In the early medieval cemeteries of southern Germany, archaeologists have recovered for over a century a striking set of female burials with artificially deformed skulls, elongated upward and backward through cradle-binding in childhood. The practice is foreign to Germanic tradition and has been linked, since the 19th century, to the Pontic-Caspian steppe and specifically to the Huns and their successor confederations. The 2018 Haak et al. paper in PNAS, "Understanding 6,000 years of genomic history from a small region of central Europe," sequenced the genomes of forty-one individuals from six 5th-to-6th-century Bavarian cemeteries and provided the first direct molecular test of who these women were. The result confirmed everything that the archaeology had suggested. The Bavarian male population of the period was demographically continuous with the surrounding northern and central European Iron Age substrate. The female population, in contrast, was highly heterogeneous, with some women showing typical local ancestry and a smaller set, particularly those with elongated skulls, carrying ancestry pointing to southeastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Eurasian steppe. The most striking individual was AED_1108 from the cemetery of Altenerding near Munich, whose autosomal profile carried a substantial East Asian-related component absent in the surrounding population. AED_1108 was buried in local Bavarian custom, integrated into the community, yet her DNA traces back to the Hunnic steppe world that had pushed into Pannonia in the 5th century. Her case has become the textbook example of female-mediated long-distance mobility in early medieval Europe.

Key Points

  • Haak et al. 2018 (PNAS) sequenced 41 early medieval individuals from six Bavarian cemeteries (Altenerding, Straubing, Alzey and others, 5th to 6th century CE), with 26 female and 15 male genomes recovered.
  • The male population shared a homogeneous northern and central European Iron Age ancestry profile, consistent with the local Bavarian population descended from the regional Iron Age substrate.
  • The female population was strikingly heterogeneous: most women shared the local male profile, but a minority, particularly those with artificially elongated skulls, carried ancestry pointing to southeastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Eurasian steppe.
  • Individual AED_1108 from Altenerding stood out: her genome showed approximately 20% East Asian-related ancestry on top of a European substrate, with an artificially elongated skull, consistent with origin in the Hunnic or post-Hunnic steppe world.
  • On the Global25 panel, AED_1108's closest neighbors are Gepidian Medieval Serbia (distance 0.0507), Lombard Northern Italy (0.0669), and Hungarian Conqueror Elite (0.0689): all Pannonian and Carpathian populations with their own steppe-Asian admixture, not local Bavarians.
  • The combination of cranial deformation, foreign autosomal ancestry, and local burial custom indicates these women were not captives or transient migrants but integrated members of Bavarian elite communities, likely arriving through marriage alliances with the post-Hunnic Pannonian world.
  • The sex-biased pattern (foreign women, local men) is a recurring feature of early medieval European population genetics, documented also at Lombard, Avar, and Hungarian Conqueror sites.
  • The Haak et al. study established that the Bavarian gene pool of the 5th-6th centuries already contained multiple ancestral streams, with the female-mediated steppe contribution being a small but biologically real component of the early medieval mosaic.

1. The archaeological puzzle: elongated skulls in Bavaria

Artificial cranial deformation, the practice of binding an infant's head with cloths or boards to produce a permanently elongated skull shape, has a documented archaeological distribution across Eurasia going back to the Late Pleistocene and is recorded in many Pre-Columbian American cultures as well. In the European Iron Age and early medieval period, the practice has a specific and well-bounded geography. It enters Eastern Europe with the arrival of the Huns in the late 4th century, spreads westward with the Hunnic confederation and its successor groups through the Pannonian basin into Germanic territories, and disappears with the consolidation of post-Hunnic kingdoms by the late 6th century.

Bavarian early medieval cemeteries contain a small but consistent number of female burials with elongated skulls dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. The men in the same cemeteries do not show cranial deformation. This sex-biased pattern, archaeologists long suggested, indicated that the women had come from outside, from the steppe world or its immediate Pannonian successors, and married into local Bavarian communities. The Haak et al. 2018 paper provided the first genetic test of this hypothesis.

2. The Haak 2018 study: 41 genomes, six cemeteries

The study examined skeletal remains from Altenerding, Straubing-Bajuwarenstrasse, Alzey, Aschheim, Dirlewang, and Erlach-Sint, all 5th-to-6th century cemeteries with mixed Germanic and steppe-influenced material culture. After sample processing, the team recovered 41 sufficiently complete autosomal genomes: 26 female and 15 male. The genome-wide analysis used outgroup f3 and qpAdm methods to position each individual in the broader European demographic landscape of the period.

