Diabetes in my Mother Line

March 28, 2026March 28, 2026Leave a comment

Introduction

Diabetes mellitus is a deadly and debilitating metabolic disorder that is becoming more and more common throughout the world. It runs in my mother line. My grandmother had it. My mum has it. She didn’t realise for many years and only found out when she nearly died from diabetic ketoacidosis. The complications still hinder her today.

In this article, I will begin by explaining metabolism and how diabetes manifests as a metabolic disorder, then go on to share how it developed for my grandmother and mother and how, so far, I have escaped it.

Overview of Metabolism

To understand diabetes, we first need to grasp how metabolism works in a healthy human. The term ‘metabolism’ stems from the Greek metabolē ‘to change’. It refers to the chemical processes within a living organism that sustain life. These can be divided into two types. Catabolism is the breakdown of complex molecules into smaller ones resulting in the release of energy. Anabolism is the synthesis of smaller molecules into more complex ones and this uses energy.

Digestion is a catabolic process. During digestion, carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars (glucose), proteins are broken down into amino acids, and fats are broken down into fatty acids and glycerol.

The body’s favoured energy source is glucose. Glucose is broken down through glycolysis, the citric acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – the primary energy currency of all life.

When there is more glucose in the blood stream than the body needs for fuel (ie. after eating) a signal is sent to the pancreas to create a hormone called insulin. The term ‘insulin’ comes from the Latin insula ‘island’ and refers to its production by beta cells in the Islets of Langerhans of the pancreas. Insulin binds with and activates subunits on insulin receptors on cells, acting as a ‘key’ that allows glucose into muscle, fat and liver cells to be used as energy. It helps store glucose in the liver and muscles as glycogen for future energy needs. It also plays a role in anabolism by enabling the synthesis of fats and proteins, promoting fat storage, muscle growth, and bone growth. This uses ATP.

Conversely, when blood sugar becomes too low, the pancreas secretes another hormone called glucagon. This sets in action a series of metabolic processes to ensure the body is provided with energy. It first signals to the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose through glycogenolysis to provide ATP. Once this has been used up, fats are broken down into fatty acids and glycerol, which undergo beta-oxidation to provide acetyl-co-A, which is converted into ketones, then ATP. This is called ketosis. When fat stores are depleted, proteins are used, via gluconeogenesis. Amino acids undergo deamination, nitrogen removal and carbon skeleton conversion to convert them into gluconeogenic and ketogenic amino acids, so they can be fed into the glycolysis and citric acid cycles to produce ATP.

The complex interplay between insulin and glucagon is essential for regulating blood sugar and providing the body with the energy it needs.

Diabetes mellitus

The term Diabetes mellitus stems from the Greek diabainein ‘to pass through’ (Apollonius of Memphis 250BC) and the Latin mellitus ‘honey sweet’ (Thomas Willis 1679) in reference to sweet urine caused by excess glucose. The disease has been known since ancient times, with the first record from an Egyptian manuscript from 1500BC mentioning ‘too great emptying of urine’.

In modern medicine, there are two types and both involve dysfunctions related to insulin. In Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the beta cells in the Islands of Langerhans in the pancreas destroying their ability to produce insulin. This usually happens early in life. In Type 2 diabetes, the cells of the body fail to respond to insulin. This is called insulin resistance. Its onset is much slower and many people only find out they have it later in life.

Insulin resistance occurs when the insulin receptors on the cells stop working. This might happen for a number of reasons. Genetic mutations can affect the insulin receptor gene. If a person is overweight, excess fat can cause fat cells to release fatty acids that interfere with insulin signalling and fat buildup inside muscle cells can create toxins that disrupt the insulin receptor’s ability to signal to the cell to absorb glucose. Lack of exercise decreases insulin sensitivity and reduces the muscle mass available to absorb glucose. Chronic inflammation can also play a role in obese people.

Over time, insulin resistance forces the pancreas to over-produce insulin, which leads the beta cells to become overworked and to fail.

When there is too much glucose in the blood, it is passed out as urine. The high levels of sugar give the urine the sweet smell that characterises the disease. Excessive urination (polyuria) leads to dehydration and thus to excessive thirst (polydipsia). Because little glucose is taken up by the cells, hunger signals continue to be sent even if a person is full, causing excessive eating (polyphagia). These symptoms, together, are known as the ‘three p’s’.

As the disease progresses in severity and the pancreas produces less insulin and the cells receive less energy, the person begins to experience fatigue, weakness, blurred vision and unexplained weight loss.

As further complications, high levels of blood sugar damage the blood vessels that supply the nerves and the small blood vessels in the eyes, causing diabetic neuropathy and diabetic eye disease.

