Rosa Rubicondior: Origin of a People - The Migration of the Slavs

Excavation in 2020 at the pre-Slavic cemetery of Brücken, Mansfeld-Südharz District (Saxony-Anhalt).

How the Slavic migration reshaped Central and Eastern Europe

This blog post is something of a departure from my usual refutations of creationism. At times, that exercise can feel like shooting fish in a barrel, since almost every scientific paper on palaeontology, cosmology, or evolutionary biology casually refutes creationism simply by presenting the facts and evidence—something creationism singularly lacks.

This, however, is only tangentially related to creationism, in that it concerns the diversification of humans into distinct regional cultural and genetic populations. That richness and complexity is utterly incompatible with the notion that all of humanity radiated out from a single founder population of eight related individuals in the Middle East.

Instead, it is about the genetic evidence for the origins of the Slavic peoples, for whom I feel a special affinity. My youngest son is married to a Slav woman from Czechia and now lives and works there. Former Czechoslovakia also played a formative role in my political development during the 1960s, when the Prague Spring gave those of us on the left hope for a form of socialism that was democratic, open, and inclusive — rather than the totalitarian system into which Soviet Communism had degenerated. The self-sacrifice of the young idealists Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc, in response to the Soviet-led invasion that suppressed the reforms, was a profound inspiration — about which I wrote after a visit to Prague in December 2011, when a visit to their memorial in Wenceslaus Square, on the site of their self-immolation, reduced me to tears.

Since then, we have returned to Czechia several times. On our most recent trip in the summer of 2024, we visited the museum in the Moravský Krumlov castle near Brno, which currently houses a series of immense art nouveau paintings by the Czech artist Alphons Maria Mucha—perhaps better known in the West for his commercial art nouveau designs for chocolate boxes, biscuit tins, and soap packages that epitomised the 1920s and 30s. The series — a Czech national treasure I described at length soon after our return — titled The Epic of the Slavs, was pained between 1912 and 1926. It depicts the story of the Slavic peoples’ development in Eastern Europe up to the mid-1920s: a people struggling to forge an identity under political pressure from surrounding religious powers, from Eastern Orthodoxy in the south and east, to Catholicism in the west, followed later by German Protestantism. Like the Irish, the Czech people’s identity was forged in this power struggle, eventually emerging as proud and independent. Today, Czechia is one of the most atheist countries in Europe.

This article, however, is about the deeper origins of the Slavic peoples, as described in a recent open-access paper in Nature by an international team of researchers led by Joscha Gretzinger of the Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.

The Slavic Peoples Since 1926.

Interwar Period (1920s–1939): Newly independent Slavic nations such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia navigated fragile democracies, nationalism, and growing external pressures from fascism and Soviet influence.
Second World War (1939–1945): Slavic lands became major battlefields. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were invaded and partitioned. Resistance movements, including the Yugoslav Partisans, played decisive roles in the war’s outcome.
Soviet Era (1945–1989): Much of Eastern and Central Europe fell under Soviet domination. Communist regimes repressed dissent but also industrialised and modernised. Tito’s Yugoslavia was an exception, maintaining a more independent socialist path.
Democratic Revolutions (1989–1991): The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, Solidarity in Poland, and other popular movements peacefully toppled Communist rule. Yugoslavia, however, disintegrated violently in the 1990s with ethnic conflicts and wars.
Velvet Divorce of Czechoslovakia (1992): In 1992 Czechoslovakia under the leadership of the first post-communist president, Václav Havel, peacefully split into Czechia (The Czech Republic) and Slovakia.
European Integration (2000s–present): Many Slavic nations joined the European Union and NATO, fostering economic development and closer ties with Western Europe. Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bulgaria are now EU members.
Modern Identity: Today, Slavic peoples retain rich cultural traditions while embracing globalisation. In places such as Czechia and Slovakia, secularism and atheism are widespread, while elsewhere, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity remain culturally influential.

The research is summarised in a Max Planck Gesellschaft news release.

