M George et al / Antiquity
The skeleton of a girl from the Updown cemetery, who was found to have ancestry of West Africa
A pair of non-related people buried in cemeteries in seventh-century Britain probably had grandparents of West Africa.
A 13 -year -old girl and a 17 -year -old, unbleed and buried in two different cemeteries in England during the High Middle Ages, had West African grandparents.
How and when His relatives arrived in Britain is unknown, but the discovery implies that migrants in Anglo-Saxon times came from much farther What was thought previously.
After the Romans finally retired from Britain at 410 AD, Britain was invaded and colonized by the Anglos, Saxons and Germanic Jutes.
To investigate whether people also arrived from other places, Duncan Sayerresearcher at the University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom, and his colleagues analyzed Old DNA of the bones of buried people in two seventh century cemeteries on the southern coast of England.
The results were presented in an article published Wednesday in Antiquity magazine.
One of these cemeteries is located in Updown, Kent, where several commercial objects from around the worldincluding pots, buckles and gaul brooches, and grenades in jewelery that may have come from India.
People buried in the cemetery were often buried with objects like kitchen utensils, cutlery or combs.
The other cemetery is in Worth Matravers, Dorset, more west. The people buried there were buried Roman-Britishwith few funeral goods.
Most of those buried in the two cemeteries, had, as expected, Ancestry of the North European or British Western and Irish.
However, A girl in updown and a young man in Worth Matravers had a recent ancestor, probably a grandfatherfrom West Africa.
In both cases, the Mitochondrial DNA, which is transmitted by the motherwas from the northern European, but the autosomal DNAwhich is also from both parents, had 20 to 40 % of ancestry similar to the current Yoruba, Mende, Mandinka and Esan groups of sub -Saharan West Africa.
This means that West Africa DNA probably comes from a grandfather – And it’s the first Evidence of genetic connections Between Britain and Africa during the High Middle Ages.
Both young people were buried as typical members of the community. DNA analysis also showed that two relatives of the “Updown girl”, which had about 11 to 13 years When they died, they are in the same cemetery: A grandmother and an aunt.
Observing the proportions of carbon isotopes and nitrogen in a bone sample of Worth Matravers, who had between 17 and 25 years When he died, he showed What he had eaten When the bones were forming.
“For your diet, it seems that the young man Born and was raised in England“, The anthropologist tells Ceiridwen Edwardsresearcher at the University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom, and co-author of the study.
There is evidence of African DNA in York in the Roman period, says Edwards. However, Sayer thinks that the proportion of DNA of West Africa in young people in cemeteries It would be much smaller if they were descendants of people from the times of Roman rule.
“This is a grandfatherTherefore, they are definitely not surviving Roman military or administrators, who were several hundred years in the past, ”he says.
Also There is no evidence that may suggest that these people were slavesays Duncan Sayer: “These two individuals were buried as members of the full right of their community.”
Instead, Sayer suggests, it has to do with the trade and the movement of goods and people. At some point, people from West Africa came to Britain, Maybe on a commercial shipand stayed.
Sayer thinks that your arrival can have been reconquesting from North Africa by Byzantine Empirealso known as the East Roman Empire in the 6th century.
This military action was taken to Get access to gold from sub -Saharan Africa. “The reopening of this channel is taking place at a time that would correspond a lot with the grandparents of these two people,” adds the main author of the study.
“The study exemplifies how dynamic the initial post-roman and medieval periods were in Britain,” the Portuguese evolutionary biologist tells new scientist. MARINA SOARES DA SILVAresearcher at the Francis Crick Institute in London, who was not involved in the study.
“The authors propose commercial routes facilitated by the domain From the Byzantine Empire in North Africa, and I think this is a valid possibility, ”adds the former Ipatimup researcher.
The seventh century England was certainly not a collection of small, rural and isolated communities from the “Dark Age,” says Duncan Sayer. “These are dynamic communities with artifacts to be marketed, and genetic flow to take place, from West Africa and beyond ”.
