The surprising origins of Britain’s Bronze Age immigrants revealed

Analysis of ancient DNA has revealed the origins of a mysterious group that appeared in Britain around 2400 BC and, within a century or less, all but replaced the people who built Stonehenge.

These people were associated with the Bell Beaker culture, which appeared in Western Europe in the Early Bronze Age and is named after the shape of the typical pots they left behind. This culture probably originated in Portugal or Spain, but the new study reveals that the people who took over Britain came from just across the North Sea, in the river deltas of northwestern Europe. This resilient population had preserved something of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle and ancestry for millennia after early farmers had swept across Europe.

David Reich at Harvard University and his colleagues studied the genomes of 112 people who lived in what is now the Netherlands, Belgium and western Germany between 8500 and 1700 BC.

Before starting the project, Reich wasn’t too excited, he admits: “The Netherlands seemed like the most boring place in the world – every bit of ground there has been walked on a million times before. But it turned out to be perhaps the most interesting place in Europe.”

The DNA sequenced by his lab revealed a population forged in the Rhine-Meuse delta in the Dutch-Belgian borderlands, descended from a resourceful group of hunter-gatherers who survived in the waterlogged wetlands around these great rivers, subsisting on fish, waterfowl, game and various plants.

Neolithic farmers originating in Anatolia spread across Europe from about 6500 BC, probably because their ability to produce their own food meant they could raise many more children than hunter-gatherers did. In just a few centuries, the genetic ancestry of hunter-gatherers disappeared or was greatly diluted in each place the farmers arrived.

But not, the ancient DNA reveals, in these wetlands, where the influx of farming genes remained sparse for thousands of years. The dynamic, regularly flooded landscape of rivers, marshes, sand dunes and peat bogs was a nightmare for early farmers, but rich with opportunity for those who knew how to survive there, says team member Luc Amkreutz of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands. “These hunter-gatherers carved their own path, from a position of strength.”

Judging from their DNA, these people were far from marginalized. Their Y chromosomes, passed from father to son, remained largely hunter-gatherers for another 1,500 years or so after the arrival of farmers in the region, while their mitochondrial DNA and X chromosomes reveal a steady stream of farmer daughters joining them. “This was really a surprise for us,” says team member Eveline Altena of the Leiden University Medical Center. “Something you can’t really tell without DNA.”

This was probably a mostly peaceful process involving societies where women tend to move while men stay in their farms, says Reich, although an element of force cannot be ruled out. This exchange may have gone both ways, but DNA preservation is much worse in the drier areas where the farmers lived, so this is currently unknown, he says.

Archaeological remains reveal that the hunter-gatherers eventually adopted pottery, cultivated some grain and raised some animals, but without abandoning their original way of life.

Then, around 3000 BC, a tribe of nomadic shepherds called the Yamna, or Yamnaya, from the steppes of what is now Ukraine and Russia began to migrate westward. Their encounters with Eastern European farmers gave rise to the Corded Ware culture, named for the cord-like decoration of the pottery. Their descendants swept across large parts of Europe, but barely made a dent in the delta.

The study identified one skeleton from this time with a Yamna Y chromosome, and excavations have also revealed pots, some of which were used to cook fish – another example of the Wetlanders using new objects from abroad in their own way. Overall, few people had much, if any, steppe ancestry.

That changed when the Bell Beaker culture emerged around 2500 BC. These people had a mixture of steppe and farmer ancestry, introducing steppe ancestry into the Wetland People’s DNA, but a significant 13 to 18 percent of the Wetland People’s characteristic hunter-gatherer-early-farmer gene mix remained. They may have started to fade into history right then. But it turns out they weren’t quite done yet.

The new study reveals that the people who arrived in Britain around 2400 BC had almost exactly the same mix of genes from Bell Beaker and wetland communities. And within a century they would almost – or even completely – replace the Neolithic farmers who had built Stonehenge. “Our models indicate that at least 90 percent, but up to 100 percent, of the original ancestry was lost (from Britain),” says Reich.

It is not entirely clear whether this started with the arrival of the Bell Beaker culture in Britain or whether other people had moved in earlier. Before Bell Beakers arrived, people in Britain cremated their dead instead of burying them, meaning they rarely left DNA behind.

Regardless, what happened was “very dramatic, almost unbelievable,” says Reich. The reasons for this rapid replacement have intrigued archaeologists since it was first suggested by a 2018 study. Reich suspects the involvement of a disease such as the plague, to which people on the European continent may have been exposed in the past. People in Britain, meanwhile, may have been more vulnerable to it.

What probably did not play a role is religious fervor, says team member Harry Fokkens at the University of Leiden. “Existing monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury remained in use and were even extended after the people who made them were gone.”

Michael Parker Pearson of University College London is fascinated by the extent to which the new population adopted Britain’s monumental styles, such as hangings and stone circles, even as they brought with them an entirely new way of life, including new pottery and clothing styles.

The Bell Beaker people also introduced metals to Britain, he adds. “Some gold hair ornaments found in Beaker graves in Britain are almost identical to those found in Belgium.”

Human origins and gentle walking in prehistoric south-west England

Immerse yourself in the early Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age human periods on this gentle walking tour.