The result for the male population was unambiguous. All 15 male individuals clustered tightly together in a region of European genetic variation consistent with central and northern European Iron Age populations. They shared the same set of Y-chromosome haplogroups (mostly R1b and I) and the same autosomal profile. They represented a demographically continuous Bavarian male population.

The female population was the opposite. Most women shared the male profile and represented the local population, but a substantial minority sat far outside the local cluster, with ancestry shifted toward southeastern Europe, the Balkans, and, in two cases, the Eurasian steppe. The skull shape correlated with the ancestry: women with normal undeformed skulls were predominantly local, while women with elongated skulls were predominantly the genetic outliers.

3. AED_1108: the most-discussed individual

Among the genetic outliers, the woman labeled AED_1108 from the cemetery at Altenerding has become the most-discussed individual. Her cranium was strongly elongated. Her autosomal genome carried approximately 20% East Asian-related ancestry, the highest in the dataset, layered onto a European substrate. Her mitochondrial DNA was assigned to a haplogroup compatible with steppe or Asian origin. Her burial included grave goods of typical local Bavarian style, with no obvious markers of foreign cultural identity.

The integration of foreign ancestry, foreign cranial deformation, and local cultural identity in a single individual is exactly what the marriage-alliance hypothesis predicts. AED_1108 was not a captive prisoner buried hastily in an alien tradition; she was buried as a member of the community, with the same care and grave goods as her local neighbors. Yet her DNA testifies to a long-distance origin: a steppe-derived population from the post-Hunnic Pannonian world, perhaps a Gepidian, an early Avar, or a member of one of the smaller post-Hunnic Pannonian groups, who married into a Bavarian household in the mid-6th century.

4. The G25 evidence: AED_1108's nearest neighbors

On the Global25 panel, AED_1108 sits in a position distinct from any Bavarian or contemporary central European population. Her closest single-population match is the Gepidian Medieval individual from Serbia (Vim2b.SG, G25 distance 0.0507), followed by a 6th-century Lombard from Italy (CL31.AG, 0.0669) and the average Hungarian Conqueror Elite (0.0689). These are all Pannonian and Carpathian populations whose own genetic profile combines local European Iron Age substrate with documented steppe and East Asian admixture. The local Bavarian male average from Haak's study, by contrast, sits more than 0.10 distance units away.

The ranking of nearest neighbors is informative. AED_1108 is closer to other early medieval Pannonian and Carpathian populations than to any modern European population, and is far from Bavarian local averages. She is part of the broader post-Hunnic steppe-influenced demographic zone of the 5th-6th century Carpathian basin, transplanted by marriage into Altenerding.

5. The Hunnic legacy in the Bavarian gene pool

The Hunnic Empire collapsed after the death of Attila in 453 CE, leaving a complex array of successor groups across central and southeastern Europe. The Gepids, Lombards, Heruli, Suevi, and various smaller Germanic and Iranian-speaking peoples reorganized the post-Hunnic Pannonian and Carpathian space in the late 5th and 6th centuries. The Avars arrived in 568 CE and dominated the region until 805. Throughout this period, the elite levels of these populations carried varying degrees of Hunnic and broader steppe-Asian admixture, recoverable in the genetic record.

The Bavarian cemeteries of the 5th and 6th centuries sit at the western edge of this post-Hunnic world. Marriage alliances, hostage exchanges, dynastic intermarriage, and trade networks connected Bavarian elites to the Pannonian successor groups. AED_1108 and the other outlier women of the Haak 2018 dataset are the biological evidence of these connections. They were a small fraction of the total population, but they were a real fraction, and they reshape the picture of early medieval Bavaria from a homogeneous Germanic society to a more cosmopolitan reality.

6. The history of post-Hunnic central Europe in five phases

370 to 453 CE
Hunnic expansion

The Huns crossed the Don river around 370 CE and expanded westward, defeating the Goths and pushing into the Roman Empire. By the 440s, the Hunnic confederation under Attila controlled a vast territory from the Carpathian basin to the lower Rhine. Cranial deformation, steppe artistic motifs, and the broader Hunnic cultural package spread westward with the confederation.

453 to 568 CE
Post-Hunnic Pannonia

After Attila's death, the Hunnic confederation fragmented. Gepids, Lombards, Heruli, Suevi, Sarmatians, and smaller Germanic and Iranian-speaking groups reorganized the Pannonian and Carpathian space. Cranial deformation continued among elite women. Bavarian cemeteries of this period record female migrants from this broader Pannonian world, including AED_1108.

