"DNA analysis of ancient individuals found in Scotland" by Dr Alison Sheridan & Dr Lisa Brown

I'm today's Standen so I'm under no pressure at all trying to train to take the police of both Alison and Lisa but the they have very good reasons for not being here and they do send their sincere apologies the ability to undertake reliable and relatively an expensive DNA analysis or an ancient human amines has been healed by Professor Christian Christensen as the thought Greek revolution in archaeology the first being the establishment of archaeology as a discipline in the 19th century and the second being the radiocarbon dating revolution from the mid 20th century onwards within the last 13 years that has been a step change and the methods used an inch DNA analysis that has men but no quickly and relatively cheaply and without having to worry about modern contamination we can get information about people's total genome not just the information about the maternal ancestry from the mitochondrial DNA or debate the paternal ancestry from the Y chromosome this means that each individual's D track gives us information about all their thousands of genealogical ancestors this is an incredibly powerful tool in helping us to understand who we are and how we go here moreover total genome analysis can spectacularly reveal the most intimate of details not just people's hair skin and eye colour and blood tape but in the case of this 4,000 year old man from Greenland they could tell that his earwax was dry and that this was an adaptation to the extreme cold conditions in which he lived similarly in the case of this ten thousand year old man whose remains were found in a cave in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset the geneticists from the Natural History Museum were able to tell that year dark skin you probably saw the TV program about him that Pizza recently on Channel four needless to see let's go at the fire rate Reese's Twitterati and 2e ranked lather this is one of the unfortunate consequences of discovering that we at all in fact descended from immigrants chair demands distant ancestors will have walked into what is known in glint from the landmaster is no Europe and which was joined to Britain until the first had predicts a card that owned 6000 BC Scotland's archaeology has been foots it's from this great DNA of evolution over the last forty years thanks to a couple of major research projects and several smaller initiatives during the Society of Antiquities of Scotland 2015 reigned lecture series it was argued that the team was rate to get some ancient DNA analysis done on Scotland's ancient inhabitants Professor Ian arm it took up the challenge and together with professor David Ray of the Harvard Medical School they launched his James Scott project its aim was to create baseline DNA data for Scotland from the Neolithic through to the raking periods they have since gone on to launch another project called Jane lab which focuses in more depth on the first millennium ad over the wall of Brennan independently of artwork Professor Ian Barnes and Matt Thomas of the Natural History Museum and University College London brought a welcome grant to look at changing diet and l-mursaleen children they were particularly interested in the major dietary change involved in the Mesolithic Neolithic transition in addition that have been various other initiatives by the University of Copenhagen geo genetics lab including a project that sayo to compare orchid Ian and Scandinavian vacanze others by the University of Stockholm Adelaide's and Titus field in fact so much research has been going on and so much of it has involved human remains from National Museum Scotland the Alison has created a roundup list of all the ancient Scottish individuals who have been sampled or analyzed for DNA and the outcome as an astonishing two hundred and sixty seven of whom largely by chance a whopping 40 percent were buried in Orkney much of this work is still in progress and only some of the genetic results have been published however hot off the presses Alison's round up is published 2d there are a small number of copies available for for those that are interested so its first come first served in des volume 19 that you will receive today if you're a member of archaeology Scotland as I said Paula Melbourne has carried on off several copies of the list that your rail comes back up it's also available online in the DES website so what do all these analyses tailors if we start with the Mesolithic Neolithic transition the way oakum project has confirmed that farming was indeed introduced to Britain by emigrants from the continent who had already been growing crops and herd thing domesticated animals there for over a millennium Allison is particularly pleased with first result as it confirms what she's been arguing for many many years from the evidence of structures and artifacts all along you can read all about the results and the people made silly nobodies al in the online journal Nature ecology and evolution you can access it for free if you use the link shown at the bottom of the slide as you can see from this plot of results the genetic makeup of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers including cheddar man and also including a Mesolithic man from North quake or an orang C is quite distinct from that of the farmers so fresh blood was quite literally being brought in the genetic signature of the Mesolithic individuals ringed in red on the diagram plots with those of other hunter-gatherers in Western Europe showing that they are descended from the same distant ancestors in contrast the farmers data and say the green oval plot fairly closely with those for farmers and Iberia and much further back that ancestry can be traced to the Middle East but this is where we have to be careful in how we interpret genetic data these results don't actually mean that farming groups were sailing up to Britain all the way from Spain in Portugal contrary to or another recent DNA project has concluded archaeologically there's not a shred of evidence for our own neolithic having any iberian characteristics instead we know that over the course of the late 6th to 8th millennia the spirit of farming and Atlantic Europe came up the coast with people and Brittany and other parts of northern France mixing with those of