Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-95.94.124.138-20130922100323/@comment-24999978-20140708192528

Neither the Atmorans nor the Nedes are descendants of one another, they are both seperate groups stemming from the Wandering Ehlnofey, largely divided by the War of the Ehlnofey. To quote MK, "And for the last time (uh huh), Nedes != Atmorans. That's just shoddy scholarship from a bygone regime." Likely referring to the mistake in 'Before the Ages of Man' which contradicts other books on the matter. For those of you who take his writing with a grain of salt, for whatever reason which really is not a point of discussion here, Kurt Kuhlmann also stated:

"The usual Imperial arrogance. The hoary old "Out of Atmora" theory has been widely discredited (no reputable archaeologist would publicly support it these days), but the Imperial Geographers continue to beat the drum of the Nordic Fatherland in the best tradition of the Septim Empire. They seem to think that the imprimature of officialdom gives their outdated scholarship added weight -- which, unfortunately, it appears to in the eyes of the ever-gullible public which continues to snap up the latest Pocket Guides along with the rest of their Imperial Certified pablum."

The Bretons did indeed have Nedic ancestors, as did the Cyrodiils who experienced the further South reaching Atmorans interbreeding with Nedic tribes in the Heartlands, and later interbreeding with Ayleids, Tsaesci etc as the fashion became popular. All of the humans obviously share ancestors further back (some more than others), but they also share geniological links with Mer, too, so I would not put Sovngarde access down to biological, but rather ideological factors (which largely contribute to the Man/Mer dichotonomy, anyway).