80 Replacement Slavic Origins and Migrat Media yJkChkSpZak 001

The Slavic languages today dominate the eastern half of the European continent, but their exact origins have long been shrouded in mystery. While some scholars advocated for a Central European origin in or around modern Poland, others have posited that the Slavs originated further east, perhaps in Ukraine or Russia. According to others, East Central Europe was originally Germanic and only became Slavic from the 6th century AD onwards, when the term Slav is first attested. Procopius places these early Slavs initially north of the Carpathians. In the course of the century, they are also attested on the Lower Danube, the Middle Danube, and even in Istria. In the following century, they are also mentioned south of the Danube, in Dalmatia, in the eastern Alps, and finally also in Bohemia and eastern Germany. Archaeologically, this expansion of the Slavs seems to go hand-in-hand with the expansion of an archaeological culture referred to as the Prague-Kolchak group, which shows remarkable conformity over the vast expanse it covered, indicating that this culture expanded so quickly that regional differences didn't have time to develop. Before these early mentions of the Slavs in our sources, Greco-Roman authors described the inhabitants of Central Europe, including Eastern Central Europe, as Garamani. Some of the most well-known of the tribes inhabiting this area were the Marcomanni and the Quadi, who famously fought against Marcus Aurelius during the Marcomannic Wars of the late 2nd century AD. These tribes seem to have inhabited the southeastern frontier of the Germanic world, as to the east of them we find the Azegis, a Sarmatian people, and even further east the Dacians, who inhabited a territory roughly corresponding to modern Romania. But the cultural and ethnic composition of this part of Europe soon began to change. From the 3rd century AD onwards, new major players arrived on the scene, chief among them the Goths. Whilst modern scholars uniformly identify the Goths as a Germanic people, most ancient sources actually refer to them as Scythians, and even though they definitely spoke a Germanic language, and probably also believed in Germanic gods, they had come a long way from their home in the north. A paleogenetic study from 2023 that I've previously covered on the channel showed that on their way, they intermixed heavily with the Steppe people north of the Black Sea, which the Greeks traditionally referred to as Scythians, which might be why they referred to the Goths as such. But the Goths weren't the only newcomers in the area. While they occupied the areas just north of the Lower Danube and the Black Sea, the Vandals had become their western neighbours, settling along the Middle Danube. From this period onwards, it seems like the entire northern frontier of the Roman Empire had become Germanic, from the Rhine in the west, all the way along the Danube and to the Black Sea in the east. This apparent expansion of Germanic-speaking groups is often seen as the prelude to the so-called Migration Period, or the time of the barbarian invasions, as many of these peoples, among them the aforementioned Vandals and Goths, eventually moved into Roman territory to establish kingdoms of their own within the borders of the declining Western Roman Empire. The movement of these groups from eastern Central Europe to the southeast left much of the territories east of the River Oder abandoned. From the 6th century onwards, the territories between the Elbe and the Oder also saw a dramatic decline in population density that has often been attributed to Alp-Germanic groups moving southwards into what is today's southern Germany. New groups are subsequently mentioned in these regions, which our historical sources refer to as Slavs, and a new kind of material culture seemingly expanded alongside them. But could the authors of these sources have made a mistake? Seeing as the region was dominated by Slavic-speaking groups from the early Middle Ages onwards, they can't have been too far off, and indeed some scholars have proposed that at least some of the people that Greco-Roman writers have identified as Germanic were indeed early Slavs, particularly when it comes to the Iron Age Przeworsk culture, which I've covered in a previous video. While most scholars today see the Przeworsk culture as Germanic, some have seen it as Slavic in the past, and this is an interpretation still often encountered today. And when it comes to the earliest stages of the Przeworsk culture, which developed during the 3rd century BC, we don't have any historical sources to refer to to help us identify the linguistic and ethnic affiliations of the people of this culture. This is also the case for virtually all neighbouring archaeological cultures of Northern Europe during this period, and it is only from the 1st century BC onwards that the inhabitants of this region came to be known as Germani. Previously, Greco-Roman authors had simply referred to all Northwestern Barbarians as Celts, and to all Northeastern Barbarians as Scythians. When Caesar first popularised the term Germanic for the population of