Extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria

What about the Scandinavian "Germanic" ancestry of the Ostrogoth from Crimea or the Gepid from Serbia


We certainly know that the "Gothi" practiced cranial deformation,but none of this elongated skulls either male or female had Germanic ancestry.

I'm not sure I understand. That Hunnic, East Asian admixed person is part Germanic is it not?

According to the paper to which I provided a link above, it certainly seems to have been practiced by Germanic groups even if this study didn't present any 100% Germanic sample where it was present. They say it survived among Germanic groups until the early 7th century.

They also say the following:
""The authors maintain that the custom spread from east to west in 6 phases, originating up to 4,000 years ago. Beginning in Central Asia, in the territory west of the Tien-Shan, the custom spread through the Caucasus and Kalymykia Steppe, through to the Danube Basin (present day Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Czech Republic), then split into three distinct regions – the Middle Germanic Group, in which curiously the elongated skulls were all female; South and Southwest Germanic group, known from burial sites in Bavarian and Rhenish territories; and the Rhone Group – located in the southwest of Switzerland, the east of France, and the north of Italy.""
 
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But it survived among Germanic groups. Just because none of the samples here with deformations are fully Germanic does not mean there weren't any Germanics who had this thing done to them, and it doesn't mean it wasn't common in Germanic societies. These Southern Europeans probably adopted this practice from the Germanics they lived with

edit: oh uh sorry Angela, i think I may have repeated some of the points you made
 
The sample with East Asian, probably actually Hunnic ancestry, or Scythian ancestry, was a Gepid, that is, Germanic. The article (and the paper to which it refers), makes it clear it was practiced in numerous Germanic groups. So, again, the fact that only a part Germanic person here had the elongation doesn't prove that Germanic people in these societies didn't have it done.

The only way we'd be absolutely sure that genetically Germanic people had it done to them is to get an autosomal analysis of the more than 200 samples from all over northern Europe which show evidence of it.
 
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Ok I forgot to comment on this and I apologize if I'm straying a bit from the thread, but I agree with you Angela, I cannot for the life of me find women who have lower faces and show a lot of forehead attractive; to me they resemble overgrown newborns with hair in the back. I'll always take that lovely lady in your avatar with wavy dark brown hair over women like that!!
 
Changing perspectives

The questions may have answers in a role of prestige and maybe even an honor. recent studies have show that this issue has(y) been a part of many studies. thank you for sharing your ideas. Hopefully this viewpoint will have so value.

Why Did These Medieval European Women Have Alien-Like Skulls?


By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | March 13, 2018 01:41 pm ET 0 0 MORE Partner Series

The discovery of mysterious, 1,500-year-old egg-shaped skulls in Bavarian graves has stumped scientists for more than half a century, but now some genetic sleuthing has helped them crack the case: The pointy skulls likely belonged to immigrant brides who traveled to Bavaria from afar to get married, a new study explains. The finding indicates that these long-headed brides, who lived in the sixth century A.D., likely traveled great distances from southeastern Europe — an area encompassing the region around modern-day Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia — to what is now the southern part of modern Germany.

The long trek was certainly arduous, but the reward was great: Wedlock helped cement strategic alliances in medieval Europe, the researchers wrote in the study. [In Images: An Ancient Long-headed Woman Reconstructed]
Great migration When the women with the alien-like skulls were alive, Europe was undergoing profound cultural change. The Roman Empire dissolved as the "barbarians" — the Germanic peoples that include the Goths, Alemanni, Gepids and Longobards — moved in and took over the region,the researchers wrote in the study. The foreign brides were buried in the cemeteries of one of these groups — the Baiuvarii — who lived in what is now modern-day Bavaria.
Specimens with strong (left), some (middle) and no (right) skull deformation. Specimens with strong (left), some (middle) and no (right) skull deformation. Credit: State collection for Anthropology and Paleoanatomy Munich, Germany The discovery of the remains of these women perplexed archaeologists for decades. It's only possible to create pointy skulls, scientifically known as artificial cranial deformation (ACD), in early childhood, when the skull is soft and malleable. But archaeologists couldn't find any children with egg-shaped skulls in the cemetery. Moreover, the women were buried with local grave artifacts, rather than foreign ones, suggesting they had adapted to local culture.
 
