Recovered Genealogy

The above portrait is of my great great grandfather Billy Baxter (William Bennet Baxter), who was born in Gressenhall workhouse, Norfolk, in 1846.

Now that I've submitted a DNA sample to 23andMe, while waiting for the results, I keep thinking, and wanting to write about my heritage and ancestry.  Hence maybe the recent posts on my past archaeology work, my interest in our Anglo-Saxon heritage, and now more directly, my past and recent experience with genealogy.

I first became interested in the family tree around the late 1980s.  I was a young married guy, on the brink of rearing my own family, so maybe there was a desire to find out where we came from, entwined with where we were going.  I can remember as a boy being interested in any tales about my alleged ancestors.  As I said in a recent post, I was always fascinated by the past.

I'm probably lucky in some ways.  Genealogy can be so Internet and computer databased these days.  I conducted most of my research before all of that.  I would visit county record offices and archives around England & Wales, and wearing white cotton gloves in reading rooms, sift through the original registers and documents - some of which were in the original handwriting of my ancestors.  Two of my ancestors had been long serving parish clerks in Norfolk.  I'd also visit archives in London, search through indexes of birth, marriage, and death (BMD).  If I wanted to order a BMD certificate, I'd write to a detective or genealogist, that would fetch bundles of certificates from the archives at a cheaper price than I could do it first hand.

With my wife, I'd also travel around the churches, cemeteries, and grave yards.  We'd interview elderly relatives, ask to see any family photographs or certificates.  Most were eager to tell their tales.

A nicer way of researching than sitting at home and paying to see transcript records in an internet database.  However, I made a mistake.  Computers were coming along.  I recorded too much onto obsolete system and using obsolete software.  Then I hit middle age.  I let go of too much, all of my notes, charts, and records.  My marriage collapsed, I moved on.  Holding onto things seemed futile when I have only one life.  I lost much of my genealogy.

Then a few days ago when I was looking at my old archaeology website on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, I spotted a few pages on my old genealogy.  There was a link to a .gedcom file that included a lot of the data that I had accumulated years ago.  It worked, the Wayback Machine had captured my .gedcom file!  Data on over 1200 ancestors and relatives from both mine, and the ex's family.  I looked for some Open Source software and found the Gramps program.  I downloaded it and the .gedcom file onto both my Windows 7 PC, and onto my Linux netbook.  After fiddling for a little while, the software opened my old gedcom file - there was all of the data, or at least a lot of it.  Charts, resources, BMDs, baptisms, burials, etc.  Retrieved from an Internet Archive, and saved in a format that still works.

The above group photograph is of four generations.  The baby is my Aunt Gladys, the mother is my maternal grandmother, the man is her father, my great grandfather Sam Tammas-Tovell, and the old lady is my great great grandmother Eliza Tammas-Tovell (nee Lawn).  Probably taken in the Halvergate or Tunstall area of Norfolk around 1936

My Genealogy and 23andMe

Most of my recorded ancestry, and most likely, most of my actual ancestry, lived in the English county of my birth - Norfolk.  Seven of my eight grandparents were born in Norfolk. My autosomal data should be pretty typical for a Norfolk born East Anglian.  The exception was my paternal great grandfather, who was born in Victorian London, of mainly Oxfordshire descent.  On the 23andMe results, he should have passed down my Y chromosome haplogroup.  On paper I can go back another three generations, to a John Brooker, who fathered some children between 1815 and 1836 in the parish of Rotherfield Peppard in Oxfordshire.  All that I currently know of his origins, is that he stated that he himself was born outside of Oxfordshire.  He lived close to the county border with Berkshire, and I suspect that he may have originated from there.

My maternal line, which should represent my mtDNA haplogroup, as with most of my recorded ancestry, is very Norfolk.  I can trace it back to Sarah Daynes (nee Quantrill), born at Wymondham, Norfolk circa 1827.  I don't think that it would be too far fetched to suggest that my ancestors most likely lived in the Norfolk area since at least as far back as the old East Anglian Kingdom, and perhaps many of them much back further, perhaps thousands of years.  Some of them however were very likely to have been part of that Anglo-Saxon immigrant Third, and to have arrived from across the North Sea.  Some of them may have arrived a bit later.  East Anglia was very much a part of the Danelaw.  Many villages in East Norfolk - as in parts of Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire, are regarded as having names that were Old Danish in origin.  Apparently even one of my family surnames - Tovell, has been identified as Old Danish, coming from Tofi-son-of-Hilda.  Another family surname Thacker has also been suggested as a Scandinavian form of thatcher.

I'll be interested to see how 23andMe analyse the Ancestry.  In all of my ancestry, I have not found any evidence of anyone coming from outside of England.  It's all Norfolk, London, and Oxfordshire - English surnames.  Therefore I'd expect the 23andMe autosomal results to come out pretty much under the British & Irish group.  However, should we ethnic English, because of our more distant history, expect elements of Scandinavian, French & German, and North West European?  My understanding is that autosomal data mainly relates to the most recent several generations.  My Y chromosome should belong to a common British male haplogroup.  It most likely passed through Oxfordshire in SW Britain.  My mtDNA should belong to a very East English haplogroup.  It might have arrived in Britain in late prehistory, or it might have arrived during the Anglo-Saxon or Viking period.

