Long-lived African presence in U.K.
ALTHOUGH MOST of Britain's one million people who define themselves as `Black or Black British' 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 Hadrian's Wall.
New research has identified the first genetic evidence of Africans having lived amongst `indigenous' British people for centuries.
Rare chromosome type
Their descendants, living across the UK today, were unaware of their black ancestry.
The University of Leicester study, funded by the Wellcome Trust and published recently in the journal European Journal of Human Genetics, found that one third of men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a rare Y chromosome type previously found only amongst people of West African origin, as reported in www.eurekalert.org
The researchers, led by Professor Mark Jobling, 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.
The association
This happened whilst PhD student Ms. Turi King was sampling a larger group in a study to explore the association between surnames and the Y chromosome. Mr. X, a white Caucasian living in Leicester, was unaware of having any African ancestors.
Further research to identify a common ancestor for all seven X-surnamed males suggests that the hgA1 Y chromosome must have entered their lineage over 250 years ago.
However, it is unclear whether the male ancestor was a first generation African immigrant or a European man carrying an African Y chromosome introduced into Britain some time earlier, or even whether the hgA1 Y chromosome goes back as far as the Roman occupation. — Our Bureau
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