The history of the British Isles and Ireland is characterized by multiple periods of major cultural change, including the influential transformation after the end of Roman rule, which precipitated shifts in language, settlement patterns and material culture¹. The extent to which migration from continental Europe mediated these transitions is a matter of long-standing debate^2,3,4. Here we study genome-wide ancient DNA from 460 medieval northwestern Europeans—including 278 individuals from England—alongside archaeological data, to infer contemporary population dynamics. We identify a substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in early medieval England, which is closely related to the early medieval and present-day inhabitants of Germany and Denmark, implying large-scale substantial migration across the North Sea into Britain during the Early Middle Ages. As a result, the individuals who we analysed from eastern England derived up to 76% of their ancestry from the continental North Sea zone, albeit with substantial regional variation and heterogeneity within sites. We show that women with immigrant ancestry were more often furnished with grave goods than women with local ancestry, whereas men with weapons were as likely not to be of immigrant ancestry. A comparison with present-day Britain indicates that subsequent demographic events reduced the fraction of continental northern European ancestry while introducing further ancestry components into the English gene pool, including substantial southwestern European ancestry most closely related to that seen in Iron Age France^5,6.

不列颠群岛和爱尔兰的历史以多个时期的重大文化变迁为特征，包括罗马统治结束后发生的有影响力的转变，这促成了语言、定居模式和物质文化的转变¹ 。来自欧洲大陆的移民在多大程度上介导了这些转变，这是一个长期争论的问题^2,3,4 。在这里，我们研究了 460 名中世纪西北欧人（其中 278 名来自英格兰的人）的全基因组古代 DNA 以及考古数据，以推断当代人口动态。我们发现中世纪早期英格兰的北欧大陆血统大幅增加，这与中世纪早期和当今德国和丹麦的居民密切相关，这意味着中世纪早期有大规模的大规模移民跨越北海进入英国。因此，我们分析的来自英格兰东部的个体高达 76% 的血统来自北海大陆地区，尽管存在很大的区域差异和地点内的异质性。我们发现，具有移民血统的女性比具有当地血统的女性更常拥有陪葬品，而拥有武器的男性则很可能不是移民血统。与当今英国的比较表明，随后的人口事件减少了北欧大陆血统的比例，同时将更多的血统成分引入了英国基因库，其中包括与铁器时代法国最为密切相关的西南部欧洲血统^5,6 。