Around 27,000 years agoTwo-thirds of Britain’s British Isles were covered by a huge sheet of ice, rendering the area unhospitable for humans.
All that changed when the changing climate allowed communities to move in and find new homes on the fertile soils. The region has become a melting pot of cultures thanks to archeologists who are putting together the stories of the early migrants.
The oldest human genomes found in Britain and Ireland indicate at least two origin stories. Each story links back to the European continent and beyond.
One fossilized human from Gough’s CaveSomerset’s genome can be linked more closely to ancestors from Spain and Belgium.
Another Kendrick’s Cave cave in Wales contains genetic links to ancestors who are represented at sites in Italy.
Radiocarbon dating shows that both humans lived in Britain more than 13500 years ago. Only a few thousand more yearsAfter the huge ice sheet in the area melted, it retreated to the Arctic.
Gough’s Cave’s bones are the oldest. They were probably born around 15,000 years ago. This means that their ancestors may have been part of a migration wave from northwest Europe about a thousand years earlier than their time.
Kendrick’s Cave’s individual lived for a few thousand more years. Their ancestors likely migrated from the area. Near EastAround 14,000 years ago, Britain was founded.
“Finding these two ancestors so close in time in Britain is adding to the emerging picture Paleolithic Europe is one of a dynamic and changing population.” SaysMateja Hajdinjak is an evolutionary anthropologist at the Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom.
The British-Irish Ice Sheet had almost disappeared by 16,000 years ago. This period is rare in fossils, and the only other human remains found are from around 15,500 years ago. This was a few centuries prior to Britain’s rapid climate change.
It is still unknown who these people were or where they came.
2018 was the year archaeologists discovered that a human-sized fossil from Gough’s cave also dates back to around 10,500 years. This fossil is known as the ‘Cheddar Man. The oldest person in England to have all of their genome sequenced.
These findings indicate that the ancient man was of dark skin with blue eyes. This indicates that the population had yet to adjust to higher and colder latitudes. The Cheddar Man’s ancestry is a mixture of western European hunter/gatherers and people who migrated to England earlier.
This latest analysis will involve many of the same researchers who were involved in previous investigations. They hope to discover other ancestral connections.
“We really wanted more information about these early populations of Britain,” SaysBiologist Selina Brace, from England’s Natural History Museum who worked on both papers.
“We knew, based on our previous work, that the western hunter/gatherers had been in Britain for around 10,500 year BP. However, we didn’t know when or if they were the first to arrive in Britain.
New results show that British post-glacial settlers were not only genetically diverse. They also seem culturally different.
As was their diet, the burial practices in Kendrick’s Cave’s Gough Cave and Kendrick’s Cave were markedly different. Both animal and human bones can be seen in the Gough Cave. One human skull even looked like a cup!
Kendrick’s Cave’s human, however, has chemical traces in its bones that indicate it had eaten freshwater fish and other mammals. However, unlike Gough’s Cave there are no signs that deer, horses, or aurochs were ever eaten by humans.
The authors state that these evidence “report the existence of at least two distinct human populations, each with their own genetic affinities and dietary patterns, in Britain during the Late Glacial.” Write.
One lineage is connected to ancestors found at sites in Villabruna, Italy, while the other appears to be a combination of Goyet ancestry related to those from sites in Belgium and El Mirón ancestry from Spain.
According to some models, the Cheddar Man could be a mixture of all three ancestries.
The authors describe a dynamic and varied Late Glacial period in Britain. These changes occurred in the Late Upper Palaeolithic in diet and funerary behavior, technologies and genetic affinity during a time of rapid ecological and environmental change. Conclusion.
“The emerging scenario, which is based on our data and the knowledge of prehistoric genetics in Britain in the early years of the 20th century, could be one of many genetic population turnover events in Britain.”
The study was published by the Nature Ecology & Evolution.
