Interesting and timely article for me personally, as a Polish + Lemko [1] American. The other day I spent a bit of time diving into the DNA results I got back from one of those ancestry services. Apparently, while the vast majority of my results say I'm Eastern European / Slavic / Pannonian etc. (depends on the service), my specific fatherline and motherline are both pre-Slavic: one Celtic/Roman and the other Ice Age hunter-gatherer.
From my own research and this article, this seems to be a rare situation? Or I guess the fatherline and motherline are still pretty small percentages, so that lines up with the "minor traces" mentioned.
In Poland specifically, the research overturns earlier ideas of long-term population continuity. Genetic results show that starting in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the region’s earlier inhabitants—descendants of populations with strong links to Northern Europe and Scandinavia in particular—almost entirely disappeared and were successively replaced by newcomers from the East, who are closely related to modern Poles, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. This conclusion is reinforced by the analysis of some of the earliest known Slavic inhumation graves in Poland, excavated at the site of Gródek, which provide rare and direct evidence of these early migrants. While the population shift was overwhelming, the genetic evidence also reveals minor traces of mixing with local populations. These findings underscore both the scale of population change and the complex dynamics that shaped the roots of today’s Central and Eastern European linguistic landscape.
Does anyone know what happened to the original people of Poland? I.e. the article explains that almost the entire pre-existing population of Poland was replaced by Slavs around the 5th/6th century, but not through war or conquest. So where did all the people go, and why?
ivan_gammel · 15h ago
I don't know if it is connected, but 6th century is when the plague of Justinian happened and it spread to Northern Europe too. In 536 there was a volcanic winter, one of the worst climate-impacting events in documented history that started an ice age. Was a pretty tough time to survive in general.
keiferski · 15h ago
"Original" depends on what time period you're referring to, because the people before the Slavs weren't there for that long themselves.
It was so shit an boring they simply turned around and left.
tucnak · 14h ago
spoken like a true Polak!
dvh · 17h ago
> our genetic results offer the first concrete clues to the formation of Slavic ancestry—pointing to a likely origin somewhere between the Dniester and Don rivers
Just like we learned in elementary school, 30 years ago.
adrian_b · 16h ago
True, but there always were people who did not believe this theory, claiming that there is not enough evidence for it.
In recent years evidence has been accumulating that this was actually right, like the genetic evidence mentioned in TFA.
orthoxerox · 15h ago
Really? I learned the urheimat was between the Vistula and the Dnieper. That's where rivers have predominantly Slavic names: Wieprz, Stokhid, Goryn, Pripyat, Teteriv.
skrebbel · 16h ago
[flagged]
Ygg2 · 16h ago
Seeing how word slave is derived from Slavs, the snark is well warranted.
GalahiSimtam · 15h ago
Funny they both originated from Sclaveni/Sklabenoi, just one of the tribe of south Slavs. But for the slave trade in middle ages, maybe you guys would call us Slovs (the jury is out on that)
otabdeveloper4 · 15h ago
This is the accepted theory, but akshually there is no way from a linguistic standpoint that the "k" between the "s" and "l" would simply appear out of nowhere. The linguistics is impossible.
The etymology deriving from σκυλεύω makes more sense.
quibono · 14h ago
Interesting, could you expand on this please? What does σκυλεύω mean and how would this transformation work?
polotics · 14h ago
dispossed ennemy, captured, this makes a lot more sense indeed https://lsj.gr/wiki/%CF%83%CE%BA%CF%85%CE%BB%CE%B5%CF%8D%CF%...
than the notion "slav" would have somehow evolved "up" linguistically to get a "k" inserted. y'all know languages mellows over time, donty'all?
gethly · 16h ago
Interesting fact - Slavs are the largest white sub-ethnicity in the world.
vintermann · 15h ago
According to a fairly arbitrary decision of which sub-groups to split up further and which to see as one.
And quite likely, you will also need another fairly arbitrary decision of which groups to include as "white" (if you included Turkic people as white, and saw them as a single group, I'm pretty sure there are more of them than Slavs).
anal_reactor · 15h ago
I have a theory based on absolutely nothing that cultures rarely ever fundamentally change. When Americans decided that racism is bad, they didn't reject the racial theory as a whole, they just concluded that some details of its application were wrong. Otherwise it's difficult to explain why a seemingly race-blind society keeps discussing race all the time, and dedicates so much effort into preserving information about who is what race. Similarly, despite democratic revolutions, both Russian and Chinese societies keep going back to some form of monarchy - this form of governance is just deeply ingrained in their culture, and you won't change it overnight.
myrmidon · 14h ago
> Otherwise it's difficult to explain why a seemingly race-blind society keeps discussing race all the time, and dedicates so much effort into preserving information about who is what race.
I think a core problem there is that people fail to realize that emphasizing and celebrating the own ethnicity/gender/sexuality/religion opens the door for discrimination along those lines.
