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Balkan genomes trace the rise/fall of Roman Empire's frontier, migrations
- nixass 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simion314 3y agoI am not sure what you mean by "started", the region was at the intersection of big empires that fought each other and the people there were caught in the middle trying to survive by chosing the least worse of the empires. I would say the conflicts are started in the capitals of the big empires/powers.
- bojan 3y agoThere is an extremely nationalist and warmongering rethoric coming from official Belgrade for decades now. I don't see how foreign capitals have anything to do with that.
- simion314 3y agoI was referring at the past history. That history causes the feelings Seribans have, I can see why they are frustrated, but I agree politicians usually use this to gain more votes instead of finding a way to look forward.
- seydor 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't start nationalistic flamewars on HN. I realize the OP has some overlap with inflammatory content but that's not a reason to start flamewars, it's a reason not to start them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hahamaster 3y agoPeople of ex-Yugoslavia have a slightly amusing trait that they overestimate importance of their local history and its impact on the world history. You'd think Abraham Lincoln was picked to be the US president by a commitee from village of Crapski 113km southeast of Zagreb. This excessive pride in obscure, embelished and unimportant historical events is probably one of the reasons for animosity between peoples of the area. If they were half as smart as they think they are, they'd be long united and speaking the same language, like wiser nations such as Germans, French or Italians. But they're not, hence the hatred.
- ardit33 3y agoNothing new here. Basically the genetics, matches the historical accounts. We know (by historical accounts) that the slavic immigration started in the end of the 6th century, after the death of Justinian the Great, where the successors lost territories and few battles and could properly defend the frontier. (avar wars). Also, after the Justinian plague (541–549 AD) a lot of the local population was decimated, hence the new slavic arrivals found it easier/space to move to the country side (initially as a trickle of immigration in the late 6th century, then eventually as settlers/invaders later in the early 7th century).
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoNo, the genetic factor itself is something new here, and interesting even to this reader with an academic background in a related field. Florin Curta (a very respected scholar overall) has held out against the mainstream view of a Slavic migration into the Balkans on the basis of a supposed lack of archaeological evidence. So, I suspect that many scholars, as soon as they learn of this news about the ancient DNA, will immediately think “Hmm, I wonder what Curta has to say to that.”
- gumballindie 3y ago[flagged]
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThe article didn’t say “race” at all. Its wording tries to simplify, for a mass audience, the research that found at this Balkan site DNA that is mainly associated with sites in the east of Europe. Across archaeology and linguistics, there has been an archaeogenetics revolution in the last 15 years or so that enables tracing historical migrations like never before. I don’t know why you think “attracted to the wealth Rome invested in its frontier zone” is a wording that implies jobseekers. It can obviously mean opportunities for pillaging, which peoples of the Eurasian steppe did for centuries. It can mean making use of convenient infrastructure left behind when the Roman military retreated from certain holdings.
- gumballindie 3y ago> archaeogenetics revolution in the last 15 years Unfortunately none of that is passed on to said audience, as can been in comments that claim ancient europe followed burial or genetic patterns aligned with a cold war era political classification of the region. It would be comical if not tragic that we actually fund people producing such “research”. I am less and less surprised that some think we can replace them with chat bots given how low quality the output is.
- ZunarJ5 3y agoThis is an incredibly ignorant take. Tracing these lineages has implications on everything from climate, geography, history, politics etc.
- gumballindie 3y agoYup, and this “research” mis traces it. A low quality piece aimed at ignorant readers that project their’s upstream.
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- tuzemec 3y agoNot sure who was saying that the Balkans produce much more history than they can consume. Maybe Churchill?
