You Might Be A Pict If….

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…if what Dr. Jim Wilson, announced via press release instead of the more standard academic publication, is true.

Pict Daughter

“A Young Daughter of the Picts” attributed to Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, circa 1585.

Dr. Wilson indicates that he, in conjunction with Scotland’s DNA, an ancestry testing company that he is affiliated with, a new SNP, S530 has been discovered and it is a Pict marker.  He says that this marker is evidence that the Picts are living among us today and can be identified genetically.  As proof, he offers that 10% of the 1000 Scottish men tested carry this marker, while it is found in only .8% of English men and about 3% of the men in Northern Ireland.  Dr. Wilson indicates that this marker is 10 times more prevalent in men with Scottish grandfathers than men with English grandfathers.  You can read the articles in “The Scotsman” and “The Telegraph and the press release by Scotland’s DNA here.”

The Picts were Scotland’s earliest known people.  It’s unknown what the Picts called themselves, but the Roman’s gave them the name Picts, meaning “painted ones.”  They were Celts, but their early history in the British Isles is unclear.  By the time they entered recorded history, they were in Scotland, north of the Forth and Clyde, beyond the stronghold of the Roman empire with whom they fought bitterly on their borders.  Their kingdoms in about 800 and 900 CE are shown on the map below.

pict map

Eventually, in about the 1100s, and rather gradually, the Picts disappeared from the records as a separate people, having assimilated as fully Gaelic Scots, their Pictish heritage forgotten, into the mainstream of the British Isles, along with other Celts, Angles, Saxons and Vikings.

Dr. Wilson says that S530, the newly discovered Pictish marker parallels the Pictish locations, in Fife, Perthshire, Tayside and the Northeast and around Moray Firth coastlands.

Normally, this kind of an announcement would be met with an extremely positive reaction in the genetic genealogy community, but in this case, not so much.  It seems that Dr. Wilson along with Britain’s DNA and Scotland’s DNA have been involved in some less than reputable actions recently, and one has to wonder if this is legitimate.

By legitimate, I mean whether, if provided with the same data and opportunities, another independent academic researcher could reproduce the same results and if unbiased, would come to the same conclusions.  This, of course, is part of the purpose of peer review during the academic publication process.  This isn’t the first time this has happened, either.  For more information about these companies, their issues, their scientific announcements via the media and resulting scuttlebutt, check the following links.

http://dna-explained.com/2012/12/20/britains-dna-caveat-emptor/

http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/12/exaggerations-and-errors-in-the-promotion-of-genetic-ancestry-testing.php

Be sure to read the comments by Debbie Kennett on the link above, and the article below, on Debbie’s blog.

http://cruwys.blogspot.com/2013/06/britainsdna-times-and-prince-william.html

I checked the Scotland’s DNA website, and fully expected to find a new “Pict” test, but it’s not there yet.  Unless I’m terribly off the mark, I’m betting it will be soon, which might have something to do with circumventing the academic publication process, aside from the minor details of peer review and accuracy.  Academic publication takes about 18 months to write the paper and shepherd it through the peer review process.  Not trivial, and there is no “big splash” so to speak about an academic paper appearing in a little known scientific journal.  Much bigger splash this way and one can offer a product immediately, no waiting.  The problem is that science isn’t a “trust me” type of field and this type of science-in-the-media announcement with no documentation flies against all of the safeguards built into the scientific publication process.

So, you just might be a Pict if Jim Wilson is correct and you carry S530….but until an academic paper is published, there is no way to know for sure unless of course, you’re into “trust me.”

However, if you’re dying to know, and can’t wait, I have a hint for you, this SNP was discovered earlier this year, at Family Tree DNA.  It’s also called SNP L1335, and is equivalent to S530.  Kind of sheds a different light on the big announcement doesn’t it.  If you need to know, and you’re a haplogroup R1b male, just order this SNP for $39 from Family Tree DNA and you’ll know if you carry this marker, or not.  However, until Dr. Wilson publishes a paper and makes his data available for review, you won’t know if you are a Pict or just another L1335 Scottish male.

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22 thoughts on “You Might Be A Pict If….”

  1. Maybe that explains why so many of my Grandchildren are so crazy about tatooing their bodies, They have this gene.(BBG) Patti-Ann

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    • I’ve been brought up looking for/at pictish standing stones and trying to find the answer of what they mean… your comment really struck home. I have 5 tattoos and 4 of them are pictish, 5th is my star-sign.

