Thursday, April 24, 2008

Germanic invaders may not have ruled by apartheid

Whoever said they did?

When a strong Germanic signal was discovered in the Y-chromosome of British men, geneticists at University College London suggested that enslavement and apartheid imposed by Saxon invaders was responsible.

Oh they did...

It was an idea that, given 20th-century European history, had a particular resonance.

The argument is, that from AD 430 to 730, the Germanic conquerors of Britain formed an elite, with a servant underclass of native Britons. Inter-marriage was restricted, and the invaders and their genes flourished.

"But it is just not necessary to assume an apartheid-like system," argues John Pattison of the University of South Australia in Adelaide. "The evidence is compatible with the idea of a much more integrated society."


Read more here and here for the "apartheid" theory.

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