Too much speculation, I must expect my DNA results to take weeks to process.

There Was No British Genocide II

The above image, captured on a Pentax K110D and Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7 lens.  Loom weights in the West Stow Anglo-Saxon reconstruction village.

Literally, as soon as I posted my There was no British Genocide article, I come across links to yet a newer study.  Dr Stephan Schiffels of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, sequenced genomes of human remains from Hinxton, Saffron Walden, Linton and Oakington - all close to Cambridge. 

The dates of the remains ranged from the Late Iron Age, until the Middle Saxon.  The team reported that:

"In the cemetery at Oakington we see evidence even in the early Anglo-Saxon period for a genetically mixed but culturally Anglo-Saxon community, in contrast to claims for strong segregation between newcomers and indigenous peoples. The genomes of two sequenced individuals (O1 and O2) are consistent with them being of recent immigrant origin, from a source population close to modern Dutch, one was genetically similar to native Iron Age samples (O4), and the fourth was consistent with being an admixed individual (O3), indicating interbreeding. Despite this, their graves were conspicuously similar, with all four individuals buried in flexed position, and with similar grave furnishing. Interestingly the wealthiest grave, with a large cruciform brooch, belonged to the individual of native British ancestry (O4), and the individual without grave goods was one of the two genetically ‘foreign’ ones (O2), an observation consistent with isotope analysis at West Heslerton which suggests that new immigrants were frequently poorer".

Based on this study, the team proposed that the immigrant portion of English DNA lay around a third, or 20 - 40% of total.  Not so far from the findings of 10% to 40% by the POBA 2015 study.  The newer study though confirms that the populations appear to have mingled closely, and that people of Romano-British ancestry were quickly adopting an Anglo-Saxon identity.  It was a surprise to find that the higher status remains Anglo Saxon dressed remains were actually of local Romano-British heritage, while some of the poorest remains were immigrant Anglo-Saxons.

Based on comparative genetics, the team suggests the origins of the immigrant Anglo-Saxons were Denmark and the Netherlands.

Full story can be found published under Creative Commons in Nature here, and the BBC news release here.

So once again, the genetic analysis suggests that rather than an Anglo-Saxon invasion wiping out the Romano-Britons, that a series of immigrations - not outnumbering the locals, arrived, and apparently mingled in.  Around a third of the population were immigrant Anglo-Saxon from the Continent.  Even the higher status locals, were apparently copying the new Anglo-Saxon culture.

The ethnic English are a surprisingly homogeneous population, with roots here going back several thousand years.  Immigrations arrive, provide admixture, but are then absorbed.  That is who we are.  Bede exaggerated the genocide.


The Paleo Diet. A critique

The above photograph seems to illustrate how many modern people eat.  I took it in a Wisbech back street, using the 50p camera, Olympus XA2, loaded with Ilford HP5+ film, which I developed in Kodak D76.

Eat like a Caveman?

What prompted this post?  I was shopping in a local discount store today, and I spotted their range of Paleo and Atkins diet aids - ketosis pills, high protein this, high protein that, and a ... Paleo Protein Bar.  I just cannot imagine a palaeolithic hunter-forager unwrapping and then biting into factory produced "protein bar".  The ketosis pills were ridiculous enough.  Still, it reminded me of why I turned my back onto the Paleo diet crowd years ago.

The Paleo-Diet is based on the assumption that humans have not had time to adapt towards a modern diet.  This they might argue, is why we grow overweight, unfit, and suffer many illnesses.  They suggest that humans evolved to a hunter-gatherer diet over many thousands of years.  In order to replicate some of our "natural" food groups, Paleo-dieters do not eat: junk food, fast food, bread, cereals, any wheat or flour products, refined sugar, beans, legumes (including peanuts), potatoes, processed vegetable oils, or any dairy produce.  Some Paleo-dieters with European heritage, also avoid certain foods, that originated in the New World, including for example, tomatoes, avocados, and peppers.  Although this proscription does not appear in the mainstream, there are some Paleo-dieters that believe that people without a long New World heritage, have a genetic based conflict with such food groups.  On my recent excursion into genetic profiling, I've seen posts from some individuals actively looking for New World food intolerant genes. I know where they are coming from.

Before I launch my critique, I should just start with what I do agree with the Paleo-Diet.

  • I fully agree that we have not had time to adapt to the modern diet.  However, I refer to the massive changes to our diet over the past 100 years, not over the past 10,000 years.  I agree that we should avoid junk food, fast food, processed meat, sugary foods, and processed oils.  I feel that we should also reduce our consumption of refined white wheat flour products.
  • I do like how the more sensible paleo-dieters seek out and eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, and nuts.  By avoiding starchy foods (rice, pasta, and potatoes), they sometimes consume more portions of vegetables.
  • It might encourage people to think like a hunter forager. Foraging at the local farmshops, markets and stores for more variety of natural wholesome foods. To consume mindfully. Avoid cheap meats.

