Ancient mtDna of Hungarians: new data

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  • Endre Neparáczki

"Mitogenomic data indicate admixture components of Central-Inner Asian and Srubnaya origin in the conquering Hungarians"
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/19/250688


"It has been widely accepted that the Finno-Ugric Hungarian language, originated from proto Uralic people, was brought into the Carpathian Basin by the conquering Hungarians. From the middle of the 19th century this view prevailed against the deep-rooted Hungarian Hun tradition, maintained in folk memory as well as in Hungarian and foreign written medieval sources, which claimed that Hungarians were kinsfolk of the Huns. In order to shed light on the genetic origin of the Conquerors we sequenced 102 mitogenomes from early Conqueror cemeteries and compared them to sequences of all available databases. We applied novel population genetic algorithms, named Shared Haplogroup Distance and MITOMIX, to reveal past admixture of maternal lineages. Our results show that the Conquerors assembled from various nomadic groups of the Eurasian steppe. Population genetic results indicate that they had closest connection to the Onogur-Bulgar ancestors of Volga Tatars. Phylogenetic results reveal that more than one third of the Conqueror maternal lineages were derived from Central-Inner Asia and their most probable ultimate sources were the Asian Scythians and Asian Huns, giving support to the Hungarian Hun tradition. The rest of the lineages most likely originated from the Bronze Age Potapovka-Poltavka-Srubnaya cultures of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Available data imply that the Conquerors did not have a major contribution to the gene pool of the Carpathian Basin."

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"The most plausible interpretation of the phylogenetic and population genetic results is that the majority of eastern lineages were ultimately derived from Inner Asia which then migrated to Central Asia where they admixed with Eurasian lineages before moving to Europe, where they in turn incorporated west Eurasian elements. As the Conquer population was apparently assembled from multiple sources this raises the questions as to when did the admixtures happen, which ancient populations could have been the source and how can our results be reconciled with historical, archaeological, anthropological and other genetic data."

"
Phylogenetic trees revealed that the Conqueror maternal lineages originated from two distant geographical regions; 31 were unequivocally derived from East Eurasia, while 60 from West Eurasia. The remaining 11 Conqueror Hg-s are ubiquitous in Eurasia. Out of the 60 west Eurasian lineages 13 are characteristic for modern Northwestern Europeans, while 7 have primarily Caucasus-Middle-East distribution."Relation to Volga Tatars

Our data testify closest genetic relation to this modern population. Volga Tatars incorporate three main ethnic components [53]; the Volga Bulgars, which arrived in the 8th century, and intermingled with local Scythian and Finno-Ugric populations, then in the 13th century Kipchak Tatars of the Golden Horde brought a final Central-Inner Asian genetic layer and their language to the region. MITOMIX seems to identify these historical components, as Finno-Ugric Mansis and Khantys (Yug) comprise a major component of Volga Tatars besides Russians, while Scythians also appear among their potential sources (S5F Table). Our remarkable result is that the Conquerors seem to provide a predominant (26–41%) component of Volga Tatars (S5F Table), while the opposite value is significantly lower (9–26%; S5A Table). This asymmetry is due to the absence of some Tatar components, like Finno-Ugric ones, from the Conquerors. Thus our data indicate that rather Volga Tatars harbor a “Conqueror like” genetic component than the opposite, which may be linked historically to the Volga Bulgars."

"This assumption is well supported by archaeological, anthropological and historical sources; Volga Bulgars were one of the few groups which had the same partial horse burial customs [54] and similar grave goods as the Conquerors. Both groups are characterized by similar anthropological types [55], and practiced identical symbolic trepanation customs [56] which is documented with such a high frequency just among the related Danube Bulgars [57]. Historical data link both groups to the Onogurs [58], the Conquerors must have belonged to the Onogur tribal union, as the name “Hungarian” is derived from “Onogur” [5,59]. Historical sources imply that ruling dynasties of both groups might be traced back to the Hun ruling dynasty [60]. Taken together the direct genetic relation of the Conquerors to Onogur-Bulgar ancestors of Volga Tatars is very feasible."

"In the Iron Age the Tuva region was inhabited by Scytho-Siberians, which were already an admixed population of east and west Eurasians [49]. During the Iron Age Scytho-Siberians further admixed with European Scythians in both directions, giving rise to 18–26% eastern lineages in European Scythians by the 2nd century BC [49,66]. Before 200 AD Tuva became part of the Asian Hun (Xiongnu) empire and Hun migration from Mongolia to west through Altai and Tuva lead to a significant increase of Mongoloid anthropological components in Central Asia between the 3rd century BC and 2nd century AD [61,67]. Thus western (Eurasian) lineages in the Tuva region can be attributed to Andronovo and Scythian periods, while appearance of east Eurasian lineages to Asian Scythian and Xiongnu periods. Genetic similarity between Xiongnu and modern Turcic and Mongolian speaking groups indicate that the Xiongnu period played a determining role in shaping the genetic profile of Eastern and Central Asia [68], supporting our phylogeographic implications (Fig 4) that Xiongnus could be among the ancestors of the Conquerors. A HVR based population genetic study [69] has indeed shown similarity between Xiongnus and among others Conquerors, as well as Volga Tatars. At any case, the eastern Hg lineages must have been brought to Europe by nomadic groups originating from this region.During the first centuries AD Northern Xiongnus were expelled from Inner Asia and escaped westward [70], leading to another major wave of east Eurasian gene flow into Central Asia, then further to the Pontic steppes. According to some archaeologists traces of European Huns can be detected on the Pontic steppe already in the 2nd century AD [71], but European Huns entered history just from the middle of the 4th century as an empire. The Xiongnu origin of European Huns has been accepted by most historians [7274], but evidences are scarce.

A decade after the fall of the European Hun empire (472 AD) another grouping of Turkic tribes, the Ogurs appeared on the Pontic steppe from Central Asia. The Onogurs are the first nomadic groups from the east, which are reliably connected by historical sources to the later appearing Bulgars, and less reliably to the Conquerors [58]. Onogurs had been part of the Hunnic people, and after the death of Attila’s son Irnik, European Hun remains fused with the Onοgurs [58]. The ensuing Avar invasion brought Onogur groups to the Carpathian Basin, others became part of the later Danube Bulgar and Volga Bulgar states.
The succeeding group arriving from East Eurasia to the Pontic steppes in the middle of 6th century were the Avars, who established an empire in the Carpathian Basin lasting for three centuries [75]. It is relevant to note that none of the Hungarian medieval sources know about Avars, presumably because they were not distinguished from the Huns [2], as many foreign medieval sources also identified Avars with the Huns [3].
Subsequent east-west migrations are connected to Göktürk, Kipchak and Mongolian groups, but these could have minor effect on the Conquerors as mostly arrived after the 10th century, moreover most Turkic loanwords in Hungarian originate from West Old Turkic [76], the Oghur Turkic branch associated with previous Turkic speaking groups as Onogurs, Bulgars, Khazars and maybe the Avars."
 
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I don't know about these results supporting the "Hun hypothesis" of the origin of the Hungarian language. For me the results do not allow us to settle on any given hypothesis. I mean, the more prevalent one, that of Hungarian having been brought by the Magyar conquerors in the 9th century, also sustains that the Magyars probably came from the steppes and even more probably from around the Central Asian steppes, first migrating to the Pontic-Caspian steppe and only later to the Pannonian plain. Ugric languages, Hungarian excepted, are found on the east of the Urals and just north of the Kazakh steppe, so a Hungarian homeland in a land with Central-Inner Asian influences and Srubnaya-like influences (especially considering they probably moved westward generations before they settled in Hungary) makes sense, too. Hungarian IIRC is very diverged from its northeastern sisters Khanty and Mansi, on the forest zone of Siberia. Therefore a southward expansion of the pre-Hungarian Proto-Ugric language could've happened maybe many centuries or even thousands of years before, allowing the Magyar population to become profoundly transformed by the genetics of the steppes, especially as they might have done the same as the Turks did, that is, absorbing many peoples that formerly spoke other language families, like Scythians and Sarmatians.
 
I don't know about these results supporting the "Hun hypothesis" of the origin of the Hungarian language. For me the results do not allow us to settle on any given hypothesis. I mean, the more prevalent one, that of Hungarian having been brought by the Magyar conquerors in the 9th century, also sustains that the Magyars probably came from the steppes and even more probably from around the Central Asian steppes, first migrating to the Pontic-Caspian steppe and only later to the Pannonian plain. Ugric languages, Hungarian excepted, are found on the east of the Urals and just north of the Kazakh steppe, so a Hungarian homeland in a land with Central-Inner Asian influences and Srubnaya-like influences (especially considering they probably moved westward generations before they settled in Hungary) makes sense, too. Hungarian IIRC is very diverged from its northeastern sisters Khanty and Mansi, on the forest zone of Siberia. Therefore a southward expansion of the pre-Hungarian Proto-Ugric language could've happened maybe many centuries or even thousands of years before, allowing the Magyar population to become profoundly transformed by the genetics of the steppes, especially as they might have done the same as the Turks did, that is, absorbing many peoples that formerly spoke other language families, like Scythians and Sarmatians.

The large genetic diversity of the Conquerors which seemingly assembled from multiple ethnic sources and their relative low proportion, having no lasting effect on Hungarian ethnogenesis, raises doubts about the Conqueror origin of the Hungarian language. Even if our samples represent mainly the Conqueror elite, the “elite dominance” linguistic hypothesis seems inconsistent when it presumes that the same Turkic elite was first readily assimilated linguistically by Finno-Ugric groups, and then it assimilated locals of the Carpathian Basin. Turkic character of the Conquerors is indicated by their “Turk” denomination in contemporary sources as well as Turkic tribal names and person names of tribe leaders of the conquest-period [98]. Above data infer that preconquest presence of the language in the Carpathian Basin, is an equally grounded hypothesis, as had been proposed by several scientists (a summary in English is given in [99]).

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205920
 
The large genetic diversity of the Conquerors which seemingly assembled from multiple ethnic sources and their relative low proportion, having no lasting effect on Hungarian ethnogenesis, raises doubts about the Conqueror origin of the Hungarian language. Even if our samples represent mainly the Conqueror elite, the “elite dominance” linguistic hypothesis seems inconsistent when it presumes that the same Turkic elite was first readily assimilated linguistically by Finno-Ugric groups, and then it assimilated locals of the Carpathian Basin. Turkic character of the Conquerors is indicated by their “Turk” denomination in contemporary sources as well as Turkic tribal names and person names of tribe leaders of the conquest-period [98]. Above data infer that preconquest presence of the language in the Carpathian Basin, is an equally grounded hypothesis, as had been proposed by several scientists (a summary in English is given in [99]).

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205920

Well, using that same token it will be hard to establish that Hungarian came with the Huns centuries earlier. The Hunnic aDNA that has been analyzed until now has been found to be very diverse and mixed, with very different proportions of admixture (including ancestries as broad as West Eurasian and East Eurasian) from one individual to another, and the Huns also seem to have originated from several different ethnic roots that were assembled into one big tribal confederation or maybe unified by a relatively recent ethnogenesis before their conquests in Europe.

Actually the genetic makeup of the Huns doesn't look that different from that of the Conquerors according to this study: basicially a Central Asian population with a mix of West Eurasian and East Eurasian lineages. Both of them do not look anything like the modern Hungarians.

Thus, Huns also seem to have left very little genetic impact in the modern Hungarian population, considering that most of them had significantly more Central/Inner Asian ancestry and were much more shifted to Northeast Asian populations than any modern Hungarian. Or do the authors of this study sustain that it can be demonstrated that Huns left a much more significant genetic descent in Hungarians than these Conquerors? If they do not, I think it's a bit of wishful thinking to think that their results support a Hunnic origin of Hungarian. The situation of these Conquerors does not look much worse than that of the Huns vis a vis the modern Hungarian population, who simply look like a population strongly influenced by the linguistic and cultural assimilation of immigrants after the High Middle Ages.