A dangerous consequence is diabetic ketoacidosis. In the absence of insulin, blood sugar levels remain high, causing excessive urination and dehydration. As the cells remain starved, the body turns to ketosis. The production of ketone bodies turn the blood acidic. This is initially buffered by the bicarbonate buffering system, which is eventually overwhelmed. This results in metabolic acidosis. The high acidity causes the body to attempt to expel carbon dioxide, resulting in heavy breathing. Other symptoms include vomiting, abdominal pain, weakness and acetone on the breath. A person can die if not hospitalised and given insulin along with fluids and electrolytes.

Type 1 diabetes must be treated by insulin injections as the pancreas is unable to produce insulin. Some cases of Type 2 diabetes may be managed through a low carbohydrate diet and regular exercise. The first line medical treatment is Metformin, in the form of oral tablets, which decreases the liver’s production of glucose and increases glucose storage in muscle and fat cells. Another type of treatment is GLP-1 receptor agonists. These mimic the GLP-1 hormone, when blood sugar levels are high, triggering insulin release, reducing the production of glucagon, slowing digestion and suppressing appetite. For those with Type 2 diabetes whose pancreas is unable to create any or enough insulin, insulin injections are necessary.

Diabetes in my Mother Line

My grandmother, Peggy Collison, was born in 1915 and died in 1992. She led a fairly sedentary lifestyle, working as a dinner lady and volunteering for the Samaritans. She didn’t like housework but enjoyed gardening. She ate a bar of chocolate every afternoon and was overweight. She didn’t have any other symptoms and only found out that she had diabetes when she was 72 as the result of a urine test for another illness. She was put on Metformin.

My great grandmother, Augusta Kennedy, was born in 1888 and died in 1971. She led an active life, working as a housekeeper, and was a normal weight. My mum doesn’t recall her having any symptoms of diabetes. My great, great grandmother, Cecilia Curtis, was born in 1850 and died in 1933. Photos show she was a larger lady but whether she was diabetic is unknown.

My mum didn’t have any symptoms of diabetes in her early life. She admits to having a sweet tooth, but was a normal weight. When she got pregnant with me and, again, with my brother she developed Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM). During pregnancy, to ensure the foetus receives enough glucose, the placenta releases hormones, such as prolactin and progesterone, which reduce the mother’s insulin sensitivity. GDM develops when the beta cells of the pancreas cannot create enough insulin to compensate for the heightened insulin resistance. This leads to high blood sugar for the mother and the foetus and can lead to bigger babies. I weighed 8 pounds 4 and my brother weighed 10 pounds. GDM is usually temporary and my mum was told afterwards that she no longer had the disease in both instances.

However, in the following years, my mum began to gain weight. She was reasonably active, working as a teaching assistant and walking to work, and doing all the housework. She reports only eating lunch and tea (sometimes with dessert) but experiencing cravings for sweet things and eating chocolate. This could have been caused by diabetes – if she had insulin resistance and the glucose was not getting into her cells, it would have made her crave sugary foods. This led to her becoming overweight.

My mum was not diagnosed until her early sixties, when she was admitted to hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis. In the lead-up, she had been very thirsty and people had noticed she had lost weight, but she had ignored the symptoms. Her condition was so severe that she nearly died.

Afterwards, she found out that she had Type 2 Diabetes and it was so bad she would need to take insulin, in the form of injections, for the rest of her life. She has since suffered from diabetic neuropathy which has caused her to lose the feeling in her feet. This led to a fall, where she broke her hip, and needed a hip replacement. Since then, due also to the numbness in her feet, she has struggled with walking and can walk only with a stick or with a walker.

She also suffers from diabetic eye disease. She developed diabetic retinopathy and has had laser surgery for the leaky blood vessels. She ended up with a detached retina, for which she had operations to put in gas and oil bubbles to hold the retina in place. She has also needed cataract removal.

My Escape of Diabetes?

So far, I have escaped diabetes. This might be because I’ve never been pregnant, which was obviously a precedent for my mum and maybe my grandma.

However, I was at risk of diabetes when I was young. Like my mum, I had a sweet tooth. There was always chocolate in the house. I began comfort eating, then binge eating as a coping mechanism due to bullying at the age of six. I can recall the intensity of the cravings and the loss of control even now.

This led to me being overweight throughout my childhood. Whether this was due to a genetic predisposition for diabetes and to the high levels of blood sugar when my mum was pregnant with me, I remain unsure. I might have had less insulin resistance than others, meaning I felt less full and had more cravings.

Hating myself for being fat, at the age of thirteen, I began restricting my diet and exercising more, only to have the binge eating return with increased fervour, leading to me to being at the high end of overweight aged sixteen. If I had continued that way, I might have developed diabetes and be diabetic now.

In my twenties, I beat the binge eating at the cost of becoming underweight and mildly anorexic, but continued to struggle with binge drinking. During my early thirties, my sweet tooth resurfaced as I began drinking cider and beer, including craft beers extremely high in sugars, and I put on a lot of weight. I was unaware that my heavy drinking put me at further risk of diabetes.

