From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

NEHGS' The Weekly Genealogist today included a link to an interesting
article https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeologists-uncover-real-story-england-became-england-180984911/
in the Smithsonian about the genetic analysis of early medieval
Anglo-Saxon remains. The results suggest migration and intermarriage
rather than conquest.

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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

Jan Wolfe wrote:

NEHGS' The Weekly Genealogist today included a link to an interesting article https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeologists-uncover-real-story-england-became-england-180984911/

in the Smithsonian about the genetic analysis of early medieval
Anglo-Saxon remains. The results suggest migration and intermarriage
rather than conquest.

Thanks, Jan.

I think I'd need to spend a bit more time on it but I'm not sure the Smithsonian's take is justified by the Nature paper.

The Nature article finally disposes of the idea that grew up some
decades ago that there wasn't a mass migration - it was just a few
elites and the bulk of the culturally English population were really
just sub-Roman British fashion victims ("acculturation" was the term).

Now it's starting to be clear that there was a mass migration based on
DNA analysis. However the Smithsonian article's take seems to be that
the English population wasn't Britons following a continental elite
there wasn't an elite to follow so that there are no high status
individuals to be buried. Without high status individuals to be buried
there can't be high status burials so all those burials previously
classified as high status weren't because they couldn't have been.

However I can't see that there is any basis for judging the status of a
a buried person other than by the grave goods they were buried with and
if some appear higher status on those grounds then they very likely
were. I don't think DNA analysis is going to be capable of telling us
what the social stratification of the incomers was. All it tells us is
that there were too many of them for the old acculturated Briton
hypothesis which now deserves a low status burial.

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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

I think it is better to say that the article disposes of TWO extreme positions. Using some earlier cruder DNA studies there have also been
people claiming that the Anglo Saxon ethnogenesis was a genocide, and/or
an "apartheid" society without intermarriage.

I think the evidence gathered in this article is relatively clear that
yes there was a significant movement of people, but no this was not a genocide. From a historical point of view this fits well with the few
records we have. Gildas, writing after the "genocide" would have been
going for a century or more, the fighting between Saxons and Britons was
a series of wars that Britons in his time weren't that worried about any
more because it happened in their grandparents' time.

Maybe the Smithsonian interpretation has simplified things a bit but I
think it would be true to say that the study presented evidence that
there was a significant amount of intermarriage, also among wealthier
people. I think this is also something historians already suspected. For example even the much later king lists, which are used to defend the
idea of Germanic dynasties, seem to contain British names.

Andrew

On 12/09/2024 2:03 pm, Ian Goddard wrote:

Jan Wolfe wrote:

NEHGS' The Weekly Genealogist today included a link to an interesting
article
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeologists-uncover-real-story-england-became-england-180984911/
in the Smithsonian about the genetic analysis of early medieval
Anglo-Saxon remains. The results suggest migration and intermarriage
rather than conquest.

Thanks, Jan.

I think I'd need to spend a bit more time on it but I'm not sure the Smithsonian's take is justified by the Nature paper.

The Nature article finally disposes of the idea that grew up some
decades ago that there wasn't a mass migration - it was just a few
elites and the bulk of the culturally English population were really
just sub-Roman British fashion victims ("acculturation" was the term).

Now it's starting to be clear that there was a mass migration based on
DNA analysis.-a However the Smithsonian article's take seems to be that
the English population wasn't Britons following a continental elite
there wasn't an elite to follow so that there are no high status
individuals to be buried.-a Without high status individuals to be buried there can't be high status burials so all those burials previously classified as high status weren't because they couldn't have been.

However I can't see that there is any basis for judging the status of a
a buried person other than by the grave goods they were buried with and
if some appear higher status on those grounds then they very likely
were.-a I don't think DNA analysis is going to be capable of telling us
what the social stratification of the incomers was.-a All it tells us is that there were too many of them for the old acculturated Briton
hypothesis which now deserves a low status burial.

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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 9/14/2024 3:30 AM, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

I think it is better to say that the article disposes of TWO extreme positions. Using some earlier cruder DNA studies there have also been
people claiming that the Anglo Saxon ethnogenesis was a genocide, and/or
an "apartheid" society without intermarriage.

