Viking Hoard Found in Scotland

[carstenb]

I seem to remember a couple of years ago that someone was checking the DNA of 9000 year old remains that had been found in Wales(?) against the local population of the small town near where it was found.

Yup - got a match - apparently some of the locals families had been living there for 9000 years and were decendants.

[SaltyMonkey]

Originally Posted by carstenb

... apparently some of the locals families had been living there for 9000 years and were decendants.

Yup, but I wouldn't wanna mate with one.

EEEK!

[Hoofsmit]

Did they test the local flocks as well ?




Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Astrid]

The majority of Icelanders are all at least distantly related to one another, due in part isolation following the end of the viking era and the relatively small amount of immigration to Iceland in more recent times.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by Astrid

The majority of Icelanders are all at least distantly related to one another, due in part isolation following the end of the viking era and the relatively small amount of immigration to Iceland in more recent times.

yes. And the iceland gnome project has charted that most icelanders have spanish genes. These come to iceland when the Spanish Armada was wrecked by a storm (1500?). A couple of ships were blown to iceland by the storm and wrecked on the coast. With no way home, the sailors were integrated into the local population and have passed their genes down through the generations

[SaltyMonkey]

Originally Posted by carstenb

yes. And the iceland gnome project has charted that most icelanders have spanish genes. These come to iceland when the Spanish Armada was wrecked by a storm (1500?). A couple of ships were blown to iceland by the storm and wrecked on the coast. With no way home, the sailors were integrated into the local population and have passed their genes down through the generations

Oh that is cool news to me. Looking online, I can't find anything about Iceland, but I do see quiet a bit related to Ireland. Did you mean Ireland?

[dannc]

Originally Posted by SaltyMonkey

@dannc Your post was awesome!!!

Thank you.

That Scottish Welshman is a good guy. I was the token American at an UK owned company so I had to work with a bunch of Brits. VERY educational to say the least! Many of the Brits who came to the states stayed and became US citizens.

We worked very hard but we also played hard too. Good folks.

I will have to be brain dead to forget our company party in Fort Lauderdale. The restaurant was on the ICW followed by bar hoping in water taxis until the wee hours of the morning followed by the long drive home with four drunk Brits singing Henry The VIII I Am over and over and over. :biggrin :

Later,
Dan

[Cormorant]

Originally Posted by carstenb

I seem to remember a couple of years ago that someone was checking the DNA of 9000 year old remains that had been found in Wales(?) against the local population of the small town near where it was found.

Yup - got a match - apparently some of the locals families had been living there for 9000 years and were decendants.

See "Cheddar Man":
Cheddar Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to the Mesolithic, approximately 7150 BC, and it appears that he died a violent death. It is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton.


Excavated in 1903, the remains are kept by the Natural History Museum in London, but are not currently on display. A replica of the skeleton is exhibited in the "Cheddar Man and the Cannibals" museum in Cheddar village. The death of Cheddar Man remains a mystery. A hole in his skull suggests violence, and Gough's Cave was used for cannibalism, trophy display or secondary burial by pre-historic humans.[1] Speculation based on scientifically investigated known ritual or warfare practices which existed during this early period is inconclusive.
Mitochondrial DNA testing

In 1996, Bryan Sykes of Oxford University first sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man, with DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man's molars. Cheddar Man was determined to have belonged to Haplogroup U5, a branch of mitochondrial Haplogroup U, which has also been found in other Mesolithic human remains.[2][3] Sykes obtained DNA from the 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man's tooth and from a 12,000-year-old Cheddar tooth from the same cave.[4]
Bryan Sykes's research into Cheddar Man was filmed as he performed it in 1997. As a means of connecting Cheddar Man to the living residents of Cheddar village, he compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) taken from 20 living residents of the village to that extracted from Cheddar Man’s molar. He found two people who shared the same mtDNA as Cheddar Man, due to the fact that around 10% of Europeans belong to Haplogroup U5.[5] They, like anyone else carrying haplogroup U5 today, share an ancestor with Cheddar Man of many thousands of years ago through his maternal line.[6][7] In May 2013, Craig Dent, from Melbourne, Australia travelled to Cheddar Gorge to visit Gough's Cave following mtDNA testing which confirmed that he too belonged to haplogroup U5 and thus shared a distant ancestor with Cheddar Man.[8]


Also more detail on Chedda Man's descendant:
Briton Is Kin of Stone Age 'Cheddar Man' - Los Angeles Times

Briton Is Kin of Stone Age 'Cheddar Man'


Science: DNA test shows history teacher is direct descendant of 9,000-year-old skeleton.


March 09, 1997|WILLIAM D. MONTALBANO | TIMES STAFF WRITER
LONDON — After he was killed by a blow to the face about 9,000 years ago, the 23-year-old hunter was laid to rest in a limestone cave in what is now southwestern England.
Now, say scientists astonishingly bridging 90 centuries and 300 generations, they have found a direct descendant of the Stone Age man.
He lives half a mile from the burial site and teaches history.
"I've been in the cave a few times, but I never realized it was home," 42-year-old Adrian Targett told The Times on Saturday, still good-naturedly coming to terms with astonishment--and an unexpected instant of fame.
What started as part of a local television special about archeology is ending as the second nudge at the frontiers of science by British researchers in as many weeks.


