Miscellaneous Hungarian archaeological items from the migration era, from the Urals to the Carpathians 9th-10th C. CE

May 22, 2024

Miscellaneous Hungarian archaeological items from the migration era, from the Urals to the Carpathians 9th-10th C. CE

The Magyars, as a nation, seem to have originated in the region of the Urals and Volga and their original territory covered a large amount of what is European Russia today. This region was known as Magna Hungaria or Ancient Hungary in the Middle Ages. In the 13th century Christian monks tried unsuccessfully to convert the Pagan inhabitants of Ancient Hungary, who they noted spoke the same language as the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin (will post more on this later). Now genetics show they were related too. Some of the Hungarians in the Carpathian region were found to be direct family members of these Uralic-based Hungarians according to this genetic study below. I grabbed some highlights of genetics article here and included some archaeological image finds:

"Two recent articles have investigated the Y-haplogroup variability of Hungarian conquerors describing the conqueror’s elite population as heterogenous, with significant proportion of European, Finno-Permic, Caucasian and Siberian (or East Eurasian) paternal lineages. Fóthi et al. have claimed that the Hungarian conquerors originated from three distant sources: Inner Asia (Lake Baikal – Altai Mountains), Western Siberia – Southern Urals (Finno-Ugric peoples) and the Black Sea – Northern Caucasus (Northern Caucasian Turks, Alans, and Eastern Europeans). Both studies pointed out the presence of the Y-haplogroup N-Z1936 (also known as N3a4-Z1936 under N-Tat/M46), which is frequent among Finno-Ugric speaking peoples.

...The genetic connection of Uyelgi cemetery in the Trans-Ural and 10th century Hungarian conquerors in the Carpathian Basin is supposed by close maternal relationships of the following individuals: Uyelgi3 from Kurgan 28 of the youngest horizon and three Hungarian conquerors from Karos II cemetery have identical U4d2 mitogenome haplotype (Supplementary Fig. S4p). Furthermore, the mtDNA A12a lineage of Hconq3 (30-40 years old woman from Harta cemetery dated to the first half of 10th century AD) is an ancestor of the mtDNA lineage of Uyelgi7 (from Kurgan 30 of the youngest horizon of the cemetery) based on the A12a haplogroup tree (see Supplementary Fig. S4a).

The mentioned graves from Uylegi show the characteristic of the Srostki culture, where the gilt silver mounts with plant ornaments were typical, and which was disseminated from the Siberian Minusinsk Depression and the Altai region through the Baraba Steppe and North-Kazakhstan to the Trans-Ural region (Fig. 1).

The connection of Uyelgi cemetery and Hungarian conquerors is visible on the N1a1a1a1a branch of the tree of haplogroup N1a1 too, that was prevalent among the ancient Hungarians (Fig. 5). Here seven Hungarian conqueror samples from cemeteries Kenézlő-Fazekaszug, Orosháza-Görbicstanya and Karos-Eperjesszög clustered together on one branch, while the five Uyelgi samples from the earliest and latest horizons are located together next to this branch.

Majority of Uyelgi males belonged to Y chromosome haplogroup N, and according to combined STR, SNP and Network analyses they belong to the same subclade within N-M46 (also known as N-tat and N1a1-M46 in ISOGG 14.255). N-M46 nowadays is a geographically widely distributed paternal lineage from East of Siberia to Scandinavia. One of its subclades is N-Z1936 (also known as N3a4 and N1a1a1a1a2 in ISOGG 14.255), which is prominent among Uralic speaking populations, probably originated from the Ural region as well and mainly distributed from the West of Ural Mountains to Scandinavia (Finland). Seven samples of Uyelgi site most probably belong to N-Y24365 (also known as N-B545 and N1a1a1a1a2a1c2 in ISOGG 14.255) under N-Z1936, a specific subclade that can be found almost exclusively in todays’ Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Hungary (ISOGG, Yfull)."

-Early Medieval Genetic Data from Ural Region Evaluated in the Light of Archaeological Evidence of Ancient Hungarians

Similar type of the archaeological finds in the heritage of the Hungarian Conquest period (10th century CE) in the Carpathian Basin (left 1–23) and in the material of Uyelgi and Sineglazovo cemetery in Trans-Ural region (right 24–46). The photos were taken by Sergei G. Botalov and Attila Türk.