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Led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, a multidisciplinary research team analyzed ancient DNA data in the context of archaeological, anthropological and historical data to reconstruct the social dynamics of Avar steppe peoples who populated Europe’s Carpathian Basin in the 6th century . The study involved analyzing entire communities by sampling human remains from four fully excavated Avar burial grounds, as well as analyzing ancient DNA from a total of 424 individuals, approximately 300 of which had a close relative in the same burial ground.