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  2. Thanks for discussing this aspect of the R1b-L21 subclade, the so-called Scots Modal. This has been discussed on several forums and indeed is controversial. There is an L1335 Project on FTDNA and the R-L21+ project lists L1335 and the downstream SNP L1065 groups. It seems there is a small Welch group that tests positive for L1335, but negative for L1065.

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  3. Well, here we go again with the “distinguished geneticist of Edinburgh University.” This is the description used by a group who’s desperate to believe what they’re being told by Wilson because it agrees with their pre-conceived notions.
    Wilson appeals to (and possibly takes advantage of) those who look for evidence to back up what they want to believe – quite a different direction from scientific research.
    Thanks for pointing out this new development.

    Steve

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    • I agree. I have been identified as L1335, but I show numerous DNA marker matches with O’Briens, O’Quinns, and O’Hearns who are South Irish or ” Irish Type III” . Just because ten percent of Scots men show the SNP S530 doesn’t mean they are Pictish.

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      • aah, but in the Irish histories, it says the Picts are also called the Cruithin- who are the same People form ireland you just mentioned????? ohh! more confusion..or clarity?

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  4. While I’m pretty sure I have Pictish ancestors, I’m quite skeptical about proving it!

    Incidentally, great picture! I’m pretty sure, however, that it is by or based on John White rather than Jacques le Moyne de Morgues. White was British and definitely did similar watercolors imagining the Picts. Jacques le Moyne de Morgues was French and I’d be surprised if he painted any Picts. Both are famous for recording what/who they saw in the New World, and that’s where confusion creeps in, because de Bry printed books with illustrations based on work by both. A lot of original watercolors remain of White’s oeuvre but Jacques le Moyne de Morgues is iffier–sounds like most of his work was destroyed early on and there is dispute about what was his. (Disclaimer: I know much less about Jacques le Moyne de Morgues than about John White.)

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  11. The really big hole in this theory that the Picts were the first Britains is that if their Haplogroup was R1b, they were among the third great wave of migration. The hunter gatherers were the first, and they were chiefly I2a. The neolithic farmers were second, and then the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the R1b group, came in and took over. Picts may have been R1b, but if they were, they weren’t first.

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    • Originally they were from Scotland territories but during wars against Rome, they were pushed into Britain. They won those wars in the 1st century and are responsible for Britain and Scotland retaining their territories against the Roman Empire. Much later, they were chased out of Britain. They tried to settle in Ireland, but were refused. Scotland agreed to take them back, with the agreement that their leaders would marrying Scotland leaders to prevent turf wars. They were mostly moved into the north eastern marshes until King Edward the 1st invaded. After that, most were killed or enslaved and sold on the slave trade, so as far as Northern Africa. Some made it to Coos county Ireland and settled. Others to England and to the Americas.

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  12. I have been told all of my life that my family is Pict and that we come from the moors of north eastern Scotland and prior to that, Britain, but were chased out. I was also taught via verbal history, that it is because of the Picts that today’s Britain and Scotland retained their territories against the Roman Empire in Caledonia. My last name is Morey, which means “people of the Moors”. As far as I know, we are one of the only families to retain our original name. I am female and our family’s tradition is to refuse to give up our name even through marriage. Not everyone refuses, but many of us still refuse. I will never give up my name and I am married.

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    • How interesting what your name is. I am from Moray(shire) which is classed as heart of Pictland and has some lovely forts locally.

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  13. a commercial kit has placed me in the R-M269 and then the R-L1335 haplogroup. I have both Scottish and Irish .. how can I learn more

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  14. My paternal haplogroup is I-S2703, which occurs in 1 in 300,000 people. No one else in my family is able to replicate my paternal haplogroup. My “brother” and “uncle” did the test and they are I-L1498, which occurs in 1 in 300 people. My father’s body was cremated by my mother and uncle because he died when I was 16. I would like to exhume my father’s ashes to test the DNA. Does anyone else have a paternal haplogroup of I-S2703? It is lonely with no family. Do I exist?

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    • I would suggest using autosomal matches to verify the relationship. There is clearly someone else, at least one person, who also has your haplogroup, or it wouldn’t be a named haplogroup. Looking at haplogroup I-S2703 on the Discover Ancestral path, those two haplogroups are related. Did you all take the Big Y test at FamilyTreeDNA? If you didn’t test at the same place, or the right SNP didn’t register on an autosomal test (like at 23andMe or LivingDNA,) then your haplogroups won’t be the same. Test at FTDNA.

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