And the few Hunnic names (leaders and warriors e.g.) that are known haven't been easily explained by Uralic or more specifically Ugric roots, but some of them have been found to be translatable using Turkic roots. AFAIK Hungarian-looking names only appear in documents coincidentally or not after the time of the Hungarian Conquerors.

The fact that Hungary experienced very significant migrations after the Huns, including those of Germanic, Slavic and Turkic tribes, leads me to doubt that Hungarian comes from the Huns, who were soon superseded by other peoples, but after the Magyar conquest there were many fewer instances of mass conquest and immigration from mysterious sources (except for the significant immigration and population replacement that supposedly happened after the Mongol and especially Ottoman conquests from Germanic and Slavic lands).
 
Well, using that same token it will be hard to establish that Hungarian came with the Huns centuries earlier. The Hunnic aDNA that has been analyzed until now has been found to be very diverse and mixed, with very different proportions of admixture (including ancestries as broad as West Eurasian and East Eurasian) from one individual to another, and the Huns also seem to have originated from several different ethnic roots that were assembled into one big tribal confederation or maybe unified by a relatively recent ethnogenesis before their conquests in Europe.

Actually the genetic makeup of the Huns doesn't look that different from that of the Conquerors according to this study: basicially a Central Asian population with a mix of West Eurasian and East Eurasian lineages. Both of them do not look anything like the modern Hungarians.

Thus, Huns also seem to have left very little genetic impact in the modern Hungarian population, considering that most of them had significantly more Central/Inner Asian ancestry and were much more shifted to Northeast Asian populations than any modern Hungarian. Or do the authors of this study sustain that it can be demonstrated that Huns left a much more significant genetic descent in Hungarians than these Conquerors? If they do not, I think it's a bit of wishful thinking to think that their results support a Hunnic origin of Hungarian. The situation of these Conquerors does not look much worse than that of the Huns vis a vis the modern Hungarian population, who simply look like a population strongly influenced by the linguistic and cultural assimilation of immigrants after the High Middle Ages.

And the few Hunnic names (leaders and warriors e.g.) that are known haven't been easily explained by Uralic or more specifically Ugric roots, but some of them have been found to be translatable using Turkic roots. AFAIK Hungarian-looking names only appear in documents coincidentally or not after the time of the Hungarian Conquerors.

The fact that Hungary experienced very significant migrations after the Huns, including those of Germanic, Slavic and Turkic tribes, leads me to doubt that Hungarian comes from the Huns, who were soon superseded by other peoples, but after the Magyar conquest there were many fewer instances of mass conquest and immigration from mysterious sources (except for the significant immigration and population replacement that supposedly happened after the Mongol and especially Ottoman conquests from Germanic and Slavic lands).
As I understand , the paper did not tell, Hungarian language came from the Huns, but the mtdna genetics of the Hungarians of that time came from the Huns. The language issue is, that the Hungarian "conquerors" most likely could not brought the actuall Hungarian language with them, because of their small number(actually no genetic impact on the Carpathian bazin, which can not be explained through the replacement of the population after the Mongols or Otomans, there was not that big replacements ). So if they are from Hun descent(partly) and have Turkish names like the Huns had, also Turkish tribal names, they must have been spoken a w-turkish dialect. It is not logical why they should take over the Ugric language in the Ural- Caucasus region and than force it on the main Carpathian inhabitants. With this logic they could have forced their previously Turkic language on the Uralic people. So it is most likely they took over the language of the main (native?) inhabitants of the Carpathian basin. In the Hungarian written sources of the middle ages ( latin language) and also in hungarian oral tradition it is told, the Magyars found people in the new homeland who spoke the same language. These may be remnants of the Huns, Onogur Bulgars or Avars who may be the first Hungarians according to some historian theories. The actual Hungarian language could be the language of the natives of the Carpathian basin. All this have to be proved or denide by further research I think, but it is very interesting results.



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