This Side of the Pond

I have a friend who grew up in a community that celebrated its European heritage to a greater degree than most. Let’s call her Beryl and, for the sake of protecting the innocent, let’s say the ancestors of her family and neighbors came over here from France.

As my friend was growing up, her grandmother made sure to teach her lessons about her family history. She ate French foods, partook in French customs and marked French holidays, while living in a community that took its architectural cues from France and hung French décor around its homes.

Being French was a significant part of my friend’s identity throughout her youth and beyond. French was simply who and what she was.

A few weeks ago, she came across one of those DNA testing sites where you can poke a q-tip around your cheek and present it to a scientist in a fancy white coat. That scientist will then tell you conclusively which bits of the world provided sprinkles of your identity.

Beryl knew the better part of her DNA would have come from France, but wondered what other nationalities might have snuck into the mix. The thing about the old world, you see, is that we’ve had thousands of years to migrate, channel hop and mingle to the point we’re basically one big family.

But inside the envelope was a surprise. It turns out she’s 73 percent British and doesn’t have a single French bone in her body.

Now, I do empathize with her shock, because she’d spent her whole life being French and these results were quite the blow to her identity. Think of all those strings of onions she didn’t have to wear around her neck after all. All those frog legs she never needed to eat.

But, on the other hand, that means I get to claim her. I could have told her there was some British blood running through her veins from the start – her gentle mockery and arch yet entertaining observations on the world were too familiar to be a coincidence.

Pleasingly, her first act after discovering the truth was to ask when I plan to start giving her “Being A Brit” lessons. We have been working hard on them ever since, though I’m still formulating my long term lesson plans and writing up a textbook.

I told another friend about Beryl’s revelation and he nodded. He, too, believed his family came from one place, only to find out that his DNA comes from pretty much everywhere except that particular country.

And once again, two thirds of his genetic makeup came from the UK, which rather leads me to suspect I’m unconsciously singling out Brits to spend my time with. Taking that thought to its logical conclusion: if you haven’t taken a DNA test but have reason to believe I like you, that probably means your upper lip is stiffer than you thought.

I haven’t swabbed my own cheek yet because I’m growing increasingly concerned. What if the same thing happens to me and it turns out I’ve been telling you everything I know about the British for all these years when I was actually Dutch all along?

A recent discovery rekindled my curiosity, however. My mother and I have always secretly believed we have continental blood due to our coloring: it’s relatively unusual for a Brit to have dark eyes, dark hair and olive skin.

We’ve always thought the default coloring for a Brit who can trace their roots back to at least medieval times is mousy hair and hazel eyes. We think of the Irish as blue-eyed and black-haired and the Scots as dark and swarthy or “kissed by fire” redheads.

These, at least, are the combinations we traditionally think of as belonging to the isles, but my own coloring seems to fit better with the Mediterranean. So strongly do I resemble my mother and grandmother, it seemed a foregone conclusion that part of me once came from somewhere else.

It turns out I might be right, but not in the way I thought. Recent research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has shown that the ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge came from modern Turkey and migrated across Iberia before heading north to the UK.

They arrived in around 4000 BC, no doubt lamenting the fact that we hadn’t invented umbrellas yet. This was part of an overall expansion that ended up introducing the idea of farming to Europe.

The isles at that time were populated by hunter-gatherers and the two groups didn’t mix much, with the Neolithic farmers eventually replacing them almost completely. The hunter-gatherers were apparently dark skinned with blue eyes…but the Neolithic farmers had pale skin, brown eyes and dark hair.

Around 1500 years later, those farmers were replaced themselves by the “Bell Beaker” people from mainland Europe, so named for the shape of the drinking vessel used at the beginning of the Bronze Age. But surely they didn’t die out completely…so perhaps that’s the answer to my genetic conundrum?

It does seem to answer my question, though it’s really just a theory. I’m still considering the idea of taking a DNA test, but I haven’t quite convinced myself it’s a good idea.

What if I turn out to be less British than all the rest of you? I’d simply never live it down.