Demonstrating "pride" to belong to some group is never consequence-free, and often a really bad trade-off overall.
vintermann · 13h ago
I basically agree. There should be no pride or shame in things you can't take neither credit or blame for. I also don't buy the common argument that taking pride in something is necessary to counterweight the shame associated with it in the past.
But I also think there are positive ways of celebrating your culture.
myrmidon · 13h ago
> But I also think there are positive ways of celebrating your culture.
I think you're right, I was being too prohibitive.
When people start to reduce their own identity (and their judgement of others) to just one dimension is where the actually dangerous territory starts, but it is a very easy position to end up in sadly (even right after being on the receiving end).
BenGosub · 8h ago
A quick Google search estimates total Turkic people at 170M
Grok could say anything. Isn't there a rule yet on just blatantly copy/pasting AI answers ?
actionfromafar · 10h ago
Gr0k wouldn't lie to you about race. Maybe the spacerace.
lifestyleguru · 15h ago
Interesting fact - "white ethnicity" is used mostly in context of a "racial theories" by Germanic and Anglo-saxon societies according to which Slavs are not white, yet Slavs somehow believe they belong to the "white group". Hint - it's not about skin shade or color. The Germanic complex of Slavs is a real thing, e.g. some Slavs believe they are superior because they "descend from Vikings".
gethly · 15h ago
You might be referring to the works of Madison Grant where he split whites into three groups: Nordics, Alpines and Mediterranean. The Nordics are seen as the most white, Alpines as less white and Mediterraneans even less white. In this case Slavic people are in the Alpine class.
If you look at Viking migration by DNA, you can find 1:1 match with Grant's Nordic peoples areas in Europe.
helge9210 · 15h ago
Reminds me of a joke: calling a Slav white is like buying a "made in Vietnam" Rolex.
personalityson · 15h ago
If not white, what are they?
ivan_gammel · 15h ago
"white" is a racist label that does not take into account the complexity of world history. It may be reasonable to use it in contexts of historical racism, e.g. in America (where many Slavic people were almost absent) or Sub-Saharan Africa (zero Slavic presence during colonial times), but it just does not make much sense elsewhere, e.g. it's absolutely irrelevant when describing ethnic tensions between Slavs and Caucasians or Central Asians.
ajuc · 15h ago
"White" in USA means "Anglo-Saxon Protestants + some groups we accept as close enough".
Makes no sense, but the whole idea of races is dumb from the start (same skin color is a very bad proxy for DNA similarity), so it's pointless to correct them.
griffzhowl · 14h ago
Calling anyone in the US "Anglo-Saxon" is already buying in to a mythology about ethnic origins. Even in England I doubt you'll find many people whose ancestry is derived mainly from the Angle and Saxon tribes as opposed to being a mix of pre-Celtic British, Celtic, Norman, other Germanic, etc.
And Protestantism didn't exist until centuries after the Anglo-Saxons stopped being identifiable groups, if they ever were
peterfirefly · 15h ago
> very bad proxy for DNA similarity
It's actually a remarkably good one. If we continue to mix for several hundred years more then it won't be. For now, it is.
ajuc · 15h ago
Because of the founder effect, white people have way lower genetic diversity.
It's like we've split the encyclopedia into three books: A-S, T, and U-Z.
otabdeveloper4 · 15h ago
> white people have way lower genetic diversity
This isn't true.
polotics · 13h ago
Indeed really not true. For example: I am quite mixed, declared my own race on an unclaimed spot of non-scientific identity-formation, and despite what some would say and discounting any possible future irradiation, my genitic diversity is absolutely zero ;-)
At various points in time Italians, Jews, Slavs weren't considered "white" in US.
See the above joke. It's seriously how many Americans think even now.
EnPissant · 15h ago
There was obviously negative sentiment towards various European groups, but they were always considered "white".
ajuc · 15h ago
Quote from the article:
> Slavic peoples were considered to be people of an "inferior race" who were unable to assimilate into American society.[4] They were originally not considered to be "fully white" (and thus fully American), and Slavic peoples' "whiteness" continues to be a debate to this day, but most people consider them to be of Caucasian culture
EnPissant · 14h ago
The citations for this are horrible if you follow them.
edit:
One of them is just some 24 minute movie.
The other is false. The Immigration Act of 1924 did not establish any category of "inferior" races or countries.
defrost · 14h ago
In the 1940 US census, "white" included anyone of Mexican descent.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted a Good Neighbor policy that sought better relations with Mexico. In 1935, a federal judge ruled that three Mexican immigrants were ineligible for citizenship because they were not white, as required by federal law.
Mexico protested, and Roosevelt decided to circumvent the decision and make sure the federal government treated Hispanics as white. The State Department, the Census Bureau, the Labor Department, and other government agencies therefore made sure to uniformly classify people of Mexican descent as white.
This policy encouraged the League of United Latin American Citizens in its quest to minimize discrimination by asserting their whiteness.
The race category of "Mexican" was eliminated in 1940, and the population of Mexican descent was counted with the white population.
