Lisette M. Kootker

Germanic languages, including German, English, Frisian, Dutch and the Nordic languages, are widely spoken across northwest Europe. However, the timing and location of the prehistoric arrival of this Indo-European linguistic phylum, as well as its Iron Age diversification, remain contentious ^1–3 . Here, by sequencing 712 ancient human genomes and analysing them alongside 4,009 previously published genomes, we identify an archaeologically elusive population that entered Sweden, likely from the Baltic region, by around 4000 bp . This population, which became widespread throughout Scandinavia by 3500 bp , offers a potential vector for the introduction of the Germanic language group to Scandinavia ^4–6 , some 800 years later than traditionally assumed ^7–9 . Following the Late Iron Age disintegration of Germanic into its descendant languages, we observe by 1650 bp a southward migration from southern Scandinavia into presumed Celtic-speaking areas, including present-day Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. During the subsequent Migration Period (1575–1375 bp ), we see this ancestry among Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons in Britain and Langobards in southern Europe. In the same time period, we identify a related large-scale northward back-migration into Denmark and southern Sweden, coinciding with the rise of Danish influence and the linguistically documented emergence of Old Norse. These findings indicate that multiple migrations and geographical locations had a major role in the arrival and formation of Germanic, as well as in its divergence into historical and modern descendant languages.

Although Roman lead production caused widespread atmospheric contamination across Europe, lead isotope evidence from human tooth enamel suggests that dietary pathways may have been more important sources of anthropogenic lead exposure than atmospheric aerosols. Here, we investigate the relationship between lead exposure and metal-based tableware in individuals from the Roman Netherlands. Anthropogenic lead isotope signatures in enamel are consistent with lead sources in the Derbyshire and Mendip districts and to a lesser extent the North Eifel, whereas Roman cooking and tableware, predominantly made of bronze from other parts of the Roman Empire, are unlikely to have been major sources of exposure. Moreover, visible anthropogenic lead signatures were absent in some individuals. Together, these findings suggest that exposure was not ubiquitous and was likely related to dietary practices, but not to the routine use of copper-alloy vessels for food preparation or consumption. Instead, exposure may have resulted from specific food products or their production and supply chains. We propose that salt produced in lead pans, together with associated products such as garum, represents a plausible pathway of anthropogenic lead exposure in the Roman-era Netherlands and other parts of Northwest Europe.

Human mobility was intrinsic to the farming communities of the Linear Pottery culture (c. 5500 − 4900 BCE). Much less is known about the mobility patterns of the earliest farmers north of the Linear Pottery zone, particularly in the Netherlands. Here, people of the Early Neolithic Swifterbant culture combined farming, hunting and gathering from c. 4240 BCE. While human remains for mobility studies are scarce, livestock offer a promising yet underexplored proxy. This research applies inter- and intra-tooth strontium ( ⁸⁷ Sr/ ⁸⁶ Sr), oxygen ( δ ¹⁸ O), and carbon ( δ ¹³ C) isotope analysis to cattle, suids, and sheep from the Swifterbant sites S3 and S4. Previous isotope research identified two distinct livestock dietary regimes: animals grazing in floodplain environments and animals grazing in forested settings. The results presented here reveal substantial variability in livestock mobility, including several non-local animals that moved multiple times during their lifetime. Notably, animals associated with the forest-grazing dietary regime display non-local strontium isotope values, whereas individuals linked to floodplain-grazing are predominantly local. These findings provide the first evidence of livestock mobility in northern Europe during the fifth millennium BCE and suggest that the movement of animals was part of broader interaction networks among early farming communities. The study further demonstrates that, in addition to intra-individual isotope variation, intra-population variability in livestock can reveal patterns of mobility and animal management.

This study investigates dietary practices and local interaction in Roman and pre-Roman Nijmegen, the Netherlands, through strontium isotope ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) and concentration measurements on cremated human remains from rural, urban, and military contexts, which primarily reflect the geological provenance of dietary strontium. Located along the Lower Rhine borderlands, Nijmegen formed a key node within the Batavian region, where local communities intersected with imperial networks. The results reveal isotopic contrasts between site types: urban and military groups tend to display higher strontium concentrations, possibly consistent with greater engagement with salt-preserved and salt-rich foods, while in the northern contexts relatively stable concentrations alongside a narrowing of isotope ratios may suggest continuity in dietary practices, potentially including earlier traditions of salt consumption. These patterns indicate that dietary change was not uniform, but shaped by the interaction between emerging imperial foodways and pre-existing local practices. Rather than reflecting simple differences in access, the isotopic evidence points to varied and context-dependent forms of engagement with Roman provisioning systems.

Ancient DNA studies revealed that, in Europe from 6500 to 4000 bce, descendants of western Anatolian farmers mixed with local hunter-gatherers resulting in 70–100% ancestry turnover¹, then steppe ancestry spread with the Corded Ware complex 3000–2500 bce². Here we document an exception in the wetland, riverine and coastal areas of the Netherlands, Belgium and western Germany, using genome-wide data from 112 people 8500–1700 bce. A distinctive population with high (approximately 50%) hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted 3,000 years later than in most European regions, reflecting incorporation of female individuals of Early European Farmer ancestry into local communities. In the western Netherlands, the arrival of the Corded Ware complex was also exceptional: lowland individuals from settlements adopting Corded Ware pottery had hardly any steppe ancestry, despite a Y-chromosome characteristic of people associated with the early Corded Ware complex. These distinctive patterns may reflect the specific ecology that they inhabited, which was not amenable to full adoption of the early Neolithic type of farming introduced with Linearbandkeramik³, and resulted in distinct communities where transfer of ideas was accompanied by little gene flow. This changed with the formation of Lower Rhine–Meuse Bell Beaker users by fusion of local people (13–18%) and Corded Ware associated migrants of both sexes. Their subsequent expansion then had a disruptive impact across a much wider part of northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain where they were the main source of a 90–100% replacement of local Neolithic ancestry.