Ancient DNA England: Iron age, Roman-Gladiator, and Anglo Saxon

[Fire Haired14]

Today the third paper this year with ancient British/Irish DNA was published: Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons.

Table 1. Gives a Description of all the samples. All of them come from York, England. One an Iron age Celtic-Briton woman, 6 are Roman-era men(>45 years old) who were gladiators or Roman soldiers, and one is an Anglo Saxon male.

Most Interesting News: 5/6 of the gladiators/soldiers were native Britons and one was from SouthWest Asia(ID=3DRIF-26). In PCA he clusters with Jordanians/Palestinians and in ADMIXTURE he scores most similar to Jordanians/Palestinians. He also belonged to typical West Asian Y DNA J2. Furthermore, Isotope analysis confirm he was born in the Levant or Africa, and not anywhere in Europe.

This is interesting because this is an example of a man who traveled from the SouthEastern-tip(Syria, Palestine, etc.) of the Roman empire to the NorthWestern tip(Britain) of the Roman empire. He reveals that in the Roman empire there was cross-Continental travel which was pretty much unheard of till modern times.

More Interesting News: 5/5 of the Briton males belonged to R1b1a2a1a-L51, but two belonged to typical German R1b-U106 and on belonged to typical Italian/Central European R1b-U152. Only one was confirmed to belong to typical British/Irish R1b-L21.

Here are the first two.
Neolithic and Bronze Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic
Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history

Summary of What We've Learned from Those two Papers.
In 3000 BC the British Isles were inhabited by "EEF/MN" people who were roughly 70% Neolithic Anatolian and 30% Mesolithic European. Then around 2000 BC a new people from mainland Europe who were mostly from mainland European"EEF/MNs" but also had significant(~1/3) from Bronze age Pontic-Caspien Steppe. Those new people did admix with the natives but not very much. From 2000 BC to 0 AD no significant genetic changes occurred in the British Isles. Then around 500 AD Anglo Saxons, who were closest to modern Danish and Dutch, arrived. The Anglo Saxon contribution to modern English is estimated at 30-40%, and the rest should be mostly from Celtic-Britons.

[Angela]

I just got alerted to it by this article in archaeology news:
http://archaeology.org/news/4081-160...race-skeletons

That led me to this University of York article and then to the paper.
http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-event...adless-romans/

Maybe it's because I've only quickly skimmed the actual paper, but while the "gladiators" or "soldiers" are similar to the Iron Age sample, the isotope analysis shows that they may have been raised outside of Britain.

That might have implications for understanding that 2/6 carried U-106, usually held to signal "Germanic" migrations. Either they came from nearby on the continent, from similar people, or U-106 arrived before the Anglo-Saxon invasions, perhaps with the Belgae?

How interesting also that we find our first Roman Era Middle Eastern sample in Britain! We need to see a comparison of him to early Anatolian farmers and to various Jewish populations. Just from a quick look through he's less SSA than modern Palestinians, yes? That would be pretty much as expected. He's also pretty close to both Saudi's and UAE and modern Syrians depending on the tool used. We really need a better fix through isotope analysis as to precisely where he originated. If he's actually Roman Era Syrian versus Idumean or Judean it makes a difference to the analysis. Also it's important to see if better resolution can be achieved for his yDna J2.

[Athiudisc]

I'll be interested in seeing if we find more U106 in less-military (or less gladiatorial) contexts; the presence of Frisian auxiliaries in northern England is generally acceptable (if not completely accepted), and Romans would throw anything into an arena, but there is still the Belgae question Angela mentions.

[Fire Haired14]

Maybe it's because I've only quickly skimmed the actual paper, but while the "gladiators" or "soldiers" are similar to the Iron Age sample, the isotope analysis shows that they may have been raised outside of Britain.

That might have implications for understanding that 2/6 carried U-106, usually held to signal "Germanic" migrations. Either they came from nearby on the continent, from similar people, or U-106 arrived before the Anglo-Saxon invasions, perhaps with the Belgae?

In the Supp. Info they give detailed description of Isotope Analysis. All except one(6DRIF­21) genetically British individual is consistent with being born and raised in NorthEast England. Those articles must have not received detailed info. It is surprising one genetically British might not have been local, but the rest were locals. The gladiators died in 200-400 AD.

