The Coming of the Anglo-Saxons to Britain


Stephan Schiffels from the Max-Planck-Institut commented the Anglo-Saxon paper on Twitter:


So what happened since then? Comparing our medieval individuals with present-day people from England with exclusively regional ancestry (who are not representative of the diverse population in England today, of course), we found evidence of additional migration into England.

Specifically, people from England today have 20-40% ancestry from a source in Southwestern Europe, similar to Iron Age France, which would also fit with archaeological artefacts of Frankish origin. Most of this influx must have happened after the early medieval period. 8/11

One thing that I got asked a lot is whether we know how many people came during the early Anglo-Saxon period to England. Unfortunately this is pure speculation at this point. Different Scenarios are possible and give vastly different numbers. 9/11

Our sampling is certainly not representative of all of England, let alone Britain, and it's possible that local folks mostly moved westwards and mixed back in later, which of course would mean that migration proportions would be lower further in the west.


















 
So, if I understood correctly the last bolded comment, the increase in the France Iron Age like ancestry in the post migration era could also be due (at least partially) to a local celtic resurgence, right?
 
Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age | Nature

They had determined that there was a Celtic migration to England. The English have more Anatolia_N inherited from this migration from the continental Celtics from France. While people like the Scots have less of it.

Retg3c2.jpg
 
So, if I understood correctly the last bolded comment, the increase in the France Iron Age like ancestry in the post migration era could also be due (at least partially) to a local celtic resurgence, right?

They explicitly stated that most of the French-like admixture dates to the post-Early Medieval time period. It started with Frankish influences among Anglo-Saxons, especially in Kent, like samples Eastry, where the E-V13 and continental R1b carriers were by the way, but never stopped since then, but being a continuous process. I'd say a large portion will be, with more data, safely attributed to the Norman conquest, which involved a lot of French, Walloon, Flemish etc. settlers from the continent which gained prominent social and spacial positions in the conquered territories.
 
They explicitly stated that most of the French-like admixture dates to the post-Early Medieval time period. It started with Frankish influences among Anglo-Saxons, especially in Kent, like samples Eastry, where the E-V13 and continental R1b carriers were by the way, but never stopped since then, but being a continuous process. I'd say a large portion will be, with more data, safely attributed to the Norman conquest, which involved a lot of French, Walloon, Flemish etc. settlers from the continent which gained prominent social and spacial positions in the conquered territories.

They also said that a lot of local celtic people probably moved to the west and mixed back in later, after the saxon had already settled in. So, maybe part of the later French-like influence is due to celtic Britons returning to East England. Or at least they seem to let the door open for such an hypothesis.
 
Yes to both.

I saw the series. Not bad at all, I thought. Even in middle age, it's quite believable that this younger man would be obsessed with her.

Did you see "Hand of God"? I liked it very much. She had to be persuaded to do the film, because it required nudity. I'm glad she did it, because she was very good in it, and again, it was believable men couldn't keep their eyes off her. As for the nudity, her body, almost 50 or not, was a work of art, imo.

Yes, they have two children; both girls.

Thanks Angela. I have not seen Hand of God.
 
They also said that a lot of local celtic people probably moved to the west and mixed back in later, after the saxon had already settled in. So, maybe part of the later French-like influence is due to celtic Britons returning to East England. Or at least they seem to let the door open for such an hypothesis.

The local Celtic population being differentiated, though and the clines and geographical distribution they present open up a very clear picture. The French-like admixture is not at all concentrated in the Western regions, to which those Celtic and Romano-British elements in part retreated, but being actually rather more Eastern and coastal than the Anglo-Saxon admixture!

Compare:

41586_2022_5247_Fig5_HTML.png


https://twitter.com/dr_appie/status/1572622175487533056
Today, a paper in @Nature on ancient British DNA, I think, may have identified the origin of the largest patterns of DNA variation as captured by PC1 & PC2 in our 2019 @uk_biobank geography & DNA paper.

Left figure: https://nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2
Right figure: https://nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0757-5

View attachment 51331

https://anthrogenica.com/showthread...gration-period&p=875375&viewfull=1#post875375

This clearly shows that the French-like admixture started with the Anglo-Saxons and further increased in the post-Anglo-Saxon (Norman and later) period. In fact, this admixture is even lower the more Celtic it gets. I really think the (at least relative) bulk will be Norman.
 
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Well, it's nice to have our speculations confirmed, although to be honest, while we knew the approximate percentage for the A-S contribution in England proper, the percentage for the French like ancestry is higher than I thought it would be.
 
This clearly shows that the French-like admixture started with the Anglo-Saxons and further increased in the post-Anglo-Saxon (Norman and later) period. In fact, this admixture is even lower the more Celtic it gets. I really think the (at least relative) bulk will be Norman.

Ok, I just skimmed the surface of the paper and I didn't get that the IA_French like ancestry is lower were there is more celtic ancestry, so they're clearly not collerated with each other. Thanks for pointing that out
 
And their haplo evaluations were based on yfull v 8.09. Current version is 10.05, so their haplos could easily be further refined with the subsequent tree structure.
 