Alcohol can damage insulin receptors through inflammatory processes, direct toxicity and the creation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). It causes harm to the beta cells in the pancreas, leading to a decrease in insulin secretion. It’s also bad for the liver. It causes cell damage, inflammation, fat accumulation and, eventually, scarring. All of this affects the liver’s ability to store glucose and to manage glucose levels, which plays a role in diabetes.

I started giving up alcohol at the end of the year in 2019 and, after a good number of lapses, have finally given it up for good. That my liver has begun to recover is signalled by consistently high ALT levels in their 50s dropping to 32.

I’ve always been sensitive to rises and dips in blood sugar. When I was eating very little in my twenties I often felt faint and dizzy and had panic attacks. Sensitivity to glucose variability can be a symptom of diabetes. These symptoms stayed with me until I started eating a better diet.

It’s only during the last few year I have begun to eat and exercise healthily. In my late thirties, I was eating a restrictive diet for the amount of exercise I was doing. Typically, toast and jam for breakfast and a post-run snack, a cheese sandwich for lunch and one slice of bread with veg and a portion of meat for tea. Bread was safe at 80 – 100 calories a slice and was a comfort food. I was running up to thirty miles a week and working in conservation.

When I started seeing a PT at my local gym she advised that I needed to eat a lot more calories, mainly in protein, and to replace the bread, which was giving me sugar spikes, with porridge in the morning and pasta or rice for tea.

I much preferred the porridge but disliked the texture of pasta and rice. When I made these shifts, I noticed bread had also been making me bloated. I have since come to realise that gluten doesn’t agree with me and shifted to oat cakes, nuts, chickpeas and lentils.

An added bonus is that all these sources of carbs are low glycemic index. This means they are absorbed more slowly and don’t cause blood sugar spikes. When I made these changes I tested my blood sugar regularly. In a fasting state it was around 3.7 mmol/L and the most after food 5 mmol/L. This shows that I do not have insulin resistance and am not currently at risk of diabetes.

Conclusion

Diabetes runs in my mother line. I have so far escaped it, but, at the cost of developing an eating disorder which I’m still struggling with psychological symptoms from now. Looking back, if my parents had educated me on the impact on my health of binge eating and drinking, explaining the science and the risk of diabetes, I might have been less likely to engage in those behaviours. Yet, they were unaware of the damage being caused themselves. As my mum’s case shows, they weren’t educated either.

More positively, there is much more information about diabetes available now. However, there is misinformation too and a lot of stigma about the links between diabetes and being overweight and obese. Many people who fall into these categories, which are based upon a faulty BMI model, are perfectly healthy. Not all people labelled overweight or obese overeat. Conversely, not all people who overeat become overweight or obese either.

I’d recommend that anybody experiencing one of the three p’s, even if it’s ‘just’ having food cravings or overeating, get an appointment with a GP.

~

With thanks to my mum and my grandmothers for allowing me to share their stories.

Orddu and Returning to the Cave

November 27, 2020November 27, 202011 Comments

‘Arthur said, “Are there any of the wonders we have still not obtained?

One of the men said, “Yes, the blood of the Very Black Witch, daughter of the Very White Witch from Pennant Gofid in the uplands of hell.

Arthur set out for the North, and came to where the hag’s cave was.’

– Culhwch ac Olwen

I. The Witch’s Cave

In the medieval Welsh story Culhwch ac Olwen (1090), Orddu ‘Very Black’, a ‘witch’ who lives in a cave in Pennant Gofid ‘the Valley of Grief’, battles against the servants of Arthur and is slaughtered by him in a gristly scene where he cuts her in twain with his knife to drain her blood.

In this tale Gwyn ap Nudd, a Brythonic god of the dead and ruler of Annwn, is dubiously made to appear beside his eternal rival, Gwythyr ap Greidol, as an advisor to Arthur. I judge this to be a move by a Christian interlocutor do demonstrate Arthur’s power not only over Orddu but her god.

It is my personal belief that Orddu was the last of a lineage of ‘witches’ of the Old North who resided in the cave at Pennant Gofid, which is identified with hell, showing Annuvian associations. They were powerful warrior-women and prophets who shared a kinship with the Witches of Caer Loyw who trained Peredur and with Scatach ‘the Shadow’ who schooled Cú Chulainn.

Their martial prowess and ability to commune with Gwyn and the spirits of Annwn to prophecy were seen as a threat to Christianity thus Orddu met her brutal end at the hands of the Christian king.

Orddu’s story has long haunted me. A few years ago it led me to trace her lineage through a series of spirit-journeys and in inspired writing from her mother, Orwen ‘Very White’, back to Snow, the first of her ancestors to arrive in Pennant Gofid (then known as the Valley of Winter) after the Ice Age.

