The Avars settled the Carpathian Basin in 567/68 CE, establishing an empire lasting over 200 years. Who they were and where they came from is highly debated. Contemporaries have disagreed about whether they were, as they claimed, the direct successors of the Mongolian Steppe Rouran empire that was destroyed by the Turks in ∼550 CE. Here, we analyze new genome-wide data from 66 pre-Avar and Avar-period Carpathian Basin individuals, including the 8 richest Avar-period burials and further elite sites from Avar's empire core region. Our results provide support for a rapid long-distance trans-Eurasian migration of Avar-period elites. These individuals carried Northeast Asian ancestry matching the profile of preceding Mongolian Steppe populations, particularly a genome available from the Rouran period. Some of the later elite individuals carried an additional non-local ancestry component broadly matching the steppe, which could point to a later migration or reflect greater genetic diversity within the initial migrant population.

Aquincum Museum and Archaeological Park 1031 Budapest Hungary

Damjanich Museum 5000 Szolnok Hungary

Department of Archaeogenetics Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 04103 Leipzig Germany

Department of Archaeogenetics Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 04103 Leipzig Germany; ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers School of Mathematical Sciences The University of Adelaide Adelaide SA 5005 Australia

Department of Archaeogenetics Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 04103 Leipzig Germany; Department of Archaeology and Museology Faculty of Arts Masaryk University 60200 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Art History Istanbul Medeniyet University 34720 Istanbul Turkey

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology University of Vienna 1030 Vienna Austria

Department of Genetics Harvard Medical School Boston MA 02115 USA; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT Cambridge MA 02142 USA

Department of Genetics Harvard Medical School Boston MA 02115 USA; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT Cambridge MA 02142 USA; Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Cambridge MA 02138 USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Harvard Medical School Boston MA 02115 USA

Dept of Biological Anthropology Eötvös Loránd University 1117 Budapest Hungary

Dept of Biological Anthropology Szeged University 6701 Szeged Hungary

Déri Museum 4026 Debrecen Hungary

Dobó István Museum 3300 Eger Hungary

Ferenczy Museum Center 2000 Szentendre Hungary

Hungarian National Museum 1113 Budapest Hungary

Institute for Advanced Study Princeton NJ 08540 USA

Institute for Medieval Research Austrian Academy of Sciences 1020 Vienna Austria; Institute of Austrian Historical Research University of Vienna 1010 Vienna Austria

Institute of Archaeogenomics Research Centre for the Humanities Eötvös Loránd Research Network 1097 Budapest Hungary

Institute of Archaeological Sciences ELTE Eötvös Loránd University 1088 Budapest Hungary

Institute of Archaeology Research Centre for the Humanities Eötvös Loránd Research Network 1097 Budapest Hungary

Katona József Museum 6000 Kecskemét Hungary

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History 07745 Jena Germany

Móra Ferenc Museum 6720 Szeged Hungary

Research Centre for the Humanities Eötvös Loránd Research Network 1097 Budapest Hungary

Rétközi Múzeum 4600 Kisvárda Hungary

Salisbury Ltd 1016 Budapest Hungary

School of Biological Sciences Seoul National University 08826 Seoul Republic of Korea

Wosinsky Mór Museum 7100 Szekszárd Hungary

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The dahliagram: An interdisciplinary tool for investigation, visualization, and communication of past human-environmental interaction