DNA evidence reshapes the history of Balkan settlement
Despite the long-standing influence of the Roman Empire on the Balkan Peninsula, recent DNA analyses show no genetic traces of Italian ancestry among populations in the region during the first millennium AD. The Balkans appear to have been settled by groups from Western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), the Pontic-Kazakh steppes, and parts of Northern and Eastern Europe, including Slavic communities. The study was published in Cell.
Today, roughly thirty to sixty percent of people in the Balkans trace their roots to Slavic ancestors. Yet the exact sequence of Balkan settlement remains partly elusive, largely because many historical sources come from Roman authors, and the Slavs did not leave a written record at that time. By using ancient DNA analysis, researchers aimed to minimize bias and gain clearer insights. DNA was extracted from 136 individuals found across twenty Balkan sites, with collaboration from local archaeologists and historians to contextualize the genetic data culturally and historically.
Researchers were surprised to find no evidence supporting Italian origins for Balkan residents during the Iron Age, when Rome reached its peak. Instead, the findings indicate a significant influx from Western Anatolia, another region within the ancient Roman world. Notably, a 16-year-old boy from a major Roman city was identified as fully East African in ancestry. He was buried with an oil lamp showing Jupiter’s eagle, yet isotope analysis of his teeth suggested a childhood diet rich in marine proteins, implying he may have grown up far from central authority centers within or near diverse empire frontiers.
In the late imperial period, roughly between AD 250 and 550, people from Northern Europe and the Pontic-Kazakh steppe regions continued to migrate into the Balkans.
Lead author David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard University, explained, “We found that these two clades, North Central European and Sarmatian-Scythian, tended to merge, suggesting they formed multi-ethnic confederations of migrating groups.”
After the Western Roman Empire collapsed, a substantial Slavic migration pushed from Eastern Europe toward the Balkans. By after AD 700, the ancestral structures observed in Balkan populations closely resembled those of modern humans, and these migrations overlap with known Slavic movements. DNA analysis, however, provides a scale of insight that historical records alone cannot match.
Reich noted that debates persist about how influential these migrations were and whether Slavic language spread was driven more by cultural exchange or population movement. The study’s findings indicate a strong demographic impact: more than half of the current ancestors of most Balkan groups trace back to Slavic origins. Even in countries where Slavic languages are not spoken today, such as Greece, about one third show Slavic ancestry.
The discovery carries potential social and political implications given the Balkans’ long history of identity-related tensions and conflicts. It reframes conversations about the region’s demographic past and the extent of Slavic influence on the present-day population.
A final, puzzling line in the text mentions satellites before a note about the growth of a new island off the coast of Japan, which remains unrelated to the Balkan study.