The sample with East Asian, probably actually Hunnic ancestry, or Scythian ancestry, was a Gepid, that is, Germanic. The article (and the paper to which it refers), makes it clear it was practiced in numerous Germanic groups. So, again, the fact that only a part Germanic person here had the elongation doesn't prove that Germanic people in these societies didn't have it done.

The only way we'd be absolutely sure that genetically Germanic people had it done to them is to get an autosomal analysis of the more than 200 samples from all over northern Europe which show evidence of it.
I'm not sure I understand. That Hunnic, East Asian admixed person is part Germanic is it not?

According to the paper to which I provided a link above, it certainly seems to have been practiced by Germanic groups even if this study didn't present any 100% Germanic sample where it was present. They say it survived among Germanic groups until the early 7th century.

They also say the following:
""The authors maintain that the custom spread from east to west in 6 phases, originating up to 4,000 years ago. Beginning in Central Asia, in the territory west of the Tien-Shan, the custom spread through the Caucasus and Kalymykia Steppe, through to the Danube Basin (present day Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Czech Republic), then split into three distinct regions – the Middle Germanic Group, in which curiously the elongated skulls were all female; South and Southwest Germanic group, known from burial sites in Bavarian and Rhenish territories; and the Rhone Group – located in the southwest of Switzerland, the east of France, and the north of Italy.""
If you are talking about the Gepid from Serbia,they just say that it had Central-Asian ancestry similar like Bavarian sample 1108 AED female with deformed skull from what i can read here http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2018/03/06/1719880115.DCSupplemental/pnas.1719880115.sapp.pdf ,but with more east Asian ancestry,but is Central-Asian Germanic? or i am missing something.

The Gepid is VIM_2,The Ostrogoth is KER_1
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However the Ostrogoth from Ukraine possessed significant southern European ancestry as well as South Asian ancestry, with an overall profile that best matched modern Turkish individuals.

No Germanic ancestry in this individuals.
No Germanic ancestry in the elongated skull woman but south-east European.
 
Not to mention that numerous times i was writing in this forum that the Goti (Goths) are the Thracian Geti (Getae) as every ancient author tell us,yes the nomadic Thracians,the "Goths" practiced cranial deformation.The Romanticist forgery of Germanic "Scandinavian" Goths should be exposed again.The "codex argenteus" which is a Romaniticist forgery for a proof of some kind east Germanic language "Gothic".
Mostly Bulgarians Academics were writing about this.

DNA suggest interaction between the Goths and also cultural exchange with other steppe people which is normal among nomadic people.
 
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@Milan,
Yes, you're missing something. Please look at the admixture graph for Gepid VIM_2.
 
The men seem to be quite similar to modern northern and central Europeans, but the women are quite different.
See: Krishna R. Veeramah, et al (inc. Hellenthal and Burger)
"Population genomic analysis of elongated skulls reveals extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria"

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/03/06/1719880115

"Significance

"Many modern European states trace their roots back to a period known as the Migration Period that spans from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. We have conducted the first population-level analysis of people from this era, generating genomic data from 41 graves from archaeological sites in present-day Bavaria in southern Germany mostly dating to around 500 AD. While they are predominantly of northern/central European ancestry, we also find significant evidence for a nonlocal genetic provenance that is highly enriched among resident Early Medieval women, demonstrating artificial skull deformation. We infer that the most likely origin of the majority of these women was southeastern Europe, resolving a debate that has lasted for more than half a century.

