3,000 Years Ago, Britain Got Half Its Genes From … France?
The New York Times
An extensive study of ancient DNA suggests that a wave of newcomers — and perhaps the first Celtic languages — crossed the English Channel three millenniums ago.
Three years ago in the journal Nature, a vast international research team led in part by Harvard geneticist David Reich shined a torchlight on one of prehistoric Britain’s murkier mysteries.
By analyzing the degraded DNA from the remains of 400 ancient Europeans, the researchers showed that 4,500 years ago nomadic pastoralists from the steppes on the eastern edge of Europe surged into Central Europe and in some areas their progeny replaced around 75 percent of the genetic ancestry of the existing populations.
Descendants of the nomads then moved west into Britain, where they mixed with the Neolithic inhabitants so thoroughly that within a few hundred years the newcomers accounted for more than 90 percent of the island’s gene pool. In effect, the research suggested, Britain was almost completely repopulated by immigrants.