Now what I disagree with:

  • It is based on bad science, bad anthropology.  10,000 years represents lots of generations for us to adapt to an agricultural diet.  Lactose tolerance is evidence of that evolution.  The book The 10,000 year Explosion: How civilization accelerated human evolution. 2009.  Cochran and Harpending, explores these issues, and revealed that human evolution, in terms of deviations within our population alleles, has actually accelerated.  One of the pressures behind this acceleration has been identified as the agricultural diet.  Anthropologists can also point to farming populations, for example, some dairy farmers in Africa, that are particularly tall and strong.  The past 100 years, yes, I can agree, we have not had time to biologically adapt to the profusion of refined sugars and processed fats that surround us daily.  However, you cannot tell me that agricultural foods are all bad.  What are Paleo-dieters actually eating?  Those fruits, vegetables, grass-fed beef, and even nuts, are all agriculturally produced.  I don't see many Paleo-dieters living on whatever they forage or hunt from the wild alone.
  • The truth is that hunter-foragers were highly adaptable to different diets.  As they spread across the planet, so they encountered different resources.  They adapted partly by human culture, by lifestyle, but humans are also great omnivores  and opportunists.  I once saw a British TV documentary about a a woman with an eating disorder, that restricted her diet to one flavour and brand of corn snacks.  Okay, her skin looked a bit pasty, but she was not noticeably overweight, and her disorder had not prevented her from surviving to adulthood, and from raising her own children.  What I hate about the Paleo-diet, particularly about some of it's more extreme schools, is that it is restrictive.  It prohibits the consumption at least of legumes, potatoes, even whole grains cereals, and beans.  Some of it's followers also avoid tomatoes!  Come on people.
  • Again, I'm not criticising the mainstream Paleo.  But some of it's followers  really go for the meat, even processed meats!  They treat it as a high protein diet.  In their eyes, hunter-gatherers ate largely what they hunted.  Although some hunter-gatherer communities did eat a lot of fish and whale meat for example, most of them in reality more likely resourced most of their calorific requirements with foraged foods.  For example, humans have an enzyme that converts starches from plant roots and tubers, into useful sugars.  Other species of apes lack this enzyme.  This would suggest that at some point of our ancestry, the ability to eat and digest roots was pretty essential for survival.  The prized tool of many bush women in SW Africa until recently (it's now most likely a smartphone), was the digging stick.  Expertly used to dig up edible roots for the pot.  Hunted meat was culturally more valued - but foraged foods provided most of the calories.  I've seen Paleo-dieters praising American bacon and tinned ham as a good food source.  I've seen the same people wince at the idea of eating fresh liver or sprats.  I'm pretty sure that fresh tomatoes, rolled oats, and even local potatoes (in the right proportion), are healthier than fried processed bacon.  But that's just my opinion.
  • Any focus on diet, is only half the equation when it comes to living well.  The other half is activity.  Do we exercise?  How often do we get out of breath?  Are we really happy, Do we push our muscles to the limit?  Do we take time out, to stroll through green, clean air areas, do we relax properly?

That's today's sermon.  Eat more vegetables and fruit, and you don't need to avoid oats or tomatoes.  Consume mindfully. Get moving.  Enjoy life.



Thetford Forest Archaeology

I took the above photo using an old digital cam phone, a Sony Ericsson C510, at Two Mile Bottom, Thetford, in 2010.  I was on a run with my old dogs across Thetford Forest, when I couldn't resist picking up this flake of flint laying in the sand, and taking this photo.  It was struck by a human knapper sometime in late prehistory.  I would see flakes of flint like this laying on the soils and sands of the forest all of the time.  After taking this photo, I returned it back to the sand.

My Archaeology

I can remember as a boy, I was always attracted to the distant past.  I find it strange that some others have no interest in it, but then again, some people find it odd that I have no interest for example, in football.  Horses for courses.  I remember when my father's shop in the City of Norwich during the 1970's seemed surrounded by archaeological digs, and how I would leer through the fences at their excavation trenches.  My life didn't go that way though, I drifted into adulthood away from any future in the heritage business.

Years later, a few events.  The first occurred when I was around twenty years old.  I visited Ireland for a fishing, photography, and drinking holiday with my big brother.  Besides the Guinness and Irish whisky, I remember being deeply impressed by a visit to the Newgrange passage grave.  Deeply impressed.  I was struck by the engineering of the stones, how they managed to perfectly direct a shaft of light into the burial chamber, that would illuminate it on Solstice, when the Sun aligned perfectly. An American tourist in bright checkered shorts, also on the tour, was not so impressed, and loudly complained about the entry fee.  Horses for courses.

Second event.  I was now a young married agricultural worker, living in a farm cottage in Norfolk.  Walking our collie dog around the local fields one day, and I spotted a large stone on the ground.  It may have fallen off a recent hoe or plough.  I took it to the local museum, and they confirmed, it was the broken butt end of a Neolithic polished flint stone axe head.


At the time I was becoming increasingly involved in local politics, and other than occasionally browsing second hand bookshops for books on British Archaeology, I didn't take it any further.  However, in time, the politics all went sour, and I felt that I didn't want contact from people anymore.  It was easier to deal with long dead people.  I started looking for more flint artifacts.  I started identifying flakes, found some beautiful scrapers and piercers, treasured flint arrowheads.  I didn't want to become a collector though.  I wanted to do something more justifiable.  I started to search for unrecorded archaeological "sites" in Thetford Forest, and to submit them to the local government archaeologists for recording onto their sites & monuments records.  I signed up for a two year extra-mural course in Field Archaeology and Landscape History with the UEA.