Of all the stories I have written Snow’s has felt the realest, the deepest and the most profound. It tells how she and her people were led by Vindos/Gwyn and his wolves and ravens, following the reindeer and wild horses, to her northern cave, where it is remembered in her lore her ancestors once lived.

I have no idea whether Orddu, Orwen, or Snow are real or mythic persons or whether Pennant Gofid is an actual place in northern Britain (if it is I haven’t found it yet). However, archaeological evidence demonstrates that people lived here in caves after the last Ice Age and in the interstadials.

During recent research I found out from Barry Cunliffe’s Britain Begins and Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British that a high percentage of the modern population can trace its ancestry back to the period after the last Ice Age when people recolonised Britain from Northern Iberia along the Atlantic seaways and from the North European Plain across Doggerland.

Up until now it had never occurred to me to question who Orddu’s people were and where they came from. To follow their footsteps back to the continent, into older times, and deeper into the cave.

II. After the Ice Age

Following the end of the last Ice Age, the Younger Dryas Stadial, (12,900 to 11,700 BP), the earliest evidence for the inhabitation of Britain comes from caves in south-west Wales. The oldest human remains from Worm’s Head include a human scapula (9920 BP), an ulna (9450 BP), a femur (9420 BP), and a cranium (9360 BP). Human bones dating from between 9000 and 7000 BP have been found at Paviland, Foxhole Cave, Ogof-yr-Ychen ‘Cave of the Oxen’, Potter’s Cave, and Daylight Rock.

One of the most famous Mesolithic burial sites is Aveline’s Hole in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. It was discovered in 1797 and investigations reported the presence of between 50 and 100 human skeletons. Unfortunately most of the finds and documentation were destroyed by bombing during World War II. Only 21 skeletons remain and they have been dated to between 9115 and 8740 BP.

Most were adults and adolescents, but they also included three children aged between 2 and 7 and an infant of 6 – 18 months. One of the skeletons was buried ceremonially in a disused hearth with ‘red ochre, abundant animal teeth some of which were perforated, and a set of fossil ammonites’.

The cave was sealed after the burial. This may have symbolised closing a connection to relatives become ancestors and to the Otherworld, or may have been a precaution to prevent their return.

In 2003 ‘an engraved panel’ consisting ‘of two rows of crosses with six in the upper row and four in the lower’ was discovered in Aveline’s Hole. Because the cave was sealed after the burial it is suspected this cave art belongs to the Mesolithic. Further art, three engravings taking the form of ‘rectilinear abstract designs’, possibly of a similar date, were found nearby, in Long Hole.

Other finds from the Mendips from this time include a mandible (9360 BP) and cranial fragments (9060 BP) from Badger Hole and the skeleton of Cheddar Man (9100 BP) from Gough’s Cave. Research into DNA has made possible a reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s appearance. His genetic make-up shows he had dark skin of a pigmentation ‘usually associated with sub-Saharan Africa’ and blue eyes.

This suggests that the earliest inhabitants of Britain, including Snow and her people, were dark-skinned. Snow received her name because she was born in a snow storm not because she had snow-white skin. Dark skin is hinted at in the way I describe Snow’s Very Great Grandmother whose face was ‘wrinkled like an old crowberry’, crowberry (empetrum nigrum), being black. Perhaps Orddu ‘Very Black’ was herself black due to a gene that linked her back to oldest ancestors.

In northern Britain a piece of human thigh bone contemporary with the burials in Aveline’s Hole was found in Kent’s Bank Cavern near the Kent estuary where it enters Morecambe Bay. Other evidence of human inhabitation of this area includes microliths and an antler point from Bart’s Shelter.

III. Creswell Crags Cave Art

Snow possessed stories about her cave, passed down by her ancestors, suggesting her people had lived in Britain in the past. Archaeological finds from a number of caves show the landmass, then attached to the continent, had indeed been occupied during the Lateglacial Interstadial (14,670 – 12,890 BP).

Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge in Derbyshire, is famous for its parietal and portable cave art and stone tools. According to Paul Petitt these have ‘very direct parallels with material from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany… the term Magdalenian… links these British industries to a much wider population dispersal into empty areas of Europe following the Last Glacial Maximum. This dispersal has its roots in the Magdalenian of south-western Europe… Magdalenian sites in Britain cluster relatively tightly between 12,600 and 12,200 radiocarbon years ago, which places the sites in the relatively mild conditions of the first half of the Lateglacial Interstadial.’

There are 25 examples of parietal art at Creswell; 23 in Church Hole, one in Robin Hood Cave, and one in Mother Grundy’s Parlour. All are engravings that often use the structures of the cave walls.

