The Piasts Were Not Slavs? Scientists Have Presented an Interesting Theory

The Piasts may have been related to the Picts, the ancestors of the Scots; it is not known when they arrived in modern Poland. New findings on the genetic genealogy of the Piasts were presented in Poznań on Monday.

During the press conference, the head of the research group , the chairman of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Prof. Marek Figlerowicz , announced that the work on the origins of the first Polish royal dynasty, the result of nearly ten years of research, has recently been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal "Nature Communications".

Prof. Marek Figlerowicz and his colleagues identified and examined the skeletal remains of 33 people, 30 men and 3 women, in the case of whom it was possible to state with a high degree of probability that they belonged to the Piast dynasty . The scientist reported that the analysis of the Y chromosome, passed down from father to son, showed that the Piasts belonged to a haplogroup, which is currently found mainly in Great Britain and is very rare in other regions of Europe. A haplogroup is a group of people who have similar DNA inherited from a common ancestor.

- Among the samples dated to the period before the establishment of the Piast state, the most closely related lineage was found in a man living in the 5th-6th century in what is now Scotland.

According to the findings made by archaeologists, he was a representative of the Pictish population. These results clearly indicate that the Piasts were not of local origin. However, it is difficult to say in what period their ancestors arrived in the territories of modern Poland, researchers reported on Monday.

- Such origins would seem a bit absurd. But on the other hand, if we look at history and the fact that the alleged sister of Bolesław the Brave, Sygryda, was the wife of the kings of Denmark and Norway and was the mother of the kings of Sweden, England, Denmark and Norway - this shows that these early relations of the Piast state, not only with the northern countries of Europe, but also with England, were very important