DNA Reveals the People Who Replaced Stonehenge's Builders Along With 90% of Britain's Population Came from a Dutch Swamp

Ancient DNA reveals how a resilient group of hunter-gatherers transformed Britain’s history.

by Tibi Puiu
February 12, 2026
Edited and reviewed by Zoe Gordon



Illustration representing the cultural transition at stonehenge from neolithic builders to the Bell Beaker population
Credit: ZME Science.

Archaeologists have dismissed the sodden, peat-filled deltas of the Lower Rhine and Meuse rivers as a historical backwater. That’s today’s Netherlands. No offence to the Dutch, but during the Bronze Age, not a lot seemed to be happening over there. Or so we thought, now that a new genetic study has revealed that this overlooked “water world” actually sheltered a unique population that would eventually launch one of the most dramatic takeovers in human history.

“The Netherlands seemed like the most boring place in the world,” admits David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, in an interview with New Scientist. “But it turned out to be perhaps the most interesting place in Europe”.

Reich’s team sequenced the DNA of 112 ancient individuals and discovered that while the rest of Europe was being swept by waves of Neolithic farmers, a stubborn group of hunter-gatherers in these wetlands held their ground. They maintained their distinct genetic ancestry — and their way of life — for a staggering 3,000 years longer than their neighbors.

That’s not all, though. This resilient group eventually fused with steppe migrants to form the Bell Beaker culture, crossing the North Sea into Britain around 2400 BC to almost entirely replace the people who built Stonehenge. It turns out the ancestors of modern Britain didn’t come from the grand civilizations of the south, but from the resourceful foragers of the Dutch swamps.

More:
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/bell-beaker-britain-replacement/