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Ancient DNA is revealing more secrets about the Avars, a fearsome people who built a mysterious empire that ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe for 250 years, starting in the mid-6th century.
Known mainly from the accounts of their adversaries, the Avars mistook the Byzantines for formidable warriors on horseback who suddenly appeared on their doorstep. The enigmatic nomads came en masse from the Mongolian steppes, in what was one of the largest and fastest long-distance migrations in ancient history.
With opulent tombs but no written records, the empire and its people remained largely in the shadows of history until recently. But a landmark study from April 2022 involving ancient DNA taken from the tombs of the Avar elite sheds light on the remote origins of the empire.
Now, a new study analysis of the remains of 424 people buried in four cemeteries unearthed in Hungary has revealed details about the family and social life of the Avar and how the newcomers interacted with the population of their adopted homeland.
“What surprised me most was the simple fact that these people in the cemeteries were so interconnected,” said Zsófia Rácz, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. Rácz co-authored the study for the latest report.
Researchers have been able to construct detailed family trees or pedigrees, the largest of which spanned nine generations over two and a half centuries. The team found that around 300 individuals had a close relative buried in the same cemetery.
The analysis showed that men remained in their community after marriage, while women married outside their community of origin — a pattern known as patrilocality.
“For all the mothers, we don’t find the fathers. Parents are not on site. Although all men are descendants of the founders,” said Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The study of mitochondrial DNA, which reveals female lineage, showed high variability, suggesting that women who married into Avar groups were from different places, according to Gnecchi-Ruscone, a postdoctoral researcher in archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology . in Leipzig, Germany. They still shared a “steppe” genetic ancestry, indicating that they were probably not conquered local peoples.
Multiple partners in patriarchal clans
Furthermore, the study concluded, it was relatively common for both men and women in Avar society to have children with multiple partners.
In the case of men, investigators found two partners in 10 cases, three partners in four cases and four partners in one case. Having multiple wives may have been relatively common in the general population as well as the elite, the study authors wrote.
The team also discovered several cases of closely related male individuals who fathered children with the same partner: three father-son pairs, two full-sibling pairs and one paternal half-sibling, and an uncle and nephew.
Similar “levirate unions” that occurred after the death of a woman’s husband existed in other Eurasian steppe societies, according to the study, and it suggests that the Avars, who abandoned their herding-based nomadic way of life and became more established soon after arriving. in Europe, they clung to some aspects of their old way of life.
Lara Cassidy, a geneticist and assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin who was not involved in the new research, said the authors “expertly unraveled” the organizing principles of this medieval society, providing “compelling evidence of a rigid patrilineal system in which children belong to the father’s family and ancestry is traced from father to son.”
Writing in a commentary published alongside the research, she largely agreed with the authors’ explanation for multiple reproductive partners.
“Polygamy (having multiple spouses), serial monogamous marriages and extramarital affairs are possible explanations,” she said.
“However, two cases of men with multiple older partners, all middle-aged at the time of death, provide a good argument in favor of polygyny (having multiple wives). In contrast, most cases of women with multiple partners were apparent levirate unions, in which a widow would marry the son or brother of the deceased. This is a common custom among pastors… both supporting widows and forcing them to fulfill marriage contracts that are conditional on the fact that they have male heirs.”
Close-knit family groups
Gnecchi-Ruscone said the biological continuity in the close-knit population the researchers studied was impressive, especially considering there was no sign of interbreeding between close blood relatives – a phenomenon known as consanguinity.
“Even more distant crosses, such as (between) cousins or second cousins, leave traces genetically. And we see absolutely no consanguinity in these individuals,” he said.
“That really tells us that they knew who their biological relatives were and they tracked their biological relatives through the generations.”
It was not possible to understand the community’s gender power dynamics just by studying ancient DNA, Gnecchi-Ruscone said.
Men’s burials were more likely to include high-status grave goods such as horses, saddles and harnesses, Rácz said. However, women likely played a role in promoting the social cohesion that linked individual communities.
Cassidy said the oral history of female-line genealogy may have been important to the Avars, ensuring that daughters did not choose husbands from among their mothers’ or grandmothers’ relatives.
Avar graves — around 100,000 have been excavated so far — form an important part of Europe’s archaeological heritage.
The Avars were once part of what the Chinese called the Rouran Khaganate or confederation of tribes, which the Turks defeated in 550, forcing the Avars to flee west.
Traveling more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) in a few years from Mongolia to the Caucasus, according to the 2022 study published in the journal Cell that identified the group’s Asian ancestry, the Avars established a base in what is now Hungary and came close of crushing Constantinople, the center of the Byzantine Empire.
Some historians credit the Avars with bringing the stirrup to Europe – a transformative technology that made mounted warfare possible and was subsequently widely adopted across the continent.
The study was a “fruitful interweaving of genetics, history and archaeology,” according to Bryan Miller, assistant professor of Central Asian art and archeology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study.
“Many previous studies aimed to sweep across Eurasia with a vast population, relying on one individual per community or a handful of individuals to represent an entire culture or society,” he said in an email.
“Instead, this study shows how only a much higher resolution dataset, with more complete investigations of entire communities, can provide the types of definitive or nuanced narratives that previous big data studies have attempted to provide.”
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