Medieval migration into England

 

Migration into England was continuous from the Romans through to the Normans and men and women moved from different places and at different rates, a study finds.

The researchers found early medieval migrants came to England from the Mediterranean and from the Arctic Circle and beyond.

The major bioarchaeological study gives a new perspective to early medieval texts and ancient DNA, researchers say.

The study of human tooth enamel also showed climate events such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly.

The study by researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge is the first large scale analysis of isotopic and ancient DNA data in cemeteries from early medieval England to assess movement.

Researchers traced the roots of population movements to England during what is known as the early medieval period – the period spanning from the end of Roman rule in Britain, around 1600 years ago, through to the arrival of the Normans more than 900 years ago.

Analysis of chemical signatures found in the teeth of ancient skeletons show that population movement was a consistent feature of England between the 4th and the 11th centuries, the study found.

Researchers used bioarchaeological techniques to study more than 700 chemical signatures from the teeth of human skeletal remains of people buried in England from around AD 400 to 1100.

The team compared this with ancient DNA from 316 individuals to compare movement versus ancestry.

Evidence from tooth enamel – which can show if a person consumed food or water which was chemically different from food and drink from their place of burial – also captured climate fluctuations such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a period of rapid cooling in the 6th and 7th centuries, and evidence of newcomers from colder regions.

The team found that migration appeared to be continuous – rather than tied to one off events – with a significant spike in the seventh and eighth centuries.

Male migration appeared to be more prominent – although there was also notable female mobility particularly into the North East, Kent and Wessex.

The researchers found evidence of migration into England from Wales and Ireland. The data also offered evidence of migration and settlement from northwest Europe and the Mediterranean, the researchers say.

The researchers looked at how the main documented sources of mobility – such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – aligned with the bioarchaeological findings sourced from the study of human skeletal remains.

The use of biomolecular data provides new evidence to answer questions about the nature and scale of early medieval migration, the researchers say.

Dr Sam Leggett of the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, said: “The study took a ‘big data’ approach to assess the narratives around early medieval migration. We see here that migration was a consistent feature rather that just tied to one off events, with evidence of communities in continual cross-cultural contact, tied into large scale networks which may have contributed to the major socio-cultural changes we see throughout the period.”

Dr Susanne Hakenbeck, of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, said: “Our study shows that migration to Britain was fairly continuous throughout the first millennium. We didn’t expect to see a spike in mobility in the 7th and 8th centuries – well after the period of the so-called Anglo-Saxon migrations. This study – incidentally co-authored by two migrants – also shows that Britain was never isolated from the continent.”

The research is published Open Access in Medieval Archaeology, Link to study: https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2025.2583016

New evidence of bipedalism in long-debated fossil discovery

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Crania, ulnae, and femora of (left to right): a chimpanzee, Sahelanthropus, and Australopithecus. 

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Credit: Scott Williams/NYU and Jason Heaton/University of Alabama Birmingham

In recent decades, scientists have debated whether a seven-million-year-old fossil was bipedal—a trait that would make it the oldest human ancestor. A new analysis by a team of anthropologists offers powerful evidence that Sahelanthropus tchadensis—a species discovered in the early 2000s—was indeed bipedal by uncovering a feature found only in bipedal hominins.

Using 3D technology and other methods, the team identified Sahelanthropus’s femoral tubercle, which is the point of attachment for the largest and most powerful ligament in the human body—the iliofemoral ligament—and vital for walking upright. The analysis also confirmed the presence of other traits in Sahelanthropus that are linked to bipedalism. 

“Sahelanthropus tchadensis was essentially a bipedal ape that possessed a chimpanzee-sized brain and likely spent a significant portion of its time in trees, foraging and seeking safety,” says Scott Williams, an associate professor in New York University’s Department of Anthropology who led the research. “Despite its superficial appearance, Sahelanthropus was adapted to using bipedal posture and movement on the ground.”

The study, which included researchers from the University of Washington, Chaffey College, and the University of Chicago, appears in the journal Science Advances. 

Sahelanthropus was discovered in Chad’s Djurab desert by University of Poitiers’ palaeontologists in the early 2000s, with initial analyses focusing on its skull. Two decades later, studies on other parts of that discovery—its forearms, or ulnae, and thigh bone, or femur—were reported. This prompted debate over whether the species was bipedal or not, leaving open the question on its status: Is Sahelanthropus a hominin (a human ancestor)? 

In the Science Advances study, the scientists took a closer look at the ulnae and femur using two primary methods: a multi-fold trait comparison with the same bones of living and fossil species and 3D geometric morphometrics—a standard method for analyzing shapes in greater detail in order to illuminate areas of particular interest. Among the compared fossil species was Australopithecus—an early human ancestor, well-known through the discovery of the “Lucy” skeleton in the early 1970s, who lived an estimated four to two million years ago. 