How the Slavic migration reshaped Central and Eastern Europe
Genetic analyses of medieval human remains reveal large-scale migrations, regional diversity, and new insights into early medieval communities
To the point

Dramatic population change: Analysis of genome-wide data from more than 550 ancient individuals demonstrates that, during the 6th-8th centuries CE, Eastern Germany, Poland/Ukraine, and the Northern Balkans experienced a major shift in ancestry, with over 80 percent originating from eastern European newcomers.
Support from other analysis: An independent study of 18 genomes from the South Moravian region linked to one of the first Slavic-speaking polities confirms this pattern.
Regional differences: While genetic turnover was nearly complete in the north, regions like the Balkans saw more mixing between Eastern European incomers and local communities. This diversity of ancestries persists until today in the modern populations of these areas.
Integration, not conquest: Genetic evidence shows no sex bias in the migration—entire families and communities seemed to have moved and integrated, rather than just male warriors.
Flexible social structure: In Eastern Germany, the migrants brought a new way of social organization, visible in the formation of large patrilinear pedigrees—a stark contrast to the much smaller family units typical of the preceding Migration Period. Meanwhile, in Croatia, early immigrant communities appear to have maintained more traditional or regionally continuous social structures, with less dramatic changes from the patterns seen before the demographic shift.

The spread of the Slavs stands as one of the most formative yet least understood events in European history. Starting in the 6th century CE, Slavic groups began to appear in the written records of Byzantine and Western sources, settling lands from the Baltic to the Balkans, and from the Elbe to the Volga. Yet, in stark contrast to the famous migrations of Germanic tribes like the Goths or Langobards or the legendary conquests of the Huns, the Slavic story has long been a difficult puzzle for historians of the European Middle Ages.

This is partly because early Slavic communities left behind rather little for archaeologists to find: they practiced cremation, built simple houses, and produced plain, undecorated pottery. Perhaps most significantly, they did not leave behind written records of their own for several centuries. As a result, the term “Slavs” itself has been ambiguous, sometimes imposed by outside chroniclers and often mis-used in later nationalist or ideological debates. Where did these people come from, and how did they so thoroughly change the cultural and linguistic map of Europe?

Historians have long debated whether the spread of Slavic material culture and language was driven by a mass migration of people, the gradual “Slavicisation” of local populations, or a combination of both. But the evidence was thin—especially in the crucial early centuries, when cremation made DNA studies nearly impossible and archaeological traces were modest.

How the Slavs transformed Europe

Now, an international research team of researchers from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechia and Croatia led by the HistoGenes consortium and working in close cooperation with the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, has provided answers with the first comprehensive ancient DNA study of medieval Slavic populations. By sequencing over 550 ancient genomes, the team has revealed that the rise of the Slavs was, at its core, a story of people on the move. Their genetic signatures point to an origin in the region stretching from southern Belarus to central Ukraine—a geographic area that matches what many linguistic and archaeological reconstructions had long suggested.

While direct evidence from early Slavic core regions is still rare, 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.

Joscha Gretzinger, lead author
Department of Archaeogenetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Leipzig, Germany

The data show that, beginning in the 6th century CE, large-scale migrations carried this Eastern European ancestry across wide areas of Central and Eastern Europe, which caused the genetic makeup of regions like Eastern Germany and Poland to shift almost entirely. Yet the expansion did not follow the model of conquest and empire: Instead of sweeping armies and rigid hierarchies, the migrants built their new societies on flexible communities, often organized around extended families and patrilineal kinship ties. Also, this was not a single, uniform model across all regions. In Eastern Germany, the shift was profound: large, multi-generational pedigrees became the backbone of society, with kinship networks more extensive and structured than the small nuclear families seen in the preceding Migration Period. In contrast, in areas such as Croatia, the arrival of Eastern European groups brought much less disruption to existing social patterns. Here, social organization often retained many features of earlier periods, resulting in communities where new and old traditions blended or persisted side by side. This regional diversity in social structure highlights how the spread of Slavic groups was not a one-size-fits-all process, but rather a dynamic transformation that adapted to local contexts and histories.

Rather than a single people moving as one, the Slavic expansion was not a monolithic event but a mosaic of different groups, each adapting and blending in its own way—suggesting there was never just one ‘Slavic’ identity, but many.

