Sherds: East meets West

A study carried out by geneticists in 2009 discovered that 30% of the 500 people who volunteered to provide a DNA sample on the Isle of Anglesey, in north east Wales, carried a gene segment common in the eastern Mediterranean but rare in the rest of the UK, where it is present in just 1% of the population. The Sheffield University team who carried out the study, led by Andy Grierson and Robert Johnston, concluded that this was the legacy of Bronze Age migrants who came to this part of Wales 4,000 years ago through the connections built up by the copper trade. There are mines of the period at both Parys Mountain on Anglesey, and on Great Orme, Llandudno, site of one of the biggest mining ente