[Angela]

Imputation and phenotype determination

"Using a similar approach to that of Gamba et al.¹⁵, we used phased reference genomes from the 1000 Genomes Project to impute genotypes associated with phenotypic traits. In particular, we inferred genotypes at SNP positions to predict eye and hair pigmentation²⁹. The most common predicted phenotype in the Roman burial samples is brown eyes and black/brown hair. However, one sample, 6DRIF-18, was estimated to have had a distinctive appearance with blue eyes and blonde hair, as did the single Anglo-Saxon individual. We also inferred that blood group O is the most common in the Roman samples (Supplementary Table 17). The Iron-Age sample is also estimated as blood type O and the Anglo-Saxon is likely to have been type B or possibly type A. Five samples returned imputed lactase persistence genotypes: two Roman burials and the Iron-Age individual were likely to have been lactase persistent, while two Romans, 6DRIF-22 and the suspected migrant 3DRIF-26 were homozygous for the ancestral non-persistence variant."

Interesting that only one of the Roman Era samples was blond and blue eyed and that not only were the rest black or dark brown haired, but they were also dark eyed. The Bronze Age samples were also mainly brown eyed, or am I remembering that wrong? The coming of the Anglo-Saxons probably had an impact on that, which makes sense for England given the percentages of admixture in England and even parts of Wales, but I'm not sure about what went on in Ireland.

I took a look at SLC45A2 derived, and 2/6 were not yet homozygous derived, although they carried one derived allele. That's very rare today not only in England, but even in Ireland. Forget about the Spanish Armada sailors. There were Colin Farrell and Aiden Turner types running around long before that, or maybe, given the Welsh similarity, Jonathan Price? :)
http://media.baselineresearch.com/im...12047_full.jpg

Aiden Turner...oh yes, indeed. :)
http://images.radiotimes.com/namedim...inal/71577.jpg


Also interesting that lactase persistence was not yet a done deal, although there was a lot of it.

[LeBrok]

That might have implications for understanding that 2/6 carried U-106, usually held to signal "Germanic" migrations. Either they came from nearby on the continent, from similar people, or U-106 arrived before the Anglo-Saxon invasions, perhaps with the Belgae?

I don't remember who, but one of british historians in one of documentaries I watched, had a hypothesis, that before Saxon invasion there was rather long and slow migration (in Roman period) from area of today's Holland, I think he said related to Frisian language speakers. That could have been potential source of U-106 before Saxons came.

[LeBrok]

Also interesting that lactase persistence was not yet a done deal, although there was a lot of it.

That's good. According to my hypothesis the process was ongoing to end of Little Ice Age around 19 hundreds AD. This is when it has achieved maximum for Northern and Central Europe. Every time crops failed in Northern Europe the number of people with LP rose. I'm expecting that climatic disaster of Dark Ages was a major event in positive selection of LP. There should be a big jump in LP numbers in population between 400 and 800 AD.

[Angela]

Just some fun facts. I knew there were famous Thracian and Gallic gladiators, but I didn't know if there were any Middle Eastern ones.

There were...Flamma, a Syrian.

"Flamma, a Syrian slave, died at the age of thirty—having fought thirty-four times and having won twenty-one of those bouts. Nine battles ended in a draw, and he was defeated just four times. Most notably, Flamma was awarded the rudis a total of four times. When the rudis was given to a gladiator, he was usually freed from his shackles, and allowed to live normally among the Roman citizens. But Flamma refused the rudis, opting instead to continue fighting."
http://listverse.com/2013/04/02/10-f...-ancient-rome/

What possessed him?

From another source I learned he was a Secutor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secutor



As the picture Fire-Haired posted shows, a Secutor would fight a Retiarius.

Oh, I see someone has suggested he might have been a Nabataen. It's certainly possible in terms of climate and flora and fauna, and the genetics would work, I think.

[Vukodav]

Modern Britons are descended from Levantine slaves. It's official.

[Fire Haired14]

They might not have all been 100% Briton. In PCA some pull towards East Europe. It's possible they had some East German(Vandals, Goths) ancestry and that's where they got their R1b-U106 from.

