dna archaelogy

[Bullika]

It doesnt sound as boring as you may think, dna archaelogy seems to be replacing traditional archaelogical methods-rewriting history as we know it.

i was watching a documentary on the history channel today while i was lazing about doing nothing, that showed these archaelogists in excavating an old village in southern sweden on the baltic sea coast digging up a grave from the viking period.

the man, i cant remember his name a historian from goteborg university, uncovered all these objects that he said were scandinavian, beads, swords, battle axes, but another noticed that some of the skeletons wore different beads and objects that were not scandinavian and had higher cheek bones. he sent a tooth from some of the skeletons for dna analysis to a scientist at one swedish university who drilled into the tooth, extracted the dna within the tooth using some chemicals and her results claimed the guy was Asian!!!! or probably Mongolian/Turkic!!!

Later more dna analysis was made to all the other viking skeletons in Gotland, sweden which showed that nearly all of the vikings had at least one ancestor or parent of inner-asian origin. I was shocked.

Apparently the vikings controlled the Vistula river from the black sea to the baltic sea and would have come into contact with mongol-turkic tribes like the pechenegs, cumans and proto-bulgars, and some would have ended up in scandinavia as either slaves or soldiers.

Its quite different to the vikings i was taught about at school who were blond blue eyed, aryans who were xenophobic and would happily chop your leg off for fun.

[cannedmoose]

It's the same as the Roman Empire. We're all taught that Roman legionaries were these strong-looking, straight-nosed Italian types, whereas in reality they were drawn from all corners of the empire. There's evidence at Hadrian's Wall in northern England of Roman soldiers who came from modern-day Syria, Morocco and elsewhere. The Vikings were less of an organised empire than an ethnic group spread across northern Europe, so it's likely that they were just as diverse. Sounds like an interesting documentary.

[Xenos 2Fan]

Very interesting Mehmet. Good point about the Roman empire Moose. The same can be said about the Ottoman armies. The soldiers came from every corner of the empire.