Tommies and Jerries

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...770399,00.html

Poor Brits - this must have come as a shock!

A genetic analysis revealed, of all things, that millions of Britons carry a Germanic gene. Britain, it would seem, is more German than many are comfortable with.

Funfunfun. It always amused me when I brought to people'S awareness the simple fact that the more you moved towards the Eastern part of Germany,(and Berlin), the more you meet Germans whose physical appearance by hair colour and eye colour seem to owe not to the blond, blue-eyed Germanic cliché, but the dark-haired, dark-eyed appearance for which more slawic genes seem to be responsible. At least it was like that 20 years ago, although due to massive population changes in the past 20 years in the East, this may have changed a bit.

As a matter of fact, modern Germans have very very little to do with the image of the historic Germanic barbars that haunted the Romans in the darkness of Teutonian forests. Both genetically and culturally, we are more Roman than anything else - especially more than being "Germanic".

Genetic analysis revealed some years ago that due to the existence of the Roman empire, genetic features typical for the original Italian Romans are very widespread in europe and even may be responsible for - I forgot which way it was - either typical European immunities or typical European vulnerabilities to certain diseases.