
New genetic map of Britain shows waves of immigration going back 10,000 years - Petiver
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-genetic-map-of-britain-shows-successive-waves-of-immigration-going-back-10000-years-10117361.html
======
umanwizard
> It reveals that the white, indigenous English share about 40 per cent of
> their DNA with the French, about 26 per cent with the Germans, 11 per cent
> with the Danes and in the region of nine per cent with the Belgians.

Don't we share a ludicrous amount (>50%) of DNA with bananas? What's the more
precise (and less false) statement hiding behind this?

~~~
Swizec
Global DNA variation of humans is about 0.5% of genes.[1] So I think that
implies an average Brit shares 40% of that 0.5% with the average French.
0.4*0.005 == 0.002 -> 0.2% of the genome.

Funnily, as a casual observer I would agree that the English language is 40%
French (vocabulary) and 26% German (structure).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation)

~~~
umanwizard
Even of the part that varies among humans, it's hard to believe that English
people share only 11% with some other Europeans.

------
gloves
I love this type of thing - it shows those of us who spend their lives
pontificating that Britain should be more British by halting immigration are
arguing such a deeply contradictory argument (as if it wasn't obvious enough
already)

Really, the best thing is to remember we're all just human beings, and should
try our best to try and look after one another as best as possible.

~~~
vixen99
Do you write anodyne Christmas card mottos as a side project?

With price a consequence of demand, <all> Britons on average salary (about
$38K pa) have given up any hope whatsoever of buying their own home thanks to
demand exacerbated by an influx of immigrants unprecedented in any of the last
two centuries. Indeed even professionals earning around $150K are very hard
pushed. Of course planning permission & other factors have played a role in
this but unquestionably, Britain is overcrowded and folk-in-the-street looking
for jobs and accommodation are suffering thanks largely to a smug rich elite
who accumulate moral brownie points opining on the value of immigration. I
would have thought that enough is enough.

All this is redolent of vitamins: "If Y mg of vitamin X is good for you then
Y*10 mg is ten times as good for you!". Really?

~~~
toyg
I think you'll find that 1) the housing problem is strictly localized to
London and surrounding areas, rather than Britain as a whole, and 2) it's
mostly due to rich speculators keeping buildings empty, rather than everyday
immigrants looking for cheap accomodation.

~~~
throwcc
apart from the very centre of london where there is an unavoidable shortage of
space, the main cause is planning restrictions, with the refusal to expand on
to "green field" sites the biggest barrier to more affordable housing. rich
speculators cannot hold up the price of property all on their own without very
strong supply side restrictions...

------
andyjohnson0
Abstract of the Nature article "The fine-scale genetic structure of the
British population" by Donnelly et al is available at [1]. The text is
paywalled but someone has made it available (for a while, anyway) at [2]

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14230.html)

[2]
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2055577/nature14230.pdf](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2055577/nature14230.pdf)

------
a_bonobo
FYI: Posted Thursday 19 March 2015, so not a "new genetic map" anymore

Here's a similar map for all of Europe that isn't as fine-grained as OP's:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/figure/F...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/figure/F2/)

------
twobits
"we're all just human beings"

Do you think these kids will "integrate":
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3362342/Babes-
arms-I...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3362342/Babes-arms-ISIS-
gets-toddlers-pose-deadly-weapons-latest-twisted-propaganda.html)

?

..Of course we are all humans, but that doesn't say anything about what you
have been taught since birth, what you believe to be true, your values, etc.

This is not "immigration". It's invasion by 80% military age young men with
unknown past, and very questionable beliefs.

~~~
scrollaway
The fix to failed integration is not to prevent people from getting in. It's
to improve integration.

I can't believe this has to be said on HN. When you find a bug in one of your
app's features, you don't remove the feature, you fix the bug.

Edit: As a sidenote, linking to the daily mail as a source for immigration-
related matters is akin to linking to timecube as a source for physics papers.

Edit 2: Someone replied to my edit, but deleted their post and I didn't reply
in time, so posting my reply below:

The Daily Mail doesn't so much reflect "the feelings of a large portion of the
country", as much as "the feelings of a large portion of the country" happen
to be easily manipulated by outrage-driven media. As for integration failures,
one of the main drivers is islamophobia. Removing that really _does_ come down
to treating each other as human beings instead of being afraid of "The
Different Ones".

~~~
twobits
Did you actually see the pics on the link? Do you think a person indoctrinated
since birth to hating / wanting to kill the infidels, can be "fixed" 2 or 3
decades later? I think it's a losing game, at the extremely very best.

As for the quality of the daily mail, I don't know, but those photos have been
posted on various news sites around the net. They are not disputed at all.

~~~
scrollaway
I'm not disputing the photos, I'm disputing the source. The Daily Mail has an
agenda and constantly tries to show the worst of the worst of any situation.

Are those kids actually coming to europe in waves of immigration? If not, why
do they matter in talks of immigration?

And let's imagine for a moment they _are_ \- is denying them entry the right
approach? Leave them in whatever neighbouring country they happen to be in at
the time? These kids can be fixed. They're not wielding weapons because
they're inherently evil. They were raised in a terrible environment and need
to be treated like other, non-immigrant kids raised in terrible environments.
We don't give up on people just because they're from somewhere else.

We _are_ all humans. This doesn't merely mean that we should treat each
individual as a human being - it also means that we should treat our
neighbouring countries as we would want our own country to be.

~~~
twobits
We don't know who is coming. I don't want to learn in the Paris way. And I
think the probability for that kind of events is scarily high.

I didn't say they are "inherently evil". I say they are being taught since
birth to be evil, and they naturally internalize it. "Being from somewhere
else" being a problem, is totally irrelevant, I didn't say or believe that,
and you are distracting from the real issue of what are their learnt since
birth values and beliefs.

"We are all humans." Well, my VM is running Linux. Maybe I should try win
3.11. After all, "they are all OSes". Maybe I should try to "improve" and
"integrate" it. Or maybe I will continue running Linux.

~~~
scrollaway
> _" We are all humans." Well, my VM is running Linux. Maybe I should try win
> 3.11. After all, "they are all OSes". Maybe I should try to "improve" and
> "integrate" it. Or maybe I will continue running Linux._

I would actually like to think that I'm having a discussion with someone who
is above such _ridiculous_ analogies. I wouldn't even say "racist" but you
_did_ just compare "immigrants" to "a primitive operating system nobody wants
to use".

To address your other point: I'm french, and my sister lost somebody in the
Paris attacks. This doesn't mean we have to close ourselves down in a bubble.

I'll elaborate on this another time (maybe when you come up with better
arguments) - but the mentality of closing borders for fear of what might come
through is akin to never going out for fear of hitting a car. And car
accidents happen a fuckton more than terrorist attacks.

