Abstract
The ancient Hungarians originated from the Ural region in today’s central Russia and migrated across the Eastern European steppe, according to historical sources. The Hungarians conquered the Carpathian Basin 895–907 AD, and admixed with the indigenous communities. Here we present mitochondrial DNA results from three datasets: one from the Avar period (7th–9th centuries) of the Carpathian Basin (n = 31); one from the Hungarian conquest-period (n = 76); and a completion of the published 10th–12th century Hungarian-Slavic contact zone dataset by four samples. We compare these mitochondrial DNA hypervariable segment sequences and haplogroup results with published ancient and modern Eurasian data. Whereas the analyzed Avars represents a certain group of the Avar society that shows East and South European genetic characteristics, the Hungarian conquerors’ maternal gene pool is a mixture of West Eurasian and Central and North Eurasian elements. Comprehensively analyzing the results, both the linguistically recorded Finno-Ugric roots and historically documented Turkic and Central Asian influxes had possible genetic imprints in the conquerors’ genetic composition. Our data allows a complex series of historic and population genetic events before the formation of the medieval population of the Carpathian Basin, and the maternal genetic continuity between 10th–12th century and modern Hungarians.
Highlights
According to historical sources, the Hungarian tribal alliance conquered the eastern parts of the Carpathian Basin in 895 AD, and in successive campaigns occupied its central territories until 907 AD1
Asian genetic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome components are apparently rare in the modern Hungarian gene pool, which led Semino et al to the conclusion that the Hungarian conquerors were in small number and that the Hungarian language could be an example of cultural dominance[22]
Reproduced hyper variable segment I (HVS-I) sequences were obtained from mtDNA of 111 individuals from the medieval Carpathian Basin: 31 mtDNA profiles from Avars, 76 from Hungarian conquerors and four from the southern Hungarian-Slavic contact zone
Summary
The Hungarian tribal alliance conquered the eastern parts of the Carpathian Basin in 895 AD, and in successive campaigns occupied its central territories until 907 AD1. Over one hundred thousand excavated graves from the Avar period in the Carpathian Basin picture a heterogenic physical anthropological composition of this population, which contained mainly Europid characters and, only in certain regions and periods, was dominated by Asian craniometric indices[4]. Tömöry et al have described the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of a small group of ancient Hungarians from the 10th–12th century Carpathian Basin, where the ancient Hungarians’ affinity to modern day Central Asia has been demonstrated. Brandstätter et al and Egyed et al built the mtDNA control region and Y chromosomal microsatellite databases from different groups of modern Hungarians, including an “average” Hungarian group from Budapest and two groups of Hungarian minorities–Ghimes Csango and Szekler–living in modern Romania Both Szeklers and Csangos were found to harbor some Asian genetic components, and the Csango population showed genetic signs of long term isolation, which differentiated them from the Szeklers and the population of Budapest[19,20,21]. The pitfalls of the very hypothetical historical interpretation of modern day population genetic results have been critically reviewed by Bálint[23]
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