The entire "science of race" in the US was fairly arbitrary phrenology adjacent quack science.
graycrow · 15h ago
Sorry, but this joke is stupid.
helge9210 · 15h ago
Not if you consider all the modern negative connotations of being called "white". Eastern Europe was under colonial rule (of Russian empire) up until 1980-90s.
peppingdore · 15h ago
Doesn’t the word “white” obviously refer to the skin color? If you think it has to bring something about colonialism it’s probably because you have somewhat of a twisted perception of reality.
ajuc · 15h ago
Russians are Slavs too. They are the last remaining colonial empire and historically one of the worst bullies ever.
Poles are Slavs, and they colonized EE before Russians took over.
It's just a pointless subdivision within a pointless hierarchy.
Races as defined by Americans don't match skin color nor DNA proximity.
Skin color doesn't match DNA proximity.
And none of these map cleanly into "bully vs victim" subdivisions. Mostly because groups of people move from bullies to victims and back over time. People who systematically have the chance to bully others will eventually do that.
vintermann · 15h ago
Not colonial rule, and not the Russian Empire...
sam_lowry_ · 14h ago
You happen to be a Russian over 60, right?
vintermann · 13h ago
No, just someone who is not a jingoist for an Eastern European country.
Though I'm sure Russian jingoists over 60 today too prefer to see Soviet-allied states as "their empire". It's no more true than saying Argentina was a US colony - which means yes, you could say it, but we'd all be dumber for thinking of it like that.
From my own research and this article, this seems to be a rare situation? Or I guess the fatherline and motherline are still pretty small percentages, so that lines up with the "minor traces" mentioned.
In Poland specifically, the research overturns earlier ideas of long-term population continuity. Genetic results show that starting in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the region’s earlier inhabitants—descendants of populations with strong links to Northern Europe and Scandinavia in particular—almost entirely disappeared and were successively replaced by newcomers from the East, who are closely related to modern Poles, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. This conclusion is reinforced by the analysis of some of the earliest known Slavic inhumation graves in Poland, excavated at the site of Gródek, which provide rare and direct evidence of these early migrants. While the population shift was overwhelming, the genetic evidence also reveals minor traces of mixing with local populations. These findings underscore both the scale of population change and the complex dynamics that shaped the roots of today’s Central and Eastern European linguistic landscape.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemkos
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_migrations
But in reference to the Slavic migrations, I think they likely headed west and south:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
Just like we learned in elementary school, 30 years ago.
In recent years evidence has been accumulating that this was actually right, like the genetic evidence mentioned in TFA.
The etymology deriving from σκυλεύω makes more sense.
And quite likely, you will also need another fairly arbitrary decision of which groups to include as "white" (if you included Turkic people as white, and saw them as a single group, I'm pretty sure there are more of them than Slavs).
I think a core problem there is that people fail to realize that emphasizing and celebrating the own ethnicity/gender/sexuality/religion opens the door for discrimination along those lines.
Demonstrating "pride" to belong to some group is never consequence-free, and often a really bad trade-off overall.
But I also think there are positive ways of celebrating your culture.
I think you're right, I was being too prohibitive.
When people start to reduce their own identity (and their judgement of others) to just one dimension is where the actually dangerous territory starts, but it is a very easy position to end up in sadly (even right after being on the receiving end).
If you look at Viking migration by DNA, you can find 1:1 match with Grant's Nordic peoples areas in Europe.
Makes no sense, but the whole idea of races is dumb from the start (same skin color is a very bad proxy for DNA similarity), so it's pointless to correct them.
And Protestantism didn't exist until centuries after the Anglo-Saxons stopped being identifiable groups, if they ever were
It's actually a remarkably good one. If we continue to mix for several hundred years more then it won't be. For now, it is.
It's like we've split the encyclopedia into three books: A-S, T, and U-Z.
This isn't true.
At various points in time Italians, Jews, Slavs weren't considered "white" in US.
See the above joke. It's seriously how many Americans think even now.
> Slavic peoples were considered to be people of an "inferior race" who were unable to assimilate into American society.[4] They were originally not considered to be "fully white" (and thus fully American), and Slavic peoples' "whiteness" continues to be a debate to this day, but most people consider them to be of Caucasian culture
edit:
One of them is just some 24 minute movie.
The other is false. The Immigration Act of 1924 did not establish any category of "inferior" races or countries.
What started as Slaves OR Free Whites OR Other Free People later granulated in fair arbirtray and often political ways: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/USCensus...
The entire "science of race" in the US was fairly arbitrary phrenology adjacent quack science.
Poles are Slavs, and they colonized EE before Russians took over.
It's just a pointless subdivision within a pointless hierarchy.
Races as defined by Americans don't match skin color nor DNA proximity.
Skin color doesn't match DNA proximity.
And none of these map cleanly into "bully vs victim" subdivisions. Mostly because groups of people move from bullies to victims and back over time. People who systematically have the chance to bully others will eventually do that.
Though I'm sure Russian jingoists over 60 today too prefer to see Soviet-allied states as "their empire". It's no more true than saying Argentina was a US colony - which means yes, you could say it, but we'd all be dumber for thinking of it like that.