Central Europe, he probably did so primarily for political reasons, although archaeological findings suggest that during his time, cultural changes took place in the region which have been interpreted as evidence for an originally Celtic population either abandoning the area, or slowly becoming Germanised, or a combination of both scenarios. So, while archaeological developments seem to at least partially correspond to the first appearances of Germani in our sources, in the aforementioned case of the Goths moving into Eastern Europe, such a correspondence seems to be missing, seeing as the Greeks identified them as Scythians, just as they had been doing for the inhabitants of this region for centuries. This shows that changes in the ethnic labels of the population of a certain region in our sources can reflect cultural changes that sometimes result from population movements, but they don't always have to. But what about archaeology by itself? Surely we can just identify the archaeological cultures that correspond to the areas that Greco-Roman authors gave a certain ethnic label, and thus we can claim that a certain archaeological culture was Germanic or Slavic. Unfortunately, it's not always that straightforward. If we go back to Caesar and his classification of the regions east of the Rhine and north of the Danube as Germanic, then we will find that the material culture of parts of what he dubbed Germania was actually more similar to Gaul, which was Celtic. It has thus often been stated that these parts of Germania weren't Germanic at the time of Caesar and only became so in the subsequent decades. So, deciding whether a certain population or archaeological culture in the past was Germanic or Slavic isn't quite as straightforward as it may first appear. Luckily, for the past decade or so, a new tool has emerged to help us investigate such questions in the form of paleogenetic studies, and it just so happens that one such study on the topic of this video was published last year. In this study, a team around the geneticist Joshua Gretzinger set out to investigate whether the genetic makeup of the people the ancient authors referred to as Germanic differed from that of those whom they called Slavic in order to find out if the original population was replaced or if they were in fact identical and it was just the name that changed. If they were identical, there would be two possible interpretations. Firstly, an originally Germanic population was Slavicized from the 6th century onwards. Or secondly, the Slavs had always been present in the region, but Greco-Roman authors didn't differentiate between them and Germanic-speaking groups. But if the populations aren't identical, or at least not similar enough to each other to suggest genetic continuity, the most likely explanation would be that an original Germanic population was largely replaced by a Slavic population. Now, let us take a look at the study's setup and its results to find out which scenario is the most likely. The study looked at a total of 555 ancient individuals, 359 of whom fall within the time frame that, according to most historians and archaeologists, can be associated with the first appearance of the Slavs. The samples were taken from a total of 26 different sites across Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on three regions. The Elbe-Saale region of Eastern Germany, the Northwestern Balkans, and an Eastern European region comprised of Poland and Northwestern Ukraine. As mentioned previously, Eastern Germany, as well as Poland and Northwestern Ukraine, had become Germanic by late antiquity, according to our historical sources. Whilst Eastern Germany was a core territory of the Alp-Germanic culture, which is often associated with the Suevi, Northern Poland was home to the Wilbach culture, which has been associated with the Goths, where Southern Poland and Northwestern Ukraine were part of the Przeworsk culture, from which the Vandals and other East Germanic people probably developed. The Northwestern Balkans, meanwhile, were originally home to the Illyrians, although they had been under Roman rule for many centuries, which had led to immigration from other parts of the empire, particularly from Anatolia. To complement these three regions, the researchers also included two other historic populations in their dataset, one from the Baltics and one from Northwestern Russia. By adding these regions, the total of ancient individuals involved in this study rises to 1,840, which is one of the highest numbers I've personally seen in these kinds of studies. But given the fact that this paper covers such a vast geographic area and over a period of around two millennia, from the Iron Age to the late Middle Ages, this is not surprising. As is common in these studies, they also included modern genetic data as a reference point from a total of roughly 10,500 people, which notably also included 600 Zorbs, a Slavic-speaking minority native to Eastern Germany. Having established the dataset the study's authors used, let us now take a look at their results. They found that roughly between 600 and 800 AD, the genetic composition of the three main study areas changed