A part of their "southwesterners" = IA France (what a curious qualification) seems come from Benelux, and Gaulish France was not Frankish and not typically "southern": they had just more 'anatolian'-like input, whose a part came with Germanics too.
That said, the Normans and their allied comrades were surely more numerous than someones had supposed. A lot of Normanno-Bretons have had lands in Essex/Suffolk by instance. In West, as astonishing it could seem, Bretons had not so much possessions.
For the South-East, I suppose the tradework organized by the Normans was rather concentrated there, so close to Northern France and Benelux of nowadays. I have nor read the whole thing so I don't know the periods, but I think the Plantagenêts reign and the conquered Aquitaine could have had an heavy input with even more southwestern-like DNA. (It hs been said that a lot of Aquitanians settled around Bristol, but they surely settled elsewhere too?)
 
The Aquitaine was the richest and largest of the Plantagenet possessions in France. I would submit the Aquitaine is pretty Southwestern, with some of it quite Northern Spanish or Basque like. Eleanor brought with her many, many, retainers, servants, merchants, entertainers, as well as lords, not only from Aquitaine, but from Provence, with which she was also affiliated. In addition, Many of England's Queens were from Poitou, and the same applied to them.

We do have Iron Age samples from France. If they made such a comparison, one would hope they used them. Has anyone found the section where that is done?

If not, when I have the chance, I'll see if I can find it.
 
The Aquitaine was the richest and largest of the Plantagenet possessions in France. I would submit the Aquitaine is pretty Southwestern, with some of it quite Northern Spanish or Basque like. Eleanor brought with her many, many, retainers, servants, merchants, entertainers, as well as lords, not only from Aquitaine, but from Provence, with which she was also affiliated. In addition, Many of England's Queens were from Poitou, and the same applied to them.

We do have Iron Age samples from France. If they made such a comparison, one would hope they used them. Has anyone found the section where that is done?

If not, when I have the chance, I'll see if I can find it.

What area of Aquitaine?

This Aquitaine province contains populations that are not all totally Basque-like, some have a "central like French" component.


The "Iberian" part of the southern Aquitaine (close to the Basque country) is essentially Basque-like, not "northern Spanish" (not Catalan if you prefer).
 
For reference purposes: from the last paper on ancient French dna from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. I'll be interested to see if the authors of this paper used one of them or an average or what, because there is some variation.

w5xIFsB.png


Pech, Pt2, Pey are Occitaine in Southern France. Ers and Nor are Bas Rhin, and Col and Jeb 8 are Hauts Rhin in eastern France. Att and BFM are Hauts de France Nord.

I
 
There is also this paper specifically on the Iron Age in France:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004222003649

Many more Iron Age samples, but still low coverage, and still covering only certain areas of Iron Age France. Southwestern France is completely unrepresented, which is a problem.

I don't know, as with the previous samples, if the authors of the British paper used one or an average of the samples.

As a general conclusion:

"The PCA also shows a clinal distribution of our IA French samples according to their latitudinal position: the northern samples are closer to the extant Great Britain population, and the southern samples are closer to the Spanish population (Figure S1). These observations are fully consistent with genomic studies conducted on modern Europeans and highlight a geographically and genomic intermediate position of the French groups between north-western and south-western European populations "


 
@Angela
This other paper, spite of low coverage, seems to me more informative and somewhat gives a more homogenous result for every site; the most of the individual variations are slight enough in them.
The paper shows the differences between North+Champagne and South concerning Steppe and Anatolian farmers.
Alsace +Ile-de-France in between. Armoricans or Normandy closer to Britain IA.
Aquitania ran from Poitou to Basque country. But here the southerners of Gaul was around S-E.
Today Poitou is rather "central France" for auDNA but shows kind of "Basque-like" ancestry increasing from inland to Vendée. ATW more southerner than North France, Champagne, Normandy or Brittany.
 
Nothing like actually reading the paper, and especially the Supplement, as I finally found time to do.

"According to the qpAdm models, France_IA-related ancestry is more highly concentrated in southern and southeastern England, especially in East Anglia where it provides, depending on the model, up to 27% (model 3) or 43% (model 1) of the ancestry. On the other hand, it is nearly absent in the northern parts of England as well as in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (Fig. 5, Supp. Fig. 5.22). England_EMA_CNE/LowerSaxony_EMA ancestry is relatively homogenous distributed across the Midlands, East of England, and South East, but found in lower quantities in the North, South West, and along the Welsh border (Fig. 5, Supp. Fig. 5.22). We note that the distribution and proportion of continental ancestry across Britain and Ireland is very similar regardless which proxy for the immigrant CNE and CWE ancestry is used, even when considering present-day sources in a supervised ADMIXTURE setup (Supp. Fig. 5.18, Supp. Fig. 5.21). Using ADMIXTURE, we estimate 40.7% ± 0.4% CNE, 33.9% ± 0.5% WBI, and 25.4% ± 0.4% CWE ancestry in England, which is strongly consistent with our qpAdm models using ancient sources."


In some of these analyses they use all 26 Iron Age Gaulish samples, which actually are not all that different from one another, although there is a cline present, as pointed out by Moesan.

