{"id":9561,"date":"2012-01-24T00:25:54","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T00:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9561"},"modified":"2012-01-24T22:24:22","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T22:24:22","slug":"study-provides-first-genetic-evidence-of-long-lived-african-presence-within-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9561","title":{"rendered":"Study provides first genetic evidence of long-lived African presence within Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study provides first genetic evidence of long-lived African presence within Britain<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Leicester<\/a>
\nPress Release
\n2007-01-24<\/p>\n

Research reveals African origins in the UK and US<\/em><\/p>\n

New research<\/a> has identified the first genetic evidence of Africans having lived amongst \u201cindigenous\u201d British people for centuries. Their descendants, living across the UK today, were unaware of their black ancestry.<\/p>\n

The University of Leicester study<\/a>, funded by the Wellcome Trust and published today in the journal European Journal of Human Genetics<\/em>, found that one third of men with a rare Yorkshire<\/a> surname carry a rare Y chromosome type<\/a> previously found only amongst people of West African<\/a> origin.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The researchers, led by Professor Mark Jobling<\/a>, of the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester, first spotted the rare Y chromosome type, known as hgA1, in one individual, Mr. X. This happened whilst PhD student Ms. Turi King<\/a> was sampling a larger group in a study to explore the association between surnames and the Y chromosome, both inherited from father to son. Mr. X, a white Caucasian living in Leicester<\/a>, was unaware of having any African ancestors.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you can imagine, we were pretty amazed to find this result in someone unaware of having any African roots,\u201d explains Professor Jobling, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. \u201cThe Y chromosome is passed down from father to son, so this suggested that Mr. X must have had African ancestry somewhere down the line. Our study suggests that this must have happened some time ago.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although most of Britain’s one million people who define themselves as \u201cBlack or Black British\u201d owe their origins to immigration from the Caribbean and Africa from the mid-twentieth century onwards, in reality, there has been a long history of contact with Africa. Africans were first recorded in the north 1800 years ago, as Roman soldiers defending <\/strong>Hadrian\u2019s Wall<\/strong><\/a>…<\/strong><\/p>\n

…\u201cThis study shows that what it means to be British is complicated and always has been,\u201d says Professor Jobling. \u201cHuman migration history is clearly very complex, particularly for an island nation such as ours, and this study further debunks the idea that there are simple and distinct populations or \u2018races\u2019.\u201d<\/strong>…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Study provides first genetic evidence of long-lived African presence within Britain University of Leicester Press Release 2007-01-24 Research reveals African origins in the UK and US New research has identified the first genetic evidence of Africans having lived amongst \u201cindigenous\u201d British people for centuries. Their descendants, living across the UK today, were unaware of their […]<\/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":[20761,4149,4152,4140,4150,4155,4154],"class_list":["post-9561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-africa","tag-mark-a-jobling","tag-mark-jobling","tag-turi-e-king","tag-turi-king","tag-university-of-leicester","tag-yorkshire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9561","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=9561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}