Apartheid-like society in Anglo-Saxon Britain-study

LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) Anglo-Saxon invaders set up an apartheid-like society in Britain between the 5th and 7th centuries and out-breed the natives, leaving modern Britons with a disproportionately large percentage of their genes.

Researchers yesterday said the Anglo-Saxons, despite coming in relatively small numbers from parts of modern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, used their economic and social advantage so that in less than 15 generations present-day England had a large percentage of Germanic genes.

''The native Britons were genetically and culturally absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons over a period of as little as a few hundred years,'' said Mark Thomas, of University College London (UCL) who headed the research team.

''An initially small invading Anglo-Saxon elite could have quickly established themselves by having more children who survived into adulthood, thanks to their military and economic advantage,'' he added.

Genetic research has shown that there are a large number of Germanic male-line ancestors in modern-day Britain.

Scientists were puzzled by this because the Anglo-Saxon immigrant population in England between the 5th and 7th centuries was relatively small compared to the number of natives.

To solve the problem, Thomas and scientists from Imperial College London and Reading University used computer simulations to try to explain the discrepancy.

''We modelled the Anglo-Saxon and native British populations to see what happened after a small number of Anglo-Saxons invaded,'' said Thomas who reported the findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

''By testing the number of different combinations of ethnic intermarriage rates and the reproductive advantage of being Anglo-Saxon, we found that under a very wide range of different combinations of these factors we would get the genetic and linguistic patterns we see today,'' he added in a statement.

The researchers said there is evidence of ethnic divisions in ancient texts such as the laws of Ine. But there must have been something more that perpetuated a distinction between the groups.

''Physical segregation could have had this effect, but this is not what the laws of Ine imply; therefore an apartheid-like social structure seems to be the obvious answer,'' Thomas added.

REUTERS SP VA RAI0918