Invading Huns sent women ahead to marry Bavarian men, by Oliver Moody.

Around 500AD, as the Roman empire buckled under invading Goths, Huns and Vandals, something very odd happened in the Bavarian countryside.

Sleepy hamlets populated by fair-haired, blue-eyed farmers were suddenly inundated with strange women who had brown eyes, darkish locks and dramatically elongated skulls that had been squeezed with bandages or wooden blocks since childhood.

A study of the newcomers’ DNA suggests the women journeyed hundreds of kilometres from the bloody tumult of the east to form strategic marriages with the local men. They were, in other words, a Hunnytrap. …

This practice, artificial cranial deformation, has generally been associated with the Huns.

There were several surprises in the cemeteries’ DNA. The native farmers were genetically very homogenous and most closely resembled modern Germans. There was no trace of Roman genes, suggesting while the legions may have come and seen, they had not conquered in the romantic sense. The Nefertiti women, on the other hand, came from all over the shop: one had strong Asian ancestry, but others were from what is now Romania and Bulgaria.

hat-tip Stephen Neil