“The majority of eastern, central and southern England is made up of a single, relatively homogeneous, genetic group with a significant DNA contribution from Anglo-Saxon migrations (10-40% of total ancestry). This settles a historical controversy in showing that the Anglo-Saxons intermarried with, rather than replaced, the existing populations.”
The Welcome Trust / Oxford research has been superseded by a more recent study; see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2. It found that the human DNA from graves from after the fifth century in eastern England records up to three-quarters descent from recent immigrants.
Thanks for that link. It’s quite a technical read. It doesn’t contradict the study I quoted, in that the high levels of CNE DNA in the early medieval burials analyzed have been subsequently “diluted” according to the authors. They don’t seem to explore the possibility that the burial grounds in their study might be biased. They note for one site that the CNE burials dominate the centre while indigenous burials are marginalized. If these were CNE elite cemeteries, the stats would be skewed. Also, there was inevitably some migration of indigenous people to the Celtic fringe, with some later returns. My paternal ancestry (Yorkshire, Lancashire, East Anglia) is over a quarter Scottish and Irish genetically. (My mother was Ulster Scotch.) I’m still digesting the Nature paper - the “Frankish” element is intriguing. All in all it is a complex issue.
Volume I: Roman Britain and the English Settlements was name of first book in Oxford history. I no longer own the series but from memory it covered where the various germanic folk came from, as understood at the time, with Stenton’s Anglo Saxon England as volume two.
Volume I: Roman Britain and the English Settlements was name of first book in Oxford history. I no longer own the series but from memory it covered where the various germanic folk came from, as understood at the time, with Stenton’s Anglo Saxon England as volume two.
My studies of medieval history in the early 1980s at the Australian National University included reading about the eastern north sea origins fo the germanic invaders, including the Bede you cite. As with the Roman period the weighting was towards the invaders since more of the evidence came from them.
Churchill's "A History of the English-speaking Peoples" is a good start
But Churchill starts with the Romans. Was Roman Britain English?
Wellcome Trust / Oxford University research:
“The majority of eastern, central and southern England is made up of a single, relatively homogeneous, genetic group with a significant DNA contribution from Anglo-Saxon migrations (10-40% of total ancestry). This settles a historical controversy in showing that the Anglo-Saxons intermarried with, rather than replaced, the existing populations.”
The Welcome Trust / Oxford research has been superseded by a more recent study; see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2. It found that the human DNA from graves from after the fifth century in eastern England records up to three-quarters descent from recent immigrants.
Thanks for that link. It’s quite a technical read. It doesn’t contradict the study I quoted, in that the high levels of CNE DNA in the early medieval burials analyzed have been subsequently “diluted” according to the authors. They don’t seem to explore the possibility that the burial grounds in their study might be biased. They note for one site that the CNE burials dominate the centre while indigenous burials are marginalized. If these were CNE elite cemeteries, the stats would be skewed. Also, there was inevitably some migration of indigenous people to the Celtic fringe, with some later returns. My paternal ancestry (Yorkshire, Lancashire, East Anglia) is over a quarter Scottish and Irish genetically. (My mother was Ulster Scotch.) I’m still digesting the Nature paper - the “Frankish” element is intriguing. All in all it is a complex issue.
Volume I: Roman Britain and the English Settlements was name of first book in Oxford history. I no longer own the series but from memory it covered where the various germanic folk came from, as understood at the time, with Stenton’s Anglo Saxon England as volume two.
Volume I: Roman Britain and the English Settlements was name of first book in Oxford history. I no longer own the series but from memory it covered where the various germanic folk came from, as understood at the time, with Stenton’s Anglo Saxon England as volume two.
My studies of medieval history in the early 1980s at the Australian National University included reading about the eastern north sea origins fo the germanic invaders, including the Bede you cite. As with the Roman period the weighting was towards the invaders since more of the evidence came from them.
Collingwood and Myres did not cover the evidence from the continent.