Origin and diversity of Hun Empire populations

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft ^ | February 24, 2025 | Press release

[SunkenCiv]

The Huns suddenly appeared in Europe in the 370s, establishing one of the most influential although short-lived empires in Europe. Scholars have long debated whether the Huns were descended from the Xiongnu. In fact, the Xiongnu Empire dissolved around 100... leaving a 300-year gap before the Huns appeared in Europe. Can DNA lineages that bridge these three centuries be found?

...researchers analyzed the DNA of 370 individuals that lived in historical periods spanning around 800 years... encompassing sites in the Mongolian steppe, Central Asia, and the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe. In particular, they examined 35 newly sequenced genomes ranging from: a 3rd-4th century site in Kazakhstan and 5th-6th century contexts in the Carpathian Basin, including exceptional Hun-period burials that exhibit Eastern or "steppe" traits often linked to nomadic traditions (i.e. "eastern-type" burials)...

This link suggests that some among the Huns in Europe could trace their lineage back to important late Xiongnu burials from the Mongolian steppe. Yet the archaeogenomic picture for most Hun and post-Hun period individuals in the Carpathian Basin is far more varied... While these connections confirm the presence of some direct descendants of Xiongnu elites, the study also shows that the population of the Hun empire in Europe was genetically highly heterogeneous. Another key conclusion of the study is that the 5th century "eastern-type" burials from Central Europe are highly diverse in both their cultural and genetic heritage.

[Verginius Rufus]

I spent a few hours in Budapest in 1980, not long enough to learn the language. At the train station there was one place to change money if you were from a Warsaw Pact country and another place if you had "hard" currency from a non-Communist country.

The word for 100 in Hungarian is szaz. It's sata in Finnish and sada in Estonian, which are distantly related to Hungarian. That seems to have come from one of the "satem" languages of the Indo-European family (satem is the Avestan word for 100--cf. sto in Russian and other Slavic languages). In the distant past the ancestors of the Finns and Magyars didn't have a word for hundred--if they had a lot of sheep they stopped counting before they got to 100.

The word for "plum" (szilva) must be Slavic (Russian sliva). The word for "sausage" (kolbasz) seems to come from Russian.

[FLT-bird]

The word for Bear is Medve. I know that one is also slavic in origin. That said, they borrowed words and phrases from German directly as well. For example “slusz” or “schluss” in German ie end or the end. etc.

I was just struck by the number of mirror translations from German to Hungarian. Even humorous slang terms

(German) mother in law “Haus Drachen” = (house dragon)

(Hungarian) mother in law “Hazi Sarkany” = (house dragon)

[Verginius Rufus]

Medved' is "bear" in Russian--"honey-eater" ("honey" is med). It's the same in Serbian (medvjed in Croatian).

Supposedly it was bad luck to use the real word for "bear"--a bear might suddenly appear, so "honey-eater" was used instead. English actually did something similar--our word for bear originally meant "the brown one."

[FLT-bird]

English actually did something similar--our word for bear originally meant "the brown one."

It did? "Bear" in English sounds the same as and means the same things as "Bär" in German. A lot of the words for animals in English come from Anglo-Saxon which means they're the same or nearly the same in German. For example when it was in the field it was Swine ("Schwein"). When it was served on your dinner plate it was Pork ("porc" in French).

[gleeaikin]

Thanks again for a fat list of links. One quibble, when I see Irish warlord, Mongol conquerors in the same sentence of great lover and the like, my immediate thought is horribly successful criminal rapist, or kidnapper and exploiter of many concubines. Men need to stop using such glorious labels to describe these criminals and killers. What sensible woman would say NO to one of these monsters? Obviously they did not, or there would not be so many descendents. With so many even today with these bloodlines, our world’s many wars are not surprising.

[Verginius Rufus]

I read that somewhere about "bear"--since the German word is similar to the English word it must predate when the Germanic languages began to become different languages. I can't swear to it...but the Latin and Greek words for "bear" are very unlike the English & German words--ursus and arktos respectively. (Hence "arctic" as the region under Ursa Major.) Spanish loses the R--oso.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Greeks of Homer's time saw nothing wrong with enslaving women and making them the concubines of their captors. The quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad is over one such captive woman.