Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history

[Chad Rohlfsen]

Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history

Stephan Schiffels, Wolfgang Haak, Pirita Paajanen, Bastien Llamas, Elizabeth Popescu, Louise Lou, Rachel Clarke, Alice Lyons, Richard Mortimer, Duncan Sayer, Chris Tyler-Smith, Alan Cooper, Richard Durbin

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/022723

Iron Age through early Saxon period. Modern Brits are much more native. East English are only 20-40% Anglo-Saxon, an average of about 30%. BAM! Called it! I'll have to find that post. Great read, on this pre-print.

" By this measure the East England samples are consistent with 30% Anglo-*Saxon ancestry on average, with a spread from 20% to 40%, and the Welsh and
Scottish samples are consistent with 20% Anglo-Saxon ancestry on average....."

[Humanist]

The above link is not working for me.

Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history

[Motzart]

That 30% anglo-saxon estimate is consistent with the number from the POBI study.

[Chad Rohlfsen]

The above link is not working for me.

Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/201...-text.pdf+html

[rms2]

Here is the table that provides a nice overview of the results.

Hinxton Oakington Linton ancient results.jpg

Looking at ISOGG's R Tree, evidently the report lists the two Iron Age Celt males (HI1 and HI2) as R1b-L21 (R1b1a2a1a2c) and R1b-DF13 (R1b1a2a1a2c1). I believe it was Felix who said HI2 was DF25+.

[Tomenable]

An excerpt from this study:

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/e...22723.full.pdf

[rms2]

Time for a brief but relevant aside. Apparently the earliest sets of remains in this study belonged to a people known only as "Iron Age". Evidently that's the language they spoke: Iron Age (whatever that is or was).

But the later sets of remains are all "Anglo-Saxon"; no doubt about that: firm, solid, unquestionably true.

Baffling.

[Tomenable]

" By this measure the East England samples are consistent with 30% Anglo-Saxon ancestry on average, with a spread from 20% to 40%, and the Welsh and Scottish samples are consistent with 20% Anglo-Saxon ancestry on average..."

By another measure that could be even less than 30% (between 20% and 30% instead of between 20% and 40%) - an excerpt:

[Chad Rohlfsen]

Exactly. You have the Danes, Normans, and Protestants entering Britain, which likely have ancestry from similar groups, which weren't really Saxons. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if no one in England is above 30% Anglo-Saxon.

[Tomenable]

Exactly. You have the Danes, Normans, and Protestants entering Britain, which likely have ancestry from similar groups, which weren't really Saxons. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if no one in England is above 30% Anglo-Saxon.

Indeed.

According to this study, Anglo-Saxons were most genetically similar to modern Danish and modern Dutch people.

So I suppose that it is impossible to distinguish Anglo-Saxon ancestry from Medieval Danish ancestry (see Danish settlement in "Danelaw").

Therefore this figure of 30% for East England is not all Anglo-Saxon, but includes also "Danelaw" Danish ancestry.

=================================

As for Normans, they were heavily mixed with local French people by 1066, so they should be possible to distinguish from Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, "original Normans" were mostly from Norway, not from Denmark, and Norwegians are quite genetically different from Danes.

Moreover, William's army included also people of Breton, Flemish, etc. blood. The Stuarts were of Celtic Breton ancestry, for example (and had R1b-L21 haplogroup, which is common among Bretons, due to them being largely descendants of earlier Briton refugees and emigrants).

So in Norman times after Hastings there was some sort of a back-migration of R1b-L21 into Britain from Bretagne as well.

Norwegian ancestry is visible in populations of the Orkney and Shetland Archipelagos in Scotland (especially their high % of R1a).

Danish settlement in "Danelaw" did not bring nearly as much of R1a as did Norwegian settlement in the Northern Islands of Scotland.

Protestants is a religion, not an ethnic group. French Huguenots had similar DNA as other French people. According to Eurogenes K15 and other admixture analyses, both Hinxton Celtic and Hinxton Anglo-Saxon samples were more "northern-oriented" autosomally, than modern English people are, suggesting considerable genetic impact of immigrants from Southern Europe in Roman times and since Hastings to modern times.

I suppose those were mostly immigrants from Italy and France.

Here is this Eurogenes K15 (posted by Anglecynn):

http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthre...ll=1#post58823

Average for 2 skeletons from pre-Roman Celtic period from Hinxton:

North_Sea 37.83
Atlantic 29.63
Baltic 10.16
Eastern_Euro 9.21
West_Mediterranean 6.55
West_Asian 4.44
East_Mediterranean 0
Red_Sea 0.7
South_Asian 0.95
Southeast_Asian 0.02
Siberian 0.06
Amerindian 0
Oceanian 0
Northeast_African 0.15
Sub-Saharan 0.255

Average for 3 skeletons from the Anglo-Saxon period from Hinxton:

North_Sea 41.37
Atlantic 28.59
Baltic 8.85
Eastern_Euro 9.48
West_Mediterranean 6.16
West_Asian 3.23
East_Mediterranean 0.3
Red_Sea 0.28
South_Asian 0.36
Southeast_Asian 0.23
Siberian 0
Amerindian 0.03
Oceanian 0.13
Northeast_African 0.27
Sub-Saharan 0.68

Modern times, average for a sample of English people from Kent:

North_Sea 35.52
Atlantic 29.86
Baltic 9.89
Eastern_Euro 8.36
West_Mediterranean 8.77
West_Asian 3.35
East_Mediterranean 2.5
Red_Sea 0.33
South_Asian 0.58
Southeast_Asian 0.03
Siberian 0.05
Amerindian 0.35
Oceanian 0.31
Northeast_African 0.06
Sub-Saharan 0.03

As you can see not just Anglo-Saxons, but also Iron Age Celts from Hinxton, were actually more "Northern", than modern English.

If Anglo-Saxons just mixed with Celts and that's it, then modern English should have had much more of North_Sea component than they do.

But what we observe, is actually an increase in Mediterranean components compared to Ancient Britons and Anglo-Saxons.

This indicates that modern English are not just a mixture of British Celts and Anglo-Saxons, but also someone who came from the south (be it Roman-related immigration, or Norman-related immigration, or French Huguenots, or whoever else did they get throughout history).