I'm Dr. Tom Booth and I work at the
Natural History Museum in London and
I work on a project where we're extracting
DNA out of ancient skeletons in order to
look at their ancestry to see when you
get big changes in ancestry the people
living in Britain.
It's looking at the patterns in the
ancient DNA when you get big changes in
the ancient DNA and seeing whether
that's related or can be related at all
to any of the changes in life style and
changes in culture that you get in different periods. When people think about
migration and mobility in Britain and
British populations they tend to think
about the migrations that occur in the
first millennium AD so these are Saxons
Romans, Normans.
But it's always assumed that before this
point that there aren't many big changes but the
analysis of ancient DNA is changing that
idea so after the glaciers retreat you
have people moving back into Britain
from southern Spain but around 14,000
years ago you get a new movement of
people that originated originally in the
Near East but moved across Europe into
Britain and they mostly replace this
population that came into Britain
originally from Spain. Similarly around
6,000 years ago the population has been
changed again so these people ultimately
derive from somewhere in Anatolia or
around the Aegean and have moved across
Europe with farming practices and end up
in Britain. And then once more on 4,500
years ago you get a migration into
Britain the originates from Russia
around the Black Sea which inevitably
bring with them metalworking. So each one
of these prehistoric migrations brings
new physical traits, new innovations and
new technologies. We see shifts from
darker skin to lighter skin, from brown
eyes to blue eyes, from dark hair to
light hair and see blonde hair for the
first time. You get the establishment of
these large-scale networks, trading
networks across Europe where people are
trading in metals pottery and other
precious objects for the
first time and through these networks
you get the establishment of more
sophisticated cultures and more complex
cultural practices. So from around 3,000
years ago from beginning of the Iron Age
we don't get as many big changes in the
genetics of people living in Britain, but
what we do seem to get is again the
constant flow of people in and out of
Britain from other parts of Europe.
So the impression that you get is
rather than being this kind of static
prehistoric Britain it's this dynamic
mobile place where people are
constantly moving in and out exchanging
ideas bringing new ideas and bringing
new ancestries which we can pick up
using this technology. So the prehistory
and history of Britain is inextricably
linked to the history of Europe.
 