The clearest engravings are of a stag, bison, and an ibis. The latter is a bird for whom we have no faunal remains in Britain, but would have been seen on the continent by the highly mobile artists.

One of the most intriguing is a bird/woman motif, which has been interpreted as ‘long-necked birds of some kind…. cranes, herons, bitterns, and swans’ and ‘schematic human females, drawn upside down.’

Another, equally ambiguous, is described as ‘a diving bird, a serpentiform or a stylised human female?’ There is a also a ‘headless horse’, ‘small incomplete engraved animal’ and ‘abstract designs such as a ‘boomerang’, ‘engraved triangle’, ‘horn-like motif’ and ‘two small triangles’. ‘Figures of uncertainty’ include a ‘square’, a ‘bison-head profile’, a ‘horse-head’, and a ‘bear’.

In Robin Hood’s Cave was found a rib engraved with a horse coloured by red ochre. William Boyd Dawkins described it in 1867: ‘the head and fore quarters of a horse incised on a smoothed and rounded fragment of rib, cut short off at one end and broken at the other. On the flat side the head is represented with the nostrils and mouth and neck carefully drawn. A series of fine oblique lines show that the animal was hog-maned. They stop at the bend of the back which is very correctly drawn.’

The Ochre Horse shares parallels with portable Ice Age horse depictions from the caves of Perigord in France and Kesserloch in Switzerland. It is also contemporary with a decorated horse jaw from Kendrick’s Cave, Llandudno, which had five panels of chevrons cut into it creating a zig-zag effect. That people carried these representations with them may suggest horses held a special place in their traditions. Whether this was simply as a prey animal or as a spirit guide or deity remains unknown.

In Pin Hole Cave, engraved on the rib-bone of a woolly rhincoeros, was a masked figure described by Albert Leslie Armstrong as a ‘masked figure in the act of dancing a ceremonial dance.’ Again, the identity of this figure and why he was carried into and left in the cave remains a mystery.

Other British examples include an engraving of a reindeer from Gower Cave in Wales and engraved plaquettes from La Varines in New Jersey featuring abstract designs and ‘zoomorphic representations’, possibly of horses, mammoths, a bovid, and human face, dating to 14,000 years ago.

The art of Creswell Crags shares similarities with Magdalenian art from across south-western Europe. Paul Pettitt links its characteristics artworks at Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France. He suggests the Creswell Crag artists spent their summers in this area and retreated to the lowlands that now form part of the North Sea or the Netherlands and central Rhine areas and says they would have been in contact with people from Ardennes and the Dordogne, which was also accessible on foot. “The Magdalenian era was the last time that Europe was unified in a real sense and on a grand scale.”

IV. Prehistoric Chapels and Rites of Initiation

The French archaeologist and Catholic Priest, Abbé Breuil, referred to Lascaux as ‘the Sistine chapel of prehistory’. The caves of the Franco-Cantabrian area have long been seen as sacred sites that were central to the religion of the Magdalenian people and their predecessors who made earlier paintings.

According to Bruno David these caves were used for ritual performances and rites of passage. He describes Cougnac: ‘Human engagements in the deep, dark space of the cave are intriguing: here are found animals that take shape along rock walls in a combination of natural concretions and painted red or black lines. At the entrance of chambers, palms of hands were dipped in red ochre and fingers smeared with black pigment, and then pressed against rock walls to leave distinctive marks. Animals were neatly arranged along rock walls, their viewing intentionally and carefully choreographed. Depictions were made of repeatedly speared humans or human-like creatures, and rocky concretions were tapped to make a ringing sound, it appears. This is the stuff of rituals… It formed part of an inner sanctum of knowledge, of an inner life, one that needed to be performed.’

David speaks also of ‘orchestrated performance’ at Tuc d’Audoubert where, adjacent to the Gallery of the Clay Bison, in the Chamber of Heels are found ‘183 impressions of the balls of human heels and myriad shallow impressions of fingertips’ ‘which show that those who walked this space did so on the heels of their feet, carefully avoiding placing the flat of their feet on the ground… The size of the heel imprints… indicates they were not made by adults but by youths probably adolescents.’

‘What we see in the art and imprints in the clay are the products of choreographed actions involving youths walking on the balls of their feet and pressing fingertips into clay along long and sometimes narrow tunnels underground, leading to sculpted clay bison that were never meant to be seen by the broader populace of the outside world. These were rituals along passageways that were, we think, literally rites of passage for youths approaching adulthood. The art was not just to be seen, but to be performed.’

David Williams argues that Lascaux holds ‘the key to major mysteries’ as a place for ‘vision quests’ leading to shamanic initiation. He says ‘different rituals were performed in contrasting areas’. In the ‘Hall of the Bulls’ the only area that can accommodate a large number of people, ‘dancing, music, and chanting’ may have taken place. He describes this area as a ‘vestibule’. In the Axial Gallery the Roaring Bull might have evoked auditory hallucinations and the Falling Horse sensations of falling and descent.