Thetford Forest Archaeology Project


In 1997 I launched the Thetford Forest Archaeology project, a one man archaeological survey of disturbed soils in Thetford Forest.  I received support from the archaeology departments of Suffolk County Council, Norfolk County Council, and the local officers of the Forestry Commission.  I was supplied with maps each year, of the forestry compartments that were being felled and restocked.  During the restocking operation, the surface would be broken.  I would survey some of these compartments, and record the potential presence of any archaeological sites, such as clusters of artifacts, or earthworks.  More than that, and this was my own take on it, I would carefully measure and calculate the percentages of different artifacts in each area.  These artifact types consisted of late prehistoric lithics (human struck stone) by type, as well as the presence and densities of Roman and Medieval potsherds.

Here is a gallery of images from my original Thetford Forest Archaeology website.


The above gallery is quite important to me.  Like a fool, I used a web host that deleted my website, when I failed one year to subscribe.  I had also lost my back up.  This is why the Posthaven policy attracted me here.  The majority of my old Thetford Forest Archaeology website can still be seen, using the wonderful Internet Archive Wayback Machine, that captured several sweeps of the website around 2006.  Link to the archived Thetford Forest Archaeology website here! 

Getting back to survey, and what I was trying to accomplish:  Using spreadsheets, and very carefully mapping my surveyed areas (I was proud that I could provenance each find within ten metres using the National Grid Reference system), I would collate data such as the following example, from each survey:

Forest-walk 32.

Forestry Compartment Roudham 2045

Norfolk SMR - 34184

Parish - Roudham. Date - 14/02/99.

Survey Area - 2.94 ha. Sample Fraction - 11 %

Centre on TL 9480 8692

Soil - Methwold/Worlington - partly calcareous slope brown earths.

Relief - flat

Water - Little Ouse River 1.7 km; stream at Roudham DMV 600 metres.

Height OD - 25 to 30 metres.

Transects were spaced at 10 metres distance apart.

A few sherds of pottery, including one of Middle Saxon date, were collected here during an earthwork survey by Brian Cushion for the Forestry Commission. It was felt that the com­partment deserved a closer look.

1 sherd of ?Romano-British grey ware pottery

9 sherds of Medieval pottery (1 glazed, 8 unglazed).

2 sherds of Late Medieval / Early Post-medieval pottery.

1 crude flint scraper.BR>1 'nosed' flint scraper.

2 retouched flint flakes.

28 flint flakes.

147 burnt flints.

Background scatter of Post-medieval / Modern tile and brick fragments.

Although surrounded by the humps, hollows, and bars that are typical of gravel uplands and terraces in Breckland, the surveyed area is quite flat, and the soil is calcareous enough to deserve destumping. The light scatters of ceramics and rubbish from different periods suggests that the surveyed area has been cultivated and manured with domestic waste on a number of occasions. Corbett's soil map shows the surveyed area consists of partly calcareous brown earths, while the surrounding compartments contain deeper upland brown earth. This would appear to explain why the surveyed area is flat and contains manure scatter, while the surfaces of surrounding compartments are uneven.

Main raw material is weathered nodules of blackish flint (Grimes Graves type), with a few pebbles. Some flakes very sharp. Probably late prehistoric. High level of burnt flint noteworthy. - notes by Peter Robins for Norfolk Museum Services.

Lithic Sample Size = 32. Sample Area = 3234 M²

Low Lithic Density for Forest-walk 32 = 0.99 per are². Burnt flint density = 4.55 per are²


I was interested in percentages, landscape facets, distance to known water supply, etc.  It all seemed so nerdy, that I don't think that my liaisons in local archaeology departments ever really got what I was doing.  I was just starting to see some relationships between certain landscapes (such as river terraces), and certain types of lithics.  I was mapping the huge clusters of lithics between the Grimes Graves site and the river Little Ouse, I was mapping areas of previous cultivation, dating to the Romano-British periods, and the Medieval periods, based on densities of potsherds from those periods.

I don't think that all of the local archaeologists were ready for my sort of survey, they didn't know how to handle me.  They were much more use to metal detector find identification.  Anyway, after a mere forty one surveys, I petered out, and the project died.  A shame really, I was just starting to experiment with using GPS and in totally non-invasive surveying, that used very minimal sample removal, but digital images in the field instead.  I'm afraid that I engaged in abit of a slanging match with a member of Norfolk Archaeology in a popular archaeology magazine, then couldn't be doing with it anymore.  Anyway, I was ready to start dealing with living people again.

That was my amateur archaeology phase.


Why do I like Mandolins

Danse Macabre

I took the above photograph on Rollei Retro 400S film, loaded in a Pentax Spotmatic camera.  Anita holding my Chinese made Countryman F-style mandolin in the village church yard.  Developed in rodinal.

Why do I like mandolins?

I don't really know, but I absolutely love mandolins.

The mandolin descends from a long line of small oud or lute-type instruments that had been circulating Africa and Europe for many centuries or perhaps even more.  However, They really took form as the mandolino in the Naples area.  Between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries the Neapolitan mandolino (meaning almond-shaped) evolved to have as a default, a bowl shaped back made of glued strips of wood, a bent sound table, decorated beading around the sound board, a tortoise shell pick guard, a narrow neck, , four pairs of metal strings, tuned in pairs the same as a violin - GDAE, and good quality tuners.  It had evolved from being a small oud, into the classic Neapolitan bowl-backed mandolin.

