News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe.

Re:High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe by brabel on Tuesday January 07, 2025 @01:47PM (#42625824)
Do I get this right: genes were flowing from Scandinavia down to mainland Europe in the first half of the first century (i.e. before the Vikings, are they talking about the ancestors of the Goths and Vandals, for example?) and it reversed direction during the Viking period?? Isn't that quite the opposite of what was expected?

Iron age British ancestry being found in Ukraine with Viking graves also sounds really fascinating.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe by asdff on Tuesday January 07, 2025 @03:07PM (#42626798)
No that is indeed what is expected. You see gene flow towards scandinavia and other viking held areas because they would capture and take women back with them when raiding.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe by brabel on Wednesday January 08, 2025 @07:58AM (#42633704)
So they didn't settle in most regions then? I had imagined they did not only settle in England and Iceland, but also in the other regions that they went towards the East, but that was just not as obvious today because those regions already had larger populations.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe by 0u89e on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:21AM (#42654040)
Well, Curonian settlemen on Gotland and Uralic male gene flow into Scandinavia via Alands during Viking age can't be explained by just capture of females. Not to mention that some of the English male ancestry that landed there during Viking times is shared with Estonians and not Scandinavians.

But frankly, this paper is not about captured females(which btw are more uniformly spread across whole Europe, so their capture even in Southern Europe would not radically add anything new to a Scandinavian female gene pool), when it specifically mentions whole populations coming to Scandinavia from Central Europe. It is differences in males that really make distinctive population groups.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe by 0u89e on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:14AM (#42654007)
Look up New England when early Rus ruler married Anglo-Saxon, that were part fo refugees from Norman ivasion.
[ Parent | on HN ]