Southeast England was 80% replaced by Anglo-Saxons in the Early Middle Ages

[Roy]

Distance to: CDG
1.83711731 English_Northeast(n=13)
2.31205536 English_North(n=107)
2.54994118 English_Lancashire(n=30)
2.62786986 English_Northwest(n=52)
2.74444894 English_Yorkshire(n=26)
2.92620915 English_Midlands(n=65)
2.94271983 English_West_Midlands(n=41)
3.04886864 English_East_Midlands(n=25)
3.11358314 English_South_East(n=56)
3.36569458 English_Southeast(n=83)
3.55177420 English_Southwest(n=38)
3.81308274 English_East(n=19)

Target: CDG
Distance: 1.8371% / 1.83711731
100.0 English_Northeast(n=13)

What CDG stands for?

[noricum]

What CDG stands for?

Really wild guess:

Celtic
Dragon
God

[Peterski]

This weird website claims that English has a prehistoric presence in Britain:

http://web.archive.org/web/201705232...o-english.org/

"Linguistic situation at the time of Julius Caesar" (a map from this website):



The author of this website and this theory is Michael Goormachtigh.

[Hialt]

Fresh off the presses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hps4bM2mZ2E

[Graham]

I'm guessing we will get to know what is happening soon?
https://medievalarchaeology.co.uk/wp...ceBooklet3.pdf

The Anglo-Saxon migration and formation of the early English gene pool
Stephan Schiffels and Joscha Gretzinger

The Anglo-Saxon migration and formation of the early English gene pool
Stephan Schiffels and Joscha Gretzinger

A series of migrations and accompanied cultural changes has formed the peoples of Britain and still represents the foundations of the English national identity. For the most prominent of these, the Anglo-Saxon migration, the traditional view outlined that the local Romanised British population was forcibly replaced by invading Germanic tribes, starting in the fifth century AD. However, to which extent this historic event coincided with factual immigration that affected the genetic composition of the British population was focus of generations of scientific and social controversy.

To better understand this key period, we have generated genome-wide sequences from 280 individuals from 22 early medieval cemeteries in England and from 195 additional individuals from contemporaneous sites in continental north-western Europe and Ireland. We combined this data with previously published genome-wide data to a total dataset of more than 750 ancient British genomes spanning from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages, allowing us to investigate shifts and affinities in British finescale population structure during this phase of transformation.

Here we present two results: First, we detect a substantial increase in continental northern European ancestry in England during the Early Anglo-Saxon period, replacing approximately 75% of the local British ancestry. Second, we highlight the yet continuous presence of ancestry identified in Iron Age and Roman individuals during the Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon period. Our observation of a culturally homogenous but genetically diverse Anglo-Saxon population demonstrates that admixture between Britons and continental immigrants was not a geographically restricted or exceptional phenomenon.

Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and the implications of new ancient DNA data
Duncan Sayer
There is no genetic signature for an early Anglo-Saxon person. Ancient genetic information has been highly anticipated for decades, but it is only now that we are in the midst of the archaeo-genetic revolution that the wider implications of the evidence are becoming apparent for our understanding of the early Middle Ages. On its own, DNA data cannot tell us who was a migrant, and who was not. But it can tell us about the biological impact of migration. The results of 210 individuals from 9 cemeteries will change the narrative, at the very least it moves the conversation from if there was a migration, to what was the impact of migration. But what has been less anticipated is what DNA deviance can tell us about the people themselves. About gender difference and migration, who was related to who, and how the cultural impact played out at a national, regional, and local level.

[J. Ketch]

^One of the preprints is claiming based on isotopic evidence that Anglo-Saxon migration was only slightly more male-mediated than female-mediated (as opposed to the heavily male Viking migration), which would be big news if true, not what many expected. Would change the stereotype about the Anglo-Saxon invasion.

Here:
https://www.academia.edu/81150902/La..._c_AD_400_1100

[Graham]

^One of the preprints is claiming based on isotopic evidence that Anglo-Saxon migration was only slightly more male-mediated than female-mediated (as opposed to the heavily male Viking migration), which would be big news if true, not what many expected. Would change the stereotype about the Anglo-Saxon invasion.

