Am a bit baffled by the Portal article because Daniel Bradley is one of the co-authors of the article I quoted yesterday (McEvoy et al, Am. J. Hum. Genet, 2004). I have a photocopy of it here in front of me, and its final words are: "these results point toward a distinctive Atlantic genetic heritage with roots in the processes at the end of the last Ice Age." That would be 12,000 ya, give or take the odd thousand (v. ancient dating is v. problematic) so why is he talking about 6,000 ya now? If they only arrived then, who was living in Ireland before then, and why don't they show up on the genetic profile (which, being "statistically indistinguishable" from Welsh and Basque, ought to register anomalies quite clearly)?
There again, the Portal article opens with "The people of Britain and Ireland may be more closely related to the people of Spain and Portugal than...etc" However, the genetic maps in the Am. J. Hum. Genet. article (p.697) clearly show Portugal to be less strongly related to Basques/Welsh/Irish in mtDNA, Y-chromosomes and classical gene frequencies. Has Bradley changed his mind from last year, or has he just been badly quoted?

As regards Berbers, they might be a big topic, so think I'll open a separate forum on them.

Cheers
Gerry