The first Slavs have a common origin in the area between what is now southern Belarus and central Ukraine, according to the findings of an international team of scientists from the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Poland and Croatia, who analysed more than 550 bone samples from the 6th to 8th centuries AD.
From the 6th century AD, Slavs migrated across central and eastern Europe, changing the genetic composition of some regions, the research found. The results of the scientific study were published this week in the journals Nature and Genome Biology. The findings were presented by archaeologists and archaeogeneticists from the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University (MUNI), who led the team.
“By comparing the samples with other data, we concluded that the genetic traces point to the origin of the first Slavs in the area between southern Belarus and central Ukraine,” said Zuzana Hofmanova, one of the lead authors of the two published studies, from the MUNI Institute of Archaeology and the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. “From the 6th century AD onwards, there was a large-scale migration of this eastern European population across central and eastern Europe, which changed the genetic composition of regions such as eastern Germany and Poland, but the course of change looked different in different regions.”
The Slavs arrived in central, western and southern Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Archaeologists point out that the Slavs did not conquer the new territory.
“Instead of armies and elite structures, migrants built new societies based on extended families,” explained Jiri Machacek, head of the Institute of Archaeology at the MUNI Faculty of Arts. “Their simple lifestyle and social flexibility allowed them to prosper even in times of instability. New genetic data show Slavs with the same origins but varying degrees of mixing with local populations. In the north of Europe, the indigenous population is disappearing, in the south it is mixing.”
According to Hofmanova, the problem with examining the DNA of Slavs from this period is that the first Slavic communities did not leave behind many material archaeological monuments or remains.
“Until they adopted Christianity, they burned their dead, built only simple dwellings and produced very simple pottery,” she said. “Yet we have been able to collect over 550 DNA samples from bones and teeth for detailed genetic analysis.”