Iberian ancestry in this week farmers living in northern France will have had an Iberian element and the genetic makeup unfortunately for us born scarcely survives in Brittany and moreover not a lot of whole genome DNA analysis has been done in France what little has been done has confirmed that there s an Iberian element in the genetic makeup of northern French farmers so the genetic data are not incompatible with Alison's multi-strand model of nila physician from different parts of northern France to different parts of Britain and Ireland the two day dad was sure the strands that reached Scotland as for what happened to the indigenous Mesolithic population the geneticists have argued that the genetics which is so dramatic that we might be dealing with some kind of population replacement in other words the Mesolithic population largely died out I see largely because it's clear from Roscoe Lee Keith and open that there's at least one case of interbreeding between the incoming farmers and the indigenous Neolithic population indeed the two populations in Western Scotland could have coexisted without necessarily meeting each other for several generations whence the dead encountered each other for at least some of them that was a case of love at first sight and farewell to the fruits and nuts existence hello McDonald's or something like that we should add that there's quite a bit of resistance from archaeologists to this idea of near total population change even though by and large it's hard to point to any communities who followed up purely Mesolithic way of life after their own 2700 BC nor date the archaeologists and geneticists will continue to argue the toss on this for quite some time to come the other big DNA result concerns the so-called beaker people and confirms that the package of novelties that included beaker Thor today and the use of corporal gold really was brought to Britain and Ireland by immigrants from the continent this resolves the debate that's been going on for over the same city and you can read all the beta and shameless plug there's jolly good new book available from ox ball for $49.99 Alison assures me you can have have it for half of that place if you ask her nicely the DNA work on the beaker people who was done by anonymous James Court project and by David Drake of Harvard its results were pretty spectacular you can also read about them in the nature article from last year by aloud e8l you can see the title at the bottom of the slide there the geneticists were able to see that in iberia which is where the earliest because I found there was no genetic difference between beacon users and the pbk population which is not surprising since it's easy to see the four beers or beaker portal II there there is also genetic continuity from previous generations the beaker users here sure ancestry from people in the Russian steppes who had moved into the area and intermarried with local farming communities around 3,000 BC but in Britain the genetic picture is very very different with the early because users contrasting genetically with the indigenous population this means that they must have come in from the continent they clearly came from different areas on the continent to different areas within Britain some came from modern-day Netherlands to southeast England and Scotland well others came from further domain to Yorkshire and parts of Scotland yet others came from northern Germany to northeast England while others yet again me will have gone from Brittany to southwest England you could lose the Boscombe Bowman's collective can even Brittany for example again the spear city of human born from Brittany isn't helping with that the geneticists got really excited by the DNA results because the suggest another significant population turnover with 93% of the genome in Britain switching to the Continental signature over the next generations on this graph the Continental beaker the genetic signature is shown in red and that of the earlier farmers in Britain in blue when these results were first published in 2017 the newspapers had a field day claiming the hordes of marauding Dutchman bought off the late Neolithic builders of the Sasson birthstone hinge the answer to the particular question posed here however is nor indeed does a lively debate between archaeologists and geneticists about just how many immigrants that come from the continent and over how many years the geneticists late to think of a massive migration but there's simply no archaeological proof of us Dutch settlements didn't empty out for example and there's no obvious cases that would have precipitated large-scale movements of refugees indeed when Alison asked David riche how many promiscuous Dutch Casanova's it would have taken to bulk theory around written to create such a big genetic turn over fifty five hundred five thousand he said he just didn't know indeed the evidence from monuments and material culture suggests that were more likely to be dealing with successive episodes of small-scale migration from the continent over several generations rather than one big wave of and agreed emigrants if local women were attracted to these sexy foreigners and play financially intermixed with him then this would help to account for the name to two percent genetic turnover Scotland has one or two proven immigrants beaker people as it here Saudis deal on coal where this young woman's grave is among the earliest beacon lives in Britain isotopic analysis of a teeth and borne by made Parker Pearson's beaker people project had already indicated that she hadn't been brought up in the area and her DNA closely matches that of beaker users or in the middle name so he'll be me will have a first-generation and again from what is now Germany there are a few other early beacon thieves in Scotland such as this distinctly continental stay or grief with its continental style pica from new mill in pairs and Kinross the grief was probably for an adult man to judge from the placements of the the Flint striker late for making fire you see that Alison's said Dutch on the slate but actually you do find this grave form and be cut ape in parts of Germany and France as well unfortunately because the grave pit for the written team but was dug into gravel the acidic groundwater has destroyed all traces of the skeleton that was once there if