Uncover the origins of the mysterious images

In the eastern parts of present-day Scotland during ancient times and a little bit into the Middle Ages, there lived a savage people whom the Romans called the Painted, or Pictians in Latin. Why the Romans chose to name them is unknown, but perhaps because they painted themselves or because they were tattooed. Regardless, the Roman occupying power found the Picts and their Caledonian ancestors so unpleasant that, as in Game of Thrones, they chose to build a high wall to the north, to keep the uncivilized peoples out.

Where are the pictures from It came, however, has long been a mystery. Historical artifacts from their time are rare, more than a number of stones raised with symbols roughly etched as hard to interpret. Throughout history, both Thrace in today’s Greece and Scythia north of the Caspian Sea have been referred to by myths and other things as the original home of the Picts, something today’s scholars have questioned.

To find out more, researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, among others, analyzed the genomes of two people who lived sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries in the northern and central parts of present-day Scotland. The genetic sequences were then compared to data from a database containing sequences from 8,300 people, both historical and living.

result now Presented in the journal Plus Geneticsshows that the Picts were by all accounts descended from Iron Age remnants who lived in the British Isles even before the Angels, Jutes, Frisians, and other separate peoples began migrating from Europe in the fourth century onwards.

The researchers also analyzed the genomes of seven individuals from the same burial site. The analysis showed that it was women, not men, who formed pairs outside their original social groups, contrary to previous speculation.

The research also shows that there are clear genetic similarities between the Picts and people living today in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.