Zuzana Hofmanová, co-senior lead author
Department of Archaeology and Museology
Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia.

Notably, the genetic record reveals no significant sex bias in these migrations: entire families moved together, and both men and women contributed equally to the emerging societies. More data will show in the upcoming years how each community adapted, integrated, or reinvented itself in response to both migration and its own local history.

Spotlight on Eastern Germany

Undisturbed burial of an adult woman with genetic markers indicating local origin. Grave goods: glass bead jewelry and a cowrie shell amulet. Pre-Slavic cemetery of Brücken, feature 13913:29.
© Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt

In Eastern Germany specifically, the genetic data show an especially striking story. Following the decline of the Thuringian kingdom, more than 85 percent of the ancestry in the region can be attributed to new arrivals from the East. This marks a shift from the earlier Migration Period, when the population was a cosmopolitan mix as best illustrated by the site of Brücken, a richly furnished late antique cemetery from Sachsen Anhalt that displayed a mix of Northern, Central and Southern European ancestry. With the spread of the Slavs, this diversity gave way to a population profile almost identical to modern Slavic-speaking groups in Eastern Europe. Archaeological evidence from cemeteries confirms that these new communities organized themselves around large extended families and patrilineal descent—while women of marriageable age typically left their home villages to join new households elsewhere. Notably, the genetic legacy of these early Eastern European settlers endures today among the Sorbs, a Slavic-speaking minority in Eastern Germany. Despite centuries of surrounding cultural and linguistic change, the Sorbs have retained a genetic profile closely related to the early medieval Slavic populations that settled the region more than 1,000 years ago.

Spotlight on Poland

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.

Spotlight on Croatia

Aerial view of the Velim burial site in Croatia.
© Archaeological Museum Zadar.

The Northern Balkans specifically present a different pattern compared to the northern immigration area—a story of both change and continuity. Ancient DNA from Croatia and neighboring regions reveals a significant influx of Eastern European-related ancestry, but not a complete genetic replacement. Instead, Eastern European migrants mixed with the region’s diverse local populations, creating new, hybrid communities. Genetic analyses indicate that in present-day Balkan populations, the proportion of this incoming Eastern European ancestry varies considerably but often makes up roughly half or even less of the modern gene pool, highlighting the region’s complex demographic history. The formation of such a mixed community is clearly seen at the site of Velim, where some of the oldest Slavic burials in the region show evidence of both Eastern European migrants and up to 30% local ancestry. Here, the Slavic migration was not a wave of conquest but a long process of intermarriage and adaptation, resulting in the cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity that still characterizes the Balkan Peninsula today.

Independent confirmation in Moravia, Czechia

The dataset included the DNA of an infant buried within a very early Slavic context usually only linked to cremations.

© Martin Košťál, Laboratory of Advanced Documentation, MUNI CZ

In an independent study at the same time today published in Genome Biology, supported among others by Czech projects FORMOR and RES-HUM, researchers from Czechia, Germany, Switzerland and UK with a senior leader of Dr. Zuzana Hofmanová found that there was also a population change in Southern Moravia (Czechia) and that also this demographic shift can be linked to the change to the Slavic-associated material culture which originated in modern-day Ukraine. While whole genomes of preceding, Migration-period individuals showed a large genetic diversity, individuals linked with the Slavic-related cultural horizons had affinities to Northeastern Europe, a feature that was not present before. This dataset included an individual, an infant, buried within a very early Slavic context usually only linked to cremations thus narrowing regionally the change in time and associating it to the Prague-Korchak culture. Importantly, the same genetic signal was present not only for individuals from 7th and 8th centuries but was regionally continuous to 9th and 10th century when this region is associated to one of the earliest Slavic polities, Moravian principality, known because of Saints Cyril and Methodius and the first literary Slavic language (Old Church Slavonic) and Glagolithic script they created for their mission among the Moravian Slavs.

A new chapter in European history

This study does not just resolve the historical puzzle how one of the world's largest linguistic and cultural groups came to be. It also offers new perspectives on why Slavic groups spread so successfully, and why they left so few traces of the kinds historians once sought: As Walter Pohl, one of the senior lead authors of the study and medievalist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, puts it, the Slavic migration represents a fundamentally different model of social organization:
… a demic diffusion or grass-root movement, often in small groups or temporary alliances, settling new territories without imposing a fixed identity or elite structures.