The analysis revealed three features that point to bipedalism in Sahelanthropus:

• The presence of a femoral tubercle, which provides attachment for the iliofemoral ligament linking the pelvis to the femur and has so far been identified only in hominins

• A natural twist, specifically within the range of hominins, in the femur—or femoral antetorsion—that helps legs to point forward, thereby aiding walking 

• The presence, drawn from the 3D analysis, of gluteal, or butt, muscles similar to those in early hominins that keep hips stable and aid in standing, walking, and running

The latter two traits—femoral antetorsion and gluteal complex—had previously been identified by other scientists; the Science Advances study affirmed their presence. 

The authors also found that Sahelanthropus had a relatively long femur relative to its ulna—additional evidence of bipedalism. The researchers note that apes have long arms and short legs, whereas hominins have relatively long legs. And while Sahelanthropus had much shorter legs than do modern humans, these were distinct from apes and approached Australopithecus in relative femur length, suggesting another adaptation to bipedalism. 

“Our analysis of these fossils offers direct evident that Sahelanthropus tchadensis could walk on two legs, demonstrating that bipedalism evolved early in our lineage and from an ancestor that looked most similar to today’s chimpanzees and bonobos,” concludes Williams. 

First ancient human herpesvirus genomes document their deep history with humans

For the first time, scientists have reconstructed ancient genomes of Human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) from archaeological human remains more than two millennia old. The study, led by the University of Vienna and University of Tartu (Estonia) and published in Science Advances, confirms that these viruses have been evolving with and within humans since at least the Iron Age. The findings trace the long history of HHV-6 integration into human chromosomes and suggest that HHV-6A lost this ability early on.

HHV-6B infects about 90 percent of children by the age of two and is best known as the cause of roseola infantum – or "sixth disease" – the leading cause of febrile seizures in young children. Together with its close relative HHV-6A, it belongs to a group of widespread human herpesviruses that typically establish lifelong, latent infections after an initial mild illness in early childhood. What makes them exceptional is their ability to integrate into human chromosomes – a feature that allows the virus to remain dormant and, in rare cases, to be inherited as part of the host's own genome. Such inherited viral copies occur in roughly one percent of people today. While earlier studies had hypothesized that these integrations were ancient, the new data from this study provide the first direct genomic proof.

Recovering viral DNA from the distant past

An international research team led by the University of Vienna and the University of Tartu (Estonia) – in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and University College London – screened nearly 4,000 human skeletal samples from archaeological sites across Europe. Eleven ancient viral genomes were identified and reconstructed – the oldest from a young girl of the Iron Age Italy (1100–600 BCE). The remaining individuals covered a wide geographic and temporal range: Both types of HHV were found in medieval England, Belgium and Estonia, while HHV-6B also appeared in samples from Italy and early historic Russia. Several of the English individuals carried inherited forms of HHV-6B, making them the earliest known carriers of chromosomally integrated human herpesviruses. The Belgian site of Sint-Truiden yielded the largest number of cases, with both viral species circulating within the same population. 

"While HHV-6 infects almost 90% of the human population at some point in their life, only around 1% carry the virus, which was inherited from your parents, in all cells of their body. These 1% of cases are what we are most likely to identify using ancient DNA, making the search for viral sequences quite difficult", said the lead researcher of the study, Meriam Guellil, University of Vienna, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. "Based on our data, the viruses' evolution can now be traced over more than 2,500 years across Europe, using genomes from the 8th-6th century BCE until today."

Ancient integrations, lasting consequences

The recovered genomes allowed the researchers to determine where in the chromosomes the viruses had integrated. Comparisons with modern data revealed that some integrations happened a very long time ago and passed down through generations for millennia. One of the two viral species (HHV-6A) appears to have lost its ability to integrate into human DNA over time – evidence that these viruses have evolved differently while coexisting with their human hosts. 

"Carrying a copy of HHV6B in your genome has been linked to angina–heart-disease", says Charlotte Houldcroft (Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge). "We know that these inherited forms of HHV6A and B are more common in the UK today compared to the rest of Europe, and this is the first evidence of ancient carriers from Britain."

A new chapter in virus–host evolution

The discovery of these ancient HHV-6 genomes provides the first time-stamped evidence for the long-term co-evolution of this virus with humans at the genomic level. It also shows how ancient DNA can reveal the long-term evolution of infectious diseases – from short-lived childhood infections to viral sequences that became part of the human genome. Discovered only in the 1980s, HHV-6A and HHV-6B can now be traced back to the Iron Age, offering direct genomic evidence for an ancient, shared history between viruses and humans. "Modern genetic data suggested that HHV-6 may have been evolving with humans since our migration out of Africa," says Guellil. "These ancient genomes now provide first concrete proof of their presence in the deep human past."