Revealing journey into the origins of this nation
As the final episode of S4C’s DNA Cymru hits the screen this Sunday, series producer John Geraint looks back over a year of excitement and revelation...
WHO are we? Where do we come from? What connects us to the rest of humanity? And what sets us apart?
Ever since we first settled here, tens of thousands of years ago, people in Wales have faced up to the deepest questions – of life and death.
Our DNA Cymru series has used the latest breakthroughs in genetic science to begin to answer those questions afresh. And it’s led to some amazing discoveries.
Astonishingly, each one of us carries inside us a precious treasure from the distant past, a hidden code that can unlock those ancient mysteries – two small portions of our genes that are passed down, more or less unchanged, from generation to generation.
Over the past year, more than a thousand people from all over Wales have come forward to have their ancestral DNA tested, allowing us to analyse their little bit of our shared past.
What emerges is a picture of a fantastically diverse nation, a gene pool refreshed by wave after wave of migration, millennium by millennium. The earliest Nomads, the First Farmers, the Beaker People who brought the secrets of smelting metal – all played their part in the makings of Wales.
Tracing their stories through time led us right back to the genesis of the human family – and to the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. Filming there, with a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Hadze, was an incredible thrill. As we ran with them, across the bushlands of Tanzania, giving chase to a group of monkeys, we got a breathless insight into the lives of our most ancient ancestors. Because – like the rest of humanity – we Welsh were once Africans.
Equally moving was exploring the caves of the Pyrenees, home to refugees from the Ice Age that had made Wales uninhabitable. Twelve-thousand years ago, these hardy souls painted the walls with dramatic linedrawings of the animals they were hunting.
Among the women who sheltered in those caves may have been the ancient great-grannies of many Welsh women today. And following their lineages back to modern Wales has been incredibly enlightening.
“It’s just great to know about a tiny piece of history that I would never have imagined belonged to me – not in a million years – without this test”, said singer and broadcaster Caryl Parry Jones.
Now, in the DNA Cymru series finale – on Sunday night at 8pm on S4C – our presenters, Jason Mohammad, Beti George and Dr Anwen Jones will draw together some of our findings.
Perhaps the most extraordinary revelation involves as many as one in five of the Welsh population. They belong to a small number of genetic clusters we’ve identified.
These clusters may be the Welsh equivalent of Scotland’s clans – they can be traced back to 10 powerful men who are likely to have lived in Wales less than 2,000 years ago. Astonishingly, 18% of Welsh men today are direct descendants on the male line of these 10 patriarchs.
And for one of our modern rugby heroes, Colin Charvis, our DNA test found a connection to one of these genetic clusters which he could not possibly have imagined. Colin had always assumed that, since his father’s family is from Jamaica, he is a descendant of black African slaves.
But Colin, it seems, has genetic markers which almost certainly arose in Wales.
He belongs to one of those genetic clusters, a group descended directly on the male line from a single individual – quite probably a prince or powerful tribal leader – who may have lived in Wales around 1,500 years ago.
There was no suggestion of any connection with Wales in Colin’s modern family tree. So what accounts for his DNA result? The most reasonable supposition is that during the time of slavery, a Welsh- man went to the Caribbean and had a son – Colin’s forefather – with a black woman there.
Colin and his family are still coming to terms with this sensational news.
In our final programme, two other Welsh icons – Michael Sheen and Charlotte Church – are standing by to get their results. They may not be quite as taken aback as Colin, but I can promise you that their reactions are well worth waiting for.
And for many, many others too, the tests have been an unexpectedly moving experience. They’ve learned just a bit more about one fragment of their DNA. It can’t tell them who all their ancestors were, by any means – after all, each of us has hundreds, thousands of forebears.
But it brings alive a connection to an unbroken line of mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, stretching back thousands of years into deep history – and that’s something that really sets the pulses racing.
“It’s done my head in”, admitted Caryl Parry Jones, as she contemplated the enormity of the timespans involved.
Yes, DNA Cymru has taken us on an odyssey across Wales, across continents, across time itself. Join us on Sunday night for journey’s end
There’s more about the CymruDNAWales project, in which the Western Mail is a partner on the series website, s4c.cymru/cymrudnawales and on the project site, cymrudnawales.com