The Neapolitan bowl backed, is still the mandolin of choice for many mandolinists performing for tourists in Italy, for fans of traditional Italian folk music, and for some classical mandolinists.  However, as the mandolin craze spread across Europe during the nineteenth century, so it took local turns and twists.  The bowl was sometimes replaced with a flat or curved back for example.  In Greece, they already had their own versions - the bouzoukis. In Portugal, it took the form of the bandolim - which also made it across the Atlantic to Brazil.  Meanwhile, both Brazilian bandolinists, and Italian mandolinists were wowing the thriving palour music scene in the USA.

It was in the USA, that new forms of mandolin were produced and popularised, particularly by the Gibson guitar company, with their A and F style American mandolins.  Mandolins started to fall into the hands of Blues musicians.  Jazz musicians picked them up.  When Bluegrass launched, Bill Munroe picked a Gibson F5-style.  Today, it seems as though the USA has replaced Italy, as the stronghold of the mandolin.

Here in the UK, when many people first see a modern mandolin, they often mistake it for a ukulele or even a banjo. They don't really know what it is, or what it sounds like.  The mandolin rarely makes it into popular music - although it has starred in songs by Led Zeppelin (the Battle of Evermore), R.E.M (Losing my Religion), and Rod Stewart (Maggie May).

So why do I love mandolins?

I have no musical background.  I had never really tried to play a musical instrument outside of a stylophone during the 1970s.  I sucked in music class.  I could not read noted music at all.  That was my musical experience up to the age of fifty two.

Then I walked into the local music shop.  He had the Countryman F5 style on the wall, at the end of a long row of guitars.  It was just so pretty, I didn't think about it.  I just handed over the plastic.  Nothing to do with liking any style of music, any musician, or the sound of the mandolin.  It was just the looks of it.  Ironically the owner of that shop was born in Italy - so that I can still say that I bought my first mandolin from an Italian.

The Countryman label is used sometimes by a Chinese distributor to the UK.  I have tracked the same mandolin under different labels in Europe and in the USA.  Like so many Chinese stringed instruments - perhaps not the best wood - it is quiet, and not the richest tone, but for the price it was incredible value, with all of the goodies that you'd expect on a much more expensive American-made bluegrass mandolin.  A simple change of the strings improved the tone noticeably.  It plays well.  A good mandolin to learn on.

I took classes with a very good mandolin teacher for a while.  Good, in the sense that he was a mature music teacher of the old school, and a genuine mandolinist himself, but not so good in that he was so strict, that I eventually felt too nervous to play, and after around six months, regrettably canceled my classes.

Since then I have tried to self-train, but instead have perhaps more simply taken the route of playing for fun.  I would like more spare time, and more self discipline in order to study more efficiently.  I have plenty of great books, and a host of great teaching videos on Youtube and elsewhere.  I'm attracted to traditional Italian, and to Irish or Scottish folk, but I'd like to have a crack at some blues.  So much music to learn, so many techniques.

Ever since my initial attraction to that instrument in the music shop, I have found other reasons to love mandolins.  Okay, they don't have the warm big sound of an acoustic guitar.  But they are so small, so portable.  I absolutely love practicing on my mandolin.  I can't really explain why.  It's not a guitar.  It is more personal.

I have to admit that I have wasted money buying a couple of cheap mandolins on Ebay.  An old Neapolitan bowl back, and a Romanian curve back, distributed by a Scottish company as the Celtic Petit.  Although both are louder, neither play as easily as my Chinese Countryman.

As I said in my last post, I have commissioned a hand-crafted mandolin from a local luthier, Gary Nava.  I'm so looking forward to it later this year.  

The below Youtube video stars Charlie Pig's World of Pluck.  He is playing one of Gary Nava's hand-made mandolins.  He's such a good player, and my playing sucks so bad.  I just hope Gary doesn't expect me to play it when I pick it up.  I really like Charlie's performance here, so I'm embedding it in this blog for inspiration.  This is why I now love the mandolin:


Losing weight

Looking down the Fen

I took the above photograph on the recent day trip to Huntingdon.  Taken between Warboys and Chatteris, I couldn't resist the shadows that the late sun was making that day.  Yashica T2 compact 35mm camera, loaded with Kodak Tmax 400 film, developed in Kodak Tmax developer.

Losing Weight

As I hover over the 12 stone mark (I was 13 stone 9 pounds in late November), the scales teasing me, I am considering weight loss as a subject.  Anita recently told me that a friend has just completed a week long fast, and is now embarking on some kind of ketosis programme, before she fasts again!

I guess that it's her health and body.  My system is really simple.  Eat super healthy and natural, with a large variety of vegetables and fruits, and some regular seeds, nuts, and whole grains. No processed meat.  No cheap red meat, instead, more fish, wild meat, some eggs, some dairy.  Then start an exercise program that makes you feel good, and that you enjoy.  Mine is running like a mad man through the countryside, strapped to a pair of hounds.  That burns calories okay.