Walter Pohl, co-senior lead author.
Institute for Austrian Historical Research
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

Their success may have been due not to conquest but to a pragmatic, egalitarian lifestyle—one that avoided the heavy burdens and hierarchies of the crumbling Roman world. In many places, the Slavs offered a credible alternative to the declining empires around them. Their social resilience, relatively simple subsistence economy, and willingness to adapt made them well-suited to periods of instability, whether caused by climate change or plague.

The new genetic findings support this interpretation. Mostly where early Slavic groups are found in the archaeological and historical record, their genetic traces match: a common ancestral origin, but regional differences shaped by the degree of mixing with local populations. In the north, earlier Germanic peoples had largely moved away, leaving room for Slavic settlement. In the south, the Eastern European newcomers merged with established communities. This patchwork process explains the remarkable diversity found in the cultures, languages, and even the genetics of today’s Central and Eastern Europe.

The spread of the Slavs was likely the last demographic event of continental scale to permanently and fundamentally reshape both the genetic and linguistic landscape of Europe.

Johannes Krause, co-senior author.
Department of Archaeogenetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

With these new results, researchers can finally see beyond the gaps in the written and archaeological record to trace the true scope of the Slavic migrations—one of the most influential yet understated chapters in Europe’s past. The echoes of this history remain today, in the languages, cultures, and even the DNA of millions across the continent.

Publication:
Gretzinger, J., Biermann, F., Mager, H. et al.
Ancient DNA connects large-scale migration with the spread of Slavs.
Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09437-6

Abstract
The second half of the first millennium ce in Central and Eastern Europe was accompanied by fundamental cultural and political transformations. This period of change is commonly associated with the appearance of the Slavs, which is supported by textual evidence^1,2 and coincides with the emergence of similar archaeological horizons^3,4,5,6. However, so far there has been no consensus on whether this archaeological horizon spread by migration, Slavicisation or a combination of both. Genetic data remain sparse, especially owing to the widespread practice of cremation in the early phase of the Slavic settlement. Here we present genome-wide data from 555 ancient individuals, including 359 samples from Slavic contexts from as early as the seventh century ce. Our data demonstrate large-scale population movement from Eastern Europe during the sixth to eighth centuries, replacing more than 80% of the local gene pool in Eastern Germany, Poland and Croatia. Yet, we also show substantial regional heterogeneity as well as a lack of sex-biased admixture, indicating varying degrees of cultural assimilation of the autochthonous populations. Comparing archaeological and genetic evidence, we find that the change in ancestry in Eastern Germany coincided with a change in social organization, characterized by an intensification of inter- and intra-site genetic relatedness and patrilocality. On the European scale, it appears plausible that the changes in material culture and language between the sixth and eighth centuries were connected to these large-scale population movements.

Main
This study combines a temporal transect of the Elbe-Saale region in Eastern Germany with the wide-angle view of large-scale demographic and cultural transformations that emerged similarly in other Eastern and Central European regions. Traditionally, on the basis of historical writings, this transformation is attributed to the emigration of ‘Germanic’ peoples from East-Central Europe and the arrival of a new population that contemporaries described as ‘Slavs’. These newcomers emerged after the dissolution of the Western Roman empire and mark the transition between the Migration Period (MP, late fourth to late sixth century) and the Slavic Period (SP, from the sixth or seventh century onwards).

At least since the first century bce, the lands between the Rhine and Vistula River were settled by numerous peoples and tribes for whom Roman observers used the umbrella term ‘Germani’⁷. These Germanic peoples were in contact with the Roman Empire west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, and since the late second century ce increasingly raided Roman provinces^8,9. In the MP, many of them left and settled on Roman territory^7,8,9,10, among them Vandals, Goths, Franks and Longobards^11,12. The Thuringians stayed and established a kingdom, which included the Elbe-Saale region^13,14. After the Franks subdued this kingdom^10,15 in the 530s, the population declined, while some cemeteries continued^14,16. During the seventh century, Slavs are first mentioned east of the Saale, but they soon expanded westward¹⁷, forming a contact zone between Slavic- and Germanic-speaking groups.