I think the evidence gathered in this article is relatively clear that
yes there was a significant movement of people, but no this was not a genocide. From a historical point of view this fits well with the few records we have. Gildas, writing after the "genocide" would have been
going for a century or more, the fighting between Saxons and Britons was
a series of wars that Britons in his time weren't that worried about any more because it happened in their grandparents' time.

Maybe the Smithsonian interpretation has simplified things a bit but I
think it would be true to say that the study presented evidence that
there was a significant amount of intermarriage, also among wealthier people. I think this is also something historians already suspected. For example even the much later king lists, which are used to defend the
idea of Germanic dynasties, seem to contain British names.

Andrew

On 12/09/2024 2:03 pm, Ian Goddard wrote:

Jan Wolfe wrote:

NEHGS' The Weekly Genealogist today included a link to an interesting
article
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeologists-uncover-real-story-england-became-england-180984911/
in the Smithsonian about the genetic analysis of early medieval
Anglo-Saxon remains. The results suggest migration and intermarriage
rather than conquest.

Thanks, Jan.

I think I'd need to spend a bit more time on it but I'm not sure the
Smithsonian's take is justified by the Nature paper.

The Nature article finally disposes of the idea that grew up some
decades ago that there wasn't a mass migration - it was just a few
elites and the bulk of the culturally English population were really
just sub-Roman British fashion victims ("acculturation" was the term).

Now it's starting to be clear that there was a mass migration based on
DNA analysis.-a However the Smithsonian article's take seems to be that
the English population wasn't Britons following a continental elite
there wasn't an elite to follow so that there are no high status
individuals to be buried.-a Without high status individuals to be
buried there can't be high status burials so all those burials
previously classified as high status weren't because they couldn't
have been.

However I can't see that there is any basis for judging the status of
a a buried person other than by the grave goods they were buried with
and if some appear higher status on those grounds then they very
likely were.-a I don't think DNA analysis is going to be capable of
telling us what the social stratification of the incomers was.-a All it
tells us is that there were too many of them for the old acculturated
Briton hypothesis which now deserves a low status burial.

Thank you Ian and Andrew for your comments and explanations.
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

Andrew Lancaster wrote:

I think it is better to say that the article disposes of TWO extreme positions. Using some earlier cruder DNA studies there have also been
people claiming that the Anglo Saxon ethnogenesis was a genocide, and/or
an "apartheid" society without intermarriage.

I think place names can give some insight into what things might have
looked like. There are several Waltons and rather fewer Walworths
suggesting that by the time the names were coined (whenever that might
have been!) there were settlements which had remained distinctly more
British than their surroundings. They were named using the English word
for the Britons.

There are at also least two Cumberworths and, of course, Cumberland,
which use the Britons' own word with an English suffix so there was
enough interchange between the two. It's possible, however, that the Yorkshire "worth" could have been the much older earthwork rather than a contemporary settlement.
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 9/15/2024 5:56 AM, Ian Goddard wrote:

Andrew Lancaster wrote:

...

I think place names can give some insight into what things might have
looked like.-a There are several Waltons and rather fewer Walworths suggesting that by the time the names were coined (whenever that might
have been!) there were settlements which had remained distinctly more British than their surroundings.-a They were named using the English word for the Britons.

There are at also least two Cumberworths and, of course, Cumberland,
which use the Britons' own word with an English suffix so there was
enough interchange between the two.-a It's possible, however, that the Yorkshire "worth" could have been the much older earthwork rather than a contemporary settlement.

In some studies with DNA from remains before and after the arrival of a
new group of people, the researchers look at the mtDNA and yDNA
frequencies before and after the arrival. If the subsequent yDNA is predominantly that of the arrivals but the mtDNA is predominantly that
of the original inhabitants, the result is considered consistent with or indicative of a conquest by a predominantly male group of migrants.
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 15/09/2024 4:23 pm, Jan Wolfe wrote:

On 9/15/2024 5:56 AM, Ian Goddard wrote:

Andrew Lancaster wrote:

...

I think place names can give some insight into what things might have
looked like.-a There are several Waltons and rather fewer Walworths
suggesting that by the time the names were coined (whenever that might
have been!) there were settlements which had remained distinctly more
British than their surroundings.-a They were named using the English
word for the Britons.

