2023-12-07 17:13:06
Although the Yugoslav War (1991) caused the recent separation of the Balkan peoples, Serbians and Croatians not only have centuries of common history, They also share the same genetic ancestry coming from Slavic and Mediterranean populations.
This is revealed by a study led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) and Harvard University, in the United States, in which the universities of the Basque Country, Western Ontario and La Rioja have also participated, the details of which are published this Thursday in Cell magazine.
“Considering the long history of conflict in the Balkans and the feeling of Slavic identity in this region, especially in Serbia, it seemed very interesting to us to analyze it genetically to know exactly what genetic substrate and what plausibility that identity has,” IBE paleogeneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox explains to EFE.
To do this, the team analyzed the genome of 146 people who have lived in this region for the last 2,000 years, from Greece to Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia, and from the Iron Age until now.
The study concludes that, during Rome’s imperial rule, the Balkans were a melting pot of cultures and a commercial focus that attracted immigrants from very distant places and that, after the fall of the empire, especially from the 6th century onwards, there was a massive arrival of Slavic populations that left a genetic mark on the Balkan peoples that still exists.
A cosmopolitan region
DNA analysis reveals that during Roman rule of the region, there was a great demographic contribution from the Mediterraneanfrom the Anatolic Peninsula (current Turkey), which left its genetic mark on the Balkan populations.
“These populations coming from the east were fully integrated into local Balkan society. In Viminacium, for example (present-day Serbia), we found an exceptionally rich sarcophagus in which a man of local ancestry and a woman of Anatolic ancestry were buried,” comments Íñigo Olalde, Ikerbasque researcher at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). .
This military city, which It once had about 80,000 inhabitants.was extremely cosmopolitan, as demonstrated by the DNA of three individuals of African descent analyzed in the study.
One of them has a genome like those of today’s Sudan or Ethiopia, “plus we know that during his childhood he had a marine diet that does not fit with that of the Balkans.”
Furthermore, the boy was buried with an oil lamp with images of an eaglethe representation of Jupiter for the Romans, something typical among legionaries “but this boy, about 15 or 16 years old, was too young to be a legionary, although he had a certain social status,” suggests Lalueza-Fox.
“The archaeological analysis of his burial reveals that he could join the Roman military forcesso we would be talking about an immigrant who traveled from very far to the Balkans in the 2nd century AD”, which shows that the Roman Empire was “diverse and cosmopolitan”, and welcomed populations “far beyond the European continent”, points out the paleogeneticist.
The study has also identified individuals of northern European and steppe ancestry, ‘barbarian’ peoples, such as the Gepids or the Huns, who They arrived in the Balkan Peninsula in the 3rd century.in full Roman occupation.
Los skulls of some of these barbarians had been deformed -a custom of these populations- which reveals that these individuals, “very genetically diverse”, crossed the borders of the Danube and joined as mercenaries long before the end of the Empire.
The arrival of the Slavic populations
After the fall of the Empire, between the 6th and 10th centuries, the study reveals the massive arrival to the Balkans of individuals genetically similar to the modern Slavic-speaking populations of Eastern Europe, which caused a great change in the ancestry of the inhabitants. of the area.
In fact, the Slavic genetic footprint accounts for between 30 and 60% of ancestry of the current Balkan peoples, “it is probably one of the largest genetic changes found in Europe during the barbarian invasions,” underlines Lalueza-Fox.
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These Slavic populations were “permeating” from the northern Balkansin present-day Serbia, where they left a large genetic contribution of between 50% and 60%, to mainland Greece (between 30 and 40%) and the Aegean Islands (20%).
And although the Yugoslavian war caused the separation of the Balkan peoplesthe study does not show division but “shared history” and influences “that resulted in the genetic profile of the modern Balkans, regardless of national borders,” concludes Miodrag Grbic, professor at the University of Western Ontario.
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