The term Slavs first appears as an ethnonym in the course of the sixth century in Constantinople and later in the west (Box 1 and Supplementary Note 1.1). Written sources locate them initially north of the Lower Danube, and later in the Carpathian Basin, the Balkans and the Eastern Alps^1,2 (Extended Data Fig. 1). Many came under the rule of the Avar steppe empire along the Middle Danube (567 ce to around 800 ce). In the seventh century, there is evidence for the presence of Slavs in much of East-Central and Southeastern Europe. Where Slavs lived, Roman, Germanic and other pre-Slavic infrastructures were usually replaced by rather simple ways of life, archaeologically characterized by small settlements of pit houses, cremation burials, handmade, undecorated pottery and modest, low-metal material culture18, known as the Prague-Korchak group^3,4. (Supplementary Note 1,2). More complex social systems and regional rulership developed later in the contact zones with Byzantium and the Christian west.

The similarity of early Slavic cultures was often attributed to a swift spread of Slavs from Northeast of the Carpathians, although debates continue, not only about their geographical origin (Supplementary Note 1,1). In Poland¹⁹, the non-native (allochthonist) view assumes Slavic origin from Ukraine–Belarus18, whereas the native (autochthonist) concept asserts that their ancestors inhabited Polish territory since the Bronze Age. Some scholars doubt Slavic expansion by migrations and assume that there was ‘Slavicisation’ of existing populations^{5,18,20,21,22,23,24,25} (Supplementary Note 1,2). Previous modern²⁶ and ancient DNA studies have supported gene flow into the Northern Balkans²⁷ and the Russian Volga-Oka region²⁸, but also argued for population continuity in Poland²⁹, so that the scale and sequence of these movements and their association with ‘Slavic’ material culture has remained unclear. Eventually, this cultural transformation led to the replacement of Germanic and other languages in East-Central and Southeastern Europe and the introduction of Slavic languages, which today represent the largest linguistic group in Europe³⁰. Yet, this presumed joint spread of language and material culture is difficult to trace, given that the first longer texts in Slavic were written in the late ninth century^5,31.

Together with previously published data from Roman and early medieval Europe^27,28,29, the newly analysed ancient DNA from the Elbe-Saale region and complementary data transects from the Northwestern Balkans, Poland, Latvia and Ukraine identify large-scale population movement and a major demographic shift. This can be linked to historical information about the spread of Slavic groups in the sixth to eighth centuries and provides a plausible vector for the spread of Slavic languages across much of Eastern Europe^21,23,32.

Fig. 1: Geographic and temporal overview of ancient individuals.

a, We assign newly reported (n = 550) and published genomic data (n = 723) to three study transects: the Northwestern Balkans (n = 301) (orange to yellow), Elbe-Saale region (Eastern Germany) (n = 483) (light and dark red), and Poland–Northwestern Ukraine (n = 489) (light and dark blue). We further analyse newly reported and published data from the Baltics as well as the Russian Volga-Oka region as reference, in total covering 1,840 ancient individuals. The size of the symbols corresponds to the number of individuals per site. Made with Natural Earth. b, Chronological sequence of 1,243 newly reported (coloured) and previously published (grey) samples analysed in this study. We selected samples from all three study regions that predate and postdate the transition to the SP. Circles, MP samples; squares, SP samples; diamonds, Bronze Age samples; triangles, present-day samples.

Fig. 2: Population structure before and after the MP–SP transition.

a, The reference PCA computed using 10,528 present-day Europeans. Large symbols indicate the mean PC1 and PC2 coordinates of the respective population. The map to the right visualizes the geographical origin of the samples. Made with Natural Earth. b, Hierarchical clustering (ward.D2) of Mahalanobis distances between selected ancient groups based on the first ten principal components. Circles, Roman Period and MP samples; squares, SP samples. BA, Bronze Age; EIA, Early Iron Age; EMA, Early Middle Ages; IA, Iron Age; MA, Middle Ages; MGS, Mödling; MP, migration period; SP, Slavic period. (See Methods section ‘Naming’.) c, Ancient genome-wide data (n = 835) from the Northwestern Balkans, Eastern Germany and Poland–Northwestern Ukraine projected onto the modern reference PCA. Circles, Roman Period and MP samples; squares, SP samples. Large symbols denote the mean PC1 and PC2 coordinates. Error bars indicate 2 × s.d.

