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Friday, 4 May 2007, 08:44 GMT 09:44 UK Native American DNA found in UK By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News
DNA testing has uncovered British descendents of Native Americans brought to the UK centuries ago as slaves, translators or tribal representatives.
Genetic analysis turned up two white British women with a DNA signature characteristic of American Indians.
An Oxford scientist said it was extremely unusual to find these DNA lineages in Britons with no previous knowledge of Native American ancestry.
Indigenous Americans were brought over to the UK as early as the 1500s.
Many were brought over as curiosities; but others travelled here in delegations during the 18th Century to petition the British imperial government over trade or protection from other tribes.
Experts say it is probable that some stayed in Britain and married into local communities.
Doreen Isherwood, 64, from Putney, and Anne Hall, 53, of Huddersfield, only found out about their New World heritage after paying for commercial DNA ancestry tests.
Mrs Isherwood told BBC News: "I was expecting the results to say I belonged to one of the common European tribes, but when I got them back, my first thought was that they were a mistake.
"It rocked me completely. It made think: who am I?"
Doreen (left) with daughter Rebecca and granddaughter Anais
Ancestral home
The chartered physiotherapist studied for a degree at the University of North Carolina, but had no idea she possessed Native American ancestors. She said she came from a long line of Lancashire cotton weavers.
Mrs Isherwood added that she was "immensely proud" of her newfound heritage, which has renewed a long-standing interest in Native American culture.
Anne Hall, who works as a private educational tutor, commented: "I was thrilled to bits. It was a very pleasant surprise. To have Native American blood is very exotic."
She said she now aimed to investigate her family history in an attempt to track down the source of her rare genetic lineage.
Mrs Isherwood says her American antecedent must have arrived in Britain in the 18th or 17th Centuries. She has traced her maternal ancestors back to 1798 and has found no sign of New World progenitors.
Pocahontas was the daughter of a Native American chief
Maternal clans
The tests taken by both women were based on analysis of DNA inside the "powerhouses" of our cells: the mitochondria.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from mother to daughter more or less unchanged; but changes, or mutations, accumulate in the DNA sequence over successive generations.
Scientists can use these changes to classify mtDNAs into broad types (called haplogroups) which, to some extent, reflect a person's geographical origin.
Mrs Isherwood and Mrs Hall possessed haplogroups characteristic of the indigenous people of the Americas, which are referred to as A and C.
"It's very unusual. Most of the people we test belong to one of the European maternal clans," said Professor Bryan Sykes, whose company Oxford Ancestors carried out the tests for Doreen and Anne.
Professor Sykes, also a professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford, said: "There are matches between [Doreen and Anne] and particular Native American tribes, but that doesn't necessarily mean those are the tribes their ancestors came from."
Trickle of immigrants
This month marks the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent English-speaking settlement in North America.
Alden Vaughan, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, in New York, has written a book on American Indians in Britain. He said indigenous peoples from the New World began arriving in Britain as early as the sixteenth century.
"It started earlier than Jamestown. A number were brought over through the 1500s, mainly as curiosities," he told BBC News. Others were taken to Britain to learn English and go back to the colonies as translators.
"Sir Walter Raleigh brought back several individuals from the Jamestown area and from the Orinoco valley. Pocahontas went to England in 1616 and died there the next year.
"She was accompanied by several of her tribal associates. Some of them stayed in England for several years. I don't know of any marriages or even relationships between those women and Englishmen, but it is certainly possible.
"Later in the 17th Century, Native American slaves were brought over. I don't know much about them, because all the evidence I have are ads in London newspapers for runaway bond-servants, described as being Indians."
As in "never seen a human being before"? Interesting that their ignorance of human diversity was that acute.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Are they sure these necessarily came from slaves? Maybe some Native American mariners crashlanded on the UK coast a long time ago. Hey, why does it have to be the Old Worlders who discover the New World? Why not the other way around?
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus: Are they sure these necessarily came from slaves? Maybe some Native American mariners crashlanded on the UK coast a long time ago. Hey, why does it have to be the Old Worlders who discover the New World? Why not the other way around?