Does it work?  Well I did it before, and I kept up the exercise and pretty much the healthy eating for around four years.  Even when I let myself go again, I know that I would make more of an effort to eat vegetables and fruit, so it took another five to six years, before I ended up close to where I started ten years earlier.  That effort was worth it.  It's not like a fad diet, where you chuck off the pounds, suffer from hunger, then stuff yourself after you hit your target weight - until you were fatter than when you started six months earlier.

I have on rare occasions,taken a 24 hour fast.  I'm not even convinced that it is a good thing.  A week?  I'd imagine that really hits your lean weight as well as your fat.  Bone, muscles, organs - your heart, I can see them suffering.  Why can't some people just avoid the cakes, and make a point out of getting out of breath a few times per week?  I really do not rate any diet plan that does nothing to increase consumption of the greens and berries.  If I stopped losing weight, it is either because I'm near enough to a healthy lean mass, or because I either / or need to:
  • Step up the activity.  Keep more active, or increase the exercise
  • Reduce calorific consumption.  Eat enough plants and you shouldn't need to, as they are low calorie and packed with fibre.  However, if I want to reduce fat further, I might calorie count, and carefully reduce my calorific consumption.

You know why?  Because losing the fat is 90% simply energy in - energy out.  Screw shit science and fad dieting.

Running with Dogs No.17

Ran the dog's favourite route this morning, 4.5 miles, 45 minutes.  It felt like an average to poor run, but we finally reached an average of 6 mph.  When I use to canicross run several years ago, I'd usually get around 6.2 mph, but I'm getting there.  I'm not sure if Flint will ever stop trying to piss up every tree though.  Loki though - I'd race canicross with that little dog, he'd be fine.

Below is a Youtube video that I made six years ago.  I was running with my old dogs, Wolfy, a large siberian husky, and Belle, a small dalmatian.  They are retired and living with my ex now.  It actually upsets me a little to see these videos, but even now I'm fifty four (so I'm told), there is no reason that I can't do it again.


The Mandolin

I haven't mentioned the mandolin yet have I?  I'm on the waiting list for a new, custom made, hand crafted wooden mandolin.  I have a very, very good guitar maker and luthier, a mere two or three miles away.  Gary Nava of Nava Guitars.  I've asked Gary to order some British hand crafted tuners from Robson Tuners, to be fitted to my mandolin.  The tuners are perhaps an extravagance.  But as much as feasible, I want my dream mandolin to be hand crafted.  Gary will be making the tailpiece himself.  I'm still considering woods, although I'm thinking Pao Ferro if he still has any, for back and sides.  Maybe Spruce for top.  This instrument is going to be my one instrument, that I want to use for the remainder of my life.

There was no British Genocide


The Anglo-Saxon Invasion according to History

When I was eleven years old, and had just started secondary school, we had this odd lesson that I still recall.  Our headmaster (who we hadn't previously encountered) took our class, but pretended to be the caretaker, taking the class in the absence of a teacher.  Bizarre behaviour, I don't know what he hoping to teach us from this, except perhaps to be careful how we judge people. 

He was a Welshman.  At one point during the session, he told us eleven year olds, that his people, were the real Britons, and that we English kids were the descendants of land thieves.  Our ancestors had invaded the British lowlands following the collapse of Roman Britain, and had slaughtered his people, driving the survivors to the hills of Wales.  It must have made an impact on me.  Sure enough, when my interest in history turned to the making of England, the text books pretty much confirmed his story of genocide.  We English weren't the real British, our ancestors were marauding, barbarians from Northern Germany, the Anglo-Saxons.  The prime sources of this tale were two accounts, one from Gildas, written from the British perspective, during the century that followed this alleged genocide, and the other was Bede, written as from the perspective of an Anglian Christian monk, another century later. 

The Archaeologists revision

I became interested in amateur archaeology from around the late 1980s, and volunteered as an enthusiastic field-walker (surface collection survey).  My read list grew.  I completed a two year extra mural course in landscape archaeology with the UEA.  I encountered more and more interpretations from British archaeologists, writing from the 1970s on, that something didn't seem right about the traditional Gildas/Bede account of genocide.  There was no archaeology of genocide.  There was more evidence of continuity through that period.  The Roman towns started decaying long before hoards of Anglo-Saxons arrived to dismantle them.  The Roman shore forts of the "Saxon Shore" - despite the usual claims that they were erected to fight off Anglo-Saxon raiders into Roman Britain, just didn't seem particularly defensive.  The archaeology suggested that their role might have actually been to control and tax imports and exports across the North Sea to the Germanic lands.  There appeared to be more shifts of settlement patterns a full century and a half after the alleged Anglo Saxon invasion, than directly following it.

The Bede claim is that two Anglo-Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, conscripted by the Romano-British as mercenaries to protect south-east Britain from attack, mutinied, called over their cousins, and commenced the Anglo-Saxon invasion.  It doesn't sound right.  Their names Hengist and Horsa are sometimes used in Germanic folklore and mythology, associated with a pair of horses.  It's not too far from the Romulus and Remus characters of the Rome origin myth. 

