In quite a few villages along the Danube in southern Germany, archaeologists have found remarkable skeletons of women with deformed skulls.
The shape is due to the fact that the girls’ heads have been tied during their growing years.
Now researchers at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz have found an explanation for the phenomenon.
Dark women came from the east
DNA analysis revealed that the women were dark-haired and brown-eyed, but this was not common in southern Germany around the year 500.
These skeletons have all been found next to others, which had not undergone such disfigurement. Those skeletons, however, are of fair-haired and blue-eyed people.
The genetic material of these people comes together with the then inhabitants of the region, but the long-headed women are more similar to the then inhabitants of Romania and Bulgaria, where it was customary among the better-off to lengthen the heads of both boys and girls.
Strengthen power alliances
Since the skulls are only of women, the researchers not only think it certain that they came from the east, but it also seems clear that there was no general migration.
It is most likely that they were married to rulers in connection with the formation of alliances in these territories of Europe in the early Middle Ages.
