Talk:English people/Archive 6

message: *The racial paradigm, which became rooted in physical anthropology at its very beginning, was, for decades, treated as a concept needing no verification. It was only in the mid-20th century that the first attempts were made to question the usefulness of the race concept in describing our species variation. Since then, an ever growing number of anthropologists, particularly in the United States, have rejected the concept (nearly seventy percent in 1999). From "Race"—Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings; By Katarzyna A. Kaszycka and Jan Strziko, Institute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, 61-701 Poznań, Poland: American Anthropologist March 2003, Vol. 105, No. 1, pp. 116-124 Abstract. Alun 13:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But what it doesn't say is whether this majority think that race exists as a biological phenomenon or a cultural/social one. I mean one can believe that race exists, but also understand that it has no biological basis. Maybe there is some bias against Coon, I don't know and care less, this is not the place for a discussion about him. If you want to discuss Coon in detail then I'd be happy to do it on my talk page. I simply make these points:
#Coon's views do not represent a consensus opinion in the field of Anthropology, therefore it is incorrect to make the claim that his theories are widely accepted or to use them as the basis for a wikipedia article.
#Coon's academic impartiality has been called into question, this means that he is a less than a reliable source.
#Coon's methods are mainly considered obsolete, his results certainly do not correlate with genetic evidence.
#Coon was interested in race, this article is about ethnicity, I included definitions of these above so we can see that ethnic identity does indeed include social, cultural, linguistic and religious elements. None of the definitions state that descent is more important than the other elements, and several maintain that descent includes percieved or a subjective view of descent. 
None of this is really serving to improve the article. I suggest we stick to proposals regarding the article. Alun 10:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

text: No one is claiming that  a percieved common ancestry is not a part of ethnicity. What I am saying is the same as you, that it is just a part of it, other users have claimed that we should correlate ethnic identity exclusively with descent, this is why the definitions are there. Alun 18:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I was thinking about your suggestion regarding spliting the article into two. It might not be a bad idea. What areas do you think display bias and unresolved POVs? I think you are right, the article doesn't really know what it wants to be. I would like to remove all of the migrationist/genetic material. I think we should have a seperate article specifically dealing with various theories regarding migration to the British and Irish Isles before say 1066. We could then include all material relevant to this. I'm currently reading The Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer and it's very good, it is well written and is impeccably sourced. This is the sort of information that could be used for a good article about who the various populations of the British and Irish Isles are descended from, he also sites many of the original research papers used here. There's also Barry Cunliffe's Britain BC and Britain AD for a more archaeological point of view. We could include all of the various invasionist theories and all of the cultural diffusionist theories, include the various interpretations of the genetic evidence etc. Much of this same information could then be removed from Anglo-Saxons and Welsh people etc. What do you think? Alun 18:22, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Coons was a racist segregationist, my link shows that he compromised his academic principles to support segregationism. Coons observations regarding the distributions of human phenotypes may have been detailed and may well be similar to genetic analysis that has been done recently. There is one major difference though. That is that coons was a racist and apparently a white supremacist who claimed seperate speciation events from Homo erectus for all so called human races, with a particularly special descent for Europeans (yeah very objective that one) this multi regional hypothesis is rejected by the vast majority of modern scientists, with a tiny minority of vested interests still clinging on to it. Humans have a very recent common African origin, all impartial genetic analysis claims so. All of these findings, which are in accord with many other studies based on different types of genetic variation assessed in different samples of humans, support an evolutionary scenario in which anatomically modern humans evolved first in Africa, accumilating genetic diversity. A small subset of the African population then left the continent, probably experienced a population bottleneck and founded anatomically modern human populations in the rest of the world. Of special importance to discussions of race, our species has a recent, common origin. This is from Nature Genetics a highly prestigious peer reviewed journal with excellent accademic credentials. Certain editors seem to have a vested interest in distorting the current state of scientific debate by introducing discredited and racialist material that is not accepted by the vast majority of modern scientific opinion. Coons may have well done excellent work at pinpointing the areas of greatest diversity, but he was dead wrong with his conclusions, and his discredited ideas about the different origins of human populations should not be peddled as anything other than contrary to the current scientific consensus. Alun 18:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

text: First, if I wanted to introduce my own political biased POV into wikipedia I would do it anonymously (oh, like you), but I always use my user account, this makes me completely accountable for all of my edits. Anyone can check my edit history at any time, I never edit without logging in. Secondly if I had a vested interest I would have edited the pages concerned, but in fact I have never edited any page to do with human evolution or to do with Coons, anyone can check this if they like. So your accusations are groundless. I am a scientist, I know what the current consensus is in the field of genetics, the out of Africa model is the consensus. There is no such thing as scientific fact. Only someone with absolutely no understanding of correct scientific method could think that such a thing exists. Alun 13:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Ah the old weasel words trick, how many? which ones? care to name them? Alun 13:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Did anyone say that they did? I just said that it discredits the multi-origin theory, that's all. Don't put words into my mouth. Alun 13:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I never asserted the contrary. I said the scientific consensus doesn't support it, even a tiny minority may still be many (after all many is a non-specific quantity that depends on context, sometimes one is many). This is what the another Nature article says: A few researchers still support a version of the 'multiregional' hypothesis.....But most now espouse a version of the 'out of Africa' model. Out of Ethiopia  Alun 13:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I never said his work was bad, I just said that his conclusions are wrong. He obviously thought the physical differences between human populations represented bigger differences that they actually do. This may have been an honest mistake, fair enough. Anyone who disputes the out of Africa model is is the minority now, like it or not it is not me who is distorting science here. Even the Carleton S. Coon article states that he special pleaded for white people Carleton Coon believed Whites followed a separate evolutionary path from other humans. He believed "The earliest Homo sapiens known, as represented by several examples from Europe and Africa, was an ancestral long-headed white man of short stature and moderately great brain size." and "the negro group probably evolved parallel to the white strain" (The Races of Europe, Chapter II). I have never edited this page, but it's clear that he was implying that somehow white people were special and somehow different from other humans. Alun 13:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Carleton S. Coon

message: Hello,
WikiProject Ethnic groups has added new assessment criteria for Ethnic Groups articles.
I rated the English people article: B-Class, with the following comments (see link to ratings summary page in the Ethnic groups template atop this talk page):
:*Broad range of subtopics; some subtopics received slightly scant coverage.
:* Some sections have excellent cite/reference, others not so good.
:*POV problems; page locked.
:*This article could be class=A without a huge amount of additional work.
You can give this article (and any other article) a rating, as described below.
:-->How to assess articles
Revisions of assessment ratings can be made by assigning an appropriate value via the class parameter in the WikiProject Ethnic groups project banner  that is currently placed at the top of Ethnic groups articles' talk pages. Quality assessment guidelines are at the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's assessment system page. After rating the article, please provide a short summary to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses. To add the summary, please edit this article's ratings summary page. A link to this page can be found in the  template on the article's talk page.
Please see the Project's article rating and assessment scheme for more information and the details and criteria for each rating value. A brief version can be found at  Template talk:Ethnic groups. You can also  enquire at the Ethnic groups Project's main discussion board for assistance.
Another way to help out that could be an enjoyable pastime is to visit  :Category:Unassessed Ethnic groups articles, find an interesting-looking article to read, and carefully assess it following those guidelines.
Thanks!--Ling.Nut 04:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Assessment Criteria for Ethnic Groups articles 

message: I've downgraded protection to s-protection, so I really hope you guys have calmed down now. Yesterday was your only collective pass and if I see anymore 3RR violations, personal attacks etc., I will start blocking. </br>
If one of you guys has a spare minute, could you please archive this page? I would like it archived so everyone can start with a clean and equal slate and I think getting rid of these rants and personal attacks would be a good start. I'll come back and do it tomorrow if no one wants to do it in the meanwhile.
Thanks, --Sarah Ewart (Talk) 14:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: The contributions to and contributions from sections in the infobox were never intended to reflect ethnic groups per se. They were intended to reflect societies/communities that contributed to or had contributions from English people. It was a deliberate tactic to avoid the ethnic tag. Having thought about it a bit, it seems to me that essentially the Contributions to section simply repeats the Regions with significant populations section. So I am revising my position and am now happy to dispense with the Contributions to section. Having said that, I am concerned about the numbers of people given in the Regions with significant populations section of the infobox. These essentially reflect people declaring English ancestry in censuses from the states that are included (rather than English ethnicity). So my compromise would result in the inclusion of the political entities mentioned, but with removal of the numbers stated (as with religions). I think these numbers can be reasonably included in the footnotes, with a statement to the effect that it is just not known whether the people that responded consider themselves ethnically English or whether they consider themselves of some other ethnicity, but that it is assumed that many of these people actually do consider themselves ethnically Engish, which is why they saw fit to include English ancestry in their census returns. Anyone who wants to find out more information need only refer to the footnote anyway. I'd like to get a consensus on this so we can get the page unprotected. It is reasonable that we all make compromises here. None of us is ever 100% correct, and we all have points of view. In the text of an article we can give all points of view, and therefore have a ballanced and neutral article. It is more difficult with an infobox, because information is either included or excluded, we cannot readily apply provisos. So I'd appreciate some cooperation here, especially from Epf and the previous anonymous user, as these people seem to be the ones who most disagree with this section. Alun 21:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A new proposal

message: This thorny subject seems to be one which is not relevant to this article. So I suggest we do not attemt to broach it here again. Alun 21:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: American/Canadian ethnicity

message: it says r1b averages 70% in England, most genetic studies have found it to average 65% in england, brian sykes book blood of the isles used 10,000 people from britain and he claims that england averages 64% r1b, scotland 75% and wales 83%.--Globe01 17:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Stephen Oppenheimer claims R1b is 60-75% in England. It's not uniformly distributed though, so the figure is somewhat missleading. I'm still reading his book The Origins of the British IMHO a far superior book to Sykes's, he has a very comprehensive list of sources and citations. He he says none of the samples taken by Capelli has fewer than 58% Iberian types. Or put another way he claims that there is a 15-42% male intrusion (average 30%) from Northern Europe into England since the last Ice Age (10,000 years ago), this fits with the 70% figure. England is far more heterogeneous in it's genetic composition than Wales and Scotland. Possibly we should reflect this in the article. Or we could also cite Sykes and Oppenheimer and put the 65% and the 70% figures in. Alun 18:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

text: You might have a good point, but I suppose we need to include the relevant POVs anyway. No one seems to be saying this is wrong as far as I'm aware. Oppenheimer has very detailed maps for sub-groups of R1b to the extent that he shows where the various colonisations of the British Isles occured and when. I think we need a seperate article for this information, something relating to prehistoric populating of the British and Irish Isles, I'm not sure this genetic info fits well on the ethnic group pages and we could include all of this info on a single page, maybe spit a bit off from the Immigration to the United Kingdom article. It seems to me that prehistoric migrations to the Islands do not conform to modern social or political boundaries, these prehistoric settlers knew nothing of Welsh people, English people or Scottish people. It could be argued thet English people (ethnic identity) originated at the time of the "Anglo-Saxon" invasion or indeed later during the time of Alfred through to Athelstan, when these people actually cane together as a unified group. So there is an argument that the article should reflect this more than anything else. This is not to say that these data should be completelly ignored, but we could refer to the "prehistoric migrations" article and include a short section here from that article. Much of the data are replicated here and at Welsh people. I don't edit the Scottish people article so I don't know about that. Alun 14:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  R1b percentages are wrong 

message: I have removed this tag which has been in place since the summer. There is no debate going on here over what it means and I suggest its just a hangover from an earlier time. If anyone objects replace it and state your reasons here.  Lumos3 11:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV tag 

message: About this text:
Nevertheless, a genetic research on European Population Substructure states:
   
Using a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel, we observed population structure in a diverse group of Europeans and European Americans. Under a variety of conditions and tests, there is a consistent and reproducible distinction between “northern” and “southern” European population groups: most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek) have >85% membership in the “southern” population; and most northern, western, eastern, and central Europeans have >90% in the “northern” population group.
	
English is included in "northern" European population group. [25]
1) He claimed irrelevancy first while relevancy was obvious from this line:
"English is included in "northern" European population group. "
2) Now he's saying "This section is about the origins of the English". The link between origin of people and genetic data should have been quite easy to understand.
3) The text also answers to previous claims about most English are descandents of Iberian People. It's important to note that English today isnt in same population group with modern Iberians. So the text has double relevancy as it answers previous claims in the section. I think all these should have been very easy to understand. Lukas19 14:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Wobble for his reasons and for this additional reason: this text is far too techinical for inclusion here.  This would be better placed in an article specifically on European Genetics.  So the study concludes "English is in the "norther" European population group...so what?  It doesn't tell us anything that isn't already in the article.--WilliamThweatt 14:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I repeat myself: "The text also answers to previous claims about most English being descandents of Iberian People. It's important to note that English today isnt in same population group with modern Iberians." Lukas19 15:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All western Europeans are the descendants of people from three Ice Age refuges, with an additional Neolithic component. No genetic study about the origins of the English disputes this. Indeed the R1b haplogroup is the most common all over Northern Europe. European men overwhelmingly have R1b, I or R1a haplotypes, which roughly correspond to the Iberian (more accurately Basque), the Balkan and Ukranian Ice age refuges. There was a Neolithic expansion out of the Near East that is more prominent in the south and the east of Europe. Not only does your paper express no opinion whatsoever as to the origins of the English, the quote you put in the article is also irrelevant. This information tells us nothing about the origins of the English. This information simply tells us that it is possible to draw an arbitrary line through the middle of Europe and show that people to the south of this line are more similar to each other than they are to people to the north of this line, and vice versa. This tells us nothing about the origins of the English. Furthermore due to the clinal nature of human geographical genetic variation it would be just as easy to draw a vertical line through the centre of Europe and show that eastern Europeans are similar to each other and western Europeans likewise. The data that are used in this test are not even English, they are from the UK, and therefore include people from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, all mixed together. This quote Using a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel, we observed population structure in a diverse group of Europeans and European Americans. Under a variety of conditions and tests, there is a consistent and reproducible distinction between “northern” and “southern” European population groups: most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek) have >85% membership in the “southern” population; and most northern, western, eastern, and central Europeans have >90% in the “northern” population group. has got nothing to do with origins, where does it mention either English people or their origins? It doesnt even say that southern Europeans are more similar to each other than they are to northern Europeans, though this is one of the inferences one can draw from it. Arbitrarily grouping geographically distributed polymorphisms into artificial "populations" and then using a limited sample of genetic material to show that some groups are more similar to each other than they are to other groups doesn't prove anything about relatedness or origins. When we talk about origins we need to use scientific and genetic data that are specifically about the genetic history of a group of people. At best this is just Thulean/Lucas19's opinion, at worst it is original research. Indeed the only reference I can find to any genetic analysis regarding perhistory and origins in the article is this It is interesting to speculate how the ability to distinguish northern and southern European populations relates to ancient as well as more modern differences in migration and admixture patterns. Archeological and skeletal evidence as well as studies of mitochondrial and Y chromosome haplogroups have provided evidence of upper Paleolithic, Neolithic, and more recent settlement and migrations as contributing to the origin of current European populations [12–18,22,49–52]. Phylogenetic analyses of Y haplotypic groups are interpreted to support both separate migrations from the Middle East 4,000 to 7,000 y ago as well as a more recent “Greek” expansion into Italy and the Iberian peninsula occurring closer to 2,500 y ago [16,18]. The earlier migrations would be consistent with waves spreading agricultural techniques from the Middle East and are supported by some mitochondrial DNA studies [13]. However, there is little consensus concerning the association of any of these migrations with agricultural techniques or trading routes [50,51], or for that matter with the spread of Indo-European languages [22,51,53]. Some studies of specific mitochondrial and Y haplogroups [53] are consistent with the demic diffusion hypothesis suggested by Cavali-Sforza et al. [22], and the work of Sokal et al. [54] and others have provided evidence of different patterns of repopulation from glacial refuges or have suggested a later influence from North Africa in both Italy and Spain [14,15,18]. As recently discussed by Barbujani and Chikhi, the origin(s) of modern European ancestors remains a controversial issue [55]. Other major population events, including the multiple epidemics during the Middle Ages, may also have resulted in genetic bottlenecks contributing to current differences in European population structure. But this mainly concerns the more recent population events that are not concerned with England. In conclusion, not only does this article no actually mention England at all, but it has nothing to say about the origins of the English. It is incorrect to imply that what applies to two general and very large pooled samples from large geographical areas of "northern and southern Europe" can equally be applied to more specific regional populations like England and the Basque country. Alun 16:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

text: You are correct R1b is an Atlantic group not a northern one, this was just a mistake, the paper Thulean/Lucas was using was about Northern Europeans and I suppose I was thinking about that. Anyway this article is not about Swedish people, Norwegian people, Danish people, Belgium people or people from the Netherlands. But it's worth looking at this world haplogroups map, R1b is vey dominant, even in Germany, it may not be in a majority, but it's still the single biggest group as far as I can see, and British men are very different to Scandinavians. English people, and British people are descended from paleolithic people from an Ice Age refuge in the Basque country. Are you disputing this? This is what Thulean/Lucas is disputing. His data are not relevant to this article, they make no mention of English people, they refer to Norther European people and Southern European people, they make little reference to origins, and when they do it is primarily to the neolithic. Thulean/Lucas's edit does not belong here. I suspect that he wants to introduce some concept regarding Nordic theory here, as it seems to be one of his favourite articles, and these data could be used to support such a theory. The R1b data clearly show that English people are mainly of Iberian origin, I know of no study that disputes this. There is also some Balkan refuge herritage in England that may be absent in other regions of the British and Irish Isles, according to Stephen Oppenheimer. There is a Neolithic component to the British population that is smaller than it is in mainland Europe, but still exists. The Y chromosome haplogroup maps also clearly show that there are east-west genetic clines in Europe as well as north south clines, andl also show the artificial nature of clustering large geographic areas into "populations", the genes are clinally distributed, not distributed in discrete populations as the paper cited by Thulean/Lukas would have it. Indeed one can take any geographical region (Wales or England or the British and Irish Isles or Northern Europe or Western Europe) and "prove" that the population is genetically "different" to other regions. It is not a matter of dispute that in general people are geneticaly more similar to those in close geographical proximity to them than to those at a distant geographical proximity. What is in dispute is whether these "populations" (or "races" if you will) are real or artificial biological constructs. I think the other point to make is that England itself displays much more genetic heterogeneity than other regions of the British and Irish Isles, possibly due to its greter area, but there are visible genetic clines even in England. It may be somewhat artificial to give only an absolute figure for the R1b haplotype frequency for England as a whole. It might be better to state that it is heterogeneously distributed in England and give the highest and lowest proportions and state the locations where these proportions occur, and then also give an absolute figure as well. Something like this for R1b, Cornwall 80%, York 57%, Norfolk 60% We may need a cite for the whole of England, I think you have been concerned about this figure in the past? They don't give one in the above map. I'll see if Oppenheimer gives a figure. Unfortunately Sykes for some strange reason doesn't use standard terminology in his book. Alun 18:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That was my point when I edited the article. To highlight that Iberian connection is ancient. Lukas19 17:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wobble's Reverts

message: This article is included in the category Germanic peoples although very few English would describe themselves as Germanic. (No source is given for the claim). I nominated the category for deletion - see its entry here - because it includes modern groups under a historical term (Roman period to mediaeval). The category is being used for a political agenda, to promote the idea that ethnic groups and nations in north-west Europe are "Germanic". That claim is typically associated with neo-nazi groups, and that seems to be the case in England too.Paul111 11:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well if the category is for people who speak germanic languages, then I don't see the problem, but we should also include Scottish people, Irish people and Welsh people in that case. I suppose it depends what the category is for, if it's a lingustic category then no problem. If it's an ethnic or racial category then it is a problem, I agree. Alun 12:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  English(ethnically) people are germanic, their technical term is Anglo- Saxon, and the angles and Saxons are from GERMANY and surrounding areas! even though most english people whouldn't say they are a germanic peoples, they have to pretty much accept they are since english or Anglo saoxns are germanic! Australian Jezza 07:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: English people are ethnically English and ethnically British, not ethnically German. English is a Germanic language, that does not make English people ethnically German. German people are ethnically German, English people are ethnically English. By your logic then Swedish people and Norwegian people are also ethnically German, and so are French people because of the Franks. Makes no sense to me. A group's ethnicity is defined by the group, not by the putative origins of the group. Alun 10:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Is there much of a difference? I don't think so, nationality is just a form of ethnicity. My understanding is that nations tend to be associated with specific geographic areas and are generally somewhat larger than ethnic groups, but the difference between a nation and an ethnic group is rather small. The claim that there is no such think as a British ethnicity has been made before, but I think it is simply an opinion held by certain people. There are many people in the world who do actually identify as ethnically British (I am one of them), our existence shows clearly that British ethnicity does exist, like it or not. Alun 07:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Nationality means the same as citizenship, you are thinking of this. I was thinking the British being a nation. Nationality is different to nation, which is a similar concept to ethnic group. Indeed British is not a nationality, a person can be a British citizen, but this is simply the legal relationship between a person and their state of origin. See the Wikipedia article Nation: Members of a "nation" share a common identity, and usually a common origin, in the sense of ancestry, parentage or descent.. Whereas the Wikipedia  ethnic group article states An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population of human beings whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry (Smith 1987). The concepts of nation and is different to citizenship in the sense of nationality: (Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty.) Find a deffinition of nation and it will not support your claim. Alun 15:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually all Germanic peoples are believed to have originated in present day Germany, and one has to be careful about what one is talking about. Modern day English people are at least as much descended from the ancient Britons as from putative invading Angles, Saxons and Jutes, if not more descended from ancient Britons. English people speak a Germanic language, much of their ancient culture (at least in parts of England) was related to that of ancient North Sea peoples, they had the same gods as these North Sea tribes, (Woden/Odin etc.) So no one disputes that there were ancient cultural, social and certainly biological ties between all the peopes of the North Sea region. But this article is not about Angles, Saxons or Jutes, it is not about Anglo-Saxons, it is about English people. What is not established is to what extent there was an Angle, Saxon and Jute invasion or what extent there was a replacement of people. It is also somewhat irrelevant to this article. This article is about English people, the English became a people, a nation at about the time of Alfred-Athelstan, late 9th Century-early tenth century. Before this there was no English people, there were Mericans and Northumbrians and Wessexians and Kentish men etc,  there had been attempts to manufacture an English identity, but the real impetus for the creation of an English nation/ethnic group were the Norse/Danish attacks. It seems to me that the argument that British people are not an ethnic group but a nation could equally be applied to English people. English ethnicity is as artificial an entity as British ethnicity, both were formed due to political considerations, the only difference is that English ethnic identity is 1000 years old and British ethnic identity is only about 400 years old. So what are you talking about when you claim that English people are a Germanic people? Do you mean that in the modsern world there is a pan-Germanic ethnic identity? I don't think that many English people would support the idea that they are of Germanic ethnicity. English people identify as English and British, ethnicity is about how people identify themselves, oe how they are identified by others, it is not about their putative origins. If you want to claim that the English are in part descended from people who would have considered themselves Germanic, then I think this is spot on. It really does depend on context as much as anything else. Alun 07:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  English are not a Germanic people 

message: The section opens with an assertion about the genetics of "English men" without any source, and continues in that vein. None of the studies which are quoted seem to refer to genetic material of the "English people", but instead to regional, local or national populations. The section contains no reliable source for any genetic information about the "English people", and could be deleted as unverifiable. However a better solution would be to move it to a separate article on the population genetics of Britain (or Britain and Ireland) - not just England, since the migration issues are related. This problem - unsourced claims based on personal interpretations of non-applicable genetic studies - is a problem at several ethnic/national articles.Paul111 10:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Read again because I definately see sources.Rex 16:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Um, so you claim no sources, then say that some studies are quoted. Aren't you contradicting yourself? Alun 06:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The studies use English people living in England. How would you define "English people"? Aren't English people a "nation"? I think they are a nation, so using regional populations in England is in fact using English people. I don't really understand what your point is. You seem to be saying that the "English people" are not the "English nation", which is clearly wrong. You also seem to be saying that local populations of people living in England do not represent "English people", which is also clearly wrong. Just how do you define an English person exactly? These studies are peer reviewed, none of the reviewers seem to have had any problem with these assumptions. If you can find academic peer reviewed journals that dispute these findings then they should be included in the article as well as per the neutality policy. As far as I can see tis just seems to be your opinion that these papers do not represent English people and you have provided no verifiable reliable source that disputes these papers. I cannot understand your claim that there are no citations, see my comment above, and that of Rex Germanus. Alun 06:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: How much immigration to England do you think there has been? Do you think these samples were taken from recent immigrants? Have you proof that these data have been distorted? Do you know of any studies that dispute these findings? Are you disputing the accuracy of this work? Do you think that the population is primarily composed of people who are not English? I really don't understand the source of your scepticism. I don't really understand what you are getting at. I do think that these data should not really be in this article. I think we need an article about the origins of British and Irish people, where we can put all of these genetic studies, they don't really fit here. I think the origins of the English as an ethnic group are quite recent, and lie in the unification of the country in the tenth century. I don't think our identity or ethnicity is defined by the founding paleolithic populations of the British and Irish Isles, though they are clearly the ancestors of modern English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish people, and also of the vast majority of the modern population of the British and Irish Isles. I also dispute how "English" self identified "English people" living in North America really are, when they edit here they often display a very superficial understanding of English culture and society, personally I think many North Americans that identify as English have little or no real concept of English ethnic identity whatsoever, and are merely the descendants of English people, and so assume that they are ethnically English, when in effect their society and culture would be alien to the English ethnic group. The data at the top of the page are extremely unreliable, and mainly refer to English descent rather than to English ethnic identity. I do not like them and do not think they are accurate. I do think your edit was excellent and support it. Alun 12:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Ah, I think this is the same as the book Blood of the Isles, possibly it has a different name in the US? It's OK, I'm currently reading it. One of the problems with Sykes's work is that he doesn't use standard genetic nomenclature. It's highly accessible to the layman and is well written, though it's light on content and detailed analysis. A much more detailed and authoritative book is Stephen Oppenheimer's The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story. There's much more detail and his list of sources is very comprehensive.  Oppenheimer also relies on the previously published work of other academics, which means that it is easy to go and find the papers and works he has used in the book. The drawback of Oppenheimer's book is that it is far less accessible, indeed I think on occasion he goes into too much detail, but he does use standard genetic names, and charts numerous founding events for the British Isles from the Basque and Balkan refugia and from the Near Eastern neolithic expansion. Both these books show convincingly that the modern population of the British and Irish Isles are overwhelmingly descended from these original colonisers from the paleolithic and neolithic (mainly from the Basque refuge, this can be shown using bothe Y chromosome data and mtDNA data,) though there is evidence of a smaller founding event in England of people from the Balkan refuge) and that subsequent invasions were small in scale. These subsequent invasions can be traced genetically, but their legacy indicates that the sort of "mass" invasions/migrations and displacements that were considered to have occured in the past never happened. There was no displacement of the entire population of south eastern Great Britain by "Germanic invaders". Indeed there is a growing idea that the south eastern part of Great Britain has had a  Germanic language for much longer than was previously thought. Oppenheimer thinks that the peoples living in northern France (north of the Seine) and in southern Britain may have been closely related and have spoken Germanic languages even in Caesar's time. Alun 06:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Genetic statistics apply to the population in question. The self-described 'English" in the USA will have, in most cases, Irish, Scottish, German, Dutch, Scandinavian and many other ancestors. The population of England has also altered since their ancestors left, which could have been in the 17th century. I reinserted the accuracy tag and again removed the claim about English men, since no source is give. It seems to be from an academic source, so that should be easilt traceable.Paul111 12:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually genetic statistics apply to the population in question and the ancestors of the population in question. Our genes come from our ancestors. Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I know of no one who claims this except for you. If you want to make this assertion you need to provide some sort of evidence. There is no evidence of any mass migration into England since then as far as I am aware. There may have been some internal migration, but a great deal of the population structure has remained unchanged. You have not addressed any of the points I have asked of you. Your edit is unsupported. Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: So what exactly is your point? Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Have you looked at the sources at the end of the paragraph?  Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: There has been mass immigration into England since the 17th century. Inferences on ancestry drawn from the current population can not be retroactively applied to the population of England in say, 1700. So even if you could find a village in New England where they had intermarried since migrating from England in 1700, it would still not be comparable to the present population of England.Paul111 11:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: This is simply untrue. If you are going to make ourageous claims like this I think you really need to provide a source. By your reckoning the population of England would have to have been massively replaced by people from the Basque country within the last 300 years. That is about 85% of the entire modern population of the British Isles would have to be of recent (less than 300 years) Basque descent. So why don't we speak Basque? The other scenario would be that 64% of the population of England is of recent Irish descent, this is again untenable as an arguement, and would still place the modern population of England (that is people that identify as English) as being descended from the western Ice age refuge population. Isn't it odd that there are no historical records for mass migration from Spain to England over the last 300 years. Indeed both Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer claim that the current British population is primarily descended from paleolithic and mesolithic populations that migrated there between about 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. They can proove this by showing that certain differences in the mtDNA and Y chromosome of people from the British Isles only occur in the British Isles, and no where else in the world. Because these differences (mutations) can be dated, we can show when exactly the "ancestral" DNA fragment left it's origin (in this case the Ice age refuge in the Basque country) and settled in the British Isles. This gives a date of ~ 12,000-8,000 years ago for the ancestors of the vast majority of the people living on the British and Irish Isles today. More recently (about 6,500 years ago) there was a significant migration of neolithic peoples into Europe, these also settled in the British Isles and have left their genetic legacy as well. Their genetic markers in the modern population occur at a lower frequency, but it is still significant. So two eminent geneticists (Oppenheimer ans Sykes) have both produced books recently that show clearly that the modern British population (including the English one) is overwhelmingly descended from founding events thousands of years ago.The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language....Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix. So where is your evidence of "mass migration" to England within the last 300 years? I don't believe it, it would be documented and I see no documentary evidence for either mass migration or population displacement anywhere in England over the last 300 years. Indeed it is becoming increasingly apparent that the "mass migrations" of the past were myths. This modern one of yours is supposed to have happened recently, so where is the evidence? Alun 13:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes it would. Your claims are without foundation. Alun 13:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The onus is on the editors who want claims in the article, about the genetic composition of the 'English nation' or the 'English ethnic group', to provide sources. Since there is no scientific definition of these two groups, there is no data on them either. At most there are data on the population of England.Paul111 10:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This reasoning applies to the whole article. It especially applies to the section regarding "Significant populations". As far as I can see there is no evidence that 25 000 000  US citicens claim English ethnic identity, merely that 25 000 000 US citizens claim some English descent. Be that as it may, there is no reason to assume that people in England do not identify as ethnically English Can you explain why you think English people are not ethnically English? To extrapolate this point would be to apply it to all ethnic group articles on the whole of wikipedia. There are no data anywhere in the world that are collected about the English ethnic group. Therefore every piece of information in the article remains unverified according to your criteria. Should we AfD the article? Unless you can provide evidence that the English people that participated in the study do not identify as ethnically English then I see no reason not to accept that they do. Ethnically English people live in England, therefore England is the main source for DNA samples when investigating the origins of the English. There is no evidence that the modern population of England is not ethnically English. You have made the claim for massive immigration to England within the last three hundred years. There is no evidence for this claim. I wonder what your motivation is for doubting these data? I can see no reason for you to be making these claims. Indeed you have provided no evidence whatsoever. Your argument above is little more than sophistry. Be more specific, provide some evidence for what you claim. Then let's see if we can come to a consensus. I am hoping to start an article about the origins of the population of the British and Irish Isles soon (when I get time), and possibly one about the origins of the European population. The information about the origins of the English can then be removed from here and we can have a coherent article about population origins. I think this is far more satisfactory. Alun 11:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: If genetic studies "make extra care not to choose people who are of recent immigrant ancestry" then they are valid for the selected population. Research can exclude recent immigrants. But if it does not, then it does not. That is why genetic statistics for the "population of England" do not equate to statistics for the "English people". If the source relates to specifically selected populationsm, then put that in the article, but it can not be assumed that researchers have gone looking for one. Further discussion of this point seems futile, the best thing to do is simply to stick to Wikipedia guidelines about sources, and preferably to original publications in scientific journals.Paul111 11:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Genetic data use indigenous populations. If you read the sources then you would know this. Indigenous populations are populations of people who know of no known recent immigration for any ancestors. Furthermore they collect both maternal grandmother information and paternal grandfather information for sourcing the sample, this is to minimise the chance of recent internal migration skewing the data. This is because grandparental place of birth is more likely to be close to the source population of any genetic origin. The populations studied would include some quite exotic Y chromosome and mtDNA signatures if they included recent migrants, indigenous European mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA are quite distinctive, most recent immigration to the UK has been from distant sources and not from Europe. It is also true that these genetic markers can be dated, and have been indigenous to the UK for thousands (in some cases tens of thousands) of years. It is somewhat odd to claim that populations that can be dated to thousands of years at a specific location are not representative of the ethnic group of the region. I still don't really understand what your original point was. You claimed massive recent immigration the England, I wonder what you base this assumption on? You have provided no evidence for this assertion. I think we are sticking to wikipeda guidelines, do you have some sort of specific point to make about English people here? The English population defines the English ethnic group, the English population is indigenous from the point of view of being descended from founding events in the paleolithic, mesolithic and neolithic. There is nothing in this source that does not conform to wikipedia guidelines regarding sources. This is about the origins of the English, all ethnic English people are derived from England, so they must have the same origins as the English population. Your reasoning is not supported by any sources so what evidence do you have to doubt this source? Alun 14:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: If the English all live in England, then the figure of '85 million English' has got to go. The article is full of this sort of inconsistencies, like many other ethnic group articles. That is why a rigorous attitude to unsourced data is necessary.Paul111 11:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The English do not all live in England, but neither are people who claim English ancestry/descent necessarily part of the English ethnic group. Claiming English ancestry does not automatically make a person ethnically English, isn't this obvious? Ethnicity is social and cultural, it seems absurd to claim that 25 million US citizens are "ethnically English", not just because they have no connection to English society or culture (though this should be enough), but because they have not claimed to be ethnically English on their census forms. There are no data available for how many US citizens are ethnically English, just as there are no data available for Australia etc. Census data are not reliable because they do not represent "ethnicity", but "descent". The UK census does collect ethnic identity data (but not data for descent), but in this case they only collect data for British ethnic identity. I suggest you look at the footnotes, it's clear from these that the data presented are not ethnic data, but data for descent. I have made this more obvious in the infobox. I am strongly in favour of removing this infobox altogether, it has ben nothing but a source of contention since it was included in the article. It seems imposible to include accurately any information there, for the simple reason that no country in the world ever seems to collect information regarding the English as an ethnic group, and so for nearly all sections data are not available. At best all of the figures in this infobox are guesses. Alun 11:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genetics: accuracy disputed 

message: I mainly agree with Veritas's edit. There's a problem with Paul's edit in that he claimed Genetic statistics about the population of England do not apply to populations outside England, such as those self-identified as English in the United States census. Well for one thing if the "self-identified American English" are the descendants of English people, then the genetic analysis must apply to them, either via their Y chromosome or their mtDNA. If the genetics do not apply to them, then they cannot be the direct descendants of English people, which beggs the question from what source do they claim English ethnic identity?. I will note that if an English woman marries a non English man, and has a son (English mtDNA, non English Y chromosome), and her son marries a non English woman, then their children will not have Y chromosomes or mtDNA from England, but the "English" connetion is quite dilute by this time anyway, the children could belong to at least three, or even four different ethnic groups, and we cannot assume that they will consider themselves "English". Conversely the US census does not collect data on ethnic identity (as far as I can tell). The data are presented here as data for descent rather than ethnic identity, so actually the data listed as "significant populations" (of ethnically English people) are erroneous, they do not display ethnic English people in living in the USA, but rather people of English descent, we don't know if these people identify as ethnically English. The most telling example is from New Zealand. In the 1996 census in NZ the question asked about descent and we get a very large figure for English descent 281,895 whereas in the 2001 census (and 1991 census) the question was phrased to more accurately reflect self defined ethnicity rather than descent and we get a much smaller figure 34,074. So how the data are collected is very important, and I don't really see how anyone can claim, as Paul seems to be doing, that North Americans that claim descent from English people are more ethnically English than actual people living in England, who are exposed to English society and culture from birth untill death. US society and culture is not English, and I find it difficult to understand how people from North America can claim English ethnicity when they have so little experience of what makes English people English. To claim English descent is a different thing than to claim English ethnicity. The UK Office for National Statistics defines an ethnic group as such “An ethnic group is a collectivity within a larger population having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a shared past, and a cultural focus upon one or more symbolic elements which define the group’s identity, such as kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group”. Now I don't claim to be an expert on American culture, but I can see that Irish ethnicity is alive and well in the USA, and I can see that Jewish and Italian ethnicities are alive and well, we see them portrayed often on the television. But let's face it there was massive immigration from all of these groups relatively recently, within the last 150 years, so they are relative newcommers who have a solid and recent familial link to their countries and cultures of origin. There has been no recent massive immigration to the USA or North America by English people. People from England that settled in the USA did so at a much earlier date, and were often fleeing religious persecution, they were also instrumental in creating the USA and went to war to do this, society and culture in the USA has little or no similarity to that of the UK or England. There is also a great deal of confusion in the USA as to the difference between the UK, Great Britian and England, this is common amongst foreigners generally, but such a lack of knowledge would indicate to me a distinct lack of any real ethnic relatedness. This may be indicated by the fact that many Americans claim English descent (25 million), but a far smaller number claim British descent (1 million). I can't help but feel that many of these people may not actually know the difference between England and Britain. These figures are also very different to how people in England self identify, with English people identifying primarily as British. When forced to choose a British or English identity people in England choose British (48%) over English (38%). When given the choice of British and English 31% choose to identify as equally English and British (this is a relative majority) with 19% more English than British, 13% more British than English, 17% English not British and 10% British not English. Alun 07:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Genetic statistics apply to the population in question. The self-described 'English" in the USA will have, in most cases, Irish, Scottish, German, Dutch, Scandinavian and many other ancestors. The population of England has also altered since their ancestors left, which could have been in the 17th century. I reinserted the accuracy tag and again removed the claim about English men, since no source is give. It seems to be from an academic source, so that should be easilt traceable.Paul111 12:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually genetic statistics apply to the population in question and the ancestors of the population in question. Our genes come from our ancestors. Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I know of no one who claims this except for you. If you want to make this assertion you need to provide some sort of evidence. There is no evidence of any mass migration into England since then as far as I am aware. There may have been some internal migration, but a great deal of the population structure has remained unchanged. You have not addressed any of the points I have asked of you. Your edit is unsupported. Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: So what exactly is your point? Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Have you looked at the sources at the end of the paragraph?  Alun 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: There has been mass immigration into England since the 17th century. Inferences on ancestry drawn from the current population can not be retroactively applied to the population of England in say, 1700. So even if you could find a village in New England where they had intermarried since migrating from England in 1700, it would still not be comparable to the present population of England.Paul111 11:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: This is simply untrue. If you are going to make ourageous claims like this I think you really need to provide a source. By your reckoning the population of England would have to have been massively replaced by people from the Basque country within the last 300 years. That is about 85% of the entire modern population of the British Isles would have to be of recent (less than 300 years) Basque descent. So why don't we speak Basque? The other scenario would be that 64% of the population of England is of recent Irish descent, this is again untenable as an arguement, and would still place the modern population of England (that is people that identify as English) as being descended from the western Ice age refuge population. Isn't it odd that there are no historical records for mass migration from Spain to England over the last 300 years. Indeed both Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer claim that the current British population is primarily descended from paleolithic and mesolithic populations that migrated there between about 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. They can proove this by showing that certain differences in the mtDNA and Y chromosome of people from the British Isles only occur in the British Isles, and no where else in the world. Because these differences (mutations) can be dated, we can show when exactly the "ancestral" DNA fragment left it's origin (in this case the Ice age refuge in the Basque country) and settled in the British Isles. This gives a date of ~ 12,000-8,000 years ago for the ancestors of the vast majority of the people living on the British and Irish Isles today. More recently (about 6,500 years ago) there was a significant migration of neolithic peoples into Europe, these also settled in the British Isles and have left their genetic legacy as well. Their genetic markers in the modern population occur at a lower frequency, but it is still significant. So two eminent geneticists (Oppenheimer ans Sykes) have both produced books recently that show clearly that the modern British population (including the English one) is overwhelmingly descended from founding events thousands of years ago.The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language....Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix. So where is your evidence of "mass migration" to England within the last 300 years? I don't believe it, it would be documented and I see no documentary evidence for either mass migration or population displacement anywhere in England over the last 300 years. Indeed it is becoming increasingly apparent that the "mass migrations" of the past were myths. This modern one of yours is supposed to have happened recently, so where is the evidence? Alun 13:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes it would. Your claims are without foundation. Alun 13:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit of Genetics section

message: The cited website does not include the claim made in the article that 70% of "English men" had a particular genetic marker. It is a genealogy website containing pseudoscientific claims based on a persoanl interpretation of genetic research. It is wholly unrereliable as a population genetics source. The linked haplogroup map does not include a diagram for England or for the 'English people', however defined. As it stands, nothing in the opening paragraph of this section is given a reliable source.Paul111 11:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The onus is on the editors who want claims in the article, about the genetic composition of the 'English nation' or the 'English ethnic group', to provide sources. Since there is no scientific definition of these two groups, there is no data on them either. At most there are data on the population of England.Paul111 10:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This reasoning applies to the whole article. It especially applies to the section regarding "Significant populations". As far as I can see there is no evidence that 25 000 000  US citicens claim English ethnic identity, merely that 25 000 000 US citizens claim some English descent. Be that as it may, there is no reason to assume that people in England do not identify as ethnically English Can you explain why you think English people are not ethnically English? To extrapolate this point would be to apply it to all ethnic group articles on the whole of wikipedia. There are no data anywhere in the world that are collected about the English ethnic group. Therefore every piece of information in the article remains unverified according to your criteria. Should we AfD the article? Unless you can provide evidence that the English people that participated in the study do not identify as ethnically English then I see no reason not to accept that they do. Ethnically English people live in England, therefore England is the main source for DNA samples when investigating the origins of the English. There is no evidence that the modern population of England is not ethnically English. You have made the claim for massive immigration to England within the last three hundred years. There is no evidence for this claim. I wonder what your motivation is for doubting these data? I can see no reason for you to be making these claims. Indeed you have provided no evidence whatsoever. Your argument above is little more than sophistry. Be more specific, provide some evidence for what you claim. Then let's see if we can come to a consensus. I am hoping to start an article about the origins of the population of the British and Irish Isles soon (when I get time), and possibly one about the origins of the European population. The information about the origins of the English can then be removed from here and we can have a coherent article about population origins. I think this is far more satisfactory. Alun 11:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unreliable sources (or none)

message: In 2001, 4.9 million (8.3 per cent) of the total population of the UK were born overseas. This is more than double the 2.1 million (4.2 per cent) in 1951. Source: UK Census 2001, . They are concentrated in England, especially London, see the maps here: 8% non-white in UK For that reason alone, it is accurate to speak of large-scale immigration. Whether you call it "mass" immigration is a question of taste. It is certainly enough to make the population different, in terms of ancestry, from the population in 1700. The immigration is accelerating, but labour migration to England from Ireland, Scotland and Wales was underway by the 18th century.
8% of UK population are non-white , primarily resulting from recent (post-1950) immigration. That alone is enough to make the population ethnically different from the population of the British Isles in 1700 or 1800. Net migration into the UK has risen (over the last 15 years) to around 600 000 annually . This inflow alone is enough to alter the population composition.
The 2011 UK Census may include a question on national identity, which would settle some of the debates around this issue. See the consultation: . It is however curious to deny that millions of immigrants have entered the UK, and concentrated in England, and it is not clear exactly what the political motive is.Paul111 18:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If genetic studies "make extra care not to choose people who are of recent immigrant ancestry" then they are valid for the selected population. Research can exclude recent immigrants. But if it does not, then it does not. That is why genetic statistics for the "population of England" do not equate to statistics for the "English people". If the source relates to specifically selected populationsm, then put that in the article, but it can not be assumed that researchers have gone looking for one. Further discussion of this point seems futile, the best thing to do is simply to stick to Wikipedia guidelines about sources, and preferably to original publications in scientific journals.Paul111 11:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Genetic data use indigenous populations. If you read the sources then you would know this. Indigenous populations are populations of people who know of no known recent immigration for any ancestors. Furthermore they collect both maternal grandmother information and paternal grandfather information for sourcing the sample, this is to minimise the chance of recent internal migration skewing the data. This is because grandparental place of birth is more likely to be close to the source population of any genetic origin. The populations studied would include some quite exotic Y chromosome and mtDNA signatures if they included recent migrants, indigenous European mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA are quite distinctive, most recent immigration to the UK has been from distant sources and not from Europe. It is also true that these genetic markers can be dated, and have been indigenous to the UK for thousands (in some cases tens of thousands) of years. It is somewhat odd to claim that populations that can be dated to thousands of years at a specific location are not representative of the ethnic group of the region. I still don't really understand what your original point was. You claimed massive recent immigration the England, I wonder what you base this assumption on? You have provided no evidence for this assertion. I think we are sticking to wikipeda guidelines, do you have some sort of specific point to make about English people here? The English population defines the English ethnic group, the English population is indigenous from the point of view of being descended from founding events in the paleolithic, mesolithic and neolithic. There is nothing in this source that does not conform to wikipedia guidelines regarding sources. This is about the origins of the English, all ethnic English people are derived from England, so they must have the same origins as the English population. Your reasoning is not supported by any sources so what evidence do you have to doubt this source? Alun 14:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: If the English all live in England, then the figure of '85 million English' has got to go. The article is full of this sort of inconsistencies, like many other ethnic group articles. That is why a rigorous attitude to unsourced data is necessary.Paul111 11:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The English do not all live in England, but neither are people who claim English ancestry/descent necessarily part of the English ethnic group. Claiming English ancestry does not automatically make a person ethnically English, isn't this obvious? Ethnicity is social and cultural, it seems absurd to claim that 25 million US citizens are "ethnically English", not just because they have no connection to English society or culture (though this should be enough), but because they have not claimed to be ethnically English on their census forms. There are no data available for how many US citizens are ethnically English, just as there are no data available for Australia etc. Census data are not reliable because they do not represent "ethnicity", but "descent". The UK census does collect ethnic identity data (but not data for descent), but in this case they only collect data for British ethnic identity. I suggest you look at the footnotes, it's clear from these that the data presented are not ethnic data, but data for descent. I have made this more obvious in the infobox. I am strongly in favour of removing this infobox altogether, it has ben nothing but a source of contention since it was included in the article. It seems imposible to include accurately any information there, for the simple reason that no country in the world ever seems to collect information regarding the English as an ethnic group, and so for nearly all sections data are not available. At best all of the figures in this infobox are guesses. Alun 11:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources for immigration

message: Some users here insist on calling Americans, Canadians, etc, who have been Americans for generations and who have mixed among other Americans for generations, English people. How long will need the Americans (or others) to be just what they are: Americans. One thousand years?. 
Another most worrying attitude is that the history comments, some seem to imply that these Americans, Canadians etc, can me more English than other English people, simply because those English people may not be considered "white". Veritas et Severitas 14:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a specific example? In many cases these American/Canadians/Australians will have responded to a question which asked about their ethnic origin, ethnic group, or ancestry - often questions which are designed to measure self-identity and affiliation. They answered English. This does not preclude other identities. -- zzuuzz (talk) 14:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I think that it is relevent and important to mention these Canadians/Americans/Australians/etc, as long as they are credited as being of English ancestry rather than actually being ethnically English, which they are not. Static Sleepstorm 21:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geographic distribution 

message: back to the genetics again for abit (sorry i know it can be very dull for some people but factual accuracy is important), in oppenheimers new book 'origins of the british' he mentions that there were migrations from a ukranian and a balkan refuge to england and scotland (aswell as scandinavia and germany), this is currently not mentioned in the article, we need to formulate a way of presenting or citing thie info in the article as it only mentions the iberian refuge to the british isles as a whole. If any users could make the time and take the effort to source out all the data concerning english genetics otherwise this article will be biased or not neutral. --Globe01 19:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More genetics 

message: http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v13/n12/abs/5201482a.html
heres is a link from the european journal of genetics basically saying that at least the irish basque link is paleolithic and there may not hasve been re-expansions from the basque country, i have only read the abstract. --Globe01 13:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  British Basque Link Alternative theory 

message: I am confused about the inclusion of the United States, Australia, Canada etc. under "Regions with significant populations" in the infobox of the article. No doubt, many people in those countries have some English ancestry but what does it say about their ethnic identity? Not much. The overwhelming majority of those people are certainly not English anymore. They do not see themselves as such. Are not seen as such by the English who today visit or immigrate to their countries.
Maybe it should be made clear that these countries were colonized by English immigrants (over the course of many centuries), whose descendants later developed their own cultural and/or ethnic identities? -- Mathieugp 15:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest you read through the talk page and it's archives. I agree with you completely, but it seems that many North Americans (most of whom seem to have a limited grasp of even the basics of English culture and society) seem to think that having an English ancestor makes them ethnically English. It's got to the point where many people seem to be claiming that a person's ethnicity is dependent on nothing more than a belief that one might have an ancestor from a certain place, and according to these people one's upbringing, societal norms, culture, language, religion, country of origin etc. are all apparently irrelevant. It's nonsense I know, but it keeps being stated here over and over. Alun 16:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have interjected to the discussions from time to time, perhaps ambiguously, and indeed I added many of the footnotes about these numbers, so will just make it clear that I take a position in the middle of the two extremes. The people in New Zealand clearly claim to belong to the English ethnic group (as opposed to ancestry or origin etc). They belong to the English ethnic group. There is a significant population of English in Spain. The people in the US and Australia have English ethnic origins. In terms of a perceived common ancestry they are worth mentioning in this article as very closely related, if not in fact ethnic English. The number in Canada is of particular interest as a significant number claim English ethnic origins but do not claim Canadian ethnic origins. There are many English people who have settled in these countries in their own lifetime. I do not really think that counting all these people among the English is applicable, but they are worth mentioning and their reported numbers are worth reporting in this article. Equally, there is no basis for reporting the number of English in England. The total number of English (everywhere) cannot be reliably reported either. I am not a fan of this infobox. -- zzuuzz (talk) 16:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  (Replying to Alun) Right, I noticed it too. That old problem of the ambiguity of words... Maybe we can help to resolve the issue by clarifying that ethnicity is socially transmitted, unlike "race" which has to be passed down biologically. One common, probably the most frequent way a person will come to identify and/or be identified as a member of a given ethnic group is to be brought up as a member of that group. A confusion arise I think because a great deal of people (this would be my case for example) are both member of a given ethnic group and also member of the main community(ies) of biological descent that make up the bulk of the said ethnic population. Do you think that could help? -- Mathieugp 17:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  (Replying to zzuuzz) Naturally, the colonization of America and other continents by the Europeans gave birth to new nations that are closely related to the original ones (by language, legal heritage, religious heritage and other). For example, the French and the Quebecers, speaking of their relation, popularly say that they are "cousins" (Nos cousins les Québécois, nos cousins les Français). -- Mathieugp 17:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  Maybe we can fix the infobox by replacing the figures of people who claim ancestry in the US, Canada etc by the figures of people who are native English speakers born in England in those countries? We would then be counting people who are very likely to be ethnic English. There are for sure stats on this. It just requires a little bit more math. :-) -- Mathieugp 18:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  I just noticed that the infobox for French people has separate cells for "French citizens", "French speakers", "French ancestry claimed". Maybe something along those lines? -- Mathieugp 18:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think something like that would be an improvement, but with some changes. The most important thing is to distinguish those with English ancestry from those claiming English ethnicity. The citizen column for France is there because of their peculiar Republic philosophy - the English equivalent for England would be resident population, and for the rest of the world it would be emigrants or passport holders (however you can't call all the people in England - even those who were born there - English, and I would be surprised if there were emigrant statistics for those claiming English ethnicity or even previous English residency). The number of English speakers would not be useful for this article. I would prefer to see a solution which meant the footnotes went into a section in the article which could properly present and explain these crude numbers. The main problem we have is that the only statistic we have for people claiming to belong to the English ethnic group is for those in New Zealand. -- zzuuzz (talk) 01:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  About the people who claim that one or more of their ancestors was English 

message: I'm fucking off from wikipedia. This proves that these "admins" are not interested in "neutrality". If you want proof see that User:LSLM (good not racist bloke) has been blocked but Alun 00:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: To the joy of many

message: Ha Ha ha, new studies just showed that English people some thosand years ago have much dna from Iran, Syria and Israel. God has a sense of humor. We need to add this. I need to find the source.--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ) 13:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: heh :)  God has nothing to do with it, with respect.  Our genes tell their own story.  By all means add this, but it will upset the ethnic purists on this page. Hakluyt bean 21:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Middle Eastern Genes found

message: I removed both paragraphs and gave a link to the population genetics of the british isles articles.
It was totally unbalanced (it only mentioned an old outdated and now doubted amongst the scientific community of anglo saxon invasion only).
Either include all the genetic info to make it balanced or have none of it, keeping one veiw point of the genetics of england is not a summary and the paragraph that was included was a one sided veiw of the genetics of england. --Globe01 11:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Germans didn't start the war, the British declared war on Germany. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they shoudn't have(indeed the UK should have acted much earlier), but to be accurate, we gave them an ultimatum which they ignored, so we declared war on them. It was the fault of the UK leadership really, the Nazis had every reason to assume that their ultimatum was not serious, we had let them get away with so many annexations and invasions over the previous three years or so (we all know "Peace in our time"), in this the Nazi leadership miscalculated badly. The policy of appeasment of the British government meant that what might have been a small conflict had they acted in 1935 (say) became a major war by 1939. Anyway I digress, there's no doubt that the British state declared war (and therefore "started it"), and there's no doubt that we commited war crimes, especially the bombing of civilian targets. I don't take the view that just because the crimes of the Nazi state were worse, it means we should gloss over the crimes of the British state. Alun 11:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Genetics

message: "Archeological discoveries suggest that North Africans may have had some presence in those parts of Britain that were to become England at the time of the Roman Empire.<ref)The Black Romans: BBC culture website. Retrieved 21 July 2006.</ref)".  
This External Ref (currently Note 18) is dead. === Vernon White (talk) 14:14, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead Link 

message: The English are not an ethnic group, at least they haven't been since the Victorians and their cooked-up ideas of racial difference, which fed into all kinds of nonsense about divisions between races in the 20th Century.  Nonsense which genetics is revealing to be myth.  One might be excused for thinking that one hazy cultural practice has been replaced by another; the celebrating of pseudo-ethnicity among North Americans of European origin.  See article Irish people for example.  It's cultural practice to draw ethnic boundaries coincident with political borders; it may accommodate political sensitivities, but it's not scientifically accurate nor encyclopaedic  prospect magazine eg.  Room is also going to have to be made for Black Britons.  Here's a Black British MP discussing same (when she references the surprise she encounters that she is British I'm pretty sure she's referring to the standard North American reaction) BBC. Hakluyt bean 21:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: haha, give ma a break Hak. The woman in that article clearly has some bent opinion on Britain being some "multi-racial society" which has always been sp. She doesn't know what she's talking about and even says: "But because the different nationalities shared a common skin colour, it was possible to ignore the racial diversity which always existed in the British Isles.", herself talking about how there was and is racial differences between groups. Your own quotes you reference from disagree with alot of what your saying and do talk of differences between peoples that are there of course. There is no "pseudo-ethnicity" of Euroepan-Americans and their identities are ethnicities and you aren't even understanding what parts make up an ethnicity. I'm pretty sure English people woudl disagree andsay they are an ethnic group and have distinct differences and ancestry.
"like its any different physiologically from any other nationalities blood, or DNA for that matter."
well I don't know about nationalities, but there are of course genetic differences between different ethnic groups or races that also happen to be linked to states, nations or regions. Every person and group is different. I think if anyone read your statemnets here, they would want that minute of their life back. 69.157.100.164 23:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text: You are quite right. The above user (User:69.157.100.164) is a banned user who used to be called Eoganan. He has a long history of tendentious editing and POV pushing (see the edit history of this page and that of Recent single-origin hypothesis  or indeed the personal attacks on my user page from this editor for proof of the lack of good faith this editor has displayed). He has a strange obsession that ethnicity is the same as race, and a firm convicton that race is a biological construct, despite the obvious and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He dismisses all evidence that does not support his point of view as biased, however impeccable the source, but uses sources with no accademic credentials to support his POV. He also has a very long history of aggressive personal attacks. He persists in editing through IP addresses and has shown no interest in formuing a consensus. His IP address usually begins with 69.157 or 69.156 (but not always), which is how I know who he is. This seems to be an IP associated with Bell Canada (see here), but that's all I know about it. Alun 13:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ethnic