A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes

by Adam Rutherford

The Welsh, they look distinct from the rest of Britain too, and within Wales, the north and south settle apart as well. Even within southern Wales, the divisions of culture are borne out in the genome. An invisible line slices through the southernmost tip of the Gower Peninsular, at the bottom of Wales. It bisects Pembrokeshire to the point where that county meets its neighbour to the east, at the River Taf north in Carmarthenshire. Since the sixteenth century this domain has been known as Anglia Transwalliana – Little England Beyond Wales – and the boundary called the Landsker Line. It’s a language barrier more than anything else, and has no formal or legal status, though it has lasted a thousand years. To the south is a pocket of English speakers, whereas the rest of Wales spoke Welsh (at least historically; English is spoken everywhere today). It’s drifted over the centuries, a few miles north or south depending on the local movement of people and traditions, but largely it’s preserved as a vague border a few miles deep. There’s a neat-ish line of forts that map roughly along the line too, Norman castles from Roch on the west to Laugharne on the east, but it’s a stretch to say these were frontiers protecting this informal border.