Fig. 3: Changes in the gene pool of Central Europe.

a, Trajectories of changes in affinity to Eastern Europe in ancient and present-day individuals from the Northwestern Balkans (n = 301), Eastern Germany (n = 483) and Poland–Northwestern Ukraine (n = 489), as measured using F₄ statistics of the form F₄(Han Chinese, test; Italy, Poland) (for the Northwestern Balkans) and F4(Han Chinese in Beijing, China (CHB), test; Denmark, Poland) (for Eastern Germany and Poland–Northwestern Ukraine). Error bars indicate 2 × s.d. b, Supervised ADMIXTURE modelling for the study regions. Ancient and present-day samples (n = 1,344) decomposed into 12 ancestral ancestry components. For different time periods, individual results were averaged and plotted according to their mean date. Influx of specific ancestries mentioned in the text are indicated using arrows. Relevant Y chromosome haplogroups associated with these autosomal ancestries are highlighted. Made with Natural Earth. c, Average sum of IBD segments (sIBD (in cM)) shared between nine ancient MP and SP groups. For all pairs of populations, the sum of IBD segments longer than 12 cM shared between members was calculated and normalized to the total number of pairs. The sums are depicted as symmetrical matrix. Hierarchical cluster analysis applying Ward’s minimum variance method to the columns is added as a dendrogram.

Gretzinger, J., Biermann, F., Mager, H. et al.
Ancient DNA connects large-scale migration with the spread of Slavs.
Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09437-6

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this latest research highlights, once again, is the way in which populations evolve and adapt over time in response to migrations, intermarriage, environment, and cultural change. The Slavic peoples did not appear suddenly or spring fully formed from some single founding family. Their story is one of centuries of movement, mixture, and gradual development—precisely what we should expect from human populations shaped by evolutionary processes.

For creationists, such a history poses an intractable problem. The sheer genetic complexity of the Slavs—like that of every other human group—is irreconcilable with the notion that all modern people are the descendants of a handful of survivors of a mythical flood just a few thousand years ago. Reality, revealed by genetics and archaeology, is far richer, far deeper, and far more compelling than any simplistic myth.

For me, this research resonates beyond the purely academic. With my youngest son now living in Czechia with his wife, and with my own enduring memories of standing at the memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc, the history of the Slavic peoples is not an abstract matter of genetics, but part of a living identity I have come to feel personally connected to.

What the science shows is that this identity, like that of all human populations, is the product of long processes of migration, intermarriage, adaptation, and cultural change. The Slavs did not spring fully formed from a single family or event, but emerged through centuries of complexity and diversity. That richness is precisely what gives their story its strength—just as the Czech struggle for freedom in the 20th century drew resilience from a deep-rooted cultural heritage.

Alphonse Mucha’s Epic of the Slavs captures that cultural and historical journey in sweeping artistic form, celebrating not only the struggles but also the dignity and endurance of the Slavic peoples. Genetics now provides a parallel narrative in scientific language, tracing the deep ancestry and migrations that underpinned the story Mucha painted. Together, they form a powerful testament to the creativity and resilience of a people who, despite centuries of external pressures, have forged a proud identity of their own.

And here lies the fatal weakness of creationist narratives. A simplistic tale of a handful of flood survivors repopulating the Earth cannot account for the genetic depth, diversity, and interwoven histories that real science uncovers. The reality, illuminated by archaeology and genetics—and echoed in art—is far richer and far more compelling.

Knowing this only deepens my admiration for the people of Czechia and for the wider Slavic family: their courage in the face of oppression, their cultural achievements, and the deep evolutionary history written in their DNA. Science, far from diminishing their story, enhances it—connecting Mucha’s grand vision, the modern struggles for freedom, and the long arc of human history that shaped them.

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