568 to 805 CE
Avar Khaganate

The Avars established the Khaganate over the Carpathian basin in 568, dominating the post-Hunnic space for nearly 250 years. Recent ancient DNA work (Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2022) confirmed substantial East Asian, particularly Mongolic and Xiongnu-related, ancestry in the Avar elite, layered with local European substrate among commoners.

895 to 1000 CE
Magyar conquest

The Magyars arrived in the Carpathian basin in 895 under Arpad, establishing the Hungarian Conqueror polity that became medieval Hungary. Maroti et al. 2022 demonstrated that the conqueror elite carried substantial East Asian ancestry from a Xiongnu-related source population in eastern Eurasia, while the commoners were predominantly local European Iron Age descendants.

5th to 10th centuries
Bavarian female-mediated input

Through the entire period, Bavarian elite cemeteries record a continuous low-frequency influx of foreign women from the Pannonian and Carpathian world, identified by cranial deformation, foreign autosomal ancestry, and integration into local burial customs. AED_1108 and the broader Haak 2018 dataset represent this pattern at its most archaeologically and genetically clear.

Modern
Genetic legacy

The 5th-6th century female-mediated steppe ancestry is detectable in the modern Bavarian gene pool only at low frequency, since the founding women were a small fraction of the population. The cultural and political legacy of the post-Hunnic period (in dynastic networks, in linguistic loans, in material culture) is larger than the genetic legacy alone would suggest.

7. The myth and the reality

Myth: Early medieval Bavaria was an ethnically homogeneous Germanic society

The traditional narrative of early medieval central Europe imagines a relatively closed Germanic population descended directly from the Iron Age substrate, with limited foreign input until the broader migration period reshaped western Europe.

Reality: Bavarian cemeteries of the 5th-6th centuries contain demographically diverse populations

Haak et al. 2018 demonstrated that while the male population was largely local, the female population included a substantial minority of long-distance migrants from the post-Hunnic Pannonian world. Sex-biased mobility, mediated by elite marriage networks, is a real and biologically traceable feature of the early medieval Bavarian gene pool.

Myth: Foreign women in Germanic cemeteries were slaves or captives

One historical interpretation of foreign individuals in early medieval burials, particularly women with elongated skulls in Germanic territories, was that they were captives or slaves taken from the steppe in raids and Roman-Hunnic military encounters.

Reality: AED_1108 and her peers were buried as integrated community members

The grave goods, burial position, and absence of any markers of forced status indicate that AED_1108 and the other foreign women were respected members of the local Bavarian elite. The marriage-alliance interpretation, in which Bavarian elites contracted strategic marriages with post-Hunnic Pannonian families, fits the biological and archaeological evidence far better than a captivity model.

