The Decline of Roman Polygenic Scores Due to ImmigrationResearchers analyzed 127 Ancient Roman genomes to understand the possible reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. They found that intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era to the Iron Age, but then declined after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period, only to increase in Late Antiquity. This decline, they state, can be attributed to foreign immigration from places like the Middle East during the Imperial Period.
Our sample shows a clear shift in genetic ancestry components between the Iron Age and the Imperial Period, where the former was characterised by a preponderance of Central European ancestry and the latter by Near-Eastern-like ancestry (Antonio et al., 2019).
The end of the Imperial Period witnessed the
Völkerwanderung, the great migration of Germanic-speaking peoples, which saw northern Europeans settle in areas of the former Roman Empire, including the Italian peninsula. This collapse and subsequent migration of northern Europeans helped reverse the decline seen in polygenic scores of the previous era brought on by non-European peoples, specifically those of
MENA ancestry.
The collapse of the Roman Empire was accompanied and accelerated by an influx of Germanic people which settled in Italy and changed its genetic landscape (Antonio et al., 2019). This influx can explain the slow rise in the polygenic scores of Late Antiquity and into the Medieval period, which partly reversed the decline observed in the Imperial Period.
Source:
Piffer, 2023⚡️
@FolkishObserver
