And Did Those Feet

We are witnessing a revolution in ancient DNA. The first results came from inference from modern DNA and seem to have given results which are somewhat dubious. But recently changes in cost and technology has built up a new and expanding database of Ancient DNA which is shaking prehistory. This article gives a good summary. https://phys.org/news/2018-02-ancient-dna-tales-humans-migrant.html#jCp One result is that the Beaker folk have been restored to a genuine folk movement after a couple of decades of PC cultural diffusion of a pottery style. But more than that the Beakers Folk are not only an intrusion from abroad But they replaced 90% of the Neolithic genome. The mechanism by which this happened is not yet established.  So the great Henge projects were created by the first farmers who were largely descended from the Hunter-Gatherers.  Around 2,400 B.C. the beaker folk came over. This was after the Sarsen phase of Stonehenge.  They seem to have adopted neolithic ...

The obviously interesting aspect of this is that he is dark skinned. But the piece below indicates what I think is a major change in perception of our origins.  Early DNA studies suggested that most Britains were descended from peoples coming here after the ice melted c 14,0000 years ago.  It was suggested that 90% (in the west) and 75% (in the East)~ were descended from the Basque area refuge. This threw doubt on the scale of Saxon migration and made the division of peoples on these islands into Celts and Britains a cultural not a genetic indentity.     However, this piece talks about  Cheddar man being part of the Western Hunter Gatherer Group and it then reports a recen t  'st udy released last year also in preliminary form claimed that around 4500 years ago, the time Stonehenge was built, the then indigenous UK genome was all but displaced by migrants from the Continent who made Beaker-style pottery (see Pots on the March , Salon 388). ...