Archaeogenetic data reveal the genetic composition of 10th-century conquering Hungarians

This chapter presents the results of a team-based archaeogenetic study (Maróti et al., 2022) on the biological origins and genetic composition of the 10th-century Conquering Hungarians. It asks whether the first generation of immigrants to the Carpathian Basin can be identified, where they came from, whether they formed a homogeneous population, and how they were related to the Huns, the Avars and the local population. Whole genomes were sequenced from 48 individuals buried in elite cemeteries and 65 from village or commoner cemeteries of the 10th–11th centuries, and compared with 1,400 individuals from 179 modern Eurasian populations and over 2,700 ancient genomes. The methods include kinship analysis with correctKin, principal component analysis, f3 and f4 statistics, qpAdm modelling and admixture dating with DATES. Most samples fall on a European cline representing the local population, while a Conqueror cline extends towards Asia. Twelve elite individuals without recent European admixture (Conq_Asia_Core) are identified as first-generation immigrants; they are closest to modern Bashkirs and Siberian Tatars, point to a region between the Urals and the Altai, and among Uralic-speaking peoples show the strongest affinity to the Mansi. The models trace them to a Late Bronze Age ‘Proto-Ugric’ community shared with the ancestors of the Mansi, followed by admixture with early Sarmatians (484–112 BCE) and late Xiongnu or early Huns (290–461 CE). The chapter concludes that most of the 10th–11th-century population was local, while the immigrants descended mainly from this Proto-Ugric-related group and, in substantial part, from other Hun- and Alan-related steppe groups.