Hang onto your Kilts! Scots woke up today to discover that part of their national DNA is Siberian

Ruins of old castle by Loch Ness, Inverness, Scotland. Picture: The Siberian Times 

Until now the main similarity between Scotland and Siberia was a love of porridge. 

While Siberians are now credited - thanks to DNA and archeological evidence - with not only discovering but populating the Americas long before Columbus was born, they also migrated to Europe's most extreme westerly point, according to Alistair Moffat, a noted historian and current rector of St Andrews University.

The ongoing study of the national genetic code has already produced other shocks for the Scots, the most disturbing of which is that some of their most eminent people are in fact English.

As well as Siberian DNA, the researchers have found  West African, Arabian, and south-east Asian blood in Scotland, says The Scotsman newspaper. 

'The explanation is simple. We are a people on the edge of beyond; on the end of a massive continent. Peoples were migrating northwest; and they couldn't get any further. We have collected them,' Moffat told the Edinburgh international book festival.

The results come in a book he co-authored with leading geneticist Dr Jim Wallace of Edinburgh University called The Scots: A Genetic Journey.

Among other 'discoveries' from the DNA study is that a retired woman teacher Marina Donald is a direct descendant of the Queen of Sheba, while another pensioner retired lecturer Ian Kinnaird found he was directly descended from the earth's very first woman, who lived 190,000 years ago.

'It is an astonishing result and means he could have been in the 'Garden of Eden', claimed Moffat who was horrified to find that his own ancestral roots were English. 

When the time comes for Siberia to check its DNA in the same way as Scotland it is also likely to find a myriad of hitherto unknown traces due to centuries of inward migration, some of it forced. 

It is more than likely that Scottish traces will be found in the Siberian DNA too. Names such as Lermontov can have Scots traces - as does Makferson.