The dense engravings in the Apse featuring ‘crowded images of horses, bison, aurochs, ibexes, deer, and a possible wolf’ etched on top of one another might have provided a glimpse of the spirit world. Having passed a pair of ‘Cerberus-like paired bison’ and crawled down a tunnel to the Diverticule of the Felines to eight formidable cave-lions, ‘a horse seen face-on’, and ‘bison with a raised tail’, ‘questers came face to face with visions of power and made personal contact with the spirit realm.’

The Shaft, and end area, which falls away into a deep well is where offerings with ‘broken signs’ were left. Here is the famous painting of a bison wounded by a spear charging down a bird-headed man with a bird-staff. Williams says here ‘we have transformation by death: the ‘death’ of the man paralleling the ‘death’ of the eviscerated bison. As both ‘die’, the man fuses with one of his spirit helpers, a bird’. He interprets this as the ‘zoomorphic transformation… becoming a shaman necessitated.’

It seems possible that Creswell Crags was also seen as a prehistoric ‘chapel’ where people communed with spirit animals and sought and then engraved visions of the spirit world. Perhaps the witch’s cave at Pennant Gofid was also used for rituals of descent presided over by Orddu and her kin that led to initiates, like them, becoming awenyddion, ‘people inspired’, the Brythonic term for ‘shamans’.

V. Gough’s Cave – Skull Caps and Cannibalism

A discussion of the cave-based rituals of the people living in Britain during the Magdalenian period would not be complete without mention of the skull caps of Gough’s Cave, Somerset, and ritual cannibalism.

There were discovered the skeletal remains of ‘a Minimum Number of six individuals: a child (aged 3.2 years), a young adolescent (approximately 12–14 years old), an older adolescent (approximately 14–16 years old), at least two adults and an older adult’ dating to 14,700 BP. Results of the research by Silvia Bello et al. ‘suggest the processing of cadavers for the consumption of body tissues (bone marrow), accompanied by meticulous shaping of cranial vaults. The distribution of cut-marks and percussion features indicates that the skulls were scrupulously ‘cleaned’ of any soft tissues, and subsequently modified by controlled removal of the facial region and breakage of the cranial base along a sub-horizontal plane. The vaults were also ‘retouched’, possibly to make the broken edges more regular. This manipulation suggests the shaping of skulls to produce skull-cups.’

These skull caps resemble those from other Magdalenian sites such as La Placard Cave and Isturitz in France, and from Herxhein, Germany, in the Neolithic period, and El Mirador, Spain, in the Bronze Age.

In Gough’s Cave was also found a human radius engraved with a zig-zag pattern of ‘87 incisions: 33 single-stroke incisions, 32 to-and-fro sawing incisions’, also bearing evidence of cannibalism. What was particularly interesting is that ‘the decorative pattern seems to have been applied in the middle of this process: the break where the bone was snapped to extract marrow cuts across the zig-zag. It seems that the arm’s flesh had been removed, but then the butchery was paused while someone engraved the bone, and only then was it broken to get at its contents.’

This shares similarities with an ulnus from Kent’s Cavern with fine cut marks and percussion marks dating to 8185 BP. The zig-zag also resembles the pattering on the Kendrick’s Cave decorated horse skull.

It is clear that complex rituals and beliefs surrounded these acts of cannibalism and the creating of skull-caps and engraving of bones. Were these acts performed to honour the ancestors? Was eating one’s kindred an act of holy communion through which their life’s essence passed from the dead to the living?

What did the marks on the bones symbolise? Days? Acts? The release of the spirit from the bones? Was the creation of skull caps linked to belief that the soul presided in the head and with its release? What did wearing or drinking from the skull caps mean? Answers to these questions can only be guessed at.

It is worth nothing that, in Culhwch ac Olwen, Gwyn is associated with ritual cannibalism. He feeds the heart of Nwython, the ruler of Strathclyde to his son, Cyledyr, who becomes wyllt ‘mad’ or ‘wild’, but later becomes a rider on the hunt for Twrch Trwyth – a veiled version of the Wild Hunt. Here the consumption of the flesh of an ancestor is initiatory, leading first to madness, then to prowess.

Orddu is associated with Gwyn and witchcraft and her abode is described as hellish. One wonders whether the practice of cannibalism lived on and was practised by her and her ancestors in the Old North.

It certainly continued into the Iron Age in other areas of Britain. In the Bone Cave of Alveston, in Gloucestershire, the remains of seven individuals were found including an individual murdered by a pole-axe. The femur of one these adults ‘had been split longitudinally and the bone marrow scraped out.’

