before Native American civilizations had rivaled Europe.
- yosito 4y ago
  > Modern England is largely made up from those descended from earlier immigrantion waves of mostly European origin This I didn't know. Thanks. I guess I need to brush up on my knowledge of English history.
  - 4y ago

fuzzfactor 4y ago

There's always this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Several_Species_of_Small_Furry_Animals_Gathered_Together_in_a_Cave_and_Grooving_with_a_Pict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Several_Species_of_Small_Furry... >Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict