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. 2022 Jul 11;32(13):2858-2870.e7.
doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.093. Epub 2022 May 25.

The genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians

Zoltán Maróti  1 , Endre Neparáczki  2 , Oszkár Schütz  3 , Kitti Maár  3 , Gergely I B Varga  4 , Bence Kovács  2 , Tibor Kalmár  5 , Emil Nyerki  1 , István Nagy  6 , Dóra Latinovics  7 , Balázs Tihanyi  8 , Antónia Marcsik  9 , György Pálfi  9 , Zsolt Bernert  10 , Zsolt Gallina  11 , Ciprián Horváth  12 , Sándor Varga  13 , László Költő  14 , István Raskó  15 , Péter L Nagy  16 , Csilla Balogh  17 , Albert Zink  18 , Frank Maixner  18 , Anders Götherström  19 , Robert George  19 , Csaba Szalontai  20 , Gergely Szenthe  20 , Erwin Gáll  21 , Attila P Kiss  22 , Bence Gulyás  23 , Bernadett Ny Kovacsóczy  24 , Szilárd Sándor Gál  25 , Péter Tomka  26 , Tibor Török  27
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Free article

The genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians

Zoltán Maróti et al. Curr Biol. .
Free article

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Asian Hun; Carpathian Basin; Ugric; ancient DNA; f-statistics; migration period; qpAdm modeling.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests P.L.N. from Praxis Genomics LLC, I.N. and D.L. from SeqOmics Biotechnology Ltd., and Z.G. from Ásatárs Ltd. were not directly involved in the design of the experiments, data analysis, and evaluation. These affiliations do not alter our adherence to Current Biology’s policies on sharing data and materials.

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