www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Royal Wedding

Post factum, I'd say the wedding was just utterly utterly.

Definitely British Isles:

Britannia (England and Scotland)
Man
Wight
the Inner Hebrides
the Outer Hebrides
the Orkney Islands
the Shetland Islands

Debatable:

the Channel Islands

Beyond the Edge of the Ecumene:

Hibernia

You know something else I found to be interesting about this whole affair? How the Middleton children, especially the sister Pippa and the brother who did the reading at the service, look very much unlike the typical English stereotype. For lack of a better term, they look almost "ethnic."

My mom's family is a mix (basically half and half) of English and Irish, and they're all about the same complexion and hair color as the Middletons (all have brown eyes, none have blue, like Kate). We always just sort of assumed there was some Native American back in there somewhere, simply because it seemed unlikely that my mother and her siblings would all be so dark, yet be only of English and Irish extraction. But seeing the Middletons, who as far as I've been able to find are about as English as it gets, makes me reconsider that assumption.

Alexis

Eighty percent of all Britons are descended from the first wave of hunter-gatherers who settled the area after the ice sheets receded. All the subsequent waves of invaders, including the Celts, the Romans, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the Danes and the Normans, left linguistic and cultural markers, but hardly changed the genetic makeup of the Island at all.

The classic example is "Cheddar Man", a 9000 year old skeleton found in Gough's Cave near Cheddar. In 1996, Bryan Sykes of Oxford was able to extract mitochondrial DNA from one of Cheddar Man's teeth. The following year, he conducted genetic surveys of the people living in nearby Cheddar Village, finding two direct matches (in schoolchildren whose names were not released) and one match with a single genetic mutation--a school teacher named Adrian Targett. After 9000 years, the direct lineal descendants of Cheddar man were living within twenty miles of the place where he was buried. Interestingly, a facial reconstruction from Cheddar Man's skull looked remarkably like Mr. Targett.

As Dr. Sykes likes to say, "We are who we were".

Stuart,

I've seen you mention this before as evidence of what you propose. And, maybe it is. But help me to understand something, and forgive me if it's obvious. But by a passage of 9000, if Cheddar Man didn't have descendants within a few miles of where he lived, I'd be very shocked. He probably has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of living descendants, all over the world, and all over England. That a couple of them would be living around where he apparently did should come as no surprise.

After all, apparently 90% of all English people today are descended from King Edward III (I believe that's the right king). Apparently every European, from the Outer Hebrides to the isles of the Aegean, has a common ancestor as recently as one millennium ago.

Point is, that was only 800 years ago or so, not even a tenth of the time Cheddar Man's descendants have had to be fruitful and multiply.

In other words, even if your proposition - that the English have changed very little - is true, I don't see how the Cheddar Man example is necessarily evidence for it. I'm a little shocked they only found three people matching him, actually.

Alexis

Alexis,

The genetic concepts and the math are complex, which is why I will not attempt to explain it in detail here, but will recommend two books to you that do so in a very accessible manner.

Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain [amazon.com] by Bryan Sykes
Before the Dawn: The Lost History of Our Ancestors [amazon.com] by Nicholas Wade

A third book that I am reading now, but have not yet finished, but which covers much of the same ground as Before the Dawn:

The Horse, the Wheel and Language: ...Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World [amazon.com] by David W. Anthony.

Stuart,

Well thank you for the connections. As a law student, I don't get to do as much outside reading as I would like (read: never - my eyes would fall out). I'll have time over the summer when I'm merely interning to read, I suppose, but very limited time, and I must say there are a few works out there that take precedence.

Alexis

As Eamon said!

Many years,

Neil

Hi Garrett,

I thought the same thing about their coloring...and then I thought that some of them may have just vacationed somewhere warm, as the son and father did look as if they had suntans...so, complexion color aside, don't some Irish and Welsh have black hair? Although it is true that they say their background is English through and through, could they perhaps have Welsh and/or Irish in their background somewhere. I agree with you that they don't look English *at all*.

Regards,
Alice

Alice,

Christ is Risen!

It's possible, but even if they did, it would have to be fairly miniscule. Nothing in an immediate genealogical "background check" reveals anything other than a few French surnames in the 19th Century - and those may very well have been just Norman leftovers that still sounded French.

Stuart,

More to the point, even if Britons haven't changed much in 9000 years, what does that mean regarding complexion? Most Brits seem to me to be fair complexioned, with medium to fair hair and a high percentage of blue eyes. Especially the English. The Middleton children just looked so "different" - but their parents didn't, necessarily.

Alexis

This discussion is getting disturbingly Wagner-esque...

Actually, Celts come in all shapes, sizes and varieties--short, tall, light, dark. And, surprisingly, a very high percentage of Scandinavians have dark hair and dark eyes. Last time I was in Stockholm, my colleague kept looking around and asking me where all the blue-eyed blonds were. So appearance means nothing insofar as genetic heritage goes. And complexion these days comes out of a bottle.

Garrett:
I just read in an article that Katherine Middleton has hazel eyes and that the dark skin you noticed on her sister and brother were indeed suntans ('her bronzed skin'). Under the overcast British light, it looks out of place, but I am sure that they had probably been 'jetsetting' to more exotic locales recently rather than applying self tanners! They may be 'commoners' but they are 'commoners' with much wealth, from what I understand.
Alice

BtzanTN-




Actually America did not fight a war to get away from Monarchy in general. This is a common misconception these days, but the idea that the American Revolution was about Republicanism and Equality over Aristocracy and Monarchy didn't develop till the idea of class warfare and the historical interpretation of seeing all events as motivated by Inequality of the Classes came along.

As difficult as it is to imagine now, Governor Morris, an American Founding Father, supported the Bourbons rather than the Revolutionaries in France and said of them that the restoration of the Bourbons to the Throne of France brought Freedom back.

Most of America's Founding Fathers, even Jefferson, admired King Louis the 16th and most saw Monarchy as a valid Governmental form, and simply believed the New World, or at least the United States, should be the Great Exception.



The American revolution was a Tax Revolt, not a revolt against Monarchy as a principal.