Each of us tells a story about who we are, often tracing our identity back through an imagined line of ancestors. Though identity is fundamentally cultural, we tend to anchor it in biology – in the idea of a stable genetic inheritance passed down through generations.

Population genomics has exposed a history far more complex, dynamic and intertwined than we might wish to imagine. Even in a place such as Britain, long imagined as an island of deep and uninterrupted heritage, genetic data suggest a history marked by intense migration, mixture and cultural reinvention.

Two new studies have reinforced this picture, by analysing DNA from the skeletal remains of British individuals who lived during Roman and medieval times.

Prehistoric Britain witnessed periodic major migrations interspersed with smaller and more regular movements of peoples across what was then a contiguous landscape.

After about 6100BC, rising sea levels isolated Britain from mainland Europe, helping to promote later historical narratives of a population relatively isolated.

Yet even early observers recognised otherwise. Writing in the first century AD, the Roman historian Tacitus noted the diversity of Britain’s tribes, suggesting their origins lay in Germany, Gaul and Iberia.

Such conclusions were drawn from physical, cultural and linguistic observations. Now it is testable, thanks to rapid advances in population genomics and ancient DNA sequencing, allowing direct ancestry reconstruction across demographic and political changes.

A major recent study by Marina Silva, from the Francis Crick Institute in London, and colleagues analysed more than 1,000 ancient genomes from across Britain during the first millennium AD.

The pre-print, which has not yet been published in a journal, asks one simple question: could the main historical events of Britain........

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