@Angela,

Yeah, the results are unexpected. 2/5 had rs12913832 AA which only 1-5% in England and Ireland have today. The Iron age Hinxton guy also had AA.

[Drac II]

Historians have known for a long time (even as far back as the 19th century) that there were considerable numbers of foreigners, including Middle Easterners, in Roman Britain simply by examining the available historical evidence:

https://books.google.com/books?id=yC...es.%22&f=false

Britain was a "frontier" place, never fully conquered and pacified, so it was in constant need of soldiers at a time when the Roman armies themselves had already become predominantly composed of foreigners. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find evidence of such diverse groups of foreigners there.

[LeBrok]

They might not have all been 100% Briton. In PCA some pull towards East Europe. It's possible they had some East German(Vandals, Goths) ancestry and that's where they got their R1b-U106 from.

@Angela,

Yeah, the results are unexpected. 2/5 had rs12913832 AA which only 1-5% in England and Ireland have today. The Iron age Hinxton guy also had AA.

That's because many fail to see it as an evolutionary process which changes amount of positive mutations in time. I bet that LP and skin whitening process is pretty much ongoing till our times in Northern Europe, therefore their levels are only growing with time, being positive mutations. Aside from physical population movements.

[berun]

Maybe it's because I've only quickly skimmed the actual paper, but while the "gladiators" or "soldiers" are similar to the Iron Age sample, the isotope analysis shows that they may have been raised outside of Britain.

Good question; in fact I have very big doubts that all five gladiators would be locals; there are a lot of academic references but Wikipedia has the basics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall

Simon Schama says that our understanding of everyday life for soldiers at the wall forts & the population around them have been “transformed” by "one of the most astonishing finds of recent Roman archaeology": the excavations at Vindolanda and the Vindolanda tablets. Schama cites an inspection on 18 May between AD92 and AD97 where only 456 of the full quota of 756 Dutch and Belgian troops were present, the rest being sick or otherwise absent

Romans were not dumb; the worst idea would be to put britons defending Britania... as they could take arms to fight the southerner invasors (Romans); it was common to defend frontiers with cohorts from other regions: the soldiers got their salary, becoming also the enemies of the locals, so their Roman loyalty increased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome

In the Late Republic, about half the gladiators who fought in Roman arenas were slaves, though the most skilled were often free volunteers.

It makes sense to find two "Germanic" U106 beacuse many slaves were before that prisoners of war (Germania, Arabia...).

To use this biased data as to understand ancient genetics is a bad deal.

[Angela]

I don't think these men would have been rebel gladiators of any kind. The slaves and gladiators executed during the Servile Wars were almost always crucified. Decapitation was a relatively more "honorable" form of execution, usually reserved for citizens, and I think there's a certain respect in the way the heads were placed near the bodies. (Other methods of execution in Republican Rome involved being pushed off the Tarpeian rocks or just being placed in a sack and thrown into the Tiber or, often, strangulation. For parricide, the worst of sins in Rome, you were flayed alive and then sewn into a sack with wild animals and tossed into the river. Later on, they probably were just tossed into the local Circus for the wild animals.)

As for cowardice in battle, the punishment probably varied, but most often it was stoning or being flogged to death. In extreme circumstances of mass cowardice or desertion, sometimes the decimatio was used where the custom was for the men to be rounded up in groups of ten, one man then being chosen by lot from among the ten, and the other nine were forced to beat him to death. Horrific, but probably effective. Theft was often punished by clubbing or whipping or being put into a sack with snakes and then thrown into a nearby lake or river.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_...ts#Punishments

It doesn't make much sense to me that they were rebels against Roman rule, either, or even marauders or raiders from north of the Wall. The enemy dead weren't treated in this way. The leaders were brought to Rome in chains, strangled and then tossed into the Cloaxa or the Tiber, and the "commoners" were either killed in battle and dumped into mass graves, or enslaved. I don't think we'd see cemeteries or this kind of care taken with the remains.

Also, we have to consider that from what I can tell, these burials stretched over the entire 100-300 AD period. (It would be important to know if the tested remains all date from the same time period, but I can't find a break-out by precise date for them, much less for the remainder of them.)

