© BBCA depiction of early man for The Story of Wales series.
Welsh people could lay claim to be the most ancient Britons, according to scientists who have drawn up a genetic map of the British Isles.
Research suggests the Welsh are genetically distinct from the rest of mainland Britain.
Professor Peter Donnelly, of Oxford University, said the Welsh carry DNA which could be traced back to the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago.
The project surveyed 2,000 people in rural areas across Britain.
Participants, as well as their parents and grandparents, had to be born in those areas to be included in the study.
Prof Donnelly, a professor of statistical science at Oxford University and director of the Wellcome Trust centre for human genetics, said DNA samples were analysed at about 500,000 different points.
After comparing statistics, a map was compiled which showed Wales and Cornwall stood out.
Prof Donnelly said: "People from Wales are genetically relatively distinct, they look different genetically from much of the rest of mainland Britain, and actually people in north Wales look relatively distinct from people in south Wales."
While there were traces of migrant groups across the UK, there were fewer in Wales and Cornwall.
He said people from south and north Wales genetically have "fairly large similarities with the ancestry of people from Ireland on the one hand and France on the other, which we think is most likely to be a combination of remnants of very ancient populations who moved across into Britain after the last Ice Age.
"And potentially also, people travelling up the Atlantic coast of France and Spain and settling in Wales many thousands of years ago".