昨年、オックスフォード大学のオッペンハイマー(Stephen Oppenheimer)教授( http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/ )が、 The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story, Carroll & Graf という劃期的な本を上梓し、遺伝子学(Y染色体(Y-chromosomes )とミトコンドリア(mitochondrial) DNAの分析)にのっとり、 言語学・考古学・古文献をも参考にしつつ、アングロサクソンの人種的・語学的起源論におおむね決着をつけました。 この本で展開されている教授の説をご紹介しましょう。 なお、オッペンハイマー教授は、現代人類は、東アフリカから、せいぜい数百人が旅立ち、北アフリカとそれ以外の全世界に散らばって行ったと主張した『エデンの東(East of Eden。1998年)』や、 白色人種(Caucasoids)はインド亜大陸の北西部から西ユーラシア大陸へ、黄色人種はインド亜大陸の北東部から東ユーラシア大陸・オセアニア・太平洋・アメリカ大陸・グリーンランドへと 散らばって行ったと主張した『本当のイブ(Out of Eden/The Real Eve)』を書いたことで有名な学者です。
March 5, 2007 English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest By NICHOLAS WADE
Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes.
But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles , Saxons, Vikings and Normans.
The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one.
The genetic evidence is still under development, however, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins.
That has not stopped the attempt. Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, says the historians’ account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.