If the beheaded samples, which are a little more than 50% of the 80 or so found, all bore marks of battle in one form or another, but stem from various periods, then perhaps it was a gladiator cemetery, although I still have a hard time accepting that dead gladiators would be treated with this kind of respect. Perhaps it's more likely that they were soldiers, drawn indeed from around the Empire and then executed relatively painlessly for some infraction?

It's pretty clear that some were native Britons, however, which shouldn't be surprising. Some tribes allied with Rome pretty early, and more and more as time went on. There are dozens of books on the topic, but you can see the following for a description of the work of the British auxiliaries. Of course, some of them wound up in legions on the continent.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yf...ritain&f=false

Perhaps some were executed by their leaders for one infraction or another, but it's also possible they were soldiers killed in border skirmishes whose bodies were retrieved and buried, some with their heads still nearby but others where they couldn't find the head. The "Celts" were well known for taking the heads of their enemies.

"Siculus, in his 1st-century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting:

They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decapitation#Celts

Of course, some of this may have been standard trash talking about the enemy.

To return to the subject of the "British" origin of these particular samples, this article in the National Geographic shows that they knew in 2010 that many of the 80 men were of "foreign" origin.

"Oxygen and strontium isotopes in the bones of the headless Romans indicate that just 5 of the 18 individuals tested came from the York area, the team reports in the new study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The rest of the men came from elsewhere in England or mainland Europe, possibly from France, Germany, the Balkans, or the Mediterranean."

These must be among those included in the study, right?

"Traces of carbon and nitrogen show that five of the headless Romans ate very different foods from York's local population. And two individuals had a carbon signature from a group of food plants—including sorghum, sugarcane, and maize—not known to have been cultivated in England at that time."

Other than the "Syrian", I don't think any of these would have been included, right?

Where the heck did they grow sorghum, sugarcane and maize at this time period in or around Europe?

"In fact, millet is the only food plant from this group that was being grown anywhere in mainland Europe, she added.

The archaeologist noted that "the Romans were not very fond of millet, and often, when they established a new province, other cereals such as wheat would replace millet as the principally grown crop.

Müldner's team thinks the headless millet-eaters hailed from colder climates, perhaps parts of Eastern Europe that were beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.

It might have been the Alps as well, or any higher mountains," Müldner said."

The Romans did eat millet, in porridge form, but preferred wheat. In fact, in the legions you were downgraded from wheat to millet rations for minor infractions. I know it can't be used with leavening agents.

Anyway: "It was a staple of the Sumerians and treasured plant grown in the hanging gardens of Babylon...There is evidence that millet was grown during the Stone Age by lake dwellers in Switzerland and was eaten in Northern Europe at least since the Iron Age. It was a staple in arid areas of India and Africa for thousands of years."
http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/vi...rticles_id=122

In the Middle Ages it was consumed more than wheat.

You'd think they might have informed readers of the paper of the yDna signature of the sample(s) in the study which shows millet consumption in childhood or the isotope signature of the continent.

However, the remains tested here, other than the "Syrian", overlap with the Welsh above all. Now, one could say, well, maybe people in France and central Europe were all "Welsh like" at that time. That's possible, I suppose, but doesn't the isotope analysis make it clear that of the tested samples in the paper all but the Near Easterner and one other were born and raised not only in Britain, but in the northeast of Britain?

[Vukodav]

It's obvious that modern Britons have nothing to do with ancient ones. Millions of Levantine slaves settled in Britain and turned it in a racially mixed country.

[berun]

Of course ancient Germans could be more similar to Welsh than today's Germans; the last 2000 years have left a lot of admixture in Europe. About the isotopes this theme it's quite new to me but the testings done are allways local, there are not comparisions with other European regions so my doubt is yet there... moreover after reading in Supplementary:

1.2.3 Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Results
δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of five of the genotyped individuals fall within or marginally outside (6DRIF3) ±2
SD of the mean for RomanoBritish humans from York (n=173) (Supplementary Fig. 4). These data are
consistent with the local RomanoBritish diet which was very predominantly based on terrestrial
C3 resources, but probably with small contributions of marine protein to the diet of at least parts of the
population 7,8 . Two of the individuals (3DRIF26 and 6DRIF18)
have dentine δ 15 N values which are higher than the York mean +3 SD (or further than 1.5 interquartile ranges from the median).
Consequently, neither individual was consuming the typical York diet, at the time when the sampled tooth
roots were forming, between c. 7 and 14 years of age 71. Indeed, the two datapoints are equally unusual
when compared with the sizeable human dataset available from all of Roman Britain (mean δ 13 C 19.6
±0.7 and δ 15 N 10.2 ± 1.3‰ (1 SD)).