Actually it is the other way around. Western Europe is the "New World" compared to the ancient cultures and civilizations of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Anyone who does not recognize the term "New World" as anything but a propaganda ploy, is woefully ignorant.
Posts: 8940 | Registered: May 2005
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"Native American slaves" in Morocco is highly likely not based on genetics; the question then becomes: On what then it is based?
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Also in the same period, Britons began to meet physically with both the American Indians and the Muslims- not only in North America and North Africa respectively, but in each other's continents. They met American Indians in North Africa as slaves who had been carried across the Atlantic by the Spaniards and the New Englanders and sold into the Muslim markets as late as 1691, Indians who had been captured during King Philip's War were " sent to be sold, in the Coasts lying not very remote from Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea." Calendar of Letters and State Papers, relating to English Affairs preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas, Elizabeth 1568-1579, 2 699 --- Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery by N. I. Matar, Nabil Matar
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I wonder if any of these Indians mixed in with the indigenous African population or not. There sure aren't any there now.
Posts: 603 | From: Mobile, Alabama | Registered: Jan 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus: Are they sure these necessarily came from slaves? Maybe some Native American mariners crashlanded on the UK coast a long time ago. Hey, why does it have to be the Old Worlders who discover the New World? Why not the other way around?
! DNA dating.
I wsa thinking the same thing, though I doubt those muchachos sailed any where.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Ebony Allen: I wonder if any of these Indians mixed in with the indigenous African population or not. There sure aren't any there now.
Ofcourse, they have probably mixed.
However, this is very recent. They were brought there by the spaniards, atleast according to our friendly neighbor-hood muchacho.
Hola mi companero American! {[Native] American high five}
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Willing Thinker {What Box}: DNA dating.
I wsa thinking the same thing, though I doubt those muchachos sailed any where.
In 'Man before Metals' by Nicholas Joly we are told that on several occasions Eskimo have drifted in their light kayaks to the western shores of Europe, and that one of these craft is preserved in the museum at Aberdeen where an Eskimo was found on the shores of Scotland.
these tend to be accidental travelers. I am sure a few Europeans,Asians and Africans have made it accidentally to the Americas and vice versa before Columbus, but no mass migration and certainly nothing to leave a drastic impression in the genetic or culture of the people.
Native American, African, European and Asian in my blood. So I guess I will give you a son de los diablos clap (similar to stepping in Black fraternities) LOL
Posts: 169 | Registered: Apr 2007
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^Of course Jaime's philosophy is "if you can't beat'em mix'em up!"
Unfortunately this cannot be said for the various civilizations that developed in Africa, including Egypt! LOLPosts: 26834 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Willing Thinker {What Box}:
quote:Originally posted by Ebony Allen: I wonder if any of these Indians mixed in with the indigenous African population or not. There sure aren't any there now.
quote:Originally posted by Willing Thinker {What Box}: DNA dating.
I wsa thinking the same thing, though I doubt those muchachos sailed any where.
In 'Man before Metals' by Nicholas Joly we are told that on several occasions Eskimo have drifted in their light kayaks to the western shores of Europe, and that one of these craft is preserved in the museum at Aberdeen where an Eskimo was found on the shores of Scotland.
these tend to be accidental travelers. I am sure a few Europeans,Asians and Africans have made it accidentally to the Americas and vice versa before Columbus, but no mass migration and certainly nothing to leave a drastic impression in the genetic or culture of the people.
Native American, African, European and Asian in my blood . So I guess I will give you a son de los diablos clap (similar to stepping in Black fraternities) LOL
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This thread is ancient but I will still contribute a couple of book titles which talk about a certain Native American presence in Europe.
One is about Native Americans in Britain 1500-1776. There were also Native Americans who came to Britain later, like the ones brought back from Tierra Del Fuego by HMS Beagle in 1830.
Regarding the ot, there have also been thoughts about if the mtDNA haplogroup C1e which has been found on Iceland could have been brought there in connection with Norse vists to what is today Canada in the 11th century. But it could also have come from Europe or Asia.
