holy cow. i sent a message to my nearest dna match. she is adopted.

[wnylib]

37. RE: People of the British Isles

Earliest inhabitants being of African origins makes sense since the first modern humans to spread around the earth were African. Other physical traits evolved later.

But there were periods of "outsider" influx into the British Isles. As early as 300 BC, Phoenicians, Greeks, and then Romans competed for the tin trade in Cornwall and Wales. They established mines and trade settlements among the locals. Jewish traders arrived on Phoenician ships. Roman soldiers from all over the empire were stationed in Britain and many acquired land to settle on when their service time was done. During the tin trade period, before Rome conquered what later became England, there were frequents raids and battles in both directions between the tin settlement areas and Irish tribes, resulting in captives, slaves, and intermating (not always voluntary).

Celtic people in Britain had connections with, and likely originated from Gaul (France) and Belgium (Belgae tribes). Gaul is the Roman word for the Celts. The word Celt comes from the Greek term, Keltoi, for the same people. There was a Celtiberian culture in Spain, composed of Celts and Iberians (from Africa, who gave the peninsula its name).

Old tales in both Ireland and Spain tell of a group from Spain settling in Ireland. The tales are usually discounted as Medieval inventions of Irish monks, but the same legends in Spain suggest maybe a kernel of historic truth underlies the tales. The Spanish believed it because they accepted Irish refugees from wars with England as full citizens of Spain. And in Spanish history there was a tribe called Celti, as well as the Celtiberian culture.

Then there were the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, some of whom had settled down there before the Viking invasions and then fled the Vikings to settle in Ireland. The Normans (mix of French and Scandinavian) who conquered England also fought with the Irish and gained some footholds in parts of Ireland, mostly coastal areas.

Nearly all of the ancient cultures and civilizations practiced enslavement of war captives who were sent wherever they could be sold, so modern people can have quite a genetic mix among our ancestors, regardless of where our most recent ones come from.