8. References

  1. Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Llamas, B., et al. (2015 and follow-up 2018). Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe, and subsequent Bavaria study. Nature and PNAS. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1719659115 Bavaria AED_1108
  2. Veeramah, K. R., Rott, A., Gross, M., van Dorp, L., Lopez, S., Kirsanow, K., et al. (2018). Population genomic analysis of elongated skulls reveals extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(13), 3494-3499. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1719880115 Female mobility
  3. Gnecchi-Ruscone, G. A., Szecsenyi-Nagy, A., Koncz, I., Csiky, G., Racz, Z., Rohrlach, A. B., et al. (2022). Ancient genomes reveal origin and rapid trans-Eurasian migration of 7th century Avar elites. Cell, 185(8), 1402-1413. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.03.007 Avars
  4. Maroti, Z., Neparaczki, E., Schutz, O., Maar, K., Varga, G. I. B., Kovacs, B., et al. (2022). The genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians. Current Biology, 32(13), 2858-2870. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.093 Huns Magyars
  5. Damgaard, P. de B., Marchi, N., Rasmussen, S., Peyrot, M., Renaud, G., Korneliussen, T., et al. (2018). 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes. Nature, 557(7705), 369-374. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0094-2 Steppe genomes
  6. Davidski, A. (ongoing). Global25 PCA modern and ancient population averages. Eurogenes Blog. eurogenes.blogspot.com G25 panel
G25 coordinates - AED_1108 and post-Hunnic Pannonian comparisons 
Germany_EarlyMedieval_o2:AED1108.SG,0.066017,0.05583,0.060716,0.040698,0.005847,-0.000279,0.018802,-0.064382,-0.045405,-0.067063,0.001137,-0.005246,-0.001486,-0.060558,0.014523,0.011667,0.022297,0.011529,-0.001886,-0.007128,-0.014226,-0.000247,-0.011463,0.002892,0.000718
Germany_EarlyMedieval_o3:AED1135b.SG,0.072847,0.118817,0.066373,0.027779,0.043392,0.013944,0.00658,0.014077,-0.000409,-0.012392,-0.014291,0.001948,-0.024826,-0.020369,0.019544,0.004773,0.000913,0.001394,-0.001257,0.002626,0.000749,0.001236,0.011216,0.027594,0.001317
Germany_EarlyMedieval:AED106.SG,0.124067,0.131003,0.071653,0.067184,0.038161,0.025937,0.00752,0.013846,0.001432,0.001458,-0.001137,0.005995,-0.025421,-0.013626,0.025922,0.012066,-0.000391,-0.000507,0.005028,0.005378,0.008984,-0.001113,-0.000493,0.008796,-0.011017
Germany_EarlyMedieval:AED1119.SG,0.120652,0.129988,0.075423,0.06298,0.036315,0.022311,0.013865,0.013846,0.003886,0.000182,-0.010717,0.003747,-0.018583,-0.013626,0.024158,0.018164,0.010822,0.001394,-0.002514,0.000626,-0.001996,-0.00482,0.001972,0.008193,-0.000957
Germany_EarlyMedieval:AED204.SG,0.122929,0.135065,0.072407,0.064924,0.040623,0.016454,0.0094,0.015692,0.003068,-0.010024,-0.005846,0.001349,-0.020812,-0.014314,0.029587,0.005966,-0.005606,0.001774,0.005028,-0.005628,0.004991,0.007543,0.00037,0.020485,-0.005508
Hungary_Conqueror_Elite,0.092388,0.099011,0.061471,0.039406,0.001231,-0.000279,0.025382,-0.054921,-0.044178,-0.063783,0.005846,-0.005246,-0.001932,-0.075004,0.020766,0.014717,0.025558,0.011656,-0.000503,-0.005378,-0.010607,-0.005935,-0.012448,-0.00012,-0.001078
Hungary_Conqueror_Commoner,0.108132,0.122879,0.067128,0.040698,0.027082,0.012829,0.022797,-0.011077,-0.012704,-0.022416,-0.001624,-0.001049,-0.014123,-0.038534,0.025108,0.020817,0.014211,0.005321,0.000378,-0.001501,-0.001247,0.001855,-0.001725,0.005181,-0.001317
Hungary_EarlyArpadian,0.122929,0.131003,0.067128,0.052972,0.0397,0.018407,0.008695,0.008307,0.000409,-0.005285,-0.005034,0.005096,-0.020366,-0.025735,0.020766,0.011667,0.010561,0.005321,0.000503,0.001751,0.003244,-0.005935,-0.006902,0.009519,-0.001317
Italy_North_EarlyMedieval_Langobards:CL31.AG,0.085558,0.097995,0.062979,0.014213,0.024928,0.01199,0.011985,-0.011538,-0.011273,-0.014762,0.012179,-0.013038,-0.005203,-0.058353,0.012486,0.017635,0.030903,0.012543,0.002388,-0.000625,-0.006988,0.005688,0.001479,-0.004579,-0.011735
Serbia_Medieval_Gepidian:Vim2b.SG,0.103579,0.118817,0.066373,0.031979,0.039392,0.012829,0.009635,0.005538,0.003068,-0.011298,-0.008444,-0.000599,-0.025272,-0.023258,0.012486,0.011667,-0.001565,-0.000507,0.001509,0,-0.001746,0.011747,0.005423,0.010362,-0.001317

G25 distance: AED_1108 vs post-Hunnic Pannonian populations vs local Bavarians

Pannonian post-Hunnic (steppe-shifted) Local Bavarian average
Serbia_Medieval_Gepidian:Vim2b.SG
0.0507
Italy_North_EarlyMedieval_Langobards:CL31.AG
0.0669
Hungary_Conqueror_Elite
0.0689
Hungary_Conqueror_Commoner
0.0974
Hungary_EarlyArpadian
0.0981
Germany_EarlyMedieval:AED106.SG (local male)
0.1206
Germany_EarlyMedieval:AED204.SG (local male)
0.1186

AED_1108 (the Hunnic-affinity Bavarian woman) is closest to the Gepidian, Lombard, and Hungarian Conqueror populations - all post-Hunnic and post-Avar Pannonian groups with their own steppe and East Asian admixture. She is far from the contemporary local Bavarian male average (AED106, AED204), at G25 distance approximately 0.12, more than twice the distance to her closest Pannonian match. The geography of her closest matches traces the post-Hunnic demographic corridor from the Carpathian basin into Bavaria.