100% English - New Channel 4 genealogy programme

[kerryb]

I don' understand it at all either, it's obvious people in England are not pure English.  What is pure English anyway, when you look at the history of all the people who have come here, Saxons, Romans, Celts, Normans etc etc etc

I am sure it is the same the world over!

Kerry

[SooCatt]

Didn't you think it interesting that it didn't make them feel less English it just made them move the goalposts about what they thought English was.  I loved it!

The lady in the headscarf was marvellous and I thought Carol Thatcher's light-hearted side-swipe at her brother getting 'rather famously lost' was hilarious.

My 14 year old son was watching with me and it really got us talking about what we considered 'being English' to mean.

I agree that some kind of definition of an average English DNA would have been useful. 

Susan

[Hackstaple]

I watched the Channel 4 programme with healthy scepticism. First I should say that being English means to feel English. That may mean different things to different people but if you have a huge imperative to visit the land of your fathers very regularly that defines your "real" nationality. So it is fine by me for Ian Wright to say he is English - he feels English, he is patriotic, he doesn't affect a West Indian accent or patois. The colour of his skin is immaterial.
The programme was designed to deflate people's dignity. There may have bewen 20 subjects but only the 8 who could suffer some public humiliation were shown - that's journalism.
The science used is false science as it uses labels of great vagueness and claims results that require "inetrpretation". Scientific method demands that a test can be repeated by others with identical outcome   On the one hand we have geneticists [who may prove to be the new alchemists] claiming we are all descended fom a woman born in East Africa 150,000 years ago and then we have this expert revealing that only one of the subjects had sub-saharan blood. Another was 7% native American - the chances of that in a person whose ancestors have lived here for 5 generations or more is very low indeed. That percentage is not even reflected in the population of the USA!
Then the Ukraine bit where those of "SE European"blood had their supposed origins. The Ukraine was extensively settled some thousands of years ago by Celts - the same bloodstock as the Welsh and Bretons so I suppose the Welsh must have oodles of this SE European blood in them. The globe he carried around must have been inaccurate if the Ukraine is placed as in SE Europe by the way.
The people of Chechnya claim they are of original Saxon origin - those of Rumania have a great deal of Roman Italian blood whilst their neighbours in Hungary are of a completely different stock.  Many people in the old Jugoslavia whilst being largely of Slavonic origin have Turkish or Kurdish bloodlines as well.
None of those matters affect their present identity as populations were on the move for 10000 years before our recent history.
Last year we were mostly supposed to have 13% Tartar bloodlines from a 13th century Mongol warrior.
The year before a half of the people of the North were definitely carrying Viking blood as were many around the Dublin area [probably true as there are many freckled red-haired people there].
On balance the programme was about as silly as the daily horoscope.
The morning post just came and I did not get a surprise despite my stars.

[7igerby7he7ail]

When you think of all the pre history migrations, all the invasions, just in Europe

The programme is just what I expected it to be, a bit of 'pop' science. And did they pick people who were predictably right wing?

Anyhow
All the tribes...........................
Greeks and Romans in Central and  Southern Europe, Germanics to the North
Slavs moving into Poland and Russia. Celts through Germany to France, Northern Spain and Britain.

Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Goths, Vandals,Helvetii,, Teutones, Cimbri, Franks, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Magyars etc.

Britain has its Celts, Angles, Saxons, Romans, Vikings, Normans.


Then we have the gradual mix, the cocktail, that we English are today. DNA wise I think that a lot would be a mixture, just imagine, you have 1024 potential 8x great grandparents, somewhere there will be a bit of spice in the sauce.

To be English is to feel English and know your culture is English.

Tom

[kerryb]

I think you are right Tom, I believe it is more about culture than race!

Kerry

[behindthefrogs]

The science used is false science as it uses labels of great vagueness and claims results that require "inetrpretation". Scientific method demands that a test can be repeated by others with identical outcome    

The morning post just came and I did not get a surprise despite my stars.

I think you are being grossly unfair Hack.

The tests are scientific in that if you repeat the extraction and testing of DNA from the same person exactly the same results will be achieved.

It is very rare in science for results not to need interpretation.  I agree the interpretation presented on the programme bordered on the fictional but that was necessary to produce a programme.  I personally would have liked them to go deeper into the DNA but
that would have made very boring television.

The next step beyond interpretation is to do further tests which confirm it.  That would have been interesting but expensive and not good television.

David

[SooCatt]

I think the whole point of the programme was to challenge peoples view of what 'English' is.  I think it did that, with some predictable and some surprising results.

As I said earlier I think it was particularly interesting that (with a few exceptions) their definition of what 'English' is appeared to change depending on what their own results showed. 

Whatever the actual science behind it I thought it was an interesting experiment.

Susan

[Old Blue]

As someone said earlier, I'd like to see some averages and some stereotypical examples - ie. pale skin freckly ginger-hair, blue-eyes/brown eyes, brown hair olive skin etc. etc. - the stereotypical Celt, Nordic, Mediterranean  - would they come up as predominantly South-Western, Northern Europe etc. or would they be a DNA cocktail? Would Ian Wright be 100% sub-saharan African for example?

A bit more explanation, serious science in the programme would have been interesting.

[Hackstaple]

David - it is hardly being grossly unfair to point out that it is not necessary to fudge the results of scientific tests before airing them to the public. That makes the assumption that the public is too stupid to understand difficult concepts, a sort of New Labour methodology. People who do not wish to be informed can watch alternative programmes such as "reality TV" or My Stepmother is an Alien or Who Wants to be a Millionaire. For me Bill Oddie is more reality TV than a half-naked tattoed lesbian being foul-mouthed. Those who sat down to watch the Channel 4 programme expected some "shocking" revelations as it would be obvious that only those which showed somesuch would be aired! However, that was enough icing for the cake. The pseudoscientific interpretations "Your euro-DNA is unusual" were just so much chocolate and strawberry sprinkle - they did not improve the cake.
There is far too much populist science about, much of it fated to be discredited in due course.
I consider myself English. I look very English - fair skin, strawberry blonde hair [or it was], blue eyes, high cheekbones. Yet within the past 200 years I have Morgan, Meredith, Jenkins and Davies in my ancestry plus a man who might just have been from Cork. But I don't feel Welsh or Irish and neither am I ashamed of that ancestry. From the Roman occupation's legions I probably have some Roman, some Greek, some Gallic and some Syrian DNA as well. That does not make me feel Syrian or Italian.