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How the Slavic Migration Reshaped Central and Eastern Europe
Genetic analyses of medieval human remains reveal large-scale migrations, regional diversity, and new insights into early medieval communities
Genetic results show that starting in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the region’s earlier inhabitants—descendants of populations with strong links to Northern Europe and Scandinavia in particular—almost entirely disappeared and were successively replaced by newcomers from the East, who are closely related to modern Poles, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. Genetic analyses indicate that in present-day Balkan populations, the proportion of this incoming Eastern European ancestry varies considerably but often makes up roughly half or even less of the modern gene pool, highlighting the region’s complex demographic history. As Walter Pohl, one of the senior lead authors of the study and medievalist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, puts it, the Slavic migration represents a fundamentally different model of social organization: “a demic diffusion or grass-root movement, often in small groups or temporary alliances, settling new territories without imposing a fixed identity or elite structures.” Their success may have been due not to conquest but to a pragmatic, egalitarian lifestyle—one that avoided the heavy burdens and hierarchies of the crumbling Roman world.
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