{"id":9553,"date":"2010-10-15T18:50:14","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T18:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9553"},"modified":"2010-12-04T00:04:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T00:04:20","slug":"africans-in-yorkshire-the-deepest-rooting-clade-of-the-y-phylogeny-within-an-english-genealogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9553","title":{"rendered":"Africans in Yorkshire? The deepest-rooting clade of the Y phylogeny within an English genealogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africans in Yorkshire? The deepest-rooting clade of the Y phylogeny within an English genealogy<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

European Journal of Human Genetics<\/a>
\nVolume 15 (2007)
\npages 288\u2013293
\nDOI: 10.1038\/sj.ejhg.5201771<\/a><\/p>\n

Turi E. King<\/a><\/strong>
\nUniversity of Leicester<\/em><\/p>\n

Emma J. Parkin<\/strong>
\nUniversity of Leicester<\/em><\/p>\n

Geoff Swinfield<\/strong>
\nGeoff Swinfield Genealogical Services, Mottingham, London<\/em><\/p>\n

Fulvio Cruciani
\n<\/strong>Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Roma \u2018La Sapienza\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Rosaria Scozzari<\/strong>
\nUniversit\u00e0 degli Studi di Roma \u2018La Sapienza\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Alexandra Rosa<\/strong>
\nUniversit\u00e0 degli Studi di Roma \u2018La Sapienza\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Si-Keun Lim
\n<\/strong>Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

Yali Xue
\n<\/strong>Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris Tyler-Smith<\/strong>
\nWellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

Mark A. Jobling<\/a><\/strong>
\nUniversity of Leicester<\/em><\/p>\n

The presence of Africans in Britain<\/a> has been recorded since Roman times<\/a>, but has left no apparent genetic trace among modern inhabitants. Y chromosomes<\/a> belonging to the deepest-rooting clade<\/a> of the Y phylogeny<\/a>, haplogroup (hg) A<\/a>, are regarded as African-specific, and no examples have been reported from Britain<\/a> or elsewhere in Western Europe<\/a>. We describe the presence of an hgA1 chromosome in an indigenous British male; comparison with African examples suggests a Western African<\/a> origin. Seven out of 18 men carrying the same rare east-Yorkshire<\/a> surname as the original male also carry hgA1 chromosomes, and documentary research resolves them into two genealogies with most-recent-common-ancestors living in Yorkshire in the late 18th century. Analysis using 77 Y-short tandem repeats<\/a> (STRs) is consistent with coalescence a few generations earlier. Our findings represent the first genetic evidence of Africans among ‘indigenous’ British, and emphasize the complexity of human migration history as well as the pitfalls of assigning geographical origin from Y-chromosomal haplotypes<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

The population of the UK<\/a> today is culturally diverse, with 8% of its 54 million inhabitants belonging to ethnic minorities, and over one million classifying themselves as ‘Black or Black British’ in the 2001 census. These people owe their origins to immigration from the Caribbean<\/a> and Africa beginning in the mid-20th century; before this time, the population has been seen as typically Western European, and its history has been interpreted in terms of more local immigration, including that of the Saxons<\/a>, Vikings<\/a> and Normans<\/a>. However, in reality, Britain has a long history of contact with Africa (reviewed by Fryer). Africans were first recorded in the north 1800 years ago<\/strong>, as Roman soldiers defending Hadrian\u2019s wall<\/a> \u2013\u2018a division of Moors<\/a>\u2019. Some historians suggest that Vikings brought captured North Africans to Britain in the 9th century. After a hiatus of several hundred years, the influence of the Atlantic slave trade began to be felt, with the first group of West Africans being brought to Britain in 1555. African domestic servants, musicians, entertainers and slaves then became common in the <\/strong>Tudor period<\/strong><\/a>, prompting an unsuccessful attempt by <\/strong>Elizabeth I<\/strong><\/a> to expel them in 1601. By the last third of the 18th century, there were an estimated 10,000 black people in Britain, mostly concentrated in cities such as London.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Has this presence left a genetic trace among people regarded as ‘indigenous’ British? In principle, Y-chromosomal haplotyping offers a means to detect long-established African lineages. Haplotypes of the non-recombining region of the Y, defined by slowly mutating binary markers such as SNPs<\/a>, can be arranged into a unique phylogeny. \u00a0These binary haplotypes, known as haplogroups (hg), show a high degree of geographical differentiation, reflecting the powerful influence of genetic drift on this chromosome. Some clades of the phylogeny are so specific to particular continents or regions that they have been used to assign population-of-origin to individual DNA samples, and in quantifying the origins of the components of admixed populations using simple allele-counting<\/a> methods.<\/p>\n

Studies of British genetic diversity, generally sampling on the criterion of two generations of residence, have found no evidence of African Y-chromosomal lineages, suggesting that they either never became assimilated into the general population or have been lost by drift. However, here, we describe a globally rare and archetypically African sublineage in Britain and show that it has been resident there for at least 250 years, representing the first genetic trace of an appreciable African presence that has existed for several centuries…<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africans in Yorkshire? The deepest-rooting clade of the Y phylogeny within an English genealogy European Journal of Human Genetics Volume 15 (2007) pages 288\u2013293 DOI: 10.1038\/sj.ejhg.5201771 Turi E. King University of Leicester Emma J. Parkin University of Leicester Geoff Swinfield Geoff Swinfield Genealogical Services, Mottingham, London Fulvio Cruciani Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Roma \u2018La Sapienza\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,1649,12,459,8,10],"tags":[20761,4145,968,4148,4141,4151,4153,4143,4142,4149,4152,4144,4146,4140,4150,4147,4154],"class_list":["post-9553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-africa","tag-alexandra-rosa","tag-britain","tag-chris-tyler-smith","tag-emma-j-parkin","tag-emma-parkin","tag-european-journal-of-human-genetics","tag-fulvio-cruciani","tag-geoff-swinfield","tag-mark-a-jobling","tag-mark-jobling","tag-rosaria-scozzari","tag-si-keun-lim","tag-turi-e-king","tag-turi-king","tag-yali-xue","tag-yorkshire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}