There are at also least two Cumberworths and, of course, Cumberland,
which use the Britons' own word with an English suffix so there was
enough interchange between the two.-a It's possible, however, that the
Yorkshire "worth" could have been the much older earthwork rather than
a contemporary settlement.

In some studies with DNA from remains before and after the arrival of a
new group of people, the researchers look at the mtDNA and yDNA
frequencies before and after the arrival. If the subsequent yDNA is predominantly that of the arrivals but the mtDNA is predominantly that
of the original inhabitants, the result is considered consistent with or indicative of a conquest by a predominantly male group of migrants.

Yes Jan that is a good point, but I feel pretty strongly these days that
Y DNA and mitochondrial can't normally be used to come to such conclusions.

Mitochondrial DNA in particular is generally useless for predicting
where someone is from in any accurate way, either modern or ancient.
Although patterns exist, exceptions are all too common, and this type of
DNA does not change quickly enough for variants to be associated with
any types of human societal changes we can relate to. There will always
be exceptions. It was useful in the case of Richard III because an
unusual haplotype was involved, so it helped improve the odds.

Y DNA is sometimes useful in cases where a whole tree of mutations can
be localized. This is unusual, but a reasonably convincing example is
the association of R1b with Bronze Age steppe dwellers entering Europe
from the east. I think there is therefore a lot more promise once it
becomes economically feasible to sequence whole genomes for novel
mutations rather than just sampling known ones. Some genealogists are
already doing this on a small scale for things like surname and clan
studies with interesting results. (Although I have not been following it closely for a few years.) The scientific papers basically never do this though.
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On Sat, 21 Sep 2024 15:27:38 +0000, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

In some studies with DNA from remains before and after the arrival of a
new group of people, the researchers look at the mtDNA and yDNA
frequencies before and after the arrival. If the subsequent yDNA is
predominantly that of the arrivals but the mtDNA is predominantly that
of the original inhabitants, the result is considered consistent with or
indicative of a conquest by a predominantly male group of migrants.

Yes Jan that is a good point, but I feel pretty strongly these days that
Y DNA and mitochondrial can't normally be used to come to such
conclusions.

Mitochondrial DNA in particular is generally useless for predicting
where someone is from in any accurate way, either modern or ancient.
Although patterns exist, exceptions are all too common, and this type of
DNA does not change quickly enough for variants to be associated with
any types of human societal changes we can relate to. There will always
be exceptions. It was useful in the case of Richard III because an
unusual haplotype was involved, so it helped improve the odds.

i remember watching the prog about the discovery of richards body. They
showed the skeleton of a man whose had scoliosis of the spine so severe
that his backbone resembled the letter S. So the shakespear tale of the hunchback king was true! Its rather extraordinary that a man so deformed
could have ridden a horse in full armour leading a cavalry charge down
Bosworth hill that nearly succeeded in killing Henry Tudor, but now we
have the paralympics so anythings possible. Plus the body had a lot of
wounds so clearly he died violently and the way it was presented it
seems impossible to argue with the science. AIUI the body shared the
mtdna with a man in australia [?] who was descended from richards sister
but OTH I thought the haplagroup wasnt shared with the other
descendants.

Y DNA is sometimes useful in cases where a whole tree of mutations can
be localized. This is unusual, but a reasonably convincing example is
the association of R1b with Bronze Age steppe dwellers entering Europe
from the east. I think there is therefore a lot more promise once it
becomes economically feasible to sequence whole genomes for novel
mutations rather than just sampling known ones. Some genealogists are
already doing this on a small scale for things like surname and clan
studies with interesting results. (Although I have not been following it closely for a few years.) The scientific papers basically never do this though.

I dont pretend to understand the science of these studies, but
frequently someone posts on this group [or used to] or other forums i
read, saying something like 'i know that i'm related to king thingy,
duke wotsit or gateway ancestor 1234 in 1634 becos i share the same dna sequence/hapla thing, plus i have some from clan Mactavish, and the
Castafiore of Montalbano' and so on. I spose the science is evolving all
the time, but isnt the interpretation of the results rather subjective?

