Abstract
Present-day people from England and Wales harbour more ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) than people of the Early Bronze Age1. To understand this, we generated genome-wide data from 793 individuals, increasing data from the Middle to Late Bronze and Iron Age in Britain by 12-fold, and Western and Central Europe by 3.5-fold. Between 1000 and 875 bc, EEF ancestry increased in southern Britain (England and Wales) but not northern Britain (Scotland) due to incorporation of migrants who arrived at this time and over previous centuries, and who were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from France. These migrants contributed about half the ancestry of Iron Age people of England and Wales, thereby creating a plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain. These patterns are part of a broader trend of EEF ancestry becoming more similar across central and western Europe in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, coincident with archaeological evidence of intensified cultural exchange2–6. There was comparatively less gene flow from continental Europe during the Iron Age, and Britain’s independent genetic trajectory is also reflected in the rise of the allele conferring lactase persistence to ~50% by this time compared to ~7% in central Europe where it rose rapidly in frequency only a millennium later. This suggests that dairy products were used in qualitatively different ways in Britain and in central Europe over this period.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 588-594 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Nature |
Volume | 601 |
Issue number | 7894 |
Early online date | 22 Dec 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 27 Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
Funding
Acknowledgements We thank P. Csengeri, T. de Rider, M. Giesen, E. Melis, A. Parkin and A. Schmitt for their contribution to sample selection and collection of archaeological data; R. Crellin, J. Koch, K. Kristiansen and G. Kroonen for comments on the manuscript; A. Williamson for manually revising Y chromosome haplogroup determinations and making corrections to nine; and M. Lee for assistance with data entry. This work was funded in part by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 834087; the COMMIOS Project to I.A.). M.N. was supported by the Croatian Science Fund grant (HRZZ IP-2016-06-1450). P.V., M.Dobe\u0161 and Z.V. were supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic (DKRVO 2019-2023/7.I.c, 00023272). M.E. was supported by Czech Academy of Sciences award Praemium Academiae. M.Dobis\u00EDkov\u00E1 and A.Danielisov\u00E1 were supported by the grant RVO 67985912 of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. M.G.B.F. was funded by The Leverhulme Trust via a Doctoral Scholarship scheme awarded to M.Pala and M.B.R. Support to M.Legge came from the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. M.G.\u2019s osteological analyses were funded by Culture Vannin. A.S.-N. was supported by the J\u00E1nos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. T.H., T.S. and K.K.\u2019s work was supported by a grant from the Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office (project number: FK128013). We acknowledge support for radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analyses as well as access to skeletal material from Manx National Heritage and A. Fox. Dating analysis was funded by Leverhulme Trust grant RPG-388. M.G.T. and I.B. were supported by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (project 100713/Z/12/Z). I.O. was supported by a Ram\u00F3n y Cajal grant from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci\u00F3n, Spanish Government (RYC2019-027909-I). The research directed at Harvard was funded by NIH grants GM100233 and HG012287, by John Templeton Foundation grant 61220, by a gift from Jean-Fran\u00E7ois Clin, and by the Allen Discovery Center program, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. D.R. is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Funders | Funder number |
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Croatian Science Fund | HRZZ IP-2016-06-1450 |
Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office | FK128013, RPG-388 |
Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences | |
Praemium Academiae | RVO 67985912 |
Spanish Government | RYC2019-027909-I |
West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership | |
National Institutes of Health | HG012287 |
National Institute of General Medical Sciences | R01GM100233 |
John Templeton Foundation | 61220 |
Wellcome Trust | 100713/Z/12/Z |
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 834087 |
Leverhulme Trust | |
European Research Council | |
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia | |
Akademie Věd České Republiky | |
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | |
Ministerstvo Kultury | 00023272 |