Some archaeologists pointed out that the east and west Britains, had always been different - since prehistory, not just since the Anglo-Saxon period.  They suggested that the West had a maritime influence down the Atlantic seaboard - to Ireland, Brittany, the Bay of Biscay, and Iberia, while the East had a maritime influence from the North Sea World - Belgium, Netherlands, North Germany, Denmark, Norway, etc.  Seas, rather than dividing Britain from external influence, had long provided highways of ideas, culture, and maybe genes from different zones of mainland Europe. The suggestion was that these two maritime influences had brought cultures, beliefs, trade, and even people, differently since prehistory, to either side of Britain. England had long been a part of the North Sea World.  Wales and Cornwall on the other hand, had long been a part of the Atlantic Celtic World.

Archaeologists were also questioning traditional histories of the Celts in Europe, and particularly in Britain.  It was pointed out, that the Romans and Greeks appeared to use that description for a number of tribal peoples that lived outside of their world, in Central Europe.  No-one then had used the word "Celt" to describe the Britons.  It was only much later, with the rise of nationalist movements, that Western Britons started to embrace the identity.  Some archaeologists accepted that there was a grouping of cultures, Gaelic linguistic groups, and art forms, shared along the European Atlantic Seaboard, from Northern Portugal to the Western Highlands of Scotland.  They called it the Western or Atlantic Seaboard Celtic, to distance itself from the Hallstatt, and classical references to the Central European Celtic culture.  It was never proposed though, that this was ever a homogeneous, or self-identifying "people".

More and more archaeologists argued for a revision of Britain's Dark Age histories.  They could not find archaeological evidence of genocide.  They were arguing for a partial displacement - that the Anglo-Saxons were immigrants that settled the British lowlands during the 5th Century AD, but did not "replace" the Romano-Britons, and instead, intermarried with them.  Some suggested that only small numbers of Anglo-Saxon elites may have arrived - and that their culture trickled down to their British subjects.  Some dared even suggest that there was no invasion, nor substantial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Eastern Britain at all.  Cultural influence merely crossed the North Sea in the vacuum of a collapsed Roman administration. 

Not all agreed though.  Many conservative historians, and even some archaeologists, continued to use traditional models of 5th Century invasion hypothesis.  School text books probably didn't change much.  Popular history continued without too much interruption.  Archaeological interpretations of the 5th/6th centuries were often confused concessions. 

Then genetic testing started to arrive.

Stephen Oppenheimmer is a British paediatrician that has developed a career in researching and writing popular science books concerning the genetic evidence for human origins.  After his best seller Out of Eden, in 2007 he published a book examining British roots, titled Origins Of The British .

He argued that 1) there was no Anglo-Saxon invasion. The ethnic British today were descended mainly from people that arrived here at the end of the Ice Age - both East and West British.  There was more admixture from later immigrations in the East, but it was still a minority in the mix. There was a genetic marker difference between east and west, but both populations had descended from the same haplogroup, that he believed had spilled out of the Basque Ice Age refuge at the end of the last Ice Age.  2)  Saxon culture had been in Britain for a longer time than traditionally accepted, that it existed in Roman Britain, perhaps even Iron Age Britain.  He argues that the term Saxon used in Britain referred to ethnicities in Roman SE Britain, that already used a Germanic language.  Not to refer to people from Saxony in modern day Germany.  He proposed genetic markers that he regarded as Angle arriving during the 5th Century, but these were not, he argued, ever a majority even in England.  Indeed, he argued that the later settlement of Danes left a bigger impression.  3) He claimed that the English language appears to date it's divergence from other Germanic dialects, long before the 5th Century AD.  He suggest that is because a form of it had already long existed in SE Roman Britain, perhaps even earlier.

You can imagine that his conclusions and hypothesis made quite a stir.  Some revisionists were ecstatic.  Some conservatives regarded it as crackpot.  He was stating that the English were as British as either the Welsh or Scots.  Just as the old Celtic origin myth had excited Irish and Welsh nationalists over the past few centuries, I saw the leader of the BNP (a British Far Right political group) on TV, citing poor Oppenheimer's book as evidence that the English were an ancient British people, pure and free of immigration.  An unfortunate interpretation of an interesting and provocative book.

Since 2007, genetic studies and understanding of British origins continue to progress, and will do so in the future.  One of Oppenheimer's assertions has been contradicted by studies of European human genes in general.  He believed that something like 60 to 95% of British inheritance had been here since before the Neolithic, descending from hunter-gatherers that arrived before 6,000 years ago.  The European-wide evidence suggest that some of his haplogroups had arrived in Europe later.  At least two significant waves of genes have entered Europe over the past 7,000 years, replacing the vast majority of earlier hunter-gatherer genes.  The first, it is suggested, arrived with the Neolithic - originating in the Middle East, and reaching NW Europe by 6,000 years ago.  The second, only recently discovered, originated it is suggested, on the Eurasian Steppes, and has been associated with the Yamnaya culture of pastoralists.  This has revived the old Indo-European hypothesis.  There is a possibility, that there was a significant expansion westwards from the Steppes and Balkans, and that they carried the Indo-European language, that so many modern European languages descend from.  The genetic data hints that this wave of genes arrived in West Europe around 4,200 years ago.  Some people are also associating it with the arrival of the Bell Beaker assemblage of artifacts and monuments. 

The point is, that these two late prehistoric waves of genes appear to have replaced the vast majority of earlier European genes.  A study published only last week, of Irish origins found particularly strong links to this Late Neolithic wave, from the Steppes.  The modern English may have some genes that originated in the Ice Age refuges of Europe, but they appear to be swamped by later immigrations of farming populations from the Middle East and the Steppes.  It doesn't however, yet appear to disrupt his assertion that their genes had been here long before the 5th Century.