Here:
https://www.academia.edu/81150902/La..._c_AD_400_1100

Always thought of the Saxons as settling into farming which would involve the family. As opposed to the later North Sea Vikings. The Saxons correlate well with arable land in Britain.

[Token]

Posted today on Anthrogenica by JonikW:

The first of the aDNA presentations now: “The Anglo-Saxon migration and formation of the early English gene pool”, Stefan Schiffels and Joscha Gretzinger.

Gretzinger (speaking very quickly throughout) started by saying about 80 people have been working on this since 2018 (including Schiffels as a PhD student). Gretzinger started off by looking at earlier studies including POBI. Then he turned to their own work. This is a map of sites the study looked at to find out the true picture:




England forms a cline between Wales and Scotlands and the Netherlands and Germany on a PCA. In the Bronze and Iron Age, England clusters with other Brits. But the 285 new samples sit with the northern Germans and Danes. The Early Medieval English are genetically closest related to northern Germans, Danes and Dutch. Most sites in England have majority ancestry from the Continent at this time.

Y chromosomes: haplogroup I1 is the big development. Around 76 percent of the paternal ancestry in the study comes from the continent. They also arrive at a level of 76 percent using the autosomal data alone.



Mitochondrial dna. Women were also involved in the migration.

Where did the continental incomers come from?: Nearly exclusively Northern Germany and Denmark. There is a “nice cline from the northern Netherlands to southern Sweden”, but mainly concentrated northern Germany and Denmark.

Impact of the migrations on the modern population: It’s not possible to model English as a simple two way mixture between the iron age population and northern Europeans. We think a better model for modern England involves a mixture between the IA Brits, early English and some French ancestry.

A three-way admixture model for the present day population has to include French. French ancestry 43 per cent in east Anglia and also strong in Kent.

Conclusions in bullet points:

We detect 76 percent ancestry replacement during the Early Middle Ages in England
We find no evidence for sex bias in the admixture process
We identify Lower Saxony and Denmark as the most plausible geographic homeland of those immigrants.
Admixture was heterogenous across England and follows an East to West cline
Continental ancestry was later diluted by southwestern European ancestry.

They now want to understand how this later French ancestry entered England (he mentioned David Reich is working with them).

Points from the questions and answers at the end: they have 30 early Medieval and 10 Iron Age samples from the Netherlands (I’m not sure whether those all belong specifically to the study because he mentioned they don’t have English IA samples of their own). Norway was not sampled specifically for the study but it looks different from the key areas discussed here including Denmark. Samples were mostly taken by archaeologists. Next they need to sample the west of England more and be careful to avoid bias of sites. They admit that “one of the major issues” is that they have is that they don’t have Roman samples from Britain. But this large-scale change that we see in the Early Medieval Period in England is NOT Roman Period”. They know this from studies that they have access to but that are not published yet.

[Jana]

How did this French ancestry enter England? Gauls or Normans?

I noticed some south-eastern English can be very southern shifted like user Norb for example, who looks very Germanic (and he probably has lot of Germanic ancestry being from east).
Such people can't be modeled as Iron Age English + Anglo Saxon indeed.

there is something else pulling them south. If it's not Roman, what it is?

Still, I think there was limited Roman impact in southern UK. That could explain why exotic branches of E-V13 and J2b2 and similar pop up in England from time to time.

[Token]

How did this French ancestry enter England? Gauls or Normans?

I noticed some south-eastern English can be very southern shifted like user Norb for example, who looks very Germanic (and he probably has lot of Germanic ancestry being from east).
Such people can't be modeled as Iron Age English + Anglo Saxon indeed.

there is something else pulling them south. If it's not Roman, what it is?

Still, I think there was limited Roman impact in southern UK. That could explain why exotic branches of E-V13 and J2b2 and similar pop up in England from time to time.

It may be from multiple sources, not necessarily just one, but I'd bet the bulk comes from the Normans. Apparently they are working in a paper with David Reich which will try to answer this.