Evidence Huns related to Xiongnu

[guy]

 

Historians have long wondered whether the Huns were derived from the Xiongnu, a group of steppe nomads who threatened China's northern and western borders between 200 and 100 BCE.

 

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The genetic makeup of some of these people suggested they shared ancestry with those buried in elaborate graves belonging to the Xiongnu elite 3 centuries earlier in the highlands of Mongolia, some 5000 kilometers to the east.

 

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Only a small number survived, the evidence suggests, and they adapted to local cultures and married into other steppe tribes over the course of 300 years. They carried with them their genetic legacy and, perhaps, the memory of their ancestors, preserved in the term, “Huns,” but appear to have adapted their culture along the way. Their graves lack the characteristic oversize, gilded bronze belt buckles and other elaborate ornaments buried with their distant ancestors. “How they perceived themselves—if they considered themselves as related to the Xiongnu—we can’t say,” Gnecchi Ruscone says.

 

 

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One of these Hun skeletons, a woman who died between the ages of 35 and 50, had an elongated cranium that was likely purposefully modified in her infancy—a practice that was somewhat common among the Xiongnu. She was buried with gold earrings in the early fifth century. “She is one of the individuals with genetic lineages descending from the Xiongnu period elite individuals that we analyzed,” Gnecchi-Ruscone tells Live Science.

 

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/who-were-the-huns-who-invaded-rome-a-new-study-has-revealed-surprising-genetic-diversity-180986143/

 

 

Article on the cranial modification of the Xiongnu.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618214009033

Edited Tuesday at 04:43 PM by guy