UGI Seminar: Thomas Booth (Crick) "The Genetic Prehistory of Britain"

Speaker:  Thomas Booth (Crick Institute)
Title: The Genetic Prehistory of Britain
Venue: Medawar Watson Lecture Theatre

Abstract:
Next Generation Sequencing technology has enabled vast improvements in the study of ancient DNA over the last 10 years and we now have genome-wide data from thousands of humans from the last c.50,000 years. A disproportionate number of ancient genomes come from Britain. This is largely because of the availability of ancient human remains related to the historic development of archaeology in Britain. As a result, we have a good understanding of the demographic prehistory of Britain, from the end of the last Ice Age (c. 18,000 BP) to the Roman Conquest (1957 BP). Here, I will give an overview of what we have learned from ancient DNA about the people who inhabited prehistoric Britain. I will discuss periods of major migration and admixture, what patterns of genetic ancestry and relatedness might tell us about societal organisation as well as evidence for recent natural selection.