A group of British researchers discovered a cache of wheat DNA underwater near the Isle of Wight suggesting trading between hunter-gatherers and farmers earlier than expected.
According to Reuters, the DNA indicated there would have been contact between the two some 8,000 years ago. It would have been in a time during the Stone Age 2,000 years before the people in Britain would have began cultivating wheat.
"We were surprised to find wheat," study co-author Robin Allaby, of the University of Warwick, told Reuters. "It will upset archaeologists. The conventional view of Britain at the time was that it was cut off.
"We can only speculate how they got wheat - it could have been trade, a gift or stolen."
The research team published their study in the journal Science.
"We found ancient DNA evidence of wheat that was not seen in mainland Britain for another 2,000 years. However, it was already being grown in southern Europe," Allaby told BBC News. "This is incredibly exciting because it means Bouldnor's inhabitants were not as isolated as previously thought.
"In fact they were in touch, one way or another, with more advanced Neolithic farming communities in southern Europe."
Their findings pointed to wheat trade because there was no evidence to suggest it was grown in Britain. 8,000 years ago, there could have been a land bridge between England and Europe left behind after the Ice Age. DNA from the site also suggested people at the time built boats, which would have aided in trade.
"[These findings] will make us re-evaluate the relationships between farmers and hunter-gatherers," Greger Larson, an American archaeologist at Oxford University not involved in the study, told Reuters. "There are trade networks that pre-date agriculture."