significantly. When it comes to Poland, the researchers used Roman-period Wielbach individuals as a reference point, which resemble modern Danes and Norwegians most closely, although a few individuals show great affinity to modern Southern Europeans, perhaps indicating the presence of people of Mediterranean origin. Meanwhile, the pre-Slavic population of Eastern Germany was defined by Alb-Germanic samples from around the 6th century AD, and the majority of the investigated individuals were most similar to modern Northern German and Dutch populations, although a substantial number of individuals resembling modern Southwestern European populations were also present. The study's authors could trace this ancestry back to Northern Italy and the Northwestern Balkans, and found that it was mostly carried by females. Their burials don't indicate any major variation in terms of their social standing, however, so it is likely that they were treated as equals. This is also shown by the presence of individuals of mixed descent, which shows that these two groups were intermixing with each other. The only difference that was found was in the type of burials themselves. Individuals of mostly Northern European descent were more likely to be buried in pits than people of mostly Southern European ancestry. Everything else was pretty much equal. The fact that the Southern and Northern groups are still clearly visible might indicate that the Southern group had arrived relatively recently, perhaps only a generation or two ago. Because their burials don't indicate any differences in their social standing compared to the Northern group, it is unlikely that they were slaves. Perhaps they were refugees from the confrontations between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire that led to the devastation of large parts of Italy, or the subsequent invasion by the Lombards, which came through the region from which they originated. If this Southern European group is included, the population of East Germany during the migration period shifts to resemble modern Belgians and Western Germans more closely on average. In the Northwestern Balkans, meanwhile, the pre-Slavic population was defined by using samples from the Roman period, and they were most similar to modern Italians and Eastern Mediterranean groups. When looking at the individual regions more closely, some other interesting observations can be made. Firstly, both the Northwestern Balkans and Eastern Germany appeared genetically considerably more diverse before 600 AD than after, whereas Northern Poland was more homogenous and retained a similar level of homogeneity after 600 AD. Though the general genetic profile of the population changed even more dramatically than in the other two regions. All three populations shifted towards greater genetic affinity to modern Eastern European populations after 600 AD. The transformation was most striking in the Northwestern Balkans, where the population's genetic profile shifted from resembling modern Italians to modern Eastern Europeans in just a few centuries. The changes in Eastern Germany and Northern Poland, meanwhile, were slightly less severe, mainly because the incoming groups shared a broadly Northern European profile with the native inhabitants of the region. The differences in the more Northwestern-oriented Roman and Migration Period populations compared to the later, more Northeastern-oriented medieval populations are still stark, however, and point to significant changes in the genetic makeup of the regions. Unfortunately, there's a substantial gap between these pre-Slavic and the post-Slavic populations, which makes it difficult to pinpoint when this change occurred exactly, and whether it was a protracted process that lasted centuries, or if it happened within the span of only a generation or two. The new populations in the three main areas the study investigated all closely resemble modern Slavic-speaking groups, but also ancient populations from the Baltic region, indicating that at least part of the gene pool of the early Slavs might have been derived from Baltic sources. Although this change was dramatic, the populations of all three regions had undergone large-scale shifts in their genetic makeup before, as is illustrated by admixture models from the last 5,000 years, which were included in this study. For these models, the researchers divided Europe into 12 distinct ancestral regions. What is problematic with them, however, is that they weren't based on ancient populations, but on modern ones, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions related to specific ancient populations, as these regions are themselves the result of millennia of intermixing. We need to keep this in mind when examining these models, as they may not represent ancient populations accurately. The, for our purposes, most relevant ancestral regions are the following. A Western British and Irish region that also includes Northern France, Belgium and the Southern Netherlands. A North Sea zone, which is made up of the Northern Netherlands, Northern Germany and Denmark. Scandinavia, which comprises Southern and Central Sweden and most of Norway. Southern