The Neolithic inhabitants of Britain appear to have travelled from Anatolia to today’s Spain before heading north and reach the British Isles by south-west, researchers in London said. Experts compared the DNA extracted from the remains of humans living in Britain during the Neolithic period with that of people alive at the same time in the European continent and found it very similar.  

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, argued the migration to Britain was part of a massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000 BC and lasted until the beginning of the Neolithic British Isles, which spanned from circa 4000 BC to circa 2500 BC.

This migration introduced farming to Europe, which was before populated largely by nomad hunter-gatherers, who fed mainly of animals, shellfish and wild plants.

Over the year, the migratory group from Anatolia split in two, with some farmers settling alongside river Danube in Central Europe and others travelling across the Mediterranean. 

British farmers’ DNA looks more similar to the one of people who reached Iberia, modern Spain and Portugal, leading to think some of those early farmers who settled in the peninsula decided to travel further north and reached the British Isles from Wales of south-west England in approximately 4000BC.

They then likely met another group of “western hunter-gatherers”, but DNA tests show the two group didn’t mix much, researchers said.

The co-author of the study, Dr Tom Booth, a specialist in ancient DNA from the Natural History Museum in London, said: “We don’t find any detectable evidence at all for the local British western hunter-gatherer ancestry in the Neolithic farmers after they arrive.

“That doesn’t mean they don’t mix at all, it just means that maybe their population sizes were too small to have left any kind of genetic legacy.” 

The Neolithic farmers replaced almost entirely the British hunter-gatherers, with the exception of one group in western Scotland.

But Professor Mark Thomas, from UCL, another co-author of the study, urged not to rush to think the farmers simply wiped out the hunter-gatherers by fighting them but said there are “a numbers game explanation”.

Among them, one explanation may be found in the fact that the farmer groups may have simply have had greater numbers than the hunter-gatherer groups.

The study also compared the appearances of the British hunter-gatherers with the one of the Neolithic farmers.

Analysing the DNA remains from, among other skeletons, the one of the Cheddar Man, dated to 7100 BC, the researchers suggested the Neolithic farmers had pale skin with brown eyes and black or dark-brown hair, while a study unveiled last year at the Natural History Museum revealed the Cheddar Man was likely dark-skinned with blue eyes.   

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