It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, June 26, 2021
ANOTHER ARYAN RACE MYTH FALLS
Being Anglo-Saxon was a matter of language and culture, not genetics
New evidence to answer the question 'who exactly were the Anglo-Saxons?'
IMAGE: THE FAMOUS ANGLO-SAXON SUTTON HOO HELMET FROM ABOUT 625 CE, PART OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM COLLECTION. PHOTO: ELISSA BLAKE/UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY view more
CREDIT: PHOTO: ELISSA BLAKE/UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
A new study from archaeologists at University of Sydney and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, has provided important new evidence to answer the question "Who exactly were the Anglo-Saxons?"
New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe.
Professor Keith Dobney at the University of Sydney said the team's results indicate that "the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain - full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture".
The Anglo-Saxon (or early medieval) period in England runs from the 5th-11th centuries AD. Early Anglo-Saxon dates from around 410-660 AD - with migration occurring throughout all but the final 100 years (ie 410-560AD).
Studying ancient skulls
Published in PLOS ONE, the collaborative study by Professor Dobney at University of Sydney and Dr Kimberly Plomp and Professor Mark Collard at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, looked at the three-dimensional shape of the base of the skull.
"Previous studies by palaeoanthropologists have shown that the base of the human skull holds a shape signature that can be used to track relationships among human populations in a similar way to ancient DNA," Dr Plomp said. "Based on this, we collected 3D data from suitably dated skeletal collections from Britain and Denmark, and then analysed the data to estimate the ancestry of the Anglo-Saxon individuals in the sample."
The researchers found that between two-thirds and three-quarters of early Anglo-Saxon individuals were of continental European ancestry, while between a quarter and one-third were of local ancestry.
When they looked at skeletons dated to the Middle Anglo-Saxon period (several hundred years after the original migrants arrived), they found that 50 to 70 percent of the individuals were of local ancestry, while 30 to 50 percent were of continental European ancestry, which probably indicates a change in the rate of migration and/or local adoption of culture over time.
"These findings tell us that being Anglo-Saxon was more likely a matter of language and culture, not genetics," Professor Collard said.
The debate about Anglo-Saxons
Although Anglo-Saxon origins can clearly be traced to a migration of Germanic-speaking people from mainland Europe between the 5th and 7th centuries AD, the number of individuals who settled in Britain is still contested, as is the nature of their relationship with the pre-existing inhabitants of the British Isles, most of whom were Romano-Celts.
The ongoing and unresolved argument is whether hordes of European invaders largely replaced the existing Romano-British inhabitants, or did smaller numbers of migrants settle and interact with the locals, who then rapidly adopted the new language and culture of the Anglo-Saxons?
"The reason for the ongoing confusion is the apparent contradiction between early historical texts (written sometime after the events that imply that the newcomers were both numerous and replaced the Romano-British population) and some recent biomolecular markers directly recovered from Anglo-Saxon skeletons that appears to suggest numbers of immigrants were few," said Professor Dobney.
"Our new data sits at the interface of this debate and implies that early Anglo-Saxon society was a mix of both newcomers and immigrants and, instead of wholesale population replacement, a process of acculturation resulted in Anglo-Saxon language and culture being adopted wholesale by the local population."
"It could be this new cultural package was attractive, filling a vacuum left at the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. Whatever the reason, it lit the fuse for the English nation we have today - still comprised of people of different origins who share the same language," Professor Dobney said.
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Anglo-Saxon ancestry was 'mixed and mutable'
Skull analysis finds combination of indigenous and immigrant ancestors for early Anglo-Saxons
The ancestry of early Anglo-Saxons, a subject of some debate, included immigrants from continental Europe as well as people indigenous to Great Britain, according to a study published June 23, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kimberly Plomp of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia and colleagues.
Between the 5th and 7th centuries CE, Germanic-speaking people from continental Europe settled across the island of Great Britain, leading to the formation of the Anglo-Saxon ethnic group, and eventually to the development of the English language and the Kingdom of England. Historical texts describe this event as an invasion, where continental immigrants replaced indigenous people, but some archaeological evidence contradicts this story, indicating that many early Anglo-Saxons in Great Britain were of local origin.
In this study, the authors sought to determine the ancestry of Anglo-Saxons by comparing their skull anatomy to that of indigenous and continental individuals. They used 3D shape analysis to compare 236 individuals from Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon cemeteries (410-899 CE), pre-Medieval sites in England (800 BCE-410 CE), and Iron Age sites in Denmark (800 BCE-399CE). The results indicate that, among Early Anglo-Saxon skeletons, 25-33% were of local ancestry, while among Middle Anglo-Saxon skeletons, 50-70% were local.
Thus, this study finds that Anglo-Saxons comprised individuals of both local and continental ancestry, and that the ratio between the two changed over time, possibly due to variations in immigration patterns. These results conflict with some previous data from historical texts, as well as isotopic and genetic analyses. The authors propose that future studies, sampling a wider selection of skulls and examining more regions of the skull, might provide more information to resolve these questions of Anglo-Saxon ancestry.
"Palaeoanthropologists have found that when the base of the human skull is analysed in 3D, it can be used to track relationships among human populations in a similar way to ancient DNA," explains Dr Plomp. "Based on this, we collected 3D data from suitably dated skeletal collections from Britain and Denmark, and then analysed the data to estimate the ancestry of the Anglo-Saxon individuals in the sample."
Professor Collard adds, "these findings tell us that being Anglo-Saxon was a matter of language and culture, not genetics".
According to Professor Dobney, the team's results indicate that "the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain--full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture."
Citation: Plomp KA, Dobney K, Collard M (2021) A 3D basicranial shape-based assessment of local and continental northwest European ancestry among 5th to 9th century CE Anglo-Saxons. PLoS ONE 16(6): e0252477. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252477
Funding: The study was supported by the European Union's Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions program (Horizon 2020 - 748200), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (895-2011-1009), the Canada Research Chairs Program (228117 and 231256), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (203808), the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund (862-804231), and Simon Fraser University (14518).
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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