There was an prog from about 20 yrs ago called 'Meet the Ancestors'
where they dug up some bod from ancient times, i forget whether it was
iron age or more recent, and revealed a reconstruction of his face to
the locals, who all laughed cos it looked so similar to someone they
knew, who happened to be present, who was also 1 of 5 people who shared
some dna with the old bod. This was all presented by academics and scientifically backed up, but in this and other progs they never
actually show what the dna proof of a relationship actually is. As i
recall it usually looks like a lot of stripes on a chart which experts
or computer programs can see patterns.

mike
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 10/1/2024 3:52 PM, miked wrote:

On Sat, 21 Sep 2024 15:27:38 +0000, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

In some studies with DNA from remains before and after the arrival of a
new group of people, the researchers look at the mtDNA and yDNA
frequencies before and after the arrival. If the subsequent yDNA is
predominantly that of the arrivals but the mtDNA is predominantly that
of the original inhabitants, the result is considered consistent

with or

indicative of a conquest by a predominantly male group of migrants.

Yes Jan that is a good point, but I feel pretty strongly these days that
Y DNA and mitochondrial can't normally be used to come to such
conclusions.

Mitochondrial DNA in particular is generally useless for predicting
where someone is from in any accurate way, either modern or ancient.
Although patterns exist, exceptions are all too common, and this type of
DNA does not change quickly enough for variants to be associated with
any types of human societal changes we can relate to. There will always
be exceptions. It was useful in the case of Richard III because an
unusual haplotype was involved, so it helped improve the odds.

i remember watching the prog about the discovery of richards body. They showed the skeleton of a man whose had scoliosis of the spine so severe
that his backbone resembled the letter S. So the shakespear tale of the hunchback king was true! Its rather extraordinary that a man so deformed could have ridden a horse in full armour leading a cavalry charge down Bosworth hill that nearly succeeded in killing Henry Tudor, but now we
have the paralympics so anythings possible. Plus the body had a lot of wounds so clearly he died violently and the way it was presented it
seems impossible to argue with the science. AIUI the body shared the
mtdna with a man in australia [?] who was descended from richards sister
but OTH I thought the haplagroup wasnt shared with the other
descendants.

The Y DNA of Richard is still an outlier. Unfortunately, they used a
test that only gave the most basic type of result - basically only
useful to distinguish which iron-age lineage one's male ancestors
derived from, so not genealogically informative except in the broadest
sense (i.e. excluding lines descended from different iron-age lineages,
but not revealing specific relationships). They had hoped to do a full
genome, which would have given much more precise results, but last I
heard they failed to get funding for it (and with the amount of time
that has passed, that is certainly the case or we would have seen the
results by now).

Y DNA is sometimes useful in cases where a whole tree of mutations can
be localized. This is unusual, but a reasonably convincing example is
the association of R1b with Bronze Age steppe dwellers entering Europe
from the east. I think there is therefore a lot more promise once it
becomes economically feasible to sequence whole genomes for novel
mutations rather than just sampling known ones. Some genealogists are
already doing this on a small scale for things like surname and clan
studies with interesting results. (Although I have not been following it
closely for a few years.) The scientific papers basically never do this
though.

I dont pretend to understand the science of these studies, but
frequently someone posts on this group [or used to] or other forums i
read, saying something like 'i know that i'm related to king thingy,
duke wotsit or gateway ancestor 1234 in 1634 becos i share the same dna sequence/hapla thing, plus i have some from clan Mactavish, and the Castafiore of Montalbano' and so on. I spose the science is evolving all
the time, but isnt the interpretation of the results rather subjective?

The degree to which the results are subjective is a matter of
perspective. A DNA haplotype is not subjective at all - the DNA has a particular sequence, and each difference allows classification into a
specific subgroup of the larger whole. However, the use of this by genealogists is often over-interpreted in and entirely subjective
manner. Take the gateway ancestor bit. If you have a particular
haplotype, then you can exclude gateway ancestors you do not descend
from, but you can never prove you descend from a specific gateway and
not, say, a brother or uncle of that man. The only exception to this is
if the family has been characterized to such an extent that specific differences have been localized to mutations that took place at specific places in the pedigree, and if one has that difference, then it can
identify a specific line to which one belongs. However, there are only a
small number of families that have been characterized to this level, and
many families do not have a sufficient number of male-line descendants
to even allow this kind of thing.