The skeletons were deposited with dog bones, cattle bones, a possible bear vertebra, and wooden twigs.’ Mark Horton says: ‘This was a highly structured deposit that can only have got there as a result of some form of ritual activity. This region was an important centre for underworld cults during the later Iron Age, some of which survived into the Roman period; in particular the Celtic Hound God, Cunomaglus, was represented as a dog guarding the underworld in a local temple sculpture.’

VI. Further Back in Time and Back to Now

The footsteps of Snow and her ancestors might be followed back from Britain to the continent and back again through earlier glacials and interglacials. The famous ‘Paviland Red Lady’, actually a male hunter found in Goat’s Hole Cave, Paviland, on the Gower Peninsula in Wales, his bones stained with red ochre, with mammoth ivory and nerite shells, dates to 33,000 BP. This is our earliest evidence for a ritual burial and thus for beliefs linking caves and the Otherworld.

The first record of Homo sapiens in Britain comes from a maxilla fragment from Kent’s Cavern, Devon, and is dated to between 34,700 and 36,400 BP and an Aurignacian burin busqué from Ffeunon Beuno, Wales, dated to 36,000 BP may have belonged to an early ancestor.

Homo sapiens arrived in Europe in 43,000 years ago having travelled through Israel after dispersing from Africa 120,000 years ago where the earliest evidence, from Omo I, dates to 195,000 years ago.

The stories of Snow and her predecessors remind us of our shared European heritage and its origins in Africa when, as Brexit approaches, Britain is cutting itself off from the EU and limiting foreign aid.

Whilst the cave art of the Magdalenians appears to have been born of a shared culture and religion, much later on, due to Christianity, Orddu, the last carrier of these traditions, appears alone in her cave. Isolated like those of us drawn to the Brythonic tradition today and those isolating due to COVID-19.

Dare we hope, instead of fearing death by Arthur’s knife, for a happier time when we can meet safely in caves and other sacred places to celebrate our bond with the Otherworld and its gods and spirits?

SOURCES

Anon, ‘Gower cave reindeer is Britain’s oldest rock art,’ BBC News, (2012), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-18648683
Anon, ‘Cannibalistic Celts discovered in South Gloucestershire’, University of Bristol, (2001), http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2001/cannibal.html
Emily Hellewell and Nicky Milner, ‘Burial Practices at the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition: Change of Continuity’, Documenta Praehistorica, XXXVII, (2011)
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The Origins of the British – Germanic people here millenia before the Anglo-Saxon invasions

October 23, 2020October 23, 202021 Comments

I have just finished reading Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British. My purpose, at the outset, was to acquaint myself with how his argument, based on genetic research (first brought to my notice in Barry Cunliffe’s Britain Begins), dispels the myth of Celtic invasions during the Iron Age.

Oppenheimer summarises the main message of his study: ‘three quarters of British ancestors arrived long before the first farmers. This applies in varying proportions to 88% of Irish, 81% of Welsh, 79% of Cornish, 70% of the people of Scotland and its associated islands and 68% (over two-thirds) of the English and their politically associated islands. These figures dwarf any perception of Celtic or Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on concepts of more recent, massive invasions.’

As cited by Cunliffe, Oppenheimer’s study reveals that the first people to arrive in Britain, and the majority from whom the British are descended, were from Iberian refuges. Then, in the Neolithic, further Iberian influxes occurred along the west coast via the Atlantic seaways and people from the Near East and the Balkans moved up the Danube and crossed the North Sea to arrive on the east coast. It was around this time the Celtic languages developed as a ‘lingua franca’.

Cunliffe leads the reader to believe all of Britain and Ireland were Celtic-speaking before the Roman invasion. The view present-day England, Wales, and southern Scotland were Brythonic-speaking until this time is held by most linguists. It was a presupposition I held myself as a Brythonic polytheist.

A large part of Oppenheimer’s argument, which Cunliffe does not cite, which surprised me, is that the Neolithic people on the south-east coast of Britain may have been Germanic and have lived there and spoken a Germanic language millennia before the Anglo-Saxon invasions.

This is of interest to me as my surname is Smithers, an Anglo-Saxon name, and a DNA analysis confirmed that my paternal line is of Saxon origin*. My descent from the Saxons, who are renowned for invading Britain and replacing the Brythonic culture with their own, has been a source of dissonance and discomfort since I learnt about these histories following my calling by the Brythonic gods.

The notion that the Germanic peoples had a long-standing presence in Britain, which may not always have been one of hostility with their Brythonic neighbours, struck me as an alluring possibility that might explain why the Brythonic gods reached out to me in spite of my Saxon name and ancestry.