I read somewhere that some individual from Mozambique had a genetic signature which showed descendancy from Brazil, which is no real surprise since Portugal colonized both countries.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 3035 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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^ I'm more curious about Indigenous American tribes who have admixture from Vikings. Any data on that? All I've read is speculation based on descriptions of certain tribes in Canada.
Posts: 26834 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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What I know of there are no actual proof of that. No DNA so far. Otherwise there have been many speculations about Europeans present in America before Columbus, like Basque fishermen and the Welsh prince Madoc and his followers. But it seems to be more talk without evidence.
Regarding Vikings though, there are signs that they visited America during a couple of hundred years also after their initial presence on Newfoundland. Findings of remnants of wood in viking age and medieval ruins on Greenland points in that direction. But there are no reports of meetings with Native Americans that resulted in children.
quote:Abstract
The native trees of Greenland are unsuitable for larger construction projects or shipbuilding. Instead, the Norse colonists (AD 985–1450) relied on driftwood and imported timber. The provenance and extent of these imports, however, remain understudied. Here, the author uses microscopic anatomical analyses to determine the taxa and provenance of wood from five Norse Greenlandic sites. The results show that while the needs of most households were met by local woodlands and driftwood, elite farms had access to timber imports from Northern Europe and North America. By demonstrating the range of timber sources used by the Greenland Norse, the results illustrate connectivity across the medieval North Atlantic world.
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On Quora some people also discuss the possibility of Norse admixture in Native Americans. Among them Ygor Coelho:
quote:They only settled for a pretty brief time (in a broad historical perspective) in a very northerly island (Newfoundland) that was located in what is now Canada, in the northernmost regions of the American continent. That was also, understandably, one of the least populated areas of the continent, certainly far less populous and demographically and economically dynamic lands than Mesoamerica, Pacific South America, the Mississippi basin (USA) and even the least civilized and economically complex zones like Eastern South America and most of the rest of what is now the USA. Thus, the Norse arrived in a quite isolated periphery. So, it is little surprising that there is no undisputable signal of the Viking presence in the genetics of Native Americans from any part of the New World. The Norse presence was short-lived, ultimately unsuccessful (conflicts with natives may have been part of their failure) and probably involved a tiny number of people in very small rural settlements relatively isolated from the closest significant concentration of Native American people (addendum: “viking” is not really the correct word, not all Norse settlers were vikings, many if not even most were just farmers, fishermen and shepherds together with their families, looking for a better and freer life away from troubled and overpopulated – for the technological and socioeconomic conditions of that time – Scandinavia).
To make matters more complicated, the arrival en masse of Europeans between the late 15th and early 17th century throughout the American continent brought about a veritable demographic apocalypsis for the Native Americans, so the genetic makeup of the present Amerindian ethnicities isn’t but a very minor, lucky and particularly resistant remnant of the much larger and more heterogeneous genetic diversity that had once existed.
Even if some individuals, clans or tribes had intermixed with the Norse settlers, it’s unlikely that any genetic evidence of that would’ve survived the onslaught of 80–90% of the Native American population by diseases, conflicts and widespread displacement to much worse territories, as well as the subsequent admixture of the much reduced Amerindian groups between themselves and, in several areas, also with the European (British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, etc.) settlers and, later, with descendants of African slaves (often run-aways or freed people).
The Newfoundland natives happened to live in what was no Mexico, Peru or Guatemala, no land that was packed full with indigenous people, so the demographic crash was particularly harmful and disruptive (including genetically disruptive) to those communities that right from the start didn’t have any population surplus to spare. Many of them just disappeared or were soon absorbed by larger groups.
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In a couple of old Icelandic sagas one can read more about the interactions between the Norse and Native Americans. There are especially two Icelandic Sagas about this subject The Saga of the Greenlanders (Grćnlendinga Saga) and The Saga of Erik the Red (Eiríks Saga Rauđa). The sagas were written down in the 13th century and describe events occurring around 970–1030.
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