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DNA reveals unseen Vikings with dark hair and Southern blood

2020-09-21T15:23:17.456Z


Not just blondes and Scandinavians: many Vikings had dark hair and even Southern European blood. This is demonstrated by the largest genetic study conducted on over 400 skeletons (ANSA)


Not just blondes and Scandinavians: many Vikings had dark hair and even southern European blood.

To reveal their surprising identikit is the largest genetic study ever carried out on this ancient people, conducted by analyzing over 400 skeletons from archaeological sites throughout Europe and Greenland.

The results, which promise to rewrite many pages of history books, are published in the journal Nature by the team of Danish evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev, who works between Cambridge and Copenhagen universities.

Italy also participates in the study with the University of Foggia and the Superintendence of Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Provinces of Barletta, Andria, Trani and Foggia.

"Puglia was involved to evaluate the possibility of verifying the reverberation of the Viking genetic heritage in the Normans of Southern Italy, who are historically a population of Viking descent," explains the archaeologist Pasquale Favia.


The study is based on the analysis of over 400 ancient skeletons (source: Vastergotlands Museum)

By sequencing DNA extracted from the teeth and skull bones of the ancient Vikings, "we discovered genetic differences between their populations in Scandinavia, indicating that the groups in the region were more isolated than expected," says Willerslev.

"Furthermore, our research refutes the modern image of blond-haired Vikings, as many had brown hair and were influenced by genetic influences from southern Europe and Asia."

Thanks to the DNA, the researchers have also reconstructed the movements of the Vikings: from Norway they arrived in Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and Greenland;

from Denmark they ended up in England;

from Sweden they reached the Baltic countries during their all-male raids.

"We discovered that these expeditions included members of the same family, since in a funeral ship in Estonia we found four brothers who died on the same day. The other occupants of the ship - explains Ashot Margaryan of the University of Copenhagen - were genetically similar, probably. because they came from the same small village in Sweden ".

This, concludes Fernando Racimo of the University of Copenhagen, "allows us to understand how natural selection acted before, during and after the movements of the Vikings in Europe, influencing genes associated with important traits such as immunity, pigmentation and metabolism. : we can also begin to deduce what they looked like ".

Source: ansa

All tech articles on 2020-09-21

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