New evidence from the oldest known DNA from the British Isles reveals mass immigrations after the last ice age.
It’s a tale of two ancient British caves: In Cheddar Gorge, just outside of Bristol, England, reindeer hunters etched designs onto human bones and drank out of carved human skulls about 15,000 years ago. A few hundred kilometers to the north, people living just a few hundred years later lived on freshwater fish and marine animals, laying their dead to rest in a cavern with decorated horse bones and bear-tooth pendants.
Both caves date to the Paleolithic, a turbulent time that followed the end of the last ice age. As the climate warmed, open tundra quickly gave way to thick forests. Melting ice sheets opened up new areas for human habitation, including what is today Great Britain, which was then connected by a land bridge to mainland Europe.populations shifted, too
At Gough’s Cave, near modern-day Bristol, England, people decorated human bones and possibly engaged in ritual cannibalism not long after glaciers there retreated.Known as Magdalenians, these first postglacial pioneers appear genetically similar across Europe—and are a perfect match for DNA obtained from a 15,000-year-old bone found in Gough’s Cave, in what is today southwestern England.
New people brought new practices: The bones of the humans in Kendrick’s Cave point to a diet heavy in fish and other marine creatures. And they’re buried with no signs of postmortem modification or cannibalism. “They have very different diets, and it does seem to line up with the genetics,” Stevens says. “People seem to be moving with their habitats.”