Slavic migration revealed by DNA

Genetic analyses of medieval human remains uncover evidence of large-scale migration, of regional differentiation of the process of the creation of Slavic Europe and let us to look again at European communities of the early mediate Ages. The “Nature” published an article describing the latest investigation of an global squad with the participation of Prof. Małgorzata Kot from the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw.

Slavic spread is 1 of the most crucial but least understandable events in Europe's history. Beginning in the sixth century, information about Slavic groups began to appear in Byzantine and Western European (Latin) written sources. Slavs occupy vast areas from the Baltic to the Balkans and from the Elbe to the Volga. However, unlike the celebrated migrations of Germanic tribes, specified as the Goths or Longobards, or the legendary conquests of the Huns, the dawn of the past of the Slavs has long been a real mystery to media historians.

To a large extent, this is due to the fact that early Slavic communities left fewer traces of archeology: they practiced cremation of the dead, built modest huts and produced simple, unorthodox ceramics. And most importantly, for the first fewer centuries of their history, they have not produced texts that paper their history. As a result, the word “Words” itself is ambiguous, sometimes used/imposed by chroniclers describing the Slavs from outside, and in time began to be abused in nationalist or ideologically coloured debates. So where did these people come from, and how did they change the cultural and linguistic map of Europe so thoroughly?

Comprehensive genetic testing

Historians have long debated whether the spread of Slavic material culture and Slavic language was due to mass migration of the population or to the gradual slow "slavisation" of local communities, or possibly a combination of both models. However, there was no conclusive evidence – especially regarding the key, first centuries of Slavic history, erstwhile widespread cremation prevented DNA investigation and archaeological traces were highly modest.

An global squad of researchers from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic and Croatia, led by the consortium of the HistoGenes project, formulated a consequence to the questions and doubts described above, carrying out the first specified a comprehensive survey of ancient DNA (aDNA) of medieval Slavic populations. After sequencing more than 550 fossil genomes, the squad proved that Slavic formation was in fact a migration story. Genetic signatures indicate the origin of this population from an area extending from confederate Belarus to central Ukraine – and thus a region to which many archaeologists and linguists have long pointed out seeking a Slavic mother.

The collected data indicate that large-scale migrations of East European people into Central and east Europe have caused almost a complete change in the genetic makeup of the East German and Polish population from the 6th century onwards. The Slavic expansion did not follow a well-known model of conquest and empire building: alternatively of forming powerful armies and hierarchical social structures, the visitors shaped theirs on the basis of flexible communities, frequently organized around extended families and patriarchal kinships. There was besides one, the same model of expansion for all regions. In East Germany, the change was fundamental: large multi-generational families became the foundation of society, and kinship networks were more developed and structured in contrast to tiny atomic families encountered in these areas during the migration period.

In Croatia, for example, the arrival of east European groups has caused much little changes in existing social patterns. In the Balkans, the social organization frequently retained many features from earlier periods and as a consequence formed communities in which fresh and old traditions blended or coexisted. This diversity of Slavic structures proves that the spread of Slavic groups was not a uniform process, but alternatively a dynamic transformation that adapted to the local – historically-dependent – situation.

Data from Poland

In the case of Poland, investigation undermines earlier theories about the long continuity of populations surviving here. The results of genetic investigation show that from the 6th, 7th century onwards, the earlier inhabitants of these lands – descendants of peoples powerfully associated with North Europe, and in peculiar with Scandinavia – have almost completely "disappeared" and have been gradually replaced by visitors from the East, closely related to contemporary Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians. This conclusion powerfully strengthens the analysis of the earliest Slavic skeleton burials known to us from Poland, discovered in the position in Grodek (over the Bug), which supply uncommon and direct evidence of the presence of these early visitors.

Although the change in the population was immense in Poland, genetics besides indicates occasional cases of mixed migrants with the population. These discoveries item both the scale of population change and the complex dynamics of processes that shaped the current language scenery of Central and east Europe.