Europe, which includes Spain, Portugal, Southern France, Southwestern Switzerland, Northwestern Italy, Corsica and Sardinia. A region the researchers called West Asian, made up of Greece, parts of Southern Bulgaria, Turkey and Northern Syria. And finally, a Baltic region centered around Lithuania and Latvia, as well as parts of adjacent countries. Most of these regions are far from homogeneous in terms of their culture, language and most importantly, also in terms of their genetic makeup, which makes it difficult to relate these three regions to specific ancient groups. Let us take a brief look at each of them in turn to establish what they might actually represent. The region the researchers referred to as Western British and Irish was mostly shaped by Celtic and Germanic groups in the last three millennia to differing degrees. Whilst the Southern Netherlands, Belgium and England were impacted severely by Germanic groups during the migration period, their influence was less pronounced, yet still very much tangible in Northern France, as well as in parts of Wales and Scotland. The latter two, and to a certain degree also Cornwall, still retained a distinct Celtic identity in either language or culture or both. The same obviously applies to Ireland, which according to another study by Gretzinger et al, was least affected genetically by migration since the Roman period. The North Sea zone is perhaps a little less problematic, as it has been home to Germanic people for at least the last 2000 years, and Northern Germany, the Northern Netherlands and Denmark form a very tight cluster genetically. The only major migration that occurred in the region in the last two millennia was the arrival of the Slavs, but they only impacted the easternmost part of this region. Scandinavia is also not a huge problem, as the researchers purposely excluded the regions with high degrees of Uralic admixture. That being said, Southern Scandinavia today doesn't equal Scandinavia during the Iron Age or earlier periods, as substantial admixture components associated with Central, Western and Eastern European, as well as Uralic populations impacted the region. Western Norway, for example, was influenced by admixture from Britain and Arden during the Viking Age, whilst Southern Sweden received substantial amounts of admixture from Central Europe, and both Southern and Central Sweden were impacted by Baltic and Uralic admixture. The Southern European region of this study is almost exclusively made up of Roman-speaking groups, with the exception of the Basques. In contrast to the other groups included in this region, a recent study by Olalde et al. has shown that they weren't genetically impacted by any major migrations since the Iron Age, making them genetically distinct from their neighbours. Perhaps even more distinct are Sardinians, as they are the closest modern European population to the ancient farming communities in Anatolia that first introduced agriculture to Europe about 9,000 years ago. These two examples show that the regions included in this group are genetically homogeneous, in spite of the fact that most of them are linguistically related. But it should also be obvious that individuals from regions as distant from each other as Southwestern Switzerland and Southern Spain are genetically distinct from each other. The West Asian group that the researchers established is also problematic, as it consists of modern Greek, Slavic, Turkish and Kurdish groups. As another study by Olalde et al. has shown, Greek, Slavic and Turkish populations are genetically distinct from each other, although there are naturally certain areas of overlap. But I'm not sure if these similarities warrant grouping them together. And finally, there's the Baltic group. Although this group seems to derive most of its ancestry from the Bronze and Iron Age inhabitants of the Baltics, they were also impacted by other ethnolinguistic groups, such as the Finnic-speaking Estonians, various Slavic-speaking groups, chief among them the Poles and the Russians, and also by Germans. So, in conclusion, in many of these cases, it is unclear which ancient populations these groups can actually accurately represent, at least to me. Perhaps the least problematic of them are the North Sea and Scandinavian groups, which might at least approximately represent Roman-period continental and North Germanic groups, respectively. The Baltic group might fall into the same category, although, as far as I'm aware, no study has dealt with the genetic history of the Baltic region in particular yet, so further research might be needed here before making any definitive statements. Even though the Southern European group can't represent any particular ancient group, it may serve as a sufficiently accurate approximation for southwestern Mediterranean groups of the Roman period in general, as most of the region didn't seem to be impacted heavily by the turmoil of the migration period. At least not in a genetic sense. The Arab conquest of most of Iberia also didn't seem to fundamentally change the genetic makeup of the peninsula, although modern Iberians still carry small amounts of North African ancestry. A