The British Are Coming!

A team of researchers (Schiffels et al, 2015) from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia has released a pre-publication report of ten complete genomes retrieved from Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon (2,300-1,200 years before present) individuals from East England, near Cambridge. This ancient DNA was compared to modern samples, to the conclusion that modern English are genetically more similar to the older Iron Age humans than to the Anglo-Saxons. The Iron Age samples showed closest affinity to modern English and French people, while the Anglo-Saxons were closer to present-day Scottish and Norwegians. Furthermore, Schiffels et al conclude that the ancient Anglo-Saxon individuals were most similar to the modern Dutch and Danish, and contributed roughly 30% to the genome of modern East English; on the other hand, the Iron Age individuals share more recent common ancestry with more ethnic groups from across Northern Europe, including England.

Fig. 1 (Schiffels et al 2015)

Perhaps most interesting are the interpretations yielded by the in situ burial sites. The ancient community at Oakington, one of the sites excavated, is described as "genetically mixed but culturally Anglo-Saxon," opposing the expectation that interactions between indigenous and immigrant peoples would result in total segregation. Of the genome-sequenced individuals buried at Oakington, two appear to be recent immigrants from different European sources, one appeared descended from the native Iron Age population, and one exhibited admixture from both indigenous Iron Age and immigrant genomes; all four were buried similarly, however, in a flexed position with grave goods. Schiffels et al note that the only grave without any burial possessions belonged to one of the "foreigners," while the grave most abundant with good belong to the "native British." They suggest this signals some kind of socioeconomic disparity between old-timers and newcomers on the ancient British Isles---an interesting if perhaps nebulous claim, nonetheless representative of a fascinating find in the intersecting realms of archaeology and ancient genomics.

Fig. 2 - Schiffels et al (2015)