Maybe this difference could be explained by the different gladiator's diet, or maybe that their diet was from another region. All is under doubts.

[Fire Haired14]

@Angela, thanks for the info.

I don't think these men would have been rebel gladiators of any kind. The slaves and gladiators executed during the Servile Wars were almost always crucified. Decapitation was a relatively more "honorable" form of execution, and I think there's a certain respect in the way the heads were placed near the bodies. (Other methods of execution in Republican Rome involved being pushed off the Tarpeian rocks or just being placed in a sack and thrown into the Tiber or, often, strangulation. For parricide, the worst of sins in Rome, you were flayed alive and then sewn into a sack with wild animals and tossed into the river. Later on, they probably were just tossed into the local Circus for the wild animals.

LOL, Holy Crap!!! That's the maximum capacity of savageness. Um, I wonder how Rome would deal with ISIS.

Müldner's team thinks the headless millet-eaters hailed from colder climates, perhaps parts of Eastern Europe that were beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.

Besides Irish/Welsh/Scottish they had the most IBS with Lithuania and Poland.

[Angela]

It's obvious that modern Britons have nothing to do with ancient ones. Millions of Levantine slaves settled in Britain and turned it in a racially mixed country.

I get your point, Vukodav. I think the comments will be very different when a "Syrian" or "Egyptian" merchant or manumitted slave is found in ancient Rome. However, you've already made it once before in this thread.

No matter how many soldiers, or gladiators, or slaves, or traders, or whatever migrate to a country, if their genetic signature is pretty close to that of the "natives" it won't make much of a ripple, and it will be difficult to quantify the number of people involved in these "foreign" migrations. If it's really different, but there isn't a mass invasion, their signature will get diluted.

Now let's move on.

[Angela]

@Angela, thanks for the info.



LOL, Holy Crap!!! That's the maximum capacity of savageness. Um, I wonder how Rome would deal with ISIS.

They took being a patriarchy seriously. :)

Execution was relatively rare for Roman citizens because it was supposed to be only for treason, and only after a trial and their concept of due process. Patricide was, however, seen as treason to one's father, and Christianity as treason to the state. Rape of a boy or a woman, if they were citizens, also resulted in a death sentence, although I don't remember the logic of making it treason. There were even statutes providing that the victims could not be held to be at fault. (Rape of slaves was a different matter, and I suppose the rape of the women of enemy tribes.) Of course, when it was a case of a mad, bad, emperor, he could decide pretty menial acts against him, even writing satires, were treason to the state as he embodied the state. Then there was always making up evidence to seize the estates. Still, if you didn't move in his circles, normal rules applied.

As for ISIS and related issues,

"According to the Historia Augusta ^[10] the future Emperor Aurelian once ordered a man who was convicted of raping the wife of the man on whom he had been billeted to be attached to two trees drawn together so that when the restraining ropes were cut, they sprang apart and the unfortunate victim was torn asunder."

One can see the logic, even if the punishment is incredibly brutal. If that kind of thing was permitted, there would be constant rebellion in subjugated provinces.

The following site describes the various punishments meted out in the military. It obviously was very different from the civilian world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_...nts_for_crimes

Flogging was a biggie; it's what happened to Jesus as well. Flogging remained a biggie down the centuries; flogging a man until he died was still practiced in the militaries of European countries in the 19th century.

I just remembered something else. Gladiators were in certain periods not executed for losing, but even when they were, it was by a sword thrust from behind down through the neck. It was considered more merciful than hacking with a dull blade or hatchet. It's depicted in "The Gladiator" if you saw it. It's another point against them being gladiators.

