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DNA from ancient graves reveals the culture of a mysterious nomadic people

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Excavation works conducted by the Eötvös Loránd University at the Avar-period (6th-9th century AD) cemetery of Rákóczifalva, Hungary, in 2006.

Scientists sampled genomic data from 279 graves at a cemetery in Rákóczifalva, Hungary, where people of the medieval Avar culture were buried.Credit: Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary

Most people know about the Huns, if only because of their infamous warrior-ruler Attila. But the Avars, another nomadic people who subsequently occupied roughly the same region of eastern and central Europe, have remained obscure despite having assembled a sprawling empire that lasted from the late sixth century to the early ninth century. Even archaeologists have struggled to piece together their history and culture, relying on spotty and potentially biased contemporaneous chronicles that, in many cases, were authored by the Avars’ adversaries.

A deep dive into 424 genomes collected from hundreds of Avar graves is filling in crucial gaps in this story, revealing a wealth of insights into the Avars’s social structure and culture1. “These people basically didn’t have a voice in history, and we are kind of looking into them this way — through their bodies,” says Zuzana Hofmanová, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and one of the study’s lead authors.

The work was published today in Nature.

Nine generations

The researchers focused on four cemeteries in Hungary that were once at the heart of the khaganate, as the former Avar empire was known. Importantly, all four sites were fully excavated, giving the researchers access to DNA from every grave and enabling them to use genetic data to map relatedness for entire Avar communities.

This effort got an important boost from a computational method called ancIBD, which can connect even distant family members on the basis of their shared chromosomal sequences2. Co-lead author Johannes Krause, an archaeogeneticist at Max Planck, says that scientists have generally struggled to reassemble DNA-based family trees that extend past third-degree relatives, such as first cousins or great-grandparents. But by using tools such as ancIBD, Krause and colleagues were able to chart much more convoluted Avar family trees, including a massive nine-generation pedigree comprising 146 family members.

The data suggest that, after migrating to Europe, the Avars retained many cultural practices from their place of origin on the northeast Asian steppes3. For example, the Avars were very strict about avoiding inbreeding. There were no observed instances of marriage between relatives — even at the level of second cousins. Krasue says that was surprising, given that unions between first cousins were not unusual during much of European history. “It’s really remarkable that they can keep track over nine generations who is related to whom, and who can have children with whom,” he says.

On the other hand, there was also limited intermarriage with non-Avar neighbors: about 20% of the genomic sequences in the sampled Avar DNA could be traced to central European ancestry.

Gold figurine from the excavation at Rákóczifalva, Hungary.

A gold figurine excavated from an Avar burial site in Rákóczifalva, Hungary.Credit: Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary

The researchers recorded several examples of ‘levirate unions’, in which a widow married a male from the family of her deceased spouse, such as a brother. Such marital patterns were atypical in much of Europe, but were established features of Asian steppe-dwelling cultures, notes co-lead author Tivadar Vida, an archaeologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. “It was archaeologically very interesting to see the conservativism in the Avar society, lasting nine generations,” says Vida.

The Avars were also strictly patrilineal, with men acting as heads of family and daughters leaving their communities to join their husbands’ households. At the largest cemetery sampled, in the village of Rákóczifalva, Hungary, Hofmanová notes that there was only a single instance of both a mother and her adult daughter being interred.

Power play

The kinship data reveal what seems to be a shift in local political power that would have been difficult to detect with sparse DNA sampling. In the graves at Rákóczifalva, the researchers found that one male lineage predominated early in Avar history, but was displaced by a different Avar bloodline by the late seventh century. Intriguingly, archaeological evidence collected from those graves suggests that the subsequent family had different diets and burial rituals than did the displaced one, indicating that Avar culture shifted over time despite relatively modest levels of intermarriage with non-Avar individuals.

Carles Lalueza-Fox, a palaeogenomicist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain, says that this work demonstrates the richness of the insights that can emerge when researchers have the opportunity and resources to broadly survey and analyse DNA at sites of historical interest. “Only this scale of analysis would allow you to obtain a reliable picture of kinship and social processes,” he says, adding that his group is now embracing a similar approach in their archaeogenomic research. “I think ancient genomics is moving toward this direction to obtain a more democratic and nuanced view of the past.”