- Ivovosk 3y agoDon’t know who it was but it’s 100% true
- paganel 3y agoI can also confirm this. I've driven by car from Bucharest to Methoni (at the South-Western tip of the Peloponnese) this past autumn and early on during the trip I started counting the battle-places I was passing by: Giurgiu and the 1812 war between Tsarist Russia and the Ottomans, Pleven and the 1878 war between the same Tsarist Russia and the Ottomans, driving down towards Thessaloniki I was thinking about the cemeteries of Western WW1 soldiers located nearby, I spent my night somewhere between Kozani and Ioannina, in Northern Greece, which had been a very active front in the Greek Civil War, next day I passed close to Missolonghi, passed on the magnificent bridge at Patras close to where the Lepanto battle had taken place, and then on to the Peloponnese and Methoni itself. But not before passing close to the ancient Old Navarino castle nearby Pylos, the same Pylos where the naval Battle of Pylos took place during the Peloponnesian War, shortly followed by the Battle of Sphacteria. And Methoni itself was the location of three battles [1] involving the Venetians and the Ottomans. And then, on my way back, I visited the exceptional Mystras Archeological Site [2], seeing Western Gothic architecture as a part of the Byzantine/East-Roman complex, in the middle of the Peloponnese, was really a very cool experience, highly recommend it. Btw, speaking of the Slavs and the Southern Peloponnese and Mystras, the nearby mountains had been inhabited by this Slavic tribe back in the day, the Melingoi [3], I hadn't know that before physically visiting those places > The Melingoi or Milingoi (Greek: Μηλιγγοί) were a Slavic tribe that settled in the Peloponnese in southern Greece during the Middle Ages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Modon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Modon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystras [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melingoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melingoi
- INTPenis 3y agoThis confirms what I already knew, as a millennial Croat. But I have some older relatives who could stand to read this. Unfortunately none of them can read english.
- foobarian 3y agoDo you think so? It looks like it just confirms the "from the century 7th" narrative (actually pushes it earlier a century if anything!) :-)
- Gare 3y agoThey probably mean the part about Croats and Serbs being genetically almost the same. But this is also not something surprising to me.
- INTPenis 3y agoNot the centuries specifically, more the fact that the whole region has always been, and still is, a melting pot of people from all surrounding regions. A lot of the older generation are trying to emphasize our differences and even make wild claims that I won't repeat here. Those borders were drawn by people who are very similar.
- Swizec 3y agoMy favorite funfact from high school history class in Slovenia is that the reason we have such good records of how Slavs migrated into the area is that we can track when churches stopped sending regular reports back to Rome. Slavs come into the area, sack the church, church goes dark. It’s a shame early Slavs didn’t have writing. When we got Christianized later, it destroyed much of our older culture and it would be cool to know more about those roots. We know the eastern slavs had vampires and werewolves, did we? We know old folk tales mention faeries and kings sleeping in caves for centuries and even the Greek Argonauts, but it’s all very fragmented. It would be nice to know more. A lot of our (Slovenian, probably Croatian) folk tales mix with even older tales from the celts who used to live in the area. It’s all very fascinating and largely lost because first the Romanization of the Celts and later the Christianization of the Slavs were both quite aggressive. Another funfact: The oldest wooden wheel was found in my home town -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Marshes_Wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Marshes_Wheel
- seydor 3y agothey talk about the fall of roman empire, but the empire continued in constantinople
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoAt that point was it an Empire, or simply a Kingdom with the King called an Emperor?
- leiaru13 3y agoThe amount of division in the Balkans -- especially in the last 20-30 years -- has never made much sense to me, given how close culturally and ethnically most of the population is. This only confirms that the fragmentation of the region is driven more from the creation of 'national myths' than on genetic differences between different groups of people.
- Swizec 3y ago> This only confirms that the fragmentation of the region is driven more from the creation of 'national myths' than on genetic differences Always has been. You think there was such a thing as “French” a thousand years ago? Are people from Munich really that different than Vienna? Do folks in Geneva really differ deeply from people in Lyon? Europe is very small. From Kyev, capital of Ukraine, to Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, it’s about the same distance as San Francisco to Los Angeles. Yet it crosses 3 countries. Kings and governments come and go, but the people stay. My great grandma, for example, lived in 4 different countries without leaving her village.
- pxeboot 3y ago> Europe is very small. For another US reference point: the entire European Union is about the same size as Alaska.
- pvg 3y agohttps://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area+of+alaska+vs+area+of+eu https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area+of+alaska+vs+area+... EU is a lot bigger than Alaska and there's a lot of Europe it doesn't cover.
- mk89 3y agoEurope is not just the "European Union". I know many don't like Russia at the moment, but its western part is Europe. Same for Ukraine, also not part of the European Union, but it's part of Europe (the continent). In the context of European "genetics" keeping Russia and Ukraine out of Europe is basically non-sense considering the Slavs kind of come from there :)