Abstract

Modern European genetic structure demonstrates strong correlations with geography, while genetic analysis of prehistoric humans has indicated at least two major waves of immigration from outside the continent during periods of cultural change. However, population-level genome data that could shed light on the demographic processes occurring during the intervening periods have been absent. Therefore, we generated genomic data from 41 individuals dating mostly to the late 5th/early 6th century AD from present-day Bavaria in southern Germany, including 11 whole genomes (mean depth 5.56×). In addition we developed a capture array to sequence neutral regions spanning a total of 5 Mb and 486 functional polymorphic sites to high depth (mean 72×) in all individuals. Our data indicate that while men generally had ancestry that closely resembles modern northern and central Europeans, women exhibit a very high genetic heterogeneity; this includes signals of genetic ancestry ranging from western Europe to East Asia. Particularly striking are women with artificial skull deformations; the analysis of their collective genetic ancestry suggests an origin in southeastern Europe. In addition, functional variants indicate that they also differed in visible characteristics. This example of female-biased migration indicates that complex demographic processes during the Early Medieval period may have contributed in an unexpected way to shape the modern European genetic landscape. Examination of the panel of functional loci also revealed that many alleles associated with recent positive selection were already at modern-like frequencies in European populations ∼1,500 years ago."


Anyone familiar with this cultural practice? I never heard of it. This is what the authors say about it:


As to the genetics:

"A population assignment analysis (PAA) at the level of individual modern nation states suggested greatest genetic similarity of these normal-skulled individuals with modern Germans, consistent with their sampling location (Fig. 4 A and B and SI Appendix, Table S35). The only exceptions to this general pattern of northern/central European ancestry were the two women, STR_300 and STR_502, which were of a more southern ancestry associated with present day Greece and Turkey, respectively (SI Appendix, Fig. S29)."

Lots of Tuscan like people in southeastern Europe still in the late 400s and early 500s.

Blue is normal skulls, green is intermediate, and red is elongated.

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"A much more diverse ancestry was observed among the females with elongated skulls, as demonstrated by a significantly greater group-based FIS(SI Appendix, Fig. S35). All these females had varying amounts of genetic ancestry found today predominantly in southern European countries [as seen by the varying amounts of ancestry inferred by model-based clustering that is representative of a sample from modern Tuscany, Italy (TSI), Fig. 3], and while the majority of samples were found to be closest to modern southeastern Europeans (Bulgaria and Romania, Fig. 4C), at least one individual, AED_1108, appeared to possess ∼20% East Asian ancestry (Fig. 3), which was also evident from the high number of haplotypes within the 5-Mb neutralome that were private to modern East Asian 1000 Genomes individuals (EAS), while also demonstrating an overall ancestry profile consistent with Central Asian populations (SI Appendix, Fig. S33). "

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"A diverse ancestry was also inferred for the two non-Bavarian samples with elongated heads. KER_1 from Ukraine possessed significant southern European ancestry as well as South Asian ancestry, with an overall profile that best matched modern Turkish individuals. The Gepid VIM_2 from Serbia demonstrated a similar Central Asian-like genetic profile to the Medieval Bavarian AED_1108 with an even larger East Asian component and number of private haplotypes but with less southern European/Middle Eastern ancestry (SI Appendix, Figs. S31 and S33). The two Sarmatian individuals (PR_4 and PR_10) fitted a general eastern European/western Asian profile, but also possessed a much larger northern European component [as represented by modern Finnish individuals (FIN)] similar to modern Russians, consistent with their sampling location. As previously observed in Schiffels et al. (12) contemporary Anglo-Saxon samples appeared to be primarily of northern/central European ancestry, with greatest similarity overall to modern British and Scandinavian individuals (SI Appendix, Fig. S32)."


"It was also notable that no Bavarian individual (normal or ACD, male or female) possessed ancestry related to southwestern Europe, as represented by a sample of individuals sequenced from the Iberian population in Spain (IBS). This is in contrast to the Roman soldier dating to around 300 AD sampled from the same region, for which its largest ancestry component was IBS, with greatest genetic similarity to modern Spanish and southern French individuals (SI Appendix, Fig. S31). Based on an analysis of patterns of haplotype sharing, the Roman soldier (FN_2: 11.08×) was found to have substantially more southern European, West Asian, and Middle Eastern ancestry than two normal-skulled Early Medieval Bavarians with high genomic coverage (ALH_10: 12.17×, ALH_1: 13.27×) (SI Appendix, Figs. S48 and S49)."

I have no idea why some people in the pop gen community are assuming that this Roman soldier from 300 AD would necessarily have been Italian of any kind. He could just as likely indeed been Iberian from what I can see. The days were long gone by 300 AD that all the Roman soldiers were from the Italian peninsula.
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Milan, see the bar chart? Look at VIM_2, the blue stuff is North Central Europe, aka Germanic.
 
Milan, see the bar chart? Look at VIM_2, the blue stuff is North Central Europe, aka Germanic.

DE(Germany),SE(Sweden),NO (Norway) next and more closer to VIM_2 are BA (Bosnia) SM (Serbia and Montenegro),HR (Croatia),BG(Bulgaria),RO(Romania)

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Next to the Gepid like AED_513 overlap with present Bulgaria according to the authors and are female with deformed skull,AED_125 overlap Romania and Bulgaria deformed skull,AED_1108 female with deformed skull described with similar east Asian ancestry like the Gepid overlap Central Asia and so on.
 
DE(Germany),SE(Sweden),NO (Norway) next and more closer to VIM_2 are BA (Bosnia) SM (Serbia and Montenegro),HR (Croatia),BG(Bulgaria),RO(Romania)

Kitmf39.png



Next to the Gepid like AED_513 overlap with present Bulgaria according to the authors and are female with deformed skull,AED_125 overlap Romania and Bulgaria deformed skull,AED_1108 female with deformed skull described with similar east Asian ancestry like the Gepid overlap Central Asia and so on.

And? About 1/3 of the ancestry of that sample is NOT North Central Euro. Why would you expect such a sample to plot with 100% North/Central Euro people?

That's not how it works. A half Japanese/half European person might plot in Tajikistan, or somewhere else in Central Asia. He'd still be half European.
 
And? About 1/3 of the ancestry of that sample is NOT North Central Euro. Why would you expect such a sample to plot with 100% North/Central Euro people?

That's not how it works. A half Japanese/half European person might plot in Tajikistan, or somewhere else in Central Asia. He'd still be half European.
Then how come AED_513 is described as Bulgarian ancestry? Now Bulgarians are north-central Europe or what?
AED_125 described as Romanian,Bulg like
STR_228 Serb,Mac,Bulg etc like
STR_535 Serb,Mac,Bulg etc like
BIM_33 Rom,Ukraine,Bulg etc
Or this South-East European ancestry turns in North/Central ancestry.

Tell me where South-East European admixture?
Or the "Tuscan" ancestry is representative of this groups?

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Then how come AED_513 is described as Bulgarian ancestry? Now Bulgarians have north-central Europe or what?

AED_125 described as Romanian like

Or this South-East European ancestry turns in North/Central ancestry.

Tell me where South-East European admixture?
Or the "Tuscan" ancestry is represantative of this groups?

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Yes of course they do. So do all Balkan people and Italian people and French people. Everyone is mixed by now.

The comparison was done using 1000 genomes samples, because they're very high coverage. However, the problem is that in 1000 genomes they don't have Southeastern European, i.e. Balkan samples. Tuscans are closest.

This Gepid sample has some "local" ancestry, as in "Tuscan like" (MN plus some Iran Chal. like ancestry), a good chunk of "East Asian", which is perhaps either from a Hunnic or Scythian ancester, mixed with the "Gepid" or Germanic ancestry.

The East Germanic tribes, the ones who didn't flee west and south to the Roman Empire, made alliances with the newcomers, perhaps marriages of alliance or bride exchange.

Now we know why certain Balkan regions get some "eastern" as in Central Asian or Siberian like ancestry.