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Microsoft says Russian hackers are exploiting an ancient printer security flaw

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Russian state-sponsored threat actors were observed abusing an old printer vulnerability to drop custom malware on target endpoints.

The malware helped them exfiltrate sensitive data and login credentials. This is according to a new report from Microsoft Threat Intelligence, published earlier this week.

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An ancient Linux flaw might be opening up users to dangerous cyberattacks

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Many versions of Linux may be vulnerable to a flaw that allowed hackers to steal passwords, or change the contents of their clipboard.

The vulnerability, however, comes with a major caveat that makes exploitations somewhat unlikely (or at least heavily limited).

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AI chip built using ancient Samsung tech is claimed to be as fast as Nvidia A100 GPU — prototype is smaller and much more power efficient but is it just too good to be true?

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Scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have unveiled an AI chip that they claim can match the speed of Nvidia‘s A100 GPU but with a smaller size and significantly lower power consumption. The chip was developed using Samsung‘s 28-nanometer manufacturing process, a technology considered relatively old in the fast-moving world of semiconductors.

The team, led by Professor Yoo Hoi-jun at KAIST’s processing-in-memory research center, has developed what it says is the world’s first ‘Complementary-Transformer’ (C-Transformer) AI chip. This neuromorphic computing system mimics the structure and workings of the human brain, using a deep learning model often employed in visual data processing.

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Ancient malaria genome from Roman skeleton hints at disease’s history

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A coloured transmission electron micrograph showing a blue and green cell with several organelles inside a red cell.

The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum infecting a red blood cell.Credit: Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science Photo Library

Researchers have sequenced the mitochondrial genome of the deadliest form of malaria from an ancient Roman skeleton. They say the results could help to untangle the history of the disease in Europe.

It’s difficult to find signs of malaria in ancient human remains, and DNA from the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium rarely shows up in them. As a result, there had never been a complete genomic sequence of the deadliest species, Plasmodium falciparum, from before the twentieth century — until now. “P. falciparum was eliminated in Europe a half century ago, and genetic data from European parasites — ancient or recent — has been an elusive piece in the puzzle of understanding how humans have moved parasites around the globe,” says Daniel Neafsey, who studies the genomics of malaria parasites and mosquito vectors at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

Malaria has long been a leading cause of human deaths. “With the development of treatments such as quinine in the last hundreds of years, it seems clear [humans and malaria] are co-evolving,” says Carles Lalueza Fox, a palaeogenomicist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. “Discovering the genomes of the ancient, pre-quinine plasmodia will likely reveal information about how they have adapted to the different anti-malarial drugs.”

Ancient pathogen

There are five malaria-causing species of Plasmodium, which are thought to have arisen in Africa between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, and then spread worldwide. Most researchers agree that they reached Europe at least 2,000 years ago, by the time of the Roman Empire.

Plasmodium falciparum “has significantly impacted human history and evolution”, says Neafsey. “So, that makes it particularly important to discover how long different societies have had to deal with [it], and how human migration and trade activities spread it.”

Researchers can glean valuable information about the origin, evolution and virulence of the parasite from DNA extracted from the ancient remains of infected people. But it is difficult to know where to look: it is not always obvious whether a person was infected with Plasmodium, and whether DNA can be recovered depends on how well it has been preserved.

In a preprint posted on the server bioRxiv1, a team of researchers led by a group at the University of Vienna identified the first complete mitochondrial genome sequence of P. falciparum from the bones of a Roman who lived in Italy in the second century ad, known as Velia-186.

Plasmodium falciparum had been detected in Velia-186 in a previous study2. The authors of the latest preprint extracted the parasite’s DNA from the body’s teeth, and were able to identify 5,458 pieces of unique genetic information that they combined to get a sequence covering 99.1% of the mitochondrial genome. They also used software to compare the genome with modern samples, and found that the Velia-186 sequence is closely related to a group of present-day strains found in India.

Carried by migration

The researchers say their findings support a hypothesis that P. falciparum spread to Europe from Asia around at least 2,000 years ago3. The Indian strains “were already present in Europe [then]; thus, a potential arrival with globalization episodes such as the Hellenistic period — when it is first described by Greeks — seems plausible”, says Lalueza Fox.

