Bloody vikings coming over ‘ere drinking our mead and impregnanting our wenches. What do we get? Flat pack furniture.
Is this news?
Anglo-Saxon from the Angles who are from around Denmark, and Saxons, from Saxony in Germany.
Celts are thought to be originally from central Europe (probably around Austria), and I’m pretty sure Romans probably bought fair number in from around the Empire, too, some of them probably spawned families here.
Lol 1500 years celts still haven’t accepted us.
Can I claim protected status as a saxon migrant,?
Bloody beaker folk! Coming over ‘ere! With their beakers! What’s wrong with cupping water with your hands and licking it like a cat?!?
Where I’m from in the fens of Norfolk we are all Vikings, very tall with fair hair and we have a big appetite.
I mean, wasn’t there a county called Dane land? I can’t remember the actual details off the top of my head but a large chunk of the country was populated by settled vikings. Then Alfred (?) united the kingdoms.
How convenient. This is how this just justify making the indigenous people ethnic minorities ‘because we’ve always been a nation of immigrants’ 🙃
How in the living fuck is this “news”?
This just in – showering gets you wet.
I want Farage and all top Brexiteers DNA sampled. Let’s see how pure they all are.
new scientist discovers history and archaeology has been a discipline for a while now, but nonetheless decides to steam ahead, full power into telling us something many already knew.
Fuck me. Just wait til they figure out where our bronze age ancestors came from. OR EVEN… Doggerland.
All those brexiters with their patriotic twitter profile pictures must be seething
Current newspapers reveal mass migration from Britain to Europe.
I’m an archaeologist who deals primarily with the period involved (5th and 6th centuries) so can elaborate a-bit on why this is important although there are some flaws in the study.
The question of Anglo-Saxon migrations has gone back and forth over the years, from theories of mass migration, elite take-over (similar to the Norman conquest), and everything in between.
Most of this was based on historical documentation (Gildas and Bede) who ‘tell’ us that Angles, Saxon, Jutes, (and others) invaded with blood and slaughter, killing the native Britons and displacing them. However this narrative account doesn’t really hold up when looking at the archaeological evidence as there’s very little evidence for mass violence and the like (hence the Elite take over model).
What this research tries to do is set the question straight through aDNA evidence and genetic studies. What they concluded is something in between. The samples they looked at indicate that there was a significant influx of new genetic material during this time, but they also found that individuals with continental (from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia) were being buried along side individuals with ancestry native to Britain. This was highly variable across cemeteries, but they did find evidence of intermarrying between populations.
Most importantly, it was identified that among the sample there was very little difference in status represented amongst the population – people with native ancestry were just as likely to be buried with grave goods as those with continental ancestry. Although there was a tendency amongst biologically female individuals with continental ancestry to have a higher number or more elaborate grave-goods.
The flaws come down to a lack of sampling from Roman period cemeteries, which makes it very hard to compare the immediate before and after periods of the migration. And some more theoretical issues of reducing past peoples down to just DNA and genetics (rather than what they were, which is people, with variable identities and different ways of expressing them – independently of genetic ancestry).
A key aspect of the research which has been a-bit underplayed is the identification of family groups within cemeteries which is super cool, and let’s us look at things like cemetery organisation and change over time amongst burial rites
14 comments
Bloody vikings coming over ‘ere drinking our mead and impregnanting our wenches. What do we get? Flat pack furniture.
Is this news?
Anglo-Saxon from the Angles who are from around Denmark, and Saxons, from Saxony in Germany.
Celts are thought to be originally from central Europe (probably around Austria), and I’m pretty sure Romans probably bought fair number in from around the Empire, too, some of them probably spawned families here.
Lol 1500 years celts still haven’t accepted us.
Can I claim protected status as a saxon migrant,?
Bloody beaker folk! Coming over ‘ere! With their beakers! What’s wrong with cupping water with your hands and licking it like a cat?!?
Where I’m from in the fens of Norfolk we are all Vikings, very tall with fair hair and we have a big appetite.
I mean, wasn’t there a county called Dane land? I can’t remember the actual details off the top of my head but a large chunk of the country was populated by settled vikings. Then Alfred (?) united the kingdoms.
How convenient. This is how this just justify making the indigenous people ethnic minorities ‘because we’ve always been a nation of immigrants’ 🙃
How in the living fuck is this “news”?
This just in – showering gets you wet.
I want Farage and all top Brexiteers DNA sampled. Let’s see how pure they all are.
new scientist discovers history and archaeology has been a discipline for a while now, but nonetheless decides to steam ahead, full power into telling us something many already knew.
Fuck me. Just wait til they figure out where our bronze age ancestors came from. OR EVEN… Doggerland.
All those brexiters with their patriotic twitter profile pictures must be seething
Current newspapers reveal mass migration from Britain to Europe.
I’m an archaeologist who deals primarily with the period involved (5th and 6th centuries) so can elaborate a-bit on why this is important although there are some flaws in the study.
The question of Anglo-Saxon migrations has gone back and forth over the years, from theories of mass migration, elite take-over (similar to the Norman conquest), and everything in between.
Most of this was based on historical documentation (Gildas and Bede) who ‘tell’ us that Angles, Saxon, Jutes, (and others) invaded with blood and slaughter, killing the native Britons and displacing them. However this narrative account doesn’t really hold up when looking at the archaeological evidence as there’s very little evidence for mass violence and the like (hence the Elite take over model).
What this research tries to do is set the question straight through aDNA evidence and genetic studies. What they concluded is something in between. The samples they looked at indicate that there was a significant influx of new genetic material during this time, but they also found that individuals with continental (from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia) were being buried along side individuals with ancestry native to Britain. This was highly variable across cemeteries, but they did find evidence of intermarrying between populations.
Most importantly, it was identified that among the sample there was very little difference in status represented amongst the population – people with native ancestry were just as likely to be buried with grave goods as those with continental ancestry. Although there was a tendency amongst biologically female individuals with continental ancestry to have a higher number or more elaborate grave-goods.
The flaws come down to a lack of sampling from Roman period cemeteries, which makes it very hard to compare the immediate before and after periods of the migration. And some more theoretical issues of reducing past peoples down to just DNA and genetics (rather than what they were, which is people, with variable identities and different ways of expressing them – independently of genetic ancestry).
A key aspect of the research which has been a-bit underplayed is the identification of family groups within cemeteries which is super cool, and let’s us look at things like cemetery organisation and change over time amongst burial rites
What about this [geezer](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/content/dam/nhmwww/discover/cheddar-man/cheddar-man-head-with-skeleton-in-background-full-width.jpg)?
Apparently he’s a Brit from 10,000 years ago!