Nándor Dreisziger

The Lessons of Genomic
Research

 

The dawn of the 21st century witnessed the birth of the new science of genomics. This event coincided with the sequencing of the human genome in the year 2000. Genomics is also known as “deep ancestry” and has significant implications for the study of our distant past. Hitherto our knowledge of ancient times, even the second half of the first millennium A.D., derived mainly from such fields as archaeology, anthropology, mythology, paleo-linguistics, paleo-musicology as well as the examination of very rare manuscript sources such as chronicles, travel and government reports. In the case of peoples without a tradition of keeping written records, these latter sources invariably originated with foreigners who often had very limited knowledge of the events and conditions they described. To these means of elucidating the distant past genomics offers a new and potent instrument.
The impact of this new science on historiography has already been felt in countries where genomic research was undertaken as soon as this new science, one might say new branch of genetics, became known. A good example is the United Kingdom where several scientists applied genomics to the re-examination of British prehistory. Perhaps the most prominent of them, Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, in a massive study of the pre-history of the British Isles concluded that most of the invaders of these islands (the Celts, the Romans, the Angles, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Danes and the Normans) have left minimal genetic footprints. He also argued that the people who brought the proto-English language to England were not the Angles and Saxons of the early Middle Ages as believed hitherto, but migrants who arrived centuries earlier.
Scientists in Hungary did not wait long after the debut of genomics to begin applying it to the study of Hungarian pre-history. The most significant of such studies was done by a team headed by Professor István Raskó of the University of Szeged’s medical school and director of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Biological Research Centre, Institute of Genetics. The project focused on the Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century A.D. and its genetic legacy.
The decision to focus on this subject was an important one since there are many unanswered questions relating to this supposedly momentous event in Hungarian history. The Conquest (the Hungarian word is honfoglalás, which translates literally as “taking of [a] home”) is one of many such developments in Europe during the Dark Ages—and it had an outcome that differs from the others. It could be said that, if it happened as it has been portrayed throughout the centuries, it defies the logic of the history of conquests in the early medieval period.
In the Hungarian case, according to the received version of this event, the Conquest resulted in the establishment by the conquerors of a nation that, for a while at least, continued the traditions of the newcomer—including a nomadic lifestyle and wide-ranging military campaigns in search of tribute and booty. More importantly, in this instance the conquerors are known to have imposed their language on the local autochthonous population. In this latter aspect especially, the Hungarian Conquest seems to have been highly a-typical, one might almost say unique. In all other significant conquests during Europe’s Dark Ages different patterns prevailed. Among the conquests that had dissimilar outcomes were those of the Scandinavians—whether called Norsemen, Vikings, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes or Varangians. Scandinavian warriors occupied and then settled large areas in eastern and northern England—the land known for some time as Danelaw. Other Scandinavians ravaged and then occupied northern France, about the same time as the “Hungarian Conquest” happened. Later, in 1066, the descendants of these people, by then known as the Normans, conquered England and installed themselves as the ruling elite there. Other Scandinavians, known as the Varangians, imposed themselves as the rulers of ancient Rus—in Novgorod, then in Kiev, and then elsewhere. Closer to Danubian Europe and somewhat earlier, Turkic-speaking Bulgars established their rule over local, mainly Slavic-speaking populations in the Lower Danube Valley. In all of these cases, the conquerors failed to impose their language on a long-term basis. In fact, in a few generations they all learned the language of their subjects. Even the Normans of Normandy (whose ancestors in the mid-10th century still spoke Scandinavian dialects) were unable to impose their recently acquired French language on their English subjects, even though they, in particular the priests that came with them, had a well-developed tradition of literacy.

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Nándor Dreisziger
arrived in Canada from Hungary in 1956. Since 1970 he has been teaching Canadian
and European history at the Royal Military College of Canada. His research interests
include the history of North America in wartime, Hungary before and during
World War II, and Hungarians in North America.