March 28, 2024

They Came From Europe and the Steppes: Mass Migration to Great Britain in the Bronze Age

They Came From Europe and the Steppes: Mass Migration to Great Britain in the Bronze Age

  • Migration movements shape the entire history of mankind
  • The British Isles experienced at least three waves of immigration
  • About 3000 years ago, the last wave brought the Celtic language and bearing milk

People have always migrated and migrated to other areas for various reasons. Migration is as old as human history itself. Mass migration from continental Europe, for example, occurred in what is now Great Britain in the mid to late Bronze Age. This is the Study result by more than 200 international researchers under the supervision of geneticists David Reich and Nick Patterson at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. The results were published in the journal Nature.

The Virtue of the Spread of Celtic Languages

According to researchers, the mass immigration to ancient Britain may have encouraged the spread of early Celtic languages. The researchers even found evidence of changes in milk consumption in DNA. “This indicates that during the Bronze Age, dairy products were used differently in Britain and Europe,” the study authors explain.

This shows how well integrating large data sets from genetics with archaeological and other data from the past can tell us. This has the potential to provide a wealth of information about a time when the Bible did not yet exist.


David Reich
Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology and Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, USA

Migration of farmers and fishermen from Europe

According to researchers, many farmers and fishermen from Europe may have migrated to Britain during the Bronze Age. These are the ancestors of the Neolithic farmers who lived around 3950-2450 BC. Live. Genome analyzes showed that the strain ranged from 20 to 80 percent.

From the steppes to Britain

The second mass migration around 2450 BC BC was associated with the arrival of continental Europeans, who brought their ancestors with them from the Pontic-Caspian steppes and are descended from the pastoralists who lived there. These steppes located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea are the western part of the so-called Eurasian steppe. The authors wrote: “The Great Migration meant that the ancestors of the population were exchanged almost completely (about 90 percent), so that the steppe proportions of England and Scotland no longer differed from each other.” She added: “Today, however, the proportion of steppe ancestors in England is much lower.”

Mass immigration from France

Great Britain seems to have a massive draw for the French, too. Thousands made their way north in the Post-Bronze Age Iron Age. The international research team analyzed a previously unknown mass migration into ancient Britain, which peaked between 1000 and 875 BC. Arrive. “We assume that these immigrants came from France and made up about half of the Iron Age population of England and Wales,” she said.

Carrying milk as a survival advantage?

Since language usually spread through migration of people, the results also support the assumption that Celtic languages ​​came to Britain from France in the late Bronze Age. “With the genetic data of large migratory movements, we can determine plausible times of language change,” said Reich, the study’s lead. The scientist and his team also discovered that the ability to digest cow’s milk was found in Britain between 1200 and 200 BC. The Center for Human Rights has increased significantly. This happened about a thousand years earlier than what happened in Central Europe.

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