2,000-Year-Old Skeleton Found in Cambridgeshire Confirms Nomadic Group Sarmatians Came to Britain

Researchers found the first biological proof that the nomadic group called Sarmatians set foot in Britain or at least one of them. The evidence was the remains of a young man born 2,000 years ago found in Cambridgeshire.

Sarmatians Arrived in Britain

DNA detectives have followed in his footsteps and illuminated a significant chapter in Roman Britain's past. Studies reveal that the skeleton discovered in Cambridgeshire is a man from the Sarmatians, a nomadic tribe.

It is the first biological evidence that some of these people lived in rural areas and traveled to Britain from the farthest limits of the Roman Empire.

The ruins were found when excavating to upgrade the A14 road between Cambridge and Huntingdon.

Archaeologists uncovered the man's complete, well-preserved skeleton, but there was not much to identify him because he was buried in a ditch by himself, without any personal belongings. He was given the specimen number 203645 and the name Offord Cluny, a combination of the village in Cambridgeshire where he was located.

Offord's ancient DNA was recovered and decoded by Dr. Marina Silva of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London from a small bone retrieved from his inner ear, the finest preserved section of the complete skeleton.

"This is not like testing the DNA of someone who is alive," she explained. "The DNA is very fragmented and damaged. However, we were able to (decode) enough of it."

She noted that they first observed how different the boy was from other Romano-British people they studied so far. However, the researchers note that their analysis showed that the man, but not his ancestors, traveled to Britain. He grew up and migrated west.

Based on the study, he consumed sorghum and millets, technically called C4 crops, and are common in the area where Sarmatians are known to have resided until age 6.

However, Prof. Janet Montgomery said that over time, data revealed a progressive decline in his use of these grains and an increase in wheat found in Western Europe.

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Who Are The Sarmatians?

The ancient Sarmatians are among the encroaching barbarians who had a part in these momentous events that altered the course of history; a group of nomadic tribes who lived near the Black Sea until late antiquity are in some ways underestimated. They were among the fiercest, most vicious warriors wreaking havoc when barbarian invasions were destroying western areas of the Roman Empire.

They were Indo-European nomads related to modern Iranians. Sarmatians joined and partially replaced the Scythians, who had previously ruled eastern Europe, around the fourth century BC. On the steppe, this pattern of power and name-switching was not uncommon. Tribes moved toward Europe, conquered large areas, and forged bonds with settlers who gave them labor, military support, and food produced on farms. And eventually, they would fade and be overtaken by a new wave.

Over the ages, numerous nomads, including the Huns, Avars, Bulgars, and Magyars, targeted Eastern Europe. The "puszta," or plain of modern-day Hungary, was the terminus of the "highway," the final area fit for herds of nomadic people traveling westward.

After AD 370, armies of Huns moved into southern Russia and destroyed Sarmatia. The ones that made it either assimilated or fled to the West to battle the Huns and the last Goths. The Sarmatian descendants had vanished from historical records by the 6th century.