little more problematic are the West Asian and the Western British and Irish groups. Greece and Turkey are genetically distinct today due to the large population movements in the region at the beginning of the 20th century, and atmospheric components differ substantially between different regions within these countries. Northern Greece, for example, derives almost 40% of its ancestry from Slavs, whilst Crete and the Aegean Islands are predominantly ancient Aegean in their origin. Meanwhile, the Western British and Irish group is a mix of mostly Celtic and Germanic influences, with the former dominating in the West, whilst the latter is more prominent in the East. So, I'm not entirely sure what ancient populations this group is supposed to represent. In case of the ancestry composition, Ireland has been impacted the least by Germanic groups over the last few millennia, so it is probably the best proxy for ancient Northwestern European populations. That being said, Ireland may still not be representative of pre-Germanic Northwestern Europe as a whole. Nevertheless, to avoid confusion, I will refer to this group as Northwestern European in the following. With this background knowledge out of the way, I think it is finally time to take a look at the actual admixture models that the study provided, starting with the Northwestern Balkans. As already mentioned, the ancestry composition of the Northwestern Balkans remained fairly stable for most of the region's history, all the way up to the latter parts of the first millennium AD, when the region underwent dramatic changes through an influx of Baltic ancestry. Before this period, the dominant component in the region had been Southern European ancestry, which ranged from 50% to almost 75%. West Asian ancestry was also prominent, particularly around 3000 BC and during the Roman period at around 25% and 20% respectively. This probably represents an influx of Eastern Mediterranean populations, which has been observed in other studies before. Northwestern European, as well as Baltic ancestry, were also significant in the region, fluctuating between 10% and 20% before the Roman period, when they largely disappeared. As stated previously, the most dramatic change occurred towards the latter parts of the first millennium AD, when the Baltic component reappeared in force, making up almost 50% of the local ancestry. Southern European ancestry, meanwhile, fell to about a quarter and West Asian ancestry decreased to around 10%. Interestingly, a small influx of North Sea-related ancestry can also be observed, perhaps indicating the presence of some individuals with partial Continental Germanic ancestry. By the modern period, this component had decreased again, but so had the degree of Baltic ancestry, which now sits at about 40%. Southern European ancestry, meanwhile, increased again dramatically to just below 40%. In the case of Eastern Germany, the earliest admixture model the study's authors provided dates to around 2000 BC, and at that time, the population interestingly derived over half of the ancestry from admixture similar to that of modern Northwestern Europeans. The second biggest ancestry component during this time was derived from a population similar to the study's Baltic group at around 25%. At around the middle of the first millennium BC, the region shows a composition with a fairly even split of Northwestern European as well as North Sea-zone-related ancestry at roughly around 25% each. This is supplemented by about 15% of Scandinavian and Baltic ancestry and around 5% Southern European and West Asian ancestry. As stated previously, this can be seen as the beginning of the Germanic period, but interestingly, only 40% of the local ancestry can be associated with the modern Germanic proxies, unless the Northwestern European component can also be related to Germanic groups. But even if that was the case, the Germanic component would still only reach about 50%. About a thousand years later, towards the late migration period, the ancestry of individuals in this region had come to be dominated by the North Sea component, making up around 50% of local ancestry. This change seems to have occurred at the expense of Northwestern European ancestry as well as the Baltic ancestry components. Another big change is the influx of Southern European ancestry, which, as has already been stated, might be associated with mostly female Roman immigrants and accounted for about 20% of the population's admixture. The degree of Scandinavian ancestry interestingly remained unchanged over this period. Overall, the population seems to have become more Germanic, at least from a modern perspective, through an influx of North Sea-related ancestry, perhaps corresponding to the area having become a core territory of the up-Germanic culture. Even though these were fairly significant developments, they pale in comparison to the change the population underwent over the next 500 years. The North Sea component shrank down significantly, to about 20%. And about two-thirds of the local ancestry was now derived from modern Baltic-like ancestry sources. Interestingly, this development was reversed to a large degree