These Neolithic farmers had a genetic signature that was distinct from the Western Hunter-Gatherers — they were more closely related to modern populations of the Middle East and southern Europe, and they carried the lighter pigmentation genes that the WHG lacked.

When these farmers arrived in Britain, they largely replaced the indigenous hunter-gatherer population.

The genetic evidence suggests that within a few thousand years of the farmers’ arrival, the indigenous WHG ancestry had been diluted to a very small fraction of the British gene pool.

This was not a gradual blending; it was a fairly rapid demographic replacement, probably driven by the higher population densities that farming could support relative to hunting and gathering.

The mechanisms of this replacement are debated.