• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Who Built Stonehenge? Genetic Analysis Suggests They May Not Be Who You Think

December 22, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

The people of Early Neolithic Britain, whose descendants went on to build Stonehenge, might not be who you thought they were.

Some 6,000 years ago, a wave of farmers from the Aegean coast in what is now modern-day Turkey traveled across mainland Europe, mingled around in the Mediterranean for some time, then made their way into Britain where they sparked the advent of agriculture on the island. Within a matter of centuries, they almost totally replaced the native “British” hunter-gatherer population.

Advertisement

Reporting in the journal Nature: Ecology & Evolution, a new study has analyzed the ancient DNA of dozens of people living in Britain between 8500 BCE and 2500 BCE, six of whom were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (dating from 11,600-6,000 years ago) and 47 Neolithic farmers (dating from 6,000 to 4,500 years ago). One of these skeletons included Cheddar Man, the oldest near-complete human skeleton found in Britain.

The genetic evidence shows that most of the hunter-gatherer population of Britain was replaced by farmers carrying ancestry originating in the Aegean coast, whose genetic makeup closer matches up with today’s population in Spain and Portugal. 

Neolithic and Mesolithic Britons

Left: Cheddar Man, an example of a Mesolithic Briton. Image credit: © Tom Barnes/Channel 4. Right: 3D reconstruction of Whitehawk Woman, an example of a Neolithic Briton from 5,600-years-ago. Image credit: © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

Most importantly, they didn’t just leave a genetic impression on Britain; they also brought with them the game-changing art of agriculture, as well as other important cultural practices, such as new funerary rites, pottery, and monument building. Agriculture is first dated in Britain to around 6,000 years ago. Before that people fed themselves by hunting, fishing, and gathering. 

Advertisement

“The transition to farming marks one of the most important technological innovations in human evolution… For over 100 years archaeologists have debated if it was brought to Britain by immigrant continental farmers, or it was adopted by local hunter-gatherers,” explained study author Mark Thomas, Professor of Genetics, Evolution & Environment at University College London, in a press release.

“Our study strongly supports the view that immigrant farmers introduced agriculture into Britain and largely replaced the Indigenous hunter-gatherer populations.”

Just like most other European hunter-gatherers, the Mesolithic Britons had dark skin and blue eyes. These genes were promptly wiped out after the arrival of the Aegean farmers, suggesting the native population was comparatively small and quickly mixed with the flocks of new-comers. The continental farmer populations also had their own long and thorny genetic heritage. On their journey from Turkey, they expanded along both the Mediterranean and Rhine-Danube in modern-day Germany, picking up ideas and genes along the way.

Advertisement

If this study proves anything, it shows that the history of migration and genetic heritage, in Europe and beyond, is a lot more interwoven and complex than it’s often made out to be.

This article was originally published in April 2019.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Talk now, act later: Five questions for the ECB
  2. Somalia’s president berates Djibouti for detaining his security adviser
  3. Japan’s Takeda says ‘human error’ caused contamination of Moderna vaccines
  4. Scientists Investigating 30-Year-Old Mystery Rare Antigens Discover Entirely New Blood Group

Source Link: Who Built Stonehenge? Genetic Analysis Suggests They May Not Be Who You Think

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
  • North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
  • North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
  • A Two-Headed Fossil, 50/50 Spider, And World-First Butt Drag
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Losing Buckets Of Water Every Second – And It’s Got Cyanide
  • “A Historic Shift”: Renewables Generated More Power Than Coal Globally For First Time
  • The World’s Oldest Known Snake In Captivity Became A Mom At 62 – No Dad Required
  • Biggest Ocean Current On Earth Is Set To Shift, Spelling Huge Changes For Ecosystems
  • Why Are The Continents All Bunched Up On One Side Of The Planet?
  • Why Can’t We Reach Absolute Zero?
  • “We Were Onto Something”: Highest Resolution Radio Arc Shows The Lowest Mass Dark Object Yet
  • How Headsets Made For Cyclists Are Giving Hearing And Hope To Kids With Glue Ear
  • It Was Thought Only One Mammal On Earth Had Iridescent Fur – Turns Out There’s More
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version