The Admiral Nelson, would have never believed that the Spanish soldiers he defeated already two centuries ago in the battle of Trafalgar were his distant cousins.
At least, this is the main conclusion of a recent study conducted by the University of Oxford, which says that a great part of the population of United Kingdom descend from a group of Iberian fishermen that 6,000 years ago travelled by sea to the British Isles.
“The majority of the current inhabitants of the UK are direct heirs of the Spanish”, confirmed professor Bryan Sykes, the author of the investigation that apparently dismantles the theory of the Celts come from Central Europe tribes, to “The Independent”.
The team of researchers came to the unexpected conclusion through the testing the genetic material of people of Celtic origin and the inhabitants of the Cantabrian coast.
After having verified that the DNA of both groups was almost identical, they published the theory of the English being descendants of a group of fishermen which left the Iberian Peninsula 6,000 or 7,000 years ago.
This wave of immigration became the basis of the British population, which genetic map has been analysed by professor Sykes for his book “Blood of the Isles”, that will be released this week in the UK.
Apparently, six millenniums ago the English territory was inhabited by several thousands of human beings before the arrival of the different ethnic groups.
Among them, says the professor of Oxford, stood out the presence of human beings that came from the Iberian Peninsula and were able to build boats that could sail in trouble waters such as those of the English Channel, before reaching the Isles.
“Subsequently, the indigenous population included a Celtic tribe of larger dimensions, which implies that the majority of the inhabitants of the British Isles descend from Spanish”, stated the author of the study.
October 2015
Stem nou! 