During the Hungarian Conquest in the 10th century CE, the early medieval Magyars, a group of mounted warriors from Eastern Europe, settled in the Carpathian Basin. They likely introduced the Hungarian language to this new settlement area, during an event documented by both written sources and archaeological evidence. Previous archaeogenetic research identified the newcomers as migrants from the Eurasian steppe. However, genome-wide ancient DNA from putative source populations has not been available to test alternative theories of their precise source. We generated genome-wide ancient DNA data for 131 individuals from candidate archaeological contexts in the Circum-Uralic region in present-day Russia. Our results tightly link the Magyars to people of the Early Medieval Karayakupovo archaeological horizon on both the European and Asian sides of the southern Urals. Our analyes show that ancestors of the people of the Karayakupovo archaeological horizon were established in the Southern Urals by the Iron Age and that their descendants persisted locally in the Volga-Kama region until at least the 14th century.

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Cambridge MA 02142 USA

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

Department of Archaeology Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Pázmány Péter Catholic University; Budapest Hungary

Department of Archaeology Kazan Federal University Kazan Republic of Tatarstan Russia

Department of Biology and Ecology Faculty of Science University of Ostrava; Ostrava Czechia

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology University of Vienna; Vienna Austria

Department of Genetics Harvard Medical School; Boston MA 02138 USA

Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Harvard University; Cambridge MA USA

Doctoral School of Biology ELTE Eötvös Loránd University; Budapest Hungary

Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Boston MA 02138 USA

Hungarian Prehistory Research group HUN REN Research Centre for the Humanities; Budapest Hungary

Institute of Archaeogenomics HUN REN Research Centre for the Humanities; Budapest Hungary

Institute of Archaeology HUN REN Research Centre for the Humanities Hungarian Research Network ; Budapest Hungary

Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Kyiv Ukraine

Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan; Kazan Republic of Tatarstan Russia

Institute of History Language and Literature Ufa Federal Research Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences; Ufa Republic of Bashkortostan Russia

Institute of the Problems of Northern Development Tyumen Scientific Centre Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Tyumen Russia

National Museum of Tatarstan Republic; Kazan Republic of Tatarstan Russia

National Museum of the Republic of Bashkortostan; Ufa Republic of Bashkortostan Russia

National Research Tomsk State University; Tomsk Russia

R G Kuzeev Institute of Ethnological Studies Ufa Federal Research Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences; Ufa Republic of Bashkortostan Russia

Research Laboratory of Archeology Samara National Research University; Samara Russia

Samara Regional Museum of History and Local Lore named after P 5 Alabin; Samara Russia

Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education; Samara Russia

South Ural Branch of the Institute of History and Archeology Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Chelyabinsk Russia

TsMP LLC; Kazan Republic of Tatarstan Russia

Udmurt Institute of History Language and Literature Udmurt Federal Research Center Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Izhevsk Udmurt Republic Russia

University of Tyumen; Tyumen Russia

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