A new study from the HistoGenes project, of which Patrick Geary , Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies is co-PI, is helping scholars to frame a better picture of the Early Medieval people who inhabited Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as the societies they created.
Their findings, published in Science , are derived from combining ancient human DNA analyses with archaeological finds. The international and multidisciplinary team and lead authors Yijie Tian (Stony Brook University) and István Koncz (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary) sequenced the genomes of more than 300 individuals who lived in the Little Hungarian Plain, an area in northwestern Hungary.
The team found that during the Roman period, communities in the region formed part of a dense infrastructural and collaborative network, with populations showing a predominantly southern European genetic ancestry, but also with the notable presence of genetic diversity from Asia and Africa, representing the cosmopolitan nature of the Roman Empire.
However, the post-Roman sites exhibited a rise in northern European genetic ancestry, reflecting large-scale population movements into the region. By integrating their genomic data with archeological material, the researchers surmised that the influx of individuals with northern European ancestry likely reflected the historically documented—yet debated—expansion of the Lombard Kingdom from north of the Danube River into former Roman territories during the early sixth century. They determine this movement was not a single large-scale migration but rather to complex and sustained patterns of mobility, with genetic connections linking individuals in the Little Hungarian Plain to populations farther north. They also determined that these new communities did not just establish loose rural settlements but created a diverse, hierarchical new society consisting of ruling elites forging a new post-Roman polity.
These results are significant, since historians know little about post-Roman life in this region. This period is commonly associated with the migration of so-called "Barbarians"—various groups from other areas of Europe and Asia who took over much of Europe as the Roman Empire disintegrated. These so-called Barbarian kingdoms left very few written records, leaving historians and archeologists to rely on the viewpoints of the conquered Romans.
The HistoGenes team's findings challenge this picture, showing that in the Little Hungarian Plain, though the migrating Lombards eventually became the ruling power, multiple modes of community formations were shaped by interactions between incoming groups with mainly northern European ancestry and local populations with predominantly southern European ancestry, all helping to form a new, complex society.
Reflecting on the significance of the discoveries and the HistoGenes project more generally, Patrick Geary stated: "The project has revealed both gradual and localized forms of movement across short and long distances, as well as rapid, large-scale population shifts from Eastern Asia into the Carpathian Basin. It has also demonstrated that material culture and genetic ancestry do not necessarily coincide and has illuminated the diverse ways newcomers integrated into existing populations."
The HistoGenes project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Its multidisciplinary team includes geneticists, archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists that have analyzed more than 6,000 individuals who lived in Central Europe between 400 and 900 C.E.
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