THE Anglo-Saxons, who invaded Britain from the 5th century AD, used a system of “medieval apartheid” to drive the indigenous population to extinction, according to new genetic research.

Scientists have discovered that genes from a small population of Anglo-Saxon immigrants supplanted almost completely those of the native Britons, most probably by using institutionalised discrimination to outbreed them.

When the Anglo-Saxons reached Britain from what is now Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, between the 5th and 7th centuries, they were outnumbered by indigenous Celts. The Anglo-Saxon invaders numbered between 10,000-200,000, compared with an estimated 2 million natives. Within just 15 generations, however, Anglo-Saxon genes had so multiplied that they accounted for more than half the male DNA in the population of what is now England. In the modern population the DNA is even more heavily Germanic in origin.

A new study led by Mark Thomas, of University College London, has shown that this remarkable spread of Anglo-Saxon genes probably was accomplished by a form of institutionalised racism, not dissimilar from the apartheid system of 20th-century South Africa.

A computer simulation that tested several scenarios found that the best fit for the spread of Anglo-Saxon genes was one in which the dominant but outnumbered ethnic group was banned from intermarrying with their British subjects and serfs. Dr Thomas said: “The native Britons were genetically and culturally absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons over a period of as little as a few hundred years. An initially small invading Anglo-Saxon elite could have established themselves by having more children who survived to adulthood, thanks to their military power and economic advantage. We believe that they also prevented the native British genes getting into the Anglo-Saxon population by restricting intermarriage in a system of apartheid that left the country culturally and genetically Germanised. This is exactly what we see today — a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language.”

The study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

An apartheid system also fits historical evidence. If a man was killed, the blood money due to his relatives could be five times lower for a Celt.

COLONIAL RULE

Anglo-Saxons lasted until the 11th-century Danish and Norman conquests

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