[Greying Wanderer]

IIRC the Hinxton samples were too northern european and required some kind of mixture to match the modern British population and the argument was over whether this mixture came from a pre-existing Welsh-like substrate or some later continental population movement. Seems to me these gladiators / soldiers being close to modern Welsh answers that question.

So to my mind its: "Welsh" substrate with waves of invaders from the north sea over many centuries with some culturally Celtic (Belgae) and some culturally Germanic (A-S) but with similar genetics to confuse everyone.

(Where Welsh = Celtic + Atlantic Megalith?)

(Makes me wonder if the Belgae (or some similar tribe) came all the way from the Baltic i.e. Caesar says they were German looking and crossed the Rhine early but were they living just across the Rhine previously or had they come on a long tribal wandering from much further away?)

@Angela

"There were Colin Farrell and Aiden Turner types running around long before that, or maybe, given the Welsh similarity, Jonathan Price? :)"

Silures - if the gladiator / soldiers were typical of darker substrate + northern Celts and the substrate proportions increased to the west then the Silures would likely be noticably darker.

#

edit:

removed some stuff not sure of

[Angela]

Of course ancient Germans could be more similar to Welsh than today's Germans; the last 2000 years have left a lot of admixture in Europe. About the isotopes this theme it's quite new to me but the testings done are allways local, there are not comparisions with other European regions so my doubt is yet there... moreover after reading in Supplementary:

1.2.3 Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Results
δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of five of the genotyped individuals fall within or marginally outside (6DRIF3) ±2
SD of the mean for RomanoBritish humans from York (n=173) (Supplementary Fig. 4). These data are
consistent with the local RomanoBritish diet which was very predominantly based on terrestrial
C3 resources, but probably with small contributions of marine protein to the diet of at least parts of the
population 7,8 . Two of the individuals (3DRIF26 and 6DRIF18)
have dentine δ 15 N values which are higher than the York mean +3 SD (or further than 1.5 interquartile ranges from the median).
Consequently, neither individual was consuming the typical York diet, at the time when the sampled tooth
roots were forming, between c. 7 and 14 years of age 71. Indeed, the two datapoints are equally unusual
when compared with the sizeable human dataset available from all of Roman Britain (mean δ 13 C 19.6
±0.7 and δ 15 N 10.2 ± 1.3‰ (1 SD)).

Maybe this difference could be explained by the different gladiator's diet, or maybe that their diet was from another region. All is under doubts.

I'm not sure that I follow; the diet was consumed when they were children, and the foods weren't grown in England, or even in Europe for some of them.

Sample 3DRIF26 is the Syrian (or Nabataen) autosomally, so his results make sense. I'd like to know the yDna of sample 6DRIF18 and if he was one of the millet eaters.

Ed. Isn't 6DRIF18, one of the two "foreigners" in this tested group, the only one of the Iron Age and Roman era samples who is blonde and blue eyed?

[Greying Wanderer]

Also interesting that lactase persistence was not yet a done deal, although there was a lot of it.

I'm wondering about this now.

The Rastlin island dudes are all R1b-L21 and LP dating from 2026–1534 cal BC.

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/2/368.abstract

This is a long time before the historical Celtic expansion from La Tene / Halstatt or Belgae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

In this new paper two of the roman era samples are R1b-L21
- 3DRIF-16
- 6DRIF-3
plus the earlier iron age woman

Table 16 in the supplementaries shows LP

5/9 samples have results for LP, 3 positive and 2 negative.

Five samples returned imputed lactase persistence genotypes: two Roman burials and the Iron-Age individual were likely to have been lactase persistent, while two Romans, 6DRIF-22 and the suspected migrant 3DRIF-26 were homozygous for the ancestral non-persistence variant.

So effectively 3/5 LP or 3/4 LP if you exclude the east med guy and
- Iron age woman and one of the two L21 males are LP (and the other L21 is blank not negative)
- other LP is 6DRIF-23

So?

Not inconsistent with the BB celts having a much higher rate of LP and later arrivals of (La Tene / Hallstat / Belgae) reducing the percentage.

#

edited a lot cos late and dumb

[Vukodav]

There is no Baltic ancestry in any of those samples. Celtic and Germanic nobles had more Steppe admixture than commoners, which pulls them towards EHG-rich populations like Balts and Finns.

