Far-reaching genetic ties between the Mongolian steppe and Central Europe under Hun rule

What is it about?

A multidisciplinary and international research project has brought fresh insights into the origins and diversity of the populations that lived under and after the Hun empire between the late 4th and 6th century CE in Central Europe. Combining forefront archaeogenomic analyses with archaeological and historical investigation, the study connects some of the European Hun-period individuals directly to some high-status elite of the earlier Xiongnu Empire - a powerful nomadic empire centered in the Mongolian steppe centuries before the Huns emerged north and west of the Black Sea. It also shows that only few Hun-period individuals carried East-Asian ancestry, and that the newcomers of the Hun period were of rather mixed origin. Thus, it sheds light on the much-discussed population dynamics that shaped Eurasian history during Late Antiquity.

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Photo by Charlotte Venema on Unsplash

Photo by Charlotte Venema on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Given their historical impact, the question of the origins of the European Huns, who they were and where they came from, has gone beyond scholarly interest and has permeated into cultural consciousness. Since the first theories that associated the Huns with the Xiongnu, academics have extensively researched and debated this topic, never reaching a consensus—except perhaps agreeing that the evidence available is very limited. In this article, we show that archaeogenomic data, if interpreted with careful archaeological and historical contextualization, can be a powerful source of information. We provide new compelling evidence on the origins of the Hun-period population, its considerable diversity and its ties to the steppe and the Xiongnu elites.