in the succeeding centuries, as modern Eastern Germans again derived most of the ancestry from the North Sea zone, at around 40%. Although Baltic ancestry is still significant at over 25%. Another quarter of the ancestry of modern Eastern Germans is derived from Southern Europeans. This component had also decreased during the Slavic period, so ancestry from Southern Europe must have been introduced at some point in the last millennium, although I can't think of how and when exactly this occurred. The Slavic-speaking Zorbs of modern Eastern Germany were similarly affected by this influx of Southern DNA, at the expense of Baltic ancestry, although the Baltic admixture component is still dominant at roughly 50%. The North Sea component also slightly increased again, although nowhere near significantly as had been the case among other Eastern German populations. Now, let us move on to Poland and Northwestern Ukraine. During the early third millennium BC, the population of Poland and Northwestern Ukraine was perhaps surprisingly dominated by a Southern European component, which contributed over 50% to the genetic makeup of the inhabitants. The second-largest component came from Northwestern Europe at just below 25%, with Baltic ancestry only making up around 15%. Unfortunately, we don't have any admixture models for Eastern Germany this early on, but it would be interesting to see if the Southern European component was similarly high. Seeing as modern Southern Europeans carry high amounts of early European farmer ancestry from Anatolia, it is likely that the high degree of this admixture component in Poland represents their presence in the region during this time. Towards the end of the millennium, this changed significantly. Now, Northwestern European ancestry was dominant at almost 50%, and Baltic ancestry had increased to about a quarter. Southern European ancestry had almost disappeared completely, while North Sea and Scandinavian admixture components had been introduced, making up about 15% of the total ancestry of the region. This might reflect the arrival of Indo-European speaking groups from the steppe related to the expansion of the Corded Ware and Belbigia cultures. About half a millennium later, the admixture of the region shifted dramatically once again. Baltic ancestry was now dominant at about two thirds, and British and Irish ancestry had decreased to about 20%. Other ancestry components were pretty much reduced to being insignificant. Then there's a long gap with the next admixture model representing the population of the Roman period about one and a half thousand years later. The Baltic component had almost disappeared completely at the expense of Scandinavian related ancestry, which now made up around 60% of the local genetic profile. Another 20% came from the North Sea zone. This change might be associated with Germanic speaking groups moving into the region over the preceding centuries, but it is particularly interesting that the majority of ancestry seems to have come from Scandinavia rather than continental Europe. This might indicate that East Germanic groups such as the Goths did actually derive a large proportion of the ancestry from Scandinavia. It should be stated, however, that the samples of this period were taken from the northern Polish Wilbach culture exclusively, so this admixture composition is probably not representative of Poland and northwestern Ukraine as a whole. Moving on to the Slavic period at around 1000 AD, the Scandinavian component had almost disappeared completely, and the North Sea component was reduced significantly to around 10%, both at the expense of Baltic ancestry, which, similar to Eastern Germany at this time, now made up around two-thirds of the local ancestry. Interestingly, there was also a slight increase in Southern European ancestry, which is in stark contrast to Eastern Germany where this component decreased. And today, the inhabitants of modern Poland and northwestern Ukraine showcase a genetic profile that is very similar to that of the swabs of Eastern Germany, with the exception of slightly lower degrees of Southern European ancestry and some northwestern European ancestry that is pretty much absent in both the swabs and the Eastern Germans. This overview shows that whilst the ancestry composition of all three regions changed over time, they all underwent very similar changes towards the end of the first millennium AD by receiving an influx of ancestry similar to that of the modern Baltics, which can probably be associated with the arrival of Slavic-speaking groups in those regions. But as I stated previously, these atmosphere models use modern populations as a reference, so based on this data alone, we can't say for certain that the newcomers actually came from the Baltics. To find out where they actually came from and how they are related or unrelated to the previous inhabitants of the investigated regions, the researchers compared segments of their DNA with segments of the DNA of those individuals that were present in the investigated regions before to see if substantial segments were passed down from one to the other. And that was in fact not the case, indicating