the body have survived Alison feels fairly confident that he would have come from somewhere along the rheine want a generation or two later there's the know what old famous grieve of a young women who's been called Eva from a Quranic and Keith nice Maya Hills project through the Phil analytical montanus young women and the facial reconstruction done by Hugh Morrison on the basis of the DNA results shows that she had the kind of skin tone that we see nowadays in the Mediterranean she wasn't a first-generation immigrant but hot pants or grampians on both sites had come from the Netherlands you can read all about her in prize-winning article in the current volume of the Society's two seatings there isn't time to go into the results of the other DNA analyses that have been completed for Scotland but we can report that the University of Copenhagen PhD on the population genomics of baking's was able to saw close genetic ties between North period individuals and/or connect and those in Norway confirming the pectin obtained from other sources are Short's research also revealed various pathogens that had been brought across from Norway including hepatitis B and the human herpes virus thanks a bundle marauding Vikings for sexually transmitted diseases it's hoped that a short will publish his results under Scottish individuals soon no DNA analysis is not just a plight to humans you've all probably seen this facial reconstruction of acute Neolithic dog from Queen passage to monotony there's a world first 49 forensics the DNA of this dog is currently being investigated by Professor Gregor Larson I also do niversity and that analysis will tell us whether the forensic artist got the dog's eye and for colouring of course who could forget that wonderful or Knievel's the of genetic makeup is today only found in Orkney and they must have come in from the continent on one or more boats around 3200 BC work by Andrzej romanyuk has shown that they were cooked and eaten as a handy snack at skara brae so they may well have been used as a sailfin ooing food source or in the long siege on make sense of it like robbers as for precisely where on the continent they originated the DNA project that right coolest esteemeth by the absence of Neolithic samples from Iberia and France the most lately alias of origin so if you read the results it says Belgium was the source area but that's actually nonsense as the compare and aware from a medieval Belgian monitoring this is a father cautionary tale about how careful people have to be when dealing with DNA data James nearly Alison and Lisa wanted to see a little about the nitty-gritty of DNA analysis and the future for Scottish DNE work if you want to get DNA analysis done the best parts of the body in terms of its survival are the pictures temporal behind the ear on the inside of your skull this is where the densest born in the body s and cementum surrounding tooth roots as a good second option the sampling for DNA has to be done by specialists in special clean Diani laps this is Tom booth taking samples at the University of York he's very skilled and drilling small and unobtrusive holes to obtain her samples this is a drilled Petra's temper doll from yard or cut the cost of DNA is a little difficult to predict the University of Huddersfield lab says it varies widely according to whether those much DNA surviving if a sample feels that it's flush screening it's 50 bones if it passes but there's only a meddling quality it can cost a thousand pounds if it's well preserved it can be as little as two hundred and fifty bones NMS have never had to pee as the work has always been done as part of big projects but I mentioned earlier fortunately that our two brand-new bug projects back to not now Ian and Matt has just secured a big ERC grant for his call me oz project and Tom booth will be working on a project called a thousand ancient British genomes at the Kliq Institute in London so both Ian and Tom I don't know a coat for many many new samples mostly from the Bronze Age on what's but earlier ones that accept - that has of course very good news for Scotland finally the creation of an ancient DNA database for Scotland had been identified as a priority task excuse me for Lisa Brown as the new archaeological science manager for historic environment Scotland it had also been identified as a priority in the SCAF national research framework and in Scotland's archaeology strategy which was launched in 2015 this strategy is designed to be used and be of benefit to everyone in Scotland Alison's creation of of will step allisyn's creation of the Scottish DNA roundup West as the first step towards the creation of historic environment Scotland's DNA database and Lisa is working with her colleagues to meet the database study ality the aim is to bring together all the information that currently exists and new data as as its generated and to make it freely accessible to researchers in the public awake with hot links to the DNA labs libraries of raw genetic data it's important to ensure that this information is also also captured within the national record of the historic environment on Canmore the aim is to have automatic upload of the information on the relevant Kanwar records but in the meantime it will be entered manually just as we do a carbon date so we also need to make sure that the information is kept up-to-date with results released quickly and that new projects are added to the database as soon as they start to that end historic environment Scotland need to maintain close contact with NMS with other museums and with excavators to find out what works actually happening Alison's template that was used in the DES roundup less will be widely circulated so that when museums grant permission to sample human amines the template can be filled in and the ton to the museum so if you know of any skeletons heard about to be sampled - please let Lisa or Alison or email addresses at the bottom of the slide there the future is most definitely great for ancient DNA studies in Scotland so we would advise you to watch this space thank you you

Channel: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

Views: 54,918

Rating: 4.5344419 out of 5

Keywords: antiquaries, excavation, survey, aDNA

Id: 4Bh99EjbRR0

Length: 25min 23sec (1523 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019