DNA-R1B1C7-L Archives

Archiver > DNA-R1B1C7 > 2008-10 > 1223473884


From: "David Ewing" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] Dubious Paternity descriptions
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 07:51:24 -0600


It is a puzzlement that of all the Ewing lines in Scotland, it was the
R1b1b2e line that immigrated to the Plantation of Ulster, which has been
thought by many to be the ancestral home of R1b1b2e. Maybe we picked up this
DNA through the back door after arriving in Ireland, but there are a lot of
other possibilities.

R1b1b2e is by no means absent from the Scottish Lowlands, and I don't know
of a good argument that it could not have been present among the native
Britons there. The Damnonii are the best candidates for the "original"
inhabitants of the area where Ewing probably emerged as a surname, though
they were long gone as a recognizable tribe by the time the surname emerged.
They may have been cousins of the Dumnonii in far SW Britain, but it is
simply silly to think of them as a kind of "pure" genetic type. They must
have been a mixed lot, even then. On this list, we often speak of the Ui
Neill as if they were all R1b1b2e. This is almost certainly false. Nobody is
"all" anything. And I have an idea that the Dumnonii were partly R1b1b2e.

There has been commerce and intercourse (of a number of different kinds)
across the Irish Sea since time immemorial. The relatively large
concentration of R1b1b2e in Ulster does not prove that it originated there,
just that it was relatively successful there. Indeed, if it could be
demonstrated that there is more diversity among R1b1b2e haplotypes in
Scotland than there is in the Irish R1b1b2e haplotypes, an argument could be
made that the R1b1b2e has been in Scotland longer than in Ireland.

David Ewing

This thread: