The following excerpt is from an article posted in the Black Country Bugle.
Around one million men in the UK can claim to be direct descendants of the Romans, scientists have revealed.
The Roman army invaded Britain in 43 AD and left around 400 years later, in the early 5th century. But historians and scientists claim that the legions left behind their legacy in the genes of many Britons.
A study by BritainsDNA, a commercial DNA testing company, compared Y chromosome markers found in men in Britain with those found in modern Italy. The results found five major types of DNA which were likely to have come from the Roman legions.
The first, known as Alpine, was found in 13% of Italian men, 6.5% of men in England and Wales, 4.3% in Scotland and 1.8% in Ireland.
As Ireland was never conquered and Scotland was only occupied for a short time, the researchers said these figures suggested this DNA was a “probable candidate” to be linked to the Romans.
When applied to the total population of the UK, it was estimated that 1.6 million men carried the Alpine marker, of which half a million may be descended from the Roman armies.
