Scientists have pieced together the long-hidden story of how life changed in one part of Europe after the Roman Empire collapsed.
An international research team sequenced the DNA of 314 people who lived on the Little Hungarian Plain between the third and sixth centuries.
The remains, dating from around 1,400 to 1,800 years ago, were excavated from seven cemeteries in present-day northwestern Hungary.
By comparing individuals buried under Roman rule with those laid to rest after the empire’s fall, the researchers tracked a dramatic shift in the region’s population.
Most Roman-period graves held people with southern European ancestry, although some individuals also had roots linked to Asia and Africa.
Later burials, however, revealed a substantial increase in northern European ancestry and genetic connections to communities farther north. The findings indicate that newcomers entered the former Roman province and intermarried with local people.
Archaeological clues suggest that many of these arrivals were Lombards, who came over a period of several years rather than as a single vast invading force, before going on to conquer much of Italy.
DNA evidence also identified clusters of close relatives within the cemeteries, pointing to the emergence of influential families that helped shape a new society in the aftermath of Roman rule.
DNA research has uncovered what happened in one corner of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire
From its founding in 625 BC until its fall in AD 476, the Roman Empire conquered and incorporated dozens of cultures.
The findings challenge the traditional image of isolated bands of barbarians seizing Europe as the Western Roman Empire disintegrated.
Historians have long struggled to understand this turbulent period because the kingdoms that replaced Roman rule left behind few written records.
Much of what is known came from Roman accounts, meaning the story was largely told from the perspective of the people who had lost control of the territory.
The new study, published in Science, allowed researchers to reconstruct what happened by combining ancient DNA with archaeological evidence recovered from graves.
Scientists examined 68 people from two Roman-era sites and 246 from five post-Roman cemeteries across the Little Hungarian Plain, an area in present-day northwestern Hungary.
Under Roman rule, communities there were connected through a dense network of roads, settlements and trade.
Most residents had ancestry associated with southern Europe, but the genetic links to Asia and Africa showed that people had traveled to the frontier region from across the vast empire.
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By comparing DNA from people buried during Roman rule with those buried after it collapsed, researchers could see how the population changed
That picture changed significantly after Roman authority weakened.
The post-Roman graves contained a sharp increase in northern European ancestry, with genetic connections linking the dead to populations living farther north.
Researchers said this change most likely reflected the expansion of the Lombards from north of the Danube into former Roman lands.
However, the genetic evidence did not point to a single mass migration or the total replacement of the local population.
Instead, it revealed years of sustained movement in which individuals and families traveled into the region, settled there and interacted with people whose ancestors had lived under Roman rule.
The newcomers eventually emerged as the dominant political power, but local residents continued to play a role in forming the new communities.
The cemeteries also revealed that these people had not simply established scattered rural settlements in the ruins of the empire.
Although the communities shared similar ancestry, burial traditions and grave goods, they were organized in different ways.
Some graves contained clusters of close biological relatives, suggesting that influential families held power and status within particular settlements.
Those families appear to have formed wider networks connecting multiple communities and helping establish a new Lombard political system.
The result was a diverse but deeply hierarchical society shaped by migration, intermarriage, family ties and cooperation, not simply conquest.
The research was conducted through the HistoGenes project, an international collaboration between geneticists, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists.
Lead authors Yijie Tian of Stony Brook University and István Koncz of Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary combined the genetic findings with objects, burial customs and other evidence discovered at the sites.
Patrick Geary, a professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study and co-leader of the project, said its work showed that population movements after Rome were far more complicated than previously believed.
‘The project has revealed both gradual and localized forms of movement across short and long distances, as well as rapid, large-scale population shifts from Eastern Asia into the Carpathian Basin,’ Geary said.
‘It has also demonstrated that material culture and genetic ancestry do not necessarily coincide and has illuminated the diverse ways newcomers integrated into existing populations.’