OSLO Stone Age Britons imported wheat about 8,000 years ago in a surprising sign of sophistication for primitive hunter-gatherers long viewed as isolated from European agriculture, a study showed on Thursday. 
 
 British scientists found traces of wheat DNA in a Stone Age site off the south coast of England near the Isle of Wight, giving an unexpected sign of contact between ancient hunter-gatherers and farmers who eventually replaced them. 
 
 The wheat DNA was dated to 8,000 years ago, 2,000 years before Stone Age people in mainland Britain started growing cereals and 400 years before farming reached what is now northern Germany or France, they wrote in the journal Science. 
 
 "We were surprised to find wheat," co-author Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick told Reuters of finds at Bouldnor Cliff. 
 
 "This is a smoking gun of cultural interaction," between primitive hunter-gatherers in Britain and farmers in Europe, he said of the findings in the journal Science. 
 
 "It will upset archaeologists. The conventional view of Britain at the time was that it was cut off," he said. "We can only speculate how they got wheat -- it could have been trade, a gift or stolen." 
 
 The scientists also found DNA of oak, poplar and beech and of dogs or wolves, deer, grouse and auroch, a type of cow. There was no trace of wheat pollen in the samples, indicating that it was not grown locally. 
 
 The scientists found the DNA at what was apparently a pre-historic site for boat building. The sediments are now 11.5 metres (38 feet) below sea level. 
 
 Britain used to be connected by land to Europe during the Ice Age but melting icecaps pushed seas higher about 10,000 years ago. A land bridge may have lingered 8,000 years ago. 
 
 Farming reaching the Balkans about 8-9,000 years ago from the Middle East and eventually spread throughout Europe. 
 
 Greger Larson, an American archaeologist at Oxford University who was not involved in the study, praised the experts for extensive checks to ensure against mis-interpretation or contamination of DNA. 
 
 The find of wheat "will make us re-evaluate the relationships between farmers and hunter-gatherers," he told Reuters. 
 
 He said there has been other signs of contacts, including bones of domesticated pigs in Germany in Stone Age hunter-gatherer settlements. "There are trade networks that pre-date agriculture," he said. 
 
 (Reporting By Alister Doyle) ||||| Food For Thought 
 
 Stone Age Britons Were Eating Wheat 2,000 Years Before They Farmed It 
 
 i itoggle caption Darren Staples/Reuters/Landov Darren Staples/Reuters/Landov 
 
 Scientists have learned a lot about our distant ancestors from DNA that's thousands of years old. Like the fact that we've inherited some Neanderthal DNA, so apparently our ancestors mated with them. Now there's new research from DNA that moves on from paleo-mating to paleo-eating. 
 
 About 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers in the Near East figured out how to grow cereal crops like wheat. The farming culture spread, and wherever it went, people traded in their spears for plows. 
 
 That's the conventional view. Apparently, it was more complicated than that. 
 
 Evidence comes from archaeologists who've been digging into Bouldnor Cliff, a submerged prehistoric site off the coast of the Isle of Wight, in the south of Great Britain. They found tools, burned nutshells and animal remains and worked wood. 
 
 "We sort of got the lunch spot of this boat-building workshop 8,000 years ago," says Robin Allaby, a molecular archaeologist at the University of Warwick in England. 
 
 He says even though the locals could build boats, they were still hunter-gatherers. Agriculture didn't take off in Britain for another 2,000 years. 
 
 And yet he found DNA from cultivated wheat along with the lunchtime paraphernalia. He didn't find any wheat pollen at all, so it wasn't grown there. In fact, there's never been evidence that wheat was cultivated in Britain earlier than about 6,000 years ago. 
 
 i itoggle caption Courtesy of Roland Brookes Courtesy of Roland Brookes 
 
 Which meant the Brits must have been getting wheat from someone else, grown somewhere else. 
 
 Writing in the journal Science, Allaby says that apparently Stone Age Britons weren't isolated on their little island. It seems they were getting their wheat from Europe, where agriculture had already established itself. 
 
 "They were perfectly happy with using the products of agriculture," he says, "but they didn't actually start farming themselves. They were interacting with the farmers some ways away, contributing to this process [of creating a Neolithic agricultural society], which is not the conventional view." 
 
 He suspects that farmers from what is now France established a regular wheat trade across the English Channel, which was narrower and shallower at the time. Which meant that the Stone Age Brits could have their cake and eat it, too. ||||| Image caption The deposits came from 8,000-year-old sediment cores from Bouldnor Cliff, near Yarmouth 
 
 DNA from an archaeological site off the Isle of Wight suggests there was an international wheat trade 2,000 years before agriculture came to Britain. 
 
 Scientists analysing the DNA fragments from the underwater site said they matched wheat strains but there was no evidence of cultivation. 
 
 The deposits came from 8,000-year-old sediment cores from Bouldnor Cliff. 
 
 When the DNA was deposited, the English Channel was yet to be formed and Britain was part of mainland Europe. 
 
 Agriculture was unknown in Britain until about 6,000 years ago so the discovery suggests trade between English hunter gatherers and Neolithic farmers must have existed for thousands of years previously. 
 
 Unanswered questions 
 
 Lead researcher Dr Robin Allaby, of the University of Warwick, said: "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. 
 
 "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." 
 
 Dr Allaby said many questions remained unanswered and more research was needed. 
 
 Bouldnor Cliff, identified as the site of an ancient Mesolithic settlement in 1999, lies 11 metres (36ft) below the surface of the Solent, near Yarmouth. 
 
 It forms part of the Solent Maritime Special Area of Conservation.
– Scientists studying a Stone Age site in Britain came across something that by all rights shouldn't have been there: wheat. More specifically, the researchers found the DNA of wheat dating back 8,000 years off the coast of the Isle of Wight, reports Reuters. That's about 2,000 years before ancient Brits began growing it, but scientists don't think this means that hunter-gatherers in the region were farming earlier than thought. In fact, the lack of wheat pollen at the site suggests it wasn't cultivated there at all. Instead, the scientists say it shows that these old inhabitants were in contact with farmers elsewhere in Europe and participating in a heretofore unknown "international wheat trade," reports the BBC. "This is a smoking gun of cultural interaction," says a co-author of the study in Science. "The conventional view of Britain at the time was that it was cut off," but the find very much suggests otherwise. "We can only speculate how they got wheat—it could have been trade, a gift, or stolen." The best guess is that the wheat came from farmers in what is now France, reports NPR. It's also possible that a land bridge existed at the time linking Britain to Europe, one now covered by the English Channel. The research site itself, called Bouldnor Cliff, is now underwater, but researchers think it was used for boat-building back in its day. (Click to read about how other ancients used flour to try to predict the future.)