Specialists from the Southern Federal University (SFU), together with the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 7-9. They determined that the Khazars living in the Don belonged to a mixed Mongolian-Caucasian type. Prior to this, scientists did not know exactly what the Khazars looked like. This was reported to socialbites.ca in SFU.
7.-8. centuries, in the North-Eastern Caucasus and in the gap between the Volga and the Don, nomadic and settled peoples formed a powerful medieval state called the Khazar Khaganate or Khazarya.
The scientists performed DNA phenotyping of remains from outstanding tombs in Southern Russia of the Khazar period to generate phenotypic markers of the remains according to the following characteristics: eye, hair, skin color, as well as blood types by blood type. AB0 system.
The remains of the noble warriors that we examined, found in the burial mounds of the Lower Don, belong to the nomadic elite of the kaganate. This became clear thanks to the characteristic features of the burial, Evgeny Vdovchenkov, head of the Department of Archeology and History of the Ancient World at the SFU Institute of History and International Relations, told socialbites.ca.
According to the results of the studies, it was determined that the owners had a Mongoloid-Caucasoid mixed type. It was also found that eight of the ten buried people had brown eyes, dark hair and predominantly dark skin during their lifetimes. People from two burials had gray-blue eyes, and one person had blond hair.
After evaluating the genetic markers, the scientists concluded that the nomadic elite of the Khazar Khaganate consisted of people with various population characteristics.
“The data obtained is an important evidence of the ethnocultural and genetic diversity of the representatives of the Khazar Khaganate, which determines their phenotypic differences. But at the same time, the main part of the sample, namely 8 out of 10 people, are dark-haired and eyed people, which is quite consistent with the knowledge of physical anthropologists about the Mongolian nature of a significant part of the nomads. this time, this work complements the written and archaeological sources on the history of the Khazar Khaganate, Olga Aramova, an employee of the Southern Federal University and director of Genotype LLC, told socialbites.ca.
ancient scientists solved The mystery of the color of Bloody Falls in Antarctica.