People of the British Isles Study 2015

A newer study of British origins that promises to be the most comprehensive of all, using new improved mathematical models.  It produced a few surprises.

  • There is no homogeneous British Celtic group.  Wales had more genetic diversity than anywhere else in the British Isles.
  • The Cornish are different from the English - but are more like the English than they are like the Welsh.
  • The English are a homogeneous group, although regionalism can be detected, that correlates with the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
  • Anglo-Saxon immigration influence on English genetics is a mere 10 - 40%. Most of our genes were indeed already here much earlier.  The English are mainly British. There was no Anglo Saxon genocide of the British.
  • The Welsh do appear to have a high level of hunter-gatherer inheritance.  Maybe Oppenheimer is vindicated on this one.
  • The Danish are missing.  They could not find a visible genetic marker left by the Danish Vikings in Dane-Law England!
  • "The analyses suggest there was a substantial migration across the channel after the original post-ice-age settlers, but before Roman times. DNA from these migrants spread across England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, but had little impact in Wales."

So there it is.  Gildas and Bede overplayed the 5th Century Anglo-Saxon Invasion.  Genetic surveys suggest that less than 40% of English genes originated with the Anglo-Saxons, perhaps even as low as 10%.  Most English genes arrived here in Britain much earlier; between 6,100 and 3,800 years ago.  The ethnic English can look at Iron Age, Bronze Age, probably even Neolithic monuments across the British lowlands, and consider them built by our ancestors.  My Welsh headmaster had it wrong.

So what was it like in 5th Century England?

I have recently read Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070. 2011 Robin Fleming.  A well researched history, where the researcher has not only referred to traditional historical sources, but leans heavily onto modern archaeology.  Fleming doesn't use Oppenheimer's suggestion of a Saxon presence in Roman Britain.  However, she does side with the new evidence of partial immigration, with few cases of any immigrant Anglo-Saxons outnumbering locals in any area of Britain.

How I interpret her book, I see the 5th Century Eastern Britain now as a very multicultural place, full of different dialects, languages, traditions and belief systems.  What people believed, and how they talked during the 5th Century, most likely differed from one farmstead to the next farmstead.  The largest ethnic group were the Romano-Britons.  How they dealt with the collapse of Rome varied from one community to another.  Some appear to have tried to revert to pre-Roman ways and even belief systems.  Others tried to preserve the Roman way of Life - the Romanitas .  Some communities preserved a form of Christianity, although in the absence of Rome, it most likely deviated towards the heretical.  Many of them would have embraced the new arrival cultures from across the North Sea - new fashions, dress, status symbols on the markets.  They became Anglo-Saxon.  Of the newcomers - 10% to 40%, there were a multitude of tribal ethnicities.  Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Allemani, Suevvi, Franks, etc.  They most likely arrived from Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, France and maybe as far away as Poland and East Prussia.  The lowlands of Britain were rich and fertile, it's rivers and coastline highly accessible.  The collapse of Roman administration, and a crisis in local society had left Britain open for adventure and investment.  A collapse of import duties, taxation, administration - the land to grow in.  A land of opportunity.

Some of these ethnicities may have had areas of Eastern England where they did dominate, where elites could gather power and identity.  However, genetic studies keep supporting the archaeologists - there was no major invasion.  The Romano-Britons left more of their genes to survive, than did the immigrant Anglo-Saxons.  English people had roots here in Britain since at least the Later Neolithic,  some of our roots may go back much further.  We have Anglo-Saxon roots from the Continent as well, but a minority of the genetic mix.

Fleming goes on to argue that it was in the following century, the 6th Century, that an Anglo-Saxon identity was developed.  Following the collapse of Roman society, and the immigrations from across the North Sea, at first it was sort of a free multicultural grab all.  Then as elites started to emerge, and expand their power into kingdoms during the 6th Century, they started to encourage cultural identities for their subjects.  Some emerging royal households were perhaps keen to claim descent from brave adventuring warriors of the North Sea World.  The "East Saxons", The "East Angles", the "South Saxons" etc.  This identity trickled down to their subjects regardless of the identity of their own ancestors.  The royal house of West-Saxon that survives today as the British Monarchy, claims the Germanic deity Woten (Odin) in their family tree.  It was now that lowland Britain transformed into Anglo-Saxon England.

I'm going to finish this incredibly long boring post with a thought. 

The past twenty years have seen a new wave of immigration, particularly into Eastern England.  EU immigration from Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Bulgaria.  I live near to a town that has seen some of the highest percentages, maybe 20 - 40% of the town population is EU.  The last time that this area saw such immigration levels may have been the 5th century.  Okay, this is different.  We live in a 21st Century Capitalist nation-state with towns, cities, mass media.  I can see that in a generation - the kids of these new adventurers from the Continent will be undistinguishable from the Britons, except for some odd sounding surnames.  When I go down town, I can buy Bulgarian mushrooms, eat in a Lithuanian bistro, buy Polish vodka, etc.  I can't help seeing some similarities between the present and the 5th Century.  It's a cool time to live in England.  Here is my 5th Century England:

Edit:  More recent evidence from the Cambridge Area in 2016 here.