Back in the first millennium A.D., waves of human migration across Europe created an elaborate genetic puzzle that researchers have now started to unravel with a leap in DNA analysis. An enhanced look at the movement of populations during the time of the Roman Empire and the Vikings has illustrated the genetic impact of this consequential era of history.
New research led by the Francis Crick Institute and published in Nature centers around a data analysis method known as Twigstats, which focuses on assessing genetic family trees. This allowed for a plethora of unprecedented discoveries on historic Iron Age migrations in Europe from the years 1 to 1000. Using Twigstats, the researchers dissected the differences between genetically similar groups in a more precise way than ever before.
Southward Migration of Germanic Peoples
The researchers examined over 1500 European genomes from people who lived during the first millennium, an eventful period in European history. These years marked the dramatic rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the dawn of the Vikings, and the migration of several Germanic groups throughout the continent.
