PHOTO: © WESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY
SCIENCE science.org 24 DECEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6575 1549A
bout 2900 years ago, an elderly
woman was carefully buried with
two lambs in her lap and a piece of
chalk in her hand at a site now called
Cliff ’s End Farm, about 30 kilometers
north of Dover, U.K. She had been
killed by sword blows to her skull, likely
in a sacrificial rite. Nearby lay the bod-
ies of a teenager, two children, and a man
whose bones had been bundled along with
a copper-tipped cow bone. Two of the dead
had been born in Europe, according
to the isotopes in their teeth. Now,
a study adds new insight into their
origins: They may have been part
of a wave of early Celtic speakers to
reach Britain.
Researchers report in Nature today
that the genomes of these people and
nearly 800 others document a previ-
ously unknown great migration from
Europe that transformed the genetic
makeup of people in southern Brit-
ain in the Late Bronze Age, 3100 to
2700 years ago. The migrants likely
introduced Celtic languages related
to those spoken today in Ireland,
Wales, and Scotland. It was “the
last major prehistoric migration to
Britain, and it probably came from
France,” says archaeologist James
Mallory of Queen’s University Belfast.
If so, Celtic languages began to reach
Britain as much as 1000 years earlier
than expected, he says.
For decades, prehistorians thought
Celtic languages arrived in Britain
about 2400 years ago in the Iron Age,
along with “Celtic” art and inscrip-
tions first spotted in Central Europe.
But debate raged over the timing, the
source of the languages, and whether they
spread through migration or diffused on
their own. “Without genetics, every theory
was debated,” Mallory says.
But now there are more ancient genomes
from Britain than anywhere else. That is
allowing researchers to trace the waves of
people who reached the British Isles over
the past 11,000 years. Hunter-gatherers
came first, followed 6000 years ago by
Early European Farmers (EEF) originally
from Anatolia. About 4500 years ago, farm-
ers with characteristic Bell Beaker potteryoverran Britain, rapidly replacing 90% of
inhabitants’ DNA and swamping out most
of the EEF ancestry.
In the new study—the largest ancient
DNA study to date—a team of more than
200 researchers, led by population geneti-
cist David Reich of Harvard University and
archaeologist Ian Armit of the University of
York, explored how the genetic makeup of
British people evolved from about 6000 to
2000 years ago. The team analyzed about
1 million alleles across the genomes of
793 people who lived in Britain and Europe.The data revealed an influx of people
with more EEF markers than local Britons,
starting about 4400 years ago. They began
to mix gradually. By the Late Bronze Age
2950 to 2875 years ago, the EEF ancestry
in southern British people surged to 38%.
Using a mathematical model, the team cal-
culated that by the Iron Age, starting 2750
years ago, EEF were the source of about half
of the DNA of people living in southern Brit-
ain. “We’re seeing people moving on a scale
to sufficiently alter the genetic makeup of the
populations in southern Britain,” Armit says.The researchers found that the genomes of
the migrants buried near Dover were closely
related to those of people then living at sites
in France and Spain, including skeletons tied
to the Urnfield culture of Central Europe,
thought to have links to early Celtic lan-
guages. But Reich says scientists need more
DNA from Europe, especially France, to pin-
point the migrants’ homeland.
The results boost a theory that Celtic
languages spread from France to Britain in
the Late Bronze Age. “I’m delighted, but I’m
obviously biased,” says philologist Patrick
Sims-Williams at Aberystwyth Uni-
versity, who backs this idea. But
some modern people who identify as
“Celts” (a term archaeologists say in-
cludes diverse material cultures) and
speak Celtic languages they consider
indigenous, such as Irish, Scottish
Gaelic, or Welsh, could find the re-
sults “unsettling,” Sims-Williams says.
“Celtic becomes just one of a succes-
sion of languages that migrants have
brought to Britain over the course of
2000 years or so: Latin with the Ro-
mans, English with the Anglo-Saxons,
Norse with the Vikings, French with
the Normans.”
The later migrations and political
dominance of the English eventu-
ally marginalized Celtic languages,
leaving them spoken chiefly beyond
England’s borders, Armit says.
Others agree that the new study
fits historical and archaeological ev-
idence of close ties between Britain
and Europe in the Late Bronze Age,
when sailors used the white cliffs of
Dover as a guide to cross the Eng-
lish Channel at its narrowest point
and find the entrance to the Thames
River. The new study shows “centu-
ries of migration, with men, women, and
children across all levels of society mov-
ing,” says University of York archaeologist
Lindsey Büster—the kind of population
shift that sustains language change. By the
end of the Bronze Age, cultures on both
sides of the channel had many similarities.
But tying a language to DNA is tricky, cau-
tions geneticist Dan Bradley of Trinity Col-
lege Dublin. He’s seeking traces of French
blood in ancient Irish DNA, to find out
whether the early Celtic speakers also made
it to Ireland, today’s Celtic heartland. jBy Ann GibbonsARCHAEOLOGYEarly migration may have spread Celtic languages
Ancient DNA reveals 3000-year-old influx of people from France to Britain
A woman (left) and man whose bones were bundled (top) were buried
in a pit on the U.K. coast.