[Angela]

I'm wondering about this now.

The Rastlin island dudes are all R1b-L21 and LP dating from 2026–1534 cal BC.

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/2/368.abstract

This is a long time before the historical Celtic expansion from La Tene / Halstatt or Belgae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

In this new paper two of the roman era samples are R1b-L21
- 3DRIF-16
- 6DRIF-3
plus the earlier iron age woman

Table 16 in the supplementaries shows LP

I may be misreading this somehow but it seems to only have five results with four left blank yet in the text it says



6DRIF-22 and 3DRIF-26 are the ones marked in the table as two yellow bars which I assume means both ancestral alleles.

So the five positive for LP should include the three mentioned in the quote plus two more?

Either way my main point is the iron age woman and one of the two L21 males are LP and the other L21 is blank.

So?

Not inconsistent with the BB celts having a much higher rate of LP and later arrivals of (La Tene / Hallstat / Belgae) reducing the percentage.

For Romano Britons they got results for only 3 of them. Then they have results for the Jordanian (homozygous ancestral) and for the Iron Age woman, who was heterozygous, so she was probably LP.

Of the three Roman-Briton samples where they were able to get results, one (# 3-L21+) was homozygous derived, one (#22 U-152) was homozygous ancestral, and one, #23, is heterozygous, so probably lactase persistent, which means 2/3 Romano-Briton samples with results were already LP, or 3/4 of all the British samples if you count the Iron Age woman. However, 2 of those three were only heterozygous. Don't take any of this to the bank; it's late. :)

IF this is representative, levels are higher now, I think. Has anyone looked at homozygosity rates in Britain for LP?

I'm even less comfortable making broad generalizations about La Tene Celts (if that's even where the ancestors of some of these men came from) versus the prior inhabitants, when we don't have results for the other 3 samples, and have so few samples in total.

(I don't remember; were the Rathlin samples homozygous or were they also heterozygous?)

As far as the pigmentation is concerned, north east Britain wasn't exactly home turf for the Silures was it? I'm not saying there might not have been movement within Britain, but I don't know why you'd assume they were Silures.

@Fire-Haired,

Unless I'm misreading it, it's number 18 who might have spent his childhood elsewhere, yes? He's also the only one of the Romano Britons who is blonde and blue-eyed.

@Vukodav,
I'm not following you. These samples are either soldiers in the Roman army, or gladiators. What do Celtic and Germanic nobles have to do with it?

[Greying Wanderer]

@Angela

IF this is representative, levels are higher now, I think.

Yes. It's not important but on first reading the frequency looked low and therefore made me lean more towards the idea of a gradual increase over time but then it struck me the results were still consistent with the idea of a dramatic increase during BB times and a reduction in the frequency in eastern Britain from the earlier BB layer being pushed back by later Celtic invasions.

As far as the pigmentation is concerned, north east Britain wasn't exactly home turf for the Silures was it? I'm not saying there might not have been movement within Britain, but I don't know why you'd assume they were Silures.

I wasn't clear. I meant that if the York people were a mixture of a darker Welsh-like substrate and more recent north sea Celts coming from the east then if there was a higher proportion of the Welsh substrate further west then it would fit with the Romans thinking the Silures in Wales were noticably darker.

Unless I'm misreading it, it's number 18 who might have spent his childhood elsewhere, yes? He's also the only one of the Romano Britons who is blonde and blue-eyed.

Of the three tests Strontium, Oxygen and Carbon/Nitrogen
- 6/7 are within the British range for Strontium (outlier the J2 guy)
- 5/7 within previous British range for oxygen (outliers the J2 guy and 6DRIF-21)(but they think the range might need to be revised upward)
- 5/7 within previous British range for the Carbon/Nitrogen test (outliers J2 guy and 6DRIF-18)

6DRIF-18 is discussed more in another paper here

http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/wp-...S-Accepted.pdf

which says he had a lot of Nitrogen as a kid so either he ate a lot of freshwater fish or may have come from elsewhere with his genetics implying Britain.

The York diet apparently had some fish so maybe he was just a fisherman's kid?