There was an prog from about 20 yrs ago called 'Meet the Ancestors'
where they dug up some bod from ancient times, i forget whether it was
iron age or more recent, and revealed a reconstruction of his face to
the locals, who all laughed cos it looked so similar to someone they
knew, who happened to be present, who was also 1 of 5 people who shared
some dna with the old bod. This was all presented by academics and scientifically backed up,

This is popular-science nonsense, but it makes for good TV. Basically,
it fails on multiple separate levels. First, the 'science' of facial reconstruction from skulls is more of an art than a science. Only the
most basic indication of features can be deduced, and the rest is left
to the artist. If it was 20 years ago, they would have guessed on such
things as eye color, hair color, skin color, nose shape, hairline, etc.
If it bore a resemblance to someone locally, that was probably because
the artist did that intentionally (this was the approach back then -
they would give the same eye color as the predominant eye color in the
area, and the same for other features).

Separate from this, humans tend to see similarities and ignore
differences. As such, the 'similar' looking person may have shared, say
the nose shape while being different in various other respects, but
because this nose shape was the distinguishing feature of the
individual, its similarity caused people to say they looked similar in
spite of numerous other features that were distinct.

Most importantly, genetics doesn't really work this way. The appearance
of an individual is based on hundreds of different genes, all
independently assorting with each generation, plus various aspects of 'nurture', both in utero, during childhood development, and during
aging. That the person who looked similar was one of five who shared a particular genetic marker with the skeleton is entirely coincidental -
the appearance of that person had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact
that they shared that genetic marker, any more than the fact that four
other people also shared the genetic marker but apparently shared no noticeable resemblance.

That it was 'presented by academics and scientifically backed up' is the
game that some scientists play to publicize themselves and their
research - they play up this stuff for the public, often using language imprecise enough that they can maintain their integrity while giving a
false impression to the audience as to the quality of the findings, but
are much more careful about their conclusions when (if at all) they
present it in scientific publications.

but in this and other progs they never
actually show what the dna proof of a relationship actually is. As i
recall it usually looks like a lot of stripes on a chart which experts
or computer programs can see patterns.

The DNA proof of relationship is referring to sharing an identical
pattern of DNA, where 'pattern' refers to different things depending on
which analysis has been done. If your DNA has certain specific sequences
at certain locations, or certain insertions or deletions, then shared
lineage can be unambiguously determined, whether that is shared lineage
with someone in modern time, shared membership in the groups descended
from the same iron-age populations, or shared descent from the same
group of mammals that survived the asteroid that wiped out the
dinosaurs. Where it becomes more tricky for the hobbyist is
understanding how precisely the DNA result allows you to place a
relationship in time - most of the early DNA relationship claims from 20
years ago simply meant they came from the same population 10,000 years
before, and not more specific relationships.

As to the 'stripes on a chart', you seem to be referring to obsolete techniques. Modern stuff is done with high-throughput nano-scale
electronics, optics and chemistry that can only be analyzed by computers producing hyper-dense datadumps that have no real visual representation. Popular-science presentations often dig out the old visuals from earlier approaches because they are communicating through visual media and have
to give their audience something to look at, but the images they show typically have no correspondence to the techniques used in the study
they are describing.

taf

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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

taf wrote:

There was an prog from about 20 yrs ago called 'Meet the Ancestors'
where they dug up some bod from ancient times, i forget whether it was iron age or more recent, and revealed a reconstruction of his face to
the locals, who all laughed cos it looked so similar to someone they
knew, who happened to be present, who was also 1 of 5 people who shared some dna with the old bod. This was all presented by academics and scientifically backed up,

This is popular-science nonsense, but it makes for good TV. Basically,
it fails on multiple separate levels. First, the 'science' of facial reconstruction from skulls is more of an art than a science. Only the
most basic indication of features can be deduced, and the rest is left
to the artist. If it was 20 years ago, they would have guessed on such things as eye color, hair color, skin color, nose shape, hairline, etc.
If it bore a resemblance to someone locally, that was probably because
the artist did that intentionally (this was the approach back then -
they would give the same eye color as the predominant eye color in the
area, and the same for other features).

