Saturday, April 09, 2022

Mystery warriors made the fastest and longest migration around 600 AD

Amazing stuff!

"The Avars, mysterious horse-riding warriors who helped hasten the end of the Roman Empire, dominated the plains between Vienna and Belgrade, Serbia, for more than 2 centuries. Then, they vanished without a trace. Scholars have been searching for their origins ever since. Now, archaeological and genetic evidence reveals the Avars were migrants from Mongolia—and their migration was, up to that point, the fastest long-distance movement in human history.
The Avars had no written records. Grave goods and historical accounts suggest they dominated the plains of modern-day Hungary soon after their arrival in Europe about 1500 years ago. ...
An international team of researchers extracted ancient DNA from the skeletons of dozens of high-status men and women buried in 27 sites from modern-day Hungary. Comparing that DNA with existing ancient DNA data, the team found the closest matches came from graves from the sixth century in what is today Mongolia ...
The first Avar burials were a near-identical match for an individual buried just a few decades earlier in eastern Mongolia, showing the first Avars in Europe probably made the journey of almost 7000 kilometers themselves. They likely capitalized on their nomadic lifestyle, trade networks stretching across the vast steppe, and horse-riding prowess to move quickly across the grasslands of Eurasia. “The DNA is so close it’s got to be within one generation, or less,” ..."

From the abstract:
"The Avars settled the Carpathian Basin in 567/68 CE, establishing an empire lasting over 200 years. Who they were and where they came from is highly debated. Contemporaries have disagreed about whether they were, as they claimed, the direct successors of the Mongolian Steppe Rouran empire that was destroyed by the Turks in ∼550 CE. Here, we analyze new genome-wide data from 66 pre-Avar and Avar-period Carpathian Basin individuals, including the 8 richest Avar-period burials and further elite sites from Avar’s empire core region. Our results provide support for a rapid long-distance trans-Eurasian migration of Avar-period elites. These individuals carried Northeast Asian ancestry matching the profile of preceding Mongolian Steppe populations, particularly a genome available from the Rouran period. ..."

Mystery warriors made the fastest migration in ancient history | Science | AAAS The Avar traveled from Mongolia to Hungary in the span of a decade or two, DNA evidence confirms

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