that the previous population didn't contribute substantially to the formation of the new genetic makeup of these regions. In fact, over 80% of both the population of eastern Germany and the northwestern Balkans seems to have been replaced, and in the case of Poland, this number increased to over 90%. Interestingly, the new populations in all three regions shared many DNA segments between them, indicating a relatively recent common source. This source seems to have split up into a distinct southern and northern branch relatively early, perhaps reflecting an early split between south Slavic and north Slavic groups. To find out where this Slavic ancestry originated, the researchers analysed an early Slavic site on the Polish side of the Polish-Ukrainian border. When comparing the genetic makeup of individuals from this site to modern Slavic-speaking populations, the researchers could determine that modern Slavs are incredibly similar to them, with some, such as modern Ukrainians, western Russians and Belarusians, being pretty much indistinguishable. Interestingly, modern western Poles also derive nearly 100% of their ancestry from people closely related to the inhabitants of this site. This can be explained by the resettlement of Poles from what is now western Ukraine and Belarus into modern western Poland following World War II. Modern Sorbs also derive the vast majority of their ancestry from this component at 88%, which is remarkable considering that they have been surrounded by German-speaking populations for centuries. Slovakia also displays high degrees of this ancestry component at over 80%, and in the northwestern Balkans it still accounts for almost three-quarters of the ancestry of the modern population. This ancestry component is also dominant among modern Czechs, making up around two-thirds of their ancestry. Generally speaking, there is a clear core area centred around Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia, and extending into eastern Central Europe and the northwestern Balkans. Outside of these regions, Slavic ancestry drops significantly, although it still accounts for between a quarter and half of the ancestry of the modern inhabitants of the rest of the Balkans, including Greece, but excluding Crete, where the degree of Slavic admixture is lower, but still significant. The admixture is also prominent in the Baltic countries and in eastern Germany, where it accounts for between 30 and 40% of the modern inhabitants' genetic background. But all of this still doesn't tell us where this ancestry component originated, which is what we'll be getting into now. According to the study's authors, the largest part of this admixture seems to have been derived from Bronze and Iron Age Baltic populations at around 70%. This Baltic population then intermixed with groups located to the south that were high in early European farmer ancestry, which made up the remaining 30% of their ancestry, before migrating to other areas of Europe. It is possible that western or northwestern European sources also played a minor role in the development of the genetic profile, although this can't be said for certain with current methods and the current samples available. It is also uncertain which southern groups exactly the Baltic populations intermixed with, as the researchers lacked samples from the region for this period. We do know, however, that this admixture event probably started around 1000 BC in the area of southern Belarus and northwestern Ukraine, and may have lasted as long as 1000 years. It might also coincide with the breakup of Balto-Slavic as a linguistic unit. In this scenario, the ancestor of the more conservative Baltic languages would have probably been spoken by the inhabitants of the Baltic, whereas the Slavic languages developed as a result of the intermixing of Baltic people with a population from the northwestern Black Sea region. In this context, it would be very interesting to see if Slavic displays certain linguistic features that might be attributed to language contact with any of the attested languages spoken in the region during this period, perhaps a dialect of Scythian. Be that as it may, after this admixture event, these early Slavs split into different groups that migrated west, southwest and southeastwards. The group that had moved west would eventually turn back east and end up in modern Russia, whereas the southeastern group came to settle in the northeastern Balkans. The southwestern group split somewhere in southeastern Central Europe and migrated to eastern Germany, as well as the northwestern and southern Balkans from there. All of these groups don't seem to have intermixed with others along their way, but eventually did so when they arrived at their respective destinations. This eventually gave rise to the distinctive genetic subgroups of the medieval Slavic world and probably also contributed to the breakup of the Slavic languages into Eastern West Slavic on the one hand and South Slavic on the other. And this is going to be it for this video. Thank you so much for watching and even more so if you have made it to the end. 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