New light shed on the origins of the Picts

Modern Scotland was once a series of smaller kingdoms that coalesced across time. The kingdom of Dal Riada merged with Pictland in the 9th century to form Alba, which later added the southern kingdoms of Strathclyde and part of Northumbria to form modern Scotland. Of all of these areas, the one offering the greatest mystery to history scholars is Pictland, with its inhabitants, the Picts (known as the Cruthin in Ireland), leaving virtually no written record, with just a few placename elements, and plenty of stone carvings (such as that below on display in Orkney Museum). It is often thought that they were a P-Celtic people, i.e. a people with a language similar to Welsh, Cumbrian and Cornish, andwith many origins theories about where they may have arrived from, including eastern Europe, and Thrace (north of the Aegean Sea).

A new genome study by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and the University of Aberdeen suggests the Picts were in Scotland a lot longer than people may have previously realised, with genetic links here dating back to the Iron Age. The researchers used Identity-By-Descent (IBD) methods to compare two high-quality Pictish genomes sequenced from individuals excavated from Pictish-era cemeteries at Lundin Links in Fife (Southern Pictland) and Balintore in Easter Ross (Northern Pictland) to those of previously published ancient genomes as well as the modern population. The findings also suggest that there was not one single homegnous people with variations between those in Northern and Southern Pictland.

For more on the story visit https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/articles/2023/4/28/study-reveals-new-insights-into-the-origins-of-scotlands-mysterious-picts.

Chris

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