Separate from this, humans tend to see similarities and ignore
differences. As such, the 'similar' looking person may have shared, say
the nose shape while being different in various other respects, but
because this nose shape was the distinguishing feature of the
individual, its similarity caused people to say they looked similar in
spite of numerous other features that were distinct.

Most importantly, genetics doesn't really work this way. The appearance
of an individual is based on hundreds of different genes, all
independently assorting with each generation, plus various aspects of 'nurture', both in utero, during childhood development, and during
aging. That the person who looked similar was one of five who shared a particular genetic marker with the skeleton is entirely coincidental -
the appearance of that person had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they shared that genetic marker, any more than the fact that four
other people also shared the genetic marker but apparently shared no noticeable resemblance.

That it was 'presented by academics and scientifically backed up' is the game that some scientists play to publicize themselves and their
research - they play up this stuff for the public, often using language imprecise enough that they can maintain their integrity while giving a
false impression to the audience as to the quality of the findings, but
are much more careful about their conclusions when (if at all) they
present it in scientific publications.

This was reshown quite recently. IIRC the excavation was in the West
Country - maybe Somerset - and the reconstruction in the lab in, again
IIRC, Manchester. I doubt she'd have seen the local whom it resembled. "recognition" was undoubtedly on the basis that we're hard winded to
recognise faces and to compare them. (Some better than others. I'm
rotten at it.)

I think to a large extent going back to the community was partially a
matter of encouraging community interest in their history or, in this
case, pre-history and partly in the interests of making a TV programme
on archaeology.

Encouraging community interest is regarded as important in UK
archaeology. After all archaeology is funded from the public purse,
rescue archaeology such as this excavation (the site was going to be developed) can put back building and increase costs and if there is
public interest, it's more likely that stray finds will be reported.

I think the main facial recognition consequence of the reshowing was how
much younger Julian Richards (the presenter) looked.

Ian
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 10/13/2024 3:23 AM, Ian Goddard wrote:

This was reshown quite recently.-a IIRC the excavation was in the West Country - maybe Somerset -

Oh, that is the study being referred to, Cheddar Man.

Two details on that. First, they actually found a closer match, but it
was a child and they didn't want to subject the young'un to the media
frenzy they were planning to whip up so they focused on their next
closest match instead (and never mentioned this, not even in their
scientific publication). Second, by modern genealogical standards the
'match' wasn't a match at all, just someone belonging to the same root haplogroup - descended from the same stone-age tribe in the Levant or
adjacent regions thousands of years before Cheddar Man lived, with
closer matches now found across Europe. This was in the very early days
of mt haplotyping and they really didn't understand at the time what the broad-scale patterns were. The presence of the 'match' in the area was entirely coincidental, not reflecting continuity of localized descent.

and the reconstruction in the lab in, again
IIRC, Manchester.-a I doubt she'd have seen the local whom it resembled.

I didn't mean it was based on the artist copying the features of that
specific person, just that in reconstructing a skull for someone in
England, for those characteristics not preserved in bone they gave him 'typical' English features - nose and ear shape, eye, skin and hair
colour, hairline, aging, etc. This kind of thing is still done - just a
year or so ago a new one from (? Scotland or Ireland) was given red
hair, not because anything in the skull suggested red hair - they didn't
have DNA - but simply because red hair is more common in the area now
than it is in most other regions, and it would directly link it with the region in the minds of modern audiences.

Take skin for example. They made Cheddar Man as pale-skinned as a
prototypical English rose, then added some weathering. All northern
European skull reconstructions did this, right up to the point when
better DNA recovery techniques and understanding of pigmentation
genetics revealed that at this period they had yet to lose the dark pigmentation they brought with them from Africa. Show him with dark skin
and it takes a bite out of the perceived similarity.

"recognition" was undoubtedly on the basis that we're hard winded to recognise faces and to compare them.

Yes, and just as when we see faces in random rocks and on the moon, our cognitive biases lock in on the similarities and ignore differences, so
just giving him 'typical' English features would lead some people to
perceive similarity with any random English bloke, particularly if told
that guy shared DNA.

taf
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