In the quickening scientific universe, tomorrow and yesterday converge. Say hello, Dolly, you futuristic cloned sheep, to Cheddar Man, you tales-telling, millenniums-spanning skeleton.
"I'm overwhelmed. I couldn't believe it," Targett said of learning that DNA tests had identified him as a direct descendant (on his mother's side) of Britain's oldest complete skeleton, found in the cave near Cheddar village. The atmosphere in the cave in the cheese-famous Somerset region of Britain helped preserve the skeleton, which was discovered by workers digging a drain in 1903.
"I'm a history teacher. But I teach modern history, so Cheddar Man's a bit out of my period. I have to admit that I knew next to nothing about him," said Targett, who is now learning in a hurry after finding himself on every front page in Britain on Saturday.
His ancestor, now on display at the Natural History Museum in London, drew the attention of TV producers preparing a documentary on archeology in Somerset.
Would it be possible to extract Cheddar Man's DNA, they wondered?
Scientists from the museum and from Oxford University found that despite the skeleton's great age, it was possible to extract mitochondrial DNA from a tooth cavity in the skeleton.
Mitochondrial DNA, which is found in parts of the cells used for generating energy, is inherited unchanged down the maternal line. It is easier to recover from ancient bones than nuclear DNA, which carries genes from both mothers and fathers, scientists say.
After months of research, the scientists charted the old hunter's genetic makeup. Then came the for-the-fun-of-it detective work.
Scientists and a camera crew appeared one day at Kings of Wessex school in Cheddar, which is no stranger to archeology: It is built amid the ruins of a Saxon palace.
"They wanted to take DNA samples from some of the students whose families had lived longest in the area," Targett said. "I gave a [cheek swab] sample too, just to encourage the children and to make up the numbers."
In all, about 20 samples were taken, Targett recalled. His family has lived in the area at least since the mid-19th century, Targett said, but he moved to Cheddar only coincidentally after he began teaching there 20 years ago.
When the results were in at Oxford, the DNA had conclusively shown Targett to be a direct descendant of Cheddar's cave man.

"It is not a perfect match," Oxford's Bryan Sykes told reporters. "One base pair--that is, one letter of the genetic alphabet--is different out of 300. But in 9,000 years, we would expect one to change by the normal rates of mutation. So it's a pretty close match."
Targett is an only child, and he and his wife, Katey, have no children. But his mother, who lives in Cheddar, had 12 brothers and sisters, including four sets of twins.
"It's a bit frightening to think that there are all those links across all those generations," Targett said. "But the nice thing is that there are links that are so strong. We are all descended from an ancestor like Cheddar Man. Who knows how many people we are related to and don't know about?"
Targett has emerged from the research with the world's longest lineage, but Oxford researcher Sykes said the odds of finding a genetic match to Cheddar Man were not long, given the relatively small population of Stone Age Britain.
If much of the population of Britain today is descended from the hunter-gatherers of Cheddar Man's time, then many people will bear the imprint of a relative handful of prehistoric mothers. And their children were hunter-gatherers rather than farmers, Sykes told the BBC.
"There has been an idea that most modern Europeans are descended from farmers that came in from the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, reaching Britain about 6,000 years ago," Sykes said. "This kind of evidence shows that is probably not true and that modern Britons are in fact descended from the earlier inhabitants like Cheddar Man who existed on hunting and gathering and who were not farmers."
Cheddar Man may have more secrets to disclose. Scientists say it may be possible to determine the color of his hair and eyes and what diseases he might have had. In the meantime, Adrian Targett will carry an amazing bit of history to history class with him.
Targett, by the way, sings in Cheddar's male choir, plays bassoon in his school's orchestra and is a steam engine buff. He does admit to liking his steaks rare. But he is not a hunter.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by SaltyMonkey

Oh that is cool news to me. Looking online, I can't find anything about Iceland, but I do see quiet a bit related to Ireland. Did you mean Ireland?

No, I meant Iceland, not Ireland.

[rognvald]

Originally Posted by carstenb

yes. And the iceland gnome project has charted that most icelanders have spanish genes. These come to iceland when the Spanish Armada was wrecked by a storm (1500?). A couple of ships were blown to iceland by the storm and wrecked on the coast. With no way home, the sailors were integrated into the local population and have passed their genes down through the generations

Cars,
Can you provide a link concerning the Spanish sailors. I first looked under Iceland Gnome Project. The Vikings believed in Gnomes but I believe you mean "genome." It was a good laugh to start the morning. However, I couldn't find anything in re: the Spanish sailors. Thanks.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by rognvald

Cars,
Can you provide a link concerning the Spanish sailors. I first looked under Iceland Gnome Project. The Vikings believed in Gnomes but I believe you mean "genome." It was a good laugh to start the morning. However, I couldn't find anything in re: the Spanish sailors. Thanks.

Gnomes are like accordion paper dolls and get rapped around the Christmas tree.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by rognvald

Cars,
Can you provide a link concerning the Spanish sailors. I first looked under Iceland Gnome Project. The Vikings believed in Gnomes but I believe you mean "genome." It was a good laugh to start the morning. However, I couldn't find anything in re: the Spanish sailors. Thanks.

More likely Portuguese from the Cod fishing ships of yesteryear..

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by boatman61

More likely Portuguese from the Cod fishing ships of yesteryear..

I had been thinking the same thing. Probably not a bunch of recorded history on that?

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by Cadence

Gnomes are like accordion paper dolls and get rapped around the Christmas tree.

My wise ass remark. Can someone tell me what Danes call them?

[rognvald]

Originally Posted by Cadence

Gnomes are like accordion paper dolls and get rapped around the Christmas tree.

You mean like this Viking garden gnome?