Skulls show women moved across medieval Europe, not just men
berlin — The newcomers who arrived in the little farming villages of medieval Germany would have stood out: They had dark hair and tawny skin, spoke a different language and had remarkably tall heads.
Now scientists who investigated the unusually shaped skulls say they provide evidence that women also migrated long distances across medieval Europe, not just men. A genetic analysis showed the women travelled from what is now Romania, Bulgaria and northern Greece at a time when the continent was being reshaped by the collapse of the Roman Empire.
In a study published on Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say the women’s elongated heads — a result of binding done after birth — suggest they might have been high-class individuals.
“These women looked extremely different to the local women, very exotic if you will,” said one of the researchers, Joachim Burger, a population geneticist at the University of Mainz, Germany.
With colleagues from Europe and the United States, Burger compared the genetic profile of almost 40 human remains unearthed from 5th and 6th century burial sites in Bavaria, along the Isar and Danube rivers.
They expected to find the telltale signs of centuries of Roman presence in the area — soldiers from the Mediterranean leaving their genetic mark on the location population. Instead, it looked “very central or northern European — blond and fair-skinned, like modern-day Scandinavians,” Burger said.
The exception was a group with deformed skulls. Known from various cultures across the world, artificially elongated skulls may have been considered a form of beauty or denoted high status because of the time and effort required to bandage a child’s head, said Burger. While the practice is often associated with the Huns who swept into Europe from the East during the 5th century, the genetic makeup of the women found in Bavaria showed little Asian ancestry, suggesting that either head binding had been adopted by people living in southeastern Europe or emerged there independently. —