You have to remember that PCAs are only two dimensions of ancestry. On that, some of these samples are landing in the Balkans or nearby. Different types of analyses, like formal stats, for example, would show the differences.
 
I don't think that Tuscans are good representatives for South-East Europeans,maybe for Albanians or Greeks could be, but I don't think for the groups this females had their ancestry from Romanians,Bulgarians,Serbs,Croats etc the groups that we talk about here.The Ostrogoth however has zero of north/central ancestry is entirely "Tuscan" or Southern like with South Asian admixture closest to present Anatolians,no "northern" ancestry at all.
 
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I don't think that Tuscans are good representatives for South-East Europeans,maybe for Albanians or Greeks could be, but I don't think for the groups this females had their ancestry from Romanians,Bulgarians,Serbs,Croats etc the groups that we talk about here.The Ostrogoth however has zero of this ancestry is entirely "Tuscan" or Southern like with South Asian admixture closest to present Anatolians,no "northern" ancestry at all.

Who said they're the best representative for the modern day Serbs? Didn't I just say that they were the closest representative among the samples in the 1000 genomes dataset?

Plus, they're the best representative among the MODERN populations in the 1000 genomes data set for the ANCIENT MN plus some more Iran Chal/Anatolia Chal. type ancestry that existed in the Balkans before the Gothic and later the Slavic migrations, which hit the Serbian and even Bulgarian areas more than they impacted the Albanians and the Greeks.

In other words, much as some Balkan nationalists might prefer it was otherwise, the Albanians and Greeks have more of the original "Balkan" ancestry than do people like the Serbs or the Croats. After the Albanians and Greeks, it would be the Romanians, Bulgarians, and then probably the Serbs.

That's just the way it is.

The "Ostrogothic" sample is heavily mixed with heavily Caucasus ancestry, probably Anatolian Greek like. It's not a mystery. PEOPLE MIXED, especially in times when there was no strong sense of nation states.
 
This is not about who have more "ancient" DNA in the Balkans,but about this paper and people,what I said is that without a "south east" Europe genome specifically,you can not determine the north Central European ancestry precisely,simple we see that this samples are closest to present day Bulgarians,Romanians,Serbs,especially elongated skulls,Tuscan is not good representative of the Romanians,Bulgarians,Serbs etc since this people have more "northern" ancestry than Greeks or Albanians is what I am saying,so this might decieve us to interpret some results as central/north Europe.
 
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This map shows the extent of the Burgundian Kingdom after AD 443. It seems to match with the Rhone Group of elongated skulls mentioned in the posts above. The Rhone valley and Savoie (the ancient Sapaudia of Burgundian times) have 5% R1a (nowadays), while France as a whole has only 2.5%. Some of the Barbarian tribes that ravaged Gaul (Vandals, Suevi,...) simply passed through and went on to Spain and North Africa. The Burgundians established a form of peaceful coexistence with the local Gallo-Romans, and stayed.

Before they settled the Rhone valley, they were stationed at the confluence of the Main and Rhine, alternately fighting the Alamans and Alans, and making fragile alliances with them. They could have picked the elongated skull tradition from their Alan allies.
 
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This map shows the extent of the Burgundian Kingdom after AD 443. It seems to match with the Rhone Group of elongated skulls mentioned in the posts above. The Rhone valley and Savoie (the ancient Sapaudia of Burgundian times) have 5% R1a (nowadays), while France as a whole has only 2.5%. Some of the Barbarian tribes that ravaged Gaul (Vandals, Suevi,...) simply passed through and went on to Spain and North Africa. The Burgundians established a form of peaceful coexistence with the local Gallo-Romans, and stayed.

Before they settled the Rhone valley, they were stationed at the confluence of the Main and Rhine, alternately fighting the Alamans and Alans, and making fragile alliances with them. They could have picked the elongated skull tradition from their Alan allies.

Yes, that's the way I see it too.
 

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