So far unknown humans found at Lake Balaton: History books will be rewritten?
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Archaeologists using different techniques have discovered new, previously unknown humans in Hungary near Lake Balaton.
Huge discovery at Lake Balaton
In Hungary, excavations were carried out in 2003 and 2004 on the outskirts of Balatonkeresztúr. During the project, led by Szilvia Fábián, graves dating back to the Bronze Age were found at several sites of different periods.
The results were studied for a long time before being published recently. The paper was written by Dániel Gerber for the Oxford Academic journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Lake Balaton is an important research site
Hungary’s most popular holiday destination, Lake Balaton is also an important treasure for researchers. Thanks to the constantly changing water levels over thousands of years, the artefacts found at the Balatonkeresztúr site can easily be separated into different periods over time.
The burials examined in the study were left behind by communities belonging to the Somogyvár-Vinkovci and Kisapostag cultures, and later to the lime-lined pottery culture, in the period of 2560-1620 BC.
The youngest archaeological find was a mass grave of eight people, which was the starting point for archaeogenomic investigations. Its peculiarity is that the bodies of one of the eight units were buried in a settlement pit, although the period was characterised by the burial rite of cremation, economx.hu reports.
Great work by Hungarian scientists. Interesting to read about the discoveries of diversity of peopple in Hungarian region. So modern day Hungarians are most likely descendants of peopple who migrated from the Baltic region and mixed with peopple who lived in Transdanubia. I hope scientists make more evidence based discoveries of even earlier cultures in the region.
It is super exciting to find out more about our ancestry.