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from the who-you-calling-a-barbarian? dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
The genetics of Europe are a bit strange. Just within historic times, it has seen waves of migrations, invasions, and the rise and fall of empires—all of which should have mixed its populations up thoroughly. Yet, if you look at the modern populations, there's little sign of all this upheaval and some indications that many of the populations have been in place since agriculture spread across the continent.
This was rarely more obvious than during the contraction and collapse of the Roman Empire. Various Germanic tribes from northeastern Europe poured into Roman territory in the west only to be followed by the force they were fleeing, the Huns. Before it was over, one of the groups ended up founding a kingdom in North Africa that extended throughout much of the Mediterranean, while another ended up controlling much of Italy.
It's that last group, the Longobards (often shorted as "Lombards"), that is the focus of a new paper. We know very little of them or any of the other barbarian tribes that roared through Western Europe other than roughly contemporary descriptions of where they came from. But a study of the DNA left behind in the cemeteries of the Longobards provides some indication of their origins and how they interacted with the Europeans they encountered.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/using-medieval-dna-to-track-the-barbarian-spread-into-italy/
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Thursday September 20 2018, @04:19AM
Nor is it any mystery or surprise that there's little trace of longobard genetics in lombardy today. Again, exactly and completely expected. Virtually every time that ancient history recorded migrations, invasions, replacement of people - it was a small percentage of the gene pool that was actually affected. The ruling class changed - though usually there were mixtures in the process - but the bulk of the population? The peasants? Not even worthy of consideration in the wording of a historians entry. They, virtually always, stayed right where they were and kept right on doing what they'd been doing; just for the new ruling class.
There's virtually no sign of Hungarian blood in Hungary either. And many, many other examples.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?