- LONDON (Reuters) - One in
every 100 "white'' Britons is directly descended from an African or
Asian, a study into DNA has found.
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- The study's author, Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics
at Oxford University, believes the DNA originates in Africans brought to
Britain as soldiers and slaves by the Romans, the Sunday Times said.
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- The study, which looked at the DNA of more than 10,000
people, found that many who believed their ancestry to be completely British
were actually far more diverse.
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- "This makes nonsense of any biological basis for
racial classification,'' the newspaper quoted Sykes as saying. "We
are all a complex mixture and, at the same time, we are all related.''
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- Among those whom Sykes found with a strong selection
of African genes were a dairy farmer from Somerset in southern England
whose British ancestry could be traced back hundreds of years.
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