Neafsey says the work is a “technical tour de force” and an interesting addition to the limited field of ancient malaria genomics. But he adds that the results should be interpreted with caution because there are only a few samples, and points out that a genome sequence from DNA in the parasite’s cell nuclei, rather than its mitochondria, “might indicate a more complex story of parasite movement among ancient human populations”.

Lalueza Fox suggests exploring other potential sources of Plasmodium DNA, such as old bones, antique medical equipment and even mosquito specimens in museums. “The integration of genetic data from these heterogeneous sources will provide a nuanced view of this disease,” he says. “It would be interesting to see what lessons we can learn from the past on the strains and dispersals of this pathogen.”

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Oldest stone tools in Europe hint at ancient humans’ route there

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Close up view of a stone tool possibly from Layer VII at Korolevo I.

A stone tool from the archaeological site of Korolevo in western Ukraine.Credit: Roman Garba

Stone tools found in western Ukraine date to roughly 1.4 million years ago1, archaeologists say. That means the tools are the oldest known artefacts in Europe made by ancient humans and offer insight into how and when our early relatives first reached the region.

The findings support the theory that these early arrivals — probably of the versatile species Homo erectus — entered Europe from the east and spread west, says study co-lead author Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. “Until now, there was no strong evidence for an east-to-west migration,” he says. “Now we have it.”

Prehistoric sites documenting the presence of human ancestors in Europe before 800,000 years ago are extremely rare, says Véronique Michel, a geochronologist at the University of Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, who was not involved in the research. “This new study adds another piece to the puzzle [of] the dispersal of early hominins in Europe.”

The findings were published on 6 March in Nature.

Set in stone

The tools were discovered in the 1980s at the Korolevo archaeological site near Ukraine’s border with Romania, yet no one had been able to precisely date them.

To do so, Garba and his colleagues used a dating method based on cosmogenic nuclides — rare isotopes generated when high-energy cosmic rays collide with chemical elements in minerals on Earth’s surface. Changes in the concentrations of these cosmogenic nuclides can reveal how long ago a mineral was buried. By calculating the ratio of specific cosmogenic nuclides in the sediment layer in which the tools were buried, the team estimated that the implements must be 1.4 million years old. The dating analyses, Michel says, “appear highly reliable”.

Until now, the earliest precisely dated evidence of hominins in Europe comprised fossils2 and stone tools3 found in Spain and France. Both are 1.1 million to 1.2 million years old.

Intrepid travellers

The dates of the Korolevo tools lead the researchers to speculate that the human ancestors who made them were H. erectus, the only archaic humans known to have lived outside Africa about 1.4 million years ago. What’s more, the Korolevo tools resemble those found at archaeological sites in the Caucasus Mountains that have been linked to H. erectus and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, says Mads Knudsen, a geoscientist at Aarhus University in Denmark, who co-led the study. However, Knudsen adds, Korolevo’s most ancient layer of sediment didn’t yield any fossilized human remains, so it is impossible to say for sure that the tools were made by H. erectus.

Geographically, Korolevo lies between older archaeological sites at the intersection of Asia and Europe, and younger sites in southwestern Europe. The findings give a fuller picture of the direction of travel probably taken by the first Europeans, supporting the idea that they spread from east to west — perhaps along the valleys of the Danube River, Garba says.

Korolevo is a treasure trove of prehistoric remains, says study co-author Vitaly Usyk, an archaeologist affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, who visited the site last year with Garba for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Korolevo site is relatively safe and hasn’t been damaged during the war, although the area is now overgrown with vegetation, Garba says. “I can imagine doing fieldwork there even now.”

However, Usyk notes, few scientists can participate in field research at Korolevo or anywhere else in the country, because of travel restrictions or because they have fled the conflict. Usyk himself left Ukraine in 2022 and is now working at the Institute of Archaeology in Brno, Czech Republic, with a fellowship that allows him to continue doing his research. “Would I like to go back [to Ukraine]? Yes, of course,” he says. “I would like to organize expeditions to Korolevo to help other scientists reveal how ancient humans came from Africa to Europe.”

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Buried vases hint that ancient Americans might have drunk tobacco

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00602-x

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