![]() Earlier ancient DNA studies also indicated substantial migration, but this latest study has so much more power.” Studies based on DNA from people alive today have indicated a substantial migration, but there is no substitute for analysing DNA from people who lived around the time of this formative transition in British history. Professor Thomas said: “There has been a number of previous genetics studies trying to establish the scale of migration. The interdisciplinary team consisting of over 70 authors, including Professor Mark Thomas (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment), was able to integrate archaeological data with these new genetic results, which revealed that women of immigrant origin were buried with artifacts more often than women of local origin, especially when considering items such as brooches and beads. Overall, the researchers witnessed prominent status burials across the studied cemeteries that comprised individuals of both local and migrant origin. This family showed a large degree of interaction between the two gene pools. ![]() In one case, in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery from Buckland near Dover, researchers were able to reconstruct a family tree across at least four generations and identify the point in time when migrants and locals intermarried. Upon arrival, the migrants intermixed with the local population to some extent. Migrants intermixed with the local population Using published genetic data from more than 4,000 ancient and 10,000 present-day Europeans, the researchers identified subtle genetic differences between the closely related groups inhabiting the ancient North Sea region. “Not only do we now have an idea of the scale of migration, but also how it played out in communities and families.” These incomers interbred with the existing population of Britain, but this integration seems to have varied from region to region and community to community.Ĭo-lead author Joscha Gretzinger (Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany) said: “With 278 ancient genomes from England and hundreds more from Europe, we now gained really fascinating insights into population-scale and individual histories during post-Roman times. However, new ancient DNA results show that around 75% of the ancestry of people in early medieval Eastern and Southern England (predominantly from the years 450-850 CE) was from continental regions bordering the North Sea - including the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. ![]() Scholars of many disciplines, including archaeology, history, linguistics and genetics, have debated what his words might have described, and what the scale, the nature and the impact of human migration was at that time.įor the last 30 years many archaeologists have favoured a view that whilst the cultural impacts of this migration were huge – profoundly changing the language and forms of objects used – the genetic impact would have been minor. The results, published in Nature, show in detail one of the largest population transformations in the post-Roman world.Īround 300 years after the Romans left Britain, the Venerable Bede wrote about the Angles and the Saxons and their migrations to the British Isles. In the largest early medieval ancient DNA study to date, an interdisciplinary team consisting of geneticists and archaeologists, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, analysed over 400 individuals from ancient Britain, Ireland, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. A genetic and archaeological study involving a UCL researcher has revealed the great extent of migration from continental Europe into the East of England during the early Middle Ages.
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