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

Ancient genomes reveal origin and rapid trans-Eurasian migration of 7th century Avar elites (open access)

Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Africa's Stone Age

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"Ancient DNA dating to between 16,000–18,000 years ago—the oldest human DNA to be extracted in Africa so far—reveals that populations of hunter-gatherers mixed and mingled 50,000 to 20,000 years ago, moving long distances across the continent. This supports the idea that demographic changes played a role in the transition from the Middle to the Later Stone Age, a time when new types of tools emerged and information was exchanged over long distances, a study published today (February 23) in Nature reports. ...
While the first complete Neanderthal mitochondrial genome was sequenced in 2008 from a 38,000 year-old individual excavated from Vindija Cave, Croatia, scientists only recovered the first DNA from human fossils in Africa in 2015. ...
“This is a very important study that reaffirms patterns we find from ancient DNA research in Europe and Asia, that what we thought were long lasting and settled populations in fact have unexpectedly complex and dynamic roots,” ..."

From the abstract:

"Multiple lines of genetic and archaeological evidence suggest that there were major demographic changes in the terminal Late Pleistocene epoch and early Holocene epoch of sub-Saharan Africa. Inferences about this period are challenging to make because demographic shifts in the past 5,000 years have obscured the structures of more ancient populations. Here we present genome-wide ancient DNA data for six individuals from eastern and south-central Africa spanning the past approximately 18,000 years (doubling the time depth of sub-Saharan African ancient DNA), increase the data quality for 15 previously published ancient individuals and analyse these alongside data from 13 other published ancient individuals. The ancestry of the individuals in our study area can be modeled as a geographically structured mixture of three highly divergent source populations, probably reflecting Pleistocene interactions around 80–20 thousand years ago, including deeply diverged eastern and southern African lineages, plus a previously unappreciated ubiquitous distribution of ancestry that occurs in highest proportion today in central African rainforest hunter-gatherers. Once established, this structure remained highly stable, with limited long-range gene flow. These results provide a new line of genetic evidence in support of hypotheses that have emerged from archaeological analyses but remain contested, suggesting increasing regionalization at the end of the Pleistocene epoch."

Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Africa’s Stone Age | The Scientist Magazine® The oldest DNA yet isolated from humans in Africa reveals long-range migrations around 50,000 years ago, which likely played a role in the Middle to Later Stone Age transition.

Ancient DNA and deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers (open access)