I will share Oppenheimer’s argument. His genetic research shows that the Ivan (I) gene group ‘makes the largest non-Iberian contribution to the British Isles (16% of all males), in particular in England, where it is most common.’ Ian (I1a) served the ‘role of the main north-western expanding Early Neolithic Line’ ‘he spread to occupy roughly the present distribution of Germanic languages – that is, southern Scandinavia (e.g. Denmark 37%), Germany (25%), Holland (16.7%), Switzerland (5.6%) and England (10-32%). The British distribution is particularly interesting, since it excludes most of Wales and misses Ireland. In addition, Ian is also found in France, although favouring the north, particularly Caesar’s Belgic Gaul (23%) and Normandy (at 11.9%), rather neatly fitting the ultimate spread of LBK pottery.’ ‘The largest British cluster is I1a-2 (32% of British Ian)… Although this cluster is found throughout Scandinavia, it centres more on Schleswig-Holstein and north-west Germany (part of the putative Anglo-Saxon homeland) at 14%… This cluster dates to the Neolithic in Britain… although 11a-2 features in the so-called Anglo-Saxon homeland, its age, distribution and unique diversity in England suggest that much of the movement had occurred in the Neolithic.’

This counters the traditionally held belief that most of the Anglo-Saxons arrived with the Dark Age invasions. (It has long been accepted that some Germanic people arrived with the Roman armies).

Oppenheimer backs up his claim by citing Caesar who, in the Gallic Wars, says ‘the greater part of the Belgae were sprung, from the Germans’ and that the Germans, who dwell on the southern side of this (southern) side of the Rhine, had joined themselves to them’. He maps the Belgic tribes, according to Caesar, labelling the Remi, Suessiones, Catalauni, and possibly the Treveri as Celtica/Belgae, the Menapii, Morini, Atrebates, Vironmandui, Ambiani, Caleti, Vellocasses, and Bellovaci as ‘Belgic related to the Germani’, and the Nervii, Eburones, Atuatuci, Condrusi, and Paemani as ‘Tribes said to be Germani’. This fits with place-name evidence with the only odd one out being the Treveri whose capital was Triers where there a number of place-names and inscriptions. He notes the Belgae occupied South-East England where Celtic place-names are scarce (there are only six).

This interested me because the Belgae may have been the people of the Celtic god, Bel(inus). This is suggested not only by the name of their tribal confederacy but of one of their leaders, Cunobelinus ‘The Hound of Belinus’. It suggests both Brythonic and Germanic people were drawn together under the name of Bel and that both may have worshipped him as the god of their war-host. Perhaps they were drawn together not only in battle but engaged in other cultural exchanges.

Oppenheimer introduces Forster’s theory that the Germanic peoples may have spoken ‘an Island Germanic’. This is supported by a ‘network analysis’ that ‘reveals a Scandinavian influence on English and apparently a pre-Scandinavian archaic component to Old English. All Germanic lexica spoken today appear to converge in the network on an ancestral Common Germanic lexicon spoken at an unknown time, but constrained to before AD 350 and probably after 3600 BC.’

This is supported by a reference to ‘Saxon Shores’ in ‘a late fourth-century Roman military inventory, the Notitia Dignum (‘Register of Offices’)’ which may not have been defended against but by Saxons. Vortigern invited ‘those Saxons who lived overseas to Britain’ to support the existing populace in their battles against Pictish and Scottish raiders.

Our conception of the Anglo-Saxon invasions is deeply rooted in the sixth century History of the Britons by Gildas. Oppenheimer says: ‘Gildas… describes an inferno of rapine, blood-shed and genocide which has formed a basis for a persisting view of the Dark Ages ethnic cleansing of the ‘Celts’ from England… Despite Gildas’ nationalist agenda and endless religious ranting, this extreme view can still be regarded as an orthodox position’. ‘Thanks to Gildas, our English ancestry was orphaned and stripped of any context beyond the Dark Age threshold.’

Genetic research shows that ‘intrusions from the traditional Anglo-Saxon homelands of Schleswig-Holstein (Angeln) and north-west Germany (Old Saxony)’ certainly took place but that ‘Only an average of 3.8% British male gene types have matches in the Anglo-Saxon homeland region.’

The replacement of the Brythonic by the Anglo-Saxon culture in England was primarily one of culture not genes. However, it has had a profound impact on the cultural landscape of Britain and its legacy lives on in the oppression of the Welsh by the English, which continues to affect the lives of each today.

There is little evidence about how the Brythonic and Germanic peoples related to each other in the millennia prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasions but one might guess, as ever, their relationship consisted of both of periods of conflict and more fruitful alliances and cultural exchange. There were possibly times during which there were crossovers between cultures and the gods they worshipped.

Maybe, just maybe, my Saxon ancestors were amongst those early Germanic peoples who, as well as their own gods, were called to worship Bel, his son, Nodens, and his grandson, my patron, Vindos/Gwyn ap Nudd.

*My Saxon ancestry on my paternal side was no surprise but I was surprised when I found out my maternal line is Yenisei, meaning I am descended from the Ket people of Siberia.