However, this is a "kernel density" map of the admixture. I would submit that if we had Iron Age samples from Aquitaine, they would pop as well. The Iberian samples are the closest thing to them available from that period.

fVrbeba.png


This definitely explains how EEF ancestry in England is higher now than it was in the Bronze Age.
 
From the supplementary "info guide":

"Interestingly, rather than in one of the more cosmopolitan trading centres like Groningen, Schleswig, or Copenhagen, we find J2-L228 in Anderten, where the haplogroup peaks due to the presence of a paternally–related kin group of four males. Within England, haplogroup J2-L228 was first observed in a Roman individual from York who originated from the Middle East, as suggested by genomic and isotopic evidence121."

First and foremost, it is J2b-L283 and the oldest aDNA samples are centered in the East Adriatic region (EBA-IA). The J2b-L283 samples from Anderten are autosomally what you would expect from that region of that time and their ancestors are not the result of some 2011 mysterious trade pocket theory but most likely of Roman legionaries with descent from the Western Balkans. The sample from York is not J2b-L283 but J-M205.

I am not exactly sure what that individual thought whilst typing that supposedly "info" text in. Bear in mind it is wrong and complete non sense and on top of that a total butchering of the nomenclature he/she desperately tried to make baseless theories about.
 
From the supplementary "info guide":

"Interestingly, rather than in one of the more cosmopolitan trading centres like Groningen, Schleswig, or Copenhagen, we find J2-L228 in Anderten, where the haplogroup peaks due to the presence of a paternally–related kin group of four males. Within England, haplogroup J2-L228 was first observed in a Roman individual from York who originated from the Middle East, as suggested by genomic and isotopic evidence121."

First and foremost, it is J2b-L283 and the oldest aDNA samples are centered in the East Adriatic region (EBA-IA). The J2b-L283 samples from Anderten are autosomally what you would expect from that region of that time and their ancestors are not the result of some 2011 mysterious trade pocket theory but most likely of Roman legionaries with descent from the Western Balkans. The sample from York is not J2b-L283 but J-M205.

I am not exactly sure what that individual thought whilst typing that supposedly "info" text in. Bear in mind it is wrong and complete non sense and on top of that a total butchering of the nomenclature he/she desperately tried to make baseless theories about.

I thought about that too. Really a bad mistake and the comment makes no sense. As for the Anderten samples, they are non-locals in the sense of being settlers from the South. The area was settled by the Franks after the Saxon defeat.

Anderten wurde als ?Ondertunum? (hinter dem Zaum) um 990 n. Chr. erstmals erw?hnt und entstand wahrscheinlich als fr?nkische Wehrsiedlung zur Zeit Karls des Gro?en vor dem ?Nordwalde?, der sich einst von Hannover bis Magdeburg erstreckte. Es geh?rt zum ?Gro?en Freien?, einem Zusammenschluss von 14 D?rfern, die eine ?hnliche Entstehungsgeschichte aufweisen wie Anderten.

http://www.nananet.de/ma/sreifzuege-zwischen-mergel-und-moor.htm

Some of them (not this kin group) plot pretty Southern, could have more recent French-like/Gallo-Roman influence, more than the average Frankish peasant and definitely more than the Saxons. One could say they were Germans and Germanics, but in that time frame they were not locals, but new settlers from the relative South.
 
Nothing like actually reading the paper, and especially the Supplement, as I finally found time to do.

"According to the qpAdm models, France_IA-related ancestry is more highly concentrated in southern and southeastern England, especially in East Anglia where it provides, depending on the model, up to 27% (model 3) or 43% (model 1) of the ancestry. On the other hand, it is nearly absent in the northern parts of England as well as in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (Fig. 5, Supp. Fig. 5.22). England_EMA_CNE/LowerSaxony_EMA ancestry is relatively homogenous distributed across the Midlands, East of England, and South East, but found in lower quantities in the North, South West, and along the Welsh border (Fig. 5, Supp. Fig. 5.22). We note that the distribution and proportion of continental ancestry across Britain and Ireland is very similar regardless which proxy for the immigrant CNE and CWE ancestry is used, even when considering present-day sources in a supervised ADMIXTURE setup (Supp. Fig. 5.18, Supp. Fig. 5.21). Using ADMIXTURE, we estimate 40.7% ± 0.4% CNE, 33.9% ± 0.5% WBI, and 25.4% ± 0.4% CWE ancestry in England, which is strongly consistent with our qpAdm models using ancient sources."


In some of these analyses they use all 26 Iron Age Gaulish samples, which actually are not all that different from one another, although there is a cline present, as pointed out by Moesan.

However, this is a "kernel density" map of the admixture. I would submit that if we had Iron Age samples from Aquitaine, they would pop as well. The Iberian samples are the closest thing to them available from that period.

fVrbeba.png


This definitely explains how EEF ancestry in England is higher now than it was in the Bronze Age.

And this perfectly explains the R1b-DF27 signal in eastern England which was a distinct split from the Iberian DF-27. Southern France was the mother of both. There was a huge resettlement of people from South France to East England, which wasn't recorded in history. Perhaps this is from the desolation mentioned in the Domesday book.
 

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