A new study suggests that the Bronze Age immigration into southern Britain contributed to half the genetic ancestry of places such as England and Wales. One of the largest DNA analyses was conducted by the University of York, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Vienna in collaboration. Over 800 DNA samples were analyzed. Researchers found that a mass movement took place between 1300-800BC, where people entered the Southern Britain region from communities that they believe belonged to France today.
According to the research, the genetic structure of the population is changing slowly but noticeably. Accordingly, the migratory evidence that the researchers found was not due to a ‘violent invasion’ or a single migratory event, but to stable phenomena like trade, intermarriage, and small groups of families moving together. ‘The new DNA evidence shows a very large number of people were moving, across all of society, as opposed to once thinking long-distance mobility was only for traders or small groups of warriors’, says Professor Ian Armit, who led the study.
It was during the Middle to Late Bronze Age when contacts between communities proliferated and interconnections flourished. This study corresponds to the case of Celtic languages in Britain in the Bronze Age since linguistic changes are inevitable when populations move. A further investigation of the pattern of adaptations with vectors of time and space is also warranted from this study.
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Professor Ron Pinhasi, the study’s co-author, said, ‘Our findings indicate that dairy products have been used in Britain in qualitatively different ways from an economic or cultural perspective than they were in Europe during the Iron Age’. Researchers published their findings in Nature, which indicate that the late Bronze age was a time of intense communication and movement that shaped the demography of different areas of the European continent.
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