Ancient DNA reveals early medieval England had people with West African ancestry
Two people who lived in England at the beginning of the Middle Ages had recent ancestry in sub -Saharan Africa – probably a grandparent, a new DNA The analysis reveals.
“DNA shows that there are human ties, as well as material, and that it extends to West Africa”, co-author of the study Duncan SayerA historic archaeologist at the University of Lancashire in the United Kingdom, told Live Science in an email.
Archaeologists discovered the burial of a teenager at the Updown cemetery in Kent and the burial of a young man from the Matravers cemetery Worth Mattravers in Dorset. The two cemeteries, located in the south of Great Britain, were dated from the 7th century, after the fall of the Roman EmpireWhen the Anglo-Saxon peoples occupied the island.
DNA analysis of five people buried in Updown and 18 people buried in Matravers Worth found that most of these individuals had the ancestry of northern Europe or the British and Irish west, researchers reported in 2022. But when they sequered the DNA of the girl buried in the grave 47 in Updown, they realized that her ancestry came from a completely different continent.
In two studies published on Wednesday (August 13) in the magazine Antiquity, the researchers detailed the unusual genetic history of the daughter of Update And the young man of BUT MATRAVER.
The analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of young people, which is transmitted from mother to child, revealed that the two had mothers probably from northern Europe. But their autosomal DNA, which comes from chromosomes that do not code biological sex, have shown clear signals of non -European ancestry.
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“The two individuals thus present a genetically and geographically mixed descent”, and had around 20% to 40% of ancestry characteristic of sub -Saharan Africa, Sayer and his colleagues wrote in the study. The DNA of the up -to -date girl had an affinity with that of today YorubaThe Mende, Mandenka and Esan groups, noted the team.
Based on a statistical model, the researchers propose that the two people had a grandparent with African ancestry, perhaps similar groups that left sub-Saharan Africa between the middle of the 17th and the beginning of the 6th century.
The fact that these people were buried with their communities suggest that they were appreciated by their peers, the authors wrote in the study.
The update girl was buried with a knife, a spoon, a bone comb near her left hip and a pot decorated with Frankish Gaul at her feet. DNA analysis also revealed that it had biological parents in the same cemetery. The young man of Matravers, on the other hand, was buried in a double grave with an older man to whom he was not biologically linked.
Tracy PROWSEA bioarchaeologist at McMaster University in Ontario which was not involved in studies, told Live Science in an email that researchers “did a good job to discuss the historical evidence of trade between certain parts of Africa and the countries of the North”.
Given the previous discoveries of various individuals dating from the Roman Empire – including the Lady Ivory Bangle Found in York, which may have had the North African ancestry-“the presence of these people in Updown and which is worth the 7th century Mattravers in Britain is not very surprising,” said Prowse.
But Sayer does not think that there is a continuity between the people of the Roman period with African ancestry and the people of the 7th century found in the south of Great Britain. After the Germanic Vandals Sacked Rome in AD 455, they founded a kingdom in North Africa. But then the Byzantine Empire conquered them in AD 534.
“At the end of the Roman period, North Africa was won over by the Vandals,” said Sayer. “It is the reconquest in the middle of the 6th century AD – around 533 to 535 – which seems to be the important event here.”
DNA data showing African ancestry is “unexpected but in conformity” with archaeological and historical evidence, have written the researchers in the study and throws new light on the early medieval period in Great Britain.
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