Ramifications of Roman Empire’s Fall Explained by Geneticists

Geneticists have shed new light on the effects of the Roman Empire on Southeast Europe.

New DNA analysis has shown how the rise and fall of the empire influenced populations in the Balkans—a region of Europe including countries like Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria.

The Roman Empire had a profound influence on the Balkans, a large part of which was under Roman rule from around the first to fifth centuries A.D. However, researchers have found no evidence of Italian descent in human remains from the area from that period. Their findings are published in the journal Cell.

Instead, the study revealed successive waves of migrations from Western Anatolia, Central and Northern Europe, and the Pontic-Kazakh Steppe, which extends from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

From the 7th century A.D. onwards, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, large numbers of people also emigrated from Eastern Europe, likely related to the arrival of Slavic-speaking populations.

“We found this genetic signal of Slavic migration all across the Balkans,” Carles Lalueza-Fox, senior author and paleogenomicist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona said in a press release detailing the findings. “This could have important social and political implications given that the Balkans has had a long history of conflict associated with their perceived identities.”

After A.D. 700, individuals in the Balkans had very similar ancestral composition to present-day groups in the region, suggesting that these migrations resulted in the last large demographic shift in the area.

The researchers analyzed DNA from the remains of 136 individuals from 20 different places across the Balkan region, the study reported. The team focused on three periods—the height of the empire from A.D. 1 to A.D. 250, the late imperial period, from A.D. 250 to A.D. 550, and following the collapse of the Western Roman empire, from A.D. 550 to A.D. 1000.

The remains came from small rural towns, military bases and large Roman cities.

To the researchers surprise, they found no evidence of Italian Iron Age descent, although, there was a lot that pointed to migration from Western Anatolia, an area that was also under Roman control.

“Ancient DNA can give a lot of insight into historical periods, especially for regions where historical sources are scarce or when we don’t know whether sources are biased or not,” first author and population geneticist Iñigo Olalde of the University of the Basque Country said in the press release. “For example, most historical sources from the Balkans are written from the side of the Romans because the Slavic people didn’t write at that time.”

They also found evidence of individual migrations into the Balkans from both within and outside the Roman Empire. The remains of a 16-year-old male were discovered to be of 100 percent East African descent, the study reported. The teen was found in the remains of a large Roman city, alongside an oil lamp decorated with a depiction of the Roman god Jupiter.

“This was the only full Eastern African individual that we analyzed, and he was also a clear outlier with respect to the diet compared to the rest of the individuals buried in the same necropolis, which tells us that this individual clearly grew up outside the borders of the Roman Empire,” Lalueza-Fox said.

Isotopic analysis of his teeth indicated that he had consumed marine protein sources during his childhood and therefore had likely grown up in a distant location.

The researchers found evidence of migrants with mixed descent from Northern Europe and the Pontic-Kazakh steppe during late imperial times.

This suggests that there may have been “multi-ethnic confederations of moving people,” senior author and population geneticist David Reich of Harvard University said in the press release.

“There have been debates about how impactful these migrations were and to what extent the spread of Slavic language was largely through cultural influences or movements of people, but our study shows that these migrations had a profound demographic effect,” Reich said.

“More than half of the ancestry of most peoples in the Balkans today comes from the Slavic migrations, with around a third Slavic ancestry even in countries like Greece where no Slavic languages are spoken today,” he said.