Science reports:

The Avars, mysterious horse-riding warriors who helped hasten the end of the Roman Empire, dominated the plains between Vienna and Belgrade, Serbia, for more than 2 centuries. Then, they vanished without a trace. Scholars have been searching for their origins ever since. Now, archaeological and genetic evidence reveals the Avars were migrants from Mongolia—and their migration was, up to that point, the fastest long-distance movement in human history.

The Avars had no written records. Grave goods and historical accounts suggest they dominated the plains of modern-day Hungary soon after their arrival in Europe about 1500 years ago. They interred their elites in massive burial mounds, surrounded by weapons, and finely decorated gold and silver vessels. They were often buried with horses and riding equipment. (The earliest stirrups in Europe are from Avar graves.)

It was those elaborate burials that yielded clues to the Avars’ origins. An international team of researchers extracted ancient DNA from the skeletons of dozens of high-status men and women buried in 27 sites from modern-day Hungary. Comparing that DNA with existing ancient DNA data, the team found the closest matches came from graves from the sixth century in what is today Mongolia, they report today in Cell.

“Genetically speaking, the elite Avars have a very, very eastern profile,” says Choongwon Jeong, a co-author and a geneticist at Seoul National University.

The first Avar burials were a near-identical match for an individual buried just a few decades earlier in eastern Mongolia, showing the first Avars in Europe probably made the journey of almost 7000 kilometers themselves. They likely capitalized on their nomadic lifestyle, trade networks stretching across the vast steppe, and horse-riding prowess to move quickly across the grasslands of Eurasia. “The DNA is so close it’s got to be within one generation, or less,” Jeong says. [Continue reading…]