A new look at eight skeletons from two Pictish cemeteries reveals that the enigmatic Picts weren't from afar, as medieval historians suggested, but that they had local roots.
Ancient DNA reveals that the Picts, the"painted people" of Scotland who fought off the Romans, weren't an enigmatic group that migrated from faraway lands. Instead, the Picts had local roots and were related to other Iron Age people in Britain, a new study finds.
The general lack of sources about the Picts and their way of life has led to numerous assumptions over the centuries. In the eighth century, during the early medieval period, for example, historians such as the Venerable Bede thought that the Picts emigrated from areas around the Aegean Sea or Eastern Europe and that they traced descent matrilineally, through the mother's side.
Human remains from the Pictish period are scarce, but the sandy soils at Lundin Links are more conducive to long-term preservation because they are less acidic than soil in other areas of Scotland."This suggested to us that DNA may also be preserved and prompted further investigation," Girdland Flink said.
The team also found that the Picts' genes persist in modern-day people who live in western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria , indicating that, even though their culture disappeared, their genes didn't.
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