DNA discovery: British people ate imported wheat 8,000 years ago

DNA evidence suggests the hunter-gatherers of Britainwere importing wheat from their agrarian neighbors on mainland Europe as much as 8,000 years ago.

The discovery, publishedThursday in Science, could meanthere was more contact betweenearly farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe than was previously thought.

According to the archaeological record,farming first started in Europe in the Balkans about 9,000 years ago and slowly moved west over the following millenniums, eventually coming to mainland Britain about 6,000 years ago.

But in the recent study, researchers studying ancient submergedsediment cores off the Isle of Wightfound evidence of wheat DNA in soils that date back 8,000 years ago.

So what is going on?

The research team, led by Robin Allabyof the University of Warwick,saythat whilethey found evidence of wheat DNA in the soil, they could not findany trace of wheat pollen. That leads them to conclude that while wheat was eaten on the site, it was not grown there.

"In the absence of direct evidence, we suspect that this wheat represents food stuffs imported from the continent," the authors write.

But there is a snag here too: The authors note that there is a 400-year gap between the age of the soil in which the wheat DNA was found and the earliest known presence of farming in nearby European sites.

In the paper, they propose that earlier agrarian sites may be submerged in southern Europe.

The researchers also reportthat there was much more wheat DNA found in the top half of the 8 cm soil sample than in the bottom half.

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DNA discovery: British people ate imported wheat 8,000 years ago