The genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians.

Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians were migration-period nomadic tribal confederations that arrived in three successive waves in the Carpathian Basin between the 5th and 9th centuries. Based on the historical data, each of these groups are thought to have arrived from Asia, although their exact origin and relation to other ancient and modern populations have been debated. Recently, hundreds of ancient genomes were analyzed from Central Asia, Mongolia, and China, from which we aimed to identify putative source populations for the above-mentioned groups. In this study, we have sequenced 9 Hun, 143 Avar, and 113 Hungarian conquest period samples and identified three core populations, representing immigrants from each period with no recent European ancestry. Our results reveal that this "immigrant core" of both Huns and Avars likely originated in present day Mongolia, and their origin can be traced back to Xiongnus (Asian Huns), as suggested by several historians. On the other hand, the "immigrant core" of the conquering Hungarians derived from an earlier admixture of Mansis, early Sarmatians, and descendants of late Xiongnus. We have also shown that a common "proto-Ugric" gene pool appeared in the Bronze Age from the admixture of Mezhovskaya and Nganasan people, supporting genetic and linguistic data. In addition, we detected shared Hun-related ancestry in numerous Avar and Hungarian conquest period genetic outliers, indicating a genetic link between these successive nomadic groups. Aside from the immigrant core groups, we identified that the majority of the individuals from each period were local residents harboring "native European" ancestry.

Maternal Lineages of Gepids from Transylvania.

According to the written historical sources, the Gepids were a Germanic tribe that settled in the Carpathian Basin during the Migration Period. They were allies of the Huns, and an independent Gepid Kingdom arose after the collapse of the Hun Empire. In this period, the Carpathian Basin was characterized by so-called row-grave cemeteries. Due to the scarcity of historical and archaeological data, we have a poor knowledge of the origin and composition of these barbarian populations, and this is still a subject of debate. To better understand the genetic legacy of migration period societies, we obtained 46 full mitogenome sequences from three Gepid cemeteries located in Transylvania, Romania. The studied samples represent the Classical Gepidic period and illustrate the genetic make-up of this group from the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD, which is characterized by cultural markers associated with the Gepid culture in Transylvania. The genetic structure of the Gepid people is explored for the first time, providing new insights into the genetic makeup of this archaic group. The retrieved genetic data showed mainly the presence of Northwestern European mitochondrial ancient lineages in the Gepid group and all population genetic analyses reiterated the same genetic structure, showing that early ancient mitogenomes from Europe were the major contributors to the Gepid maternal genetic pool.