Bellbeaker people formed in the lower Rhine-Meuse region around 2500 BC — not Iberia as thought. When they reached Britain around 2400 BC, they replaced 90-100% of local Neolithic ancestry within 200 years. This sweeping replacement may have been aided by disease, per study published in Nature 🧬
Bellbeaker DNA reveals origins of Stonehenge replacement migrants
Key facts
- DNA analysis of 112 ancient individuals from Netherlands, Belgium, Western Germany (8500-1700 BC)
- Bellbeaker population formed from mixing local hunter-gatherer descendants with steppe-related migrants around 2500 BC
- Formed in lower Rhine-Meuse region, not from Iberia as previously thought
- When Bellbeaker people arrived in Britain around 2400 BC, they replaced 90-100% of local Neolithic ancestry
- Migration happened within approximately 200 years
- Replacement may have been triggered by disease/plague to which continental Europeans had immunity but Britons did not
- Published in journal Nature
Sources
Bell Beaker culture - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
From about 2400 BC the Beaker folk culture expanded eastwards, into the Corded Ware horizon. In parts of Central and Eastern Europe, as far east as Poland, a ...
Long-term hunter-gatherer continuity in the Rhine-Meuse region ...pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
This changed with the formation-through-mixture of Bell Beaker using populations ~2500 BCE by fusion of local Rhine-Meuse people (9–17%) and Corded Ware ...
DNA study uncovers continental origins of Britain's bronze age ...theconversation.com
At least 80% of their ancestry was now from the steppe. The Bell Beaker people rapidly expanded and rippled out further in all directions, ...
The Foragers Who Shaped Bell Beaker Europe - Anthropology.netanthropology.net
After 2500 BCE, something shifted. The Bell Beaker culture emerged in the Lower Rhine-Meuse region through mixing. Local people, carrying ...
DNA Reveals the People Who Replaced Stonehenge's Builders ...zmescience.com
The Bell Beaker people who arrived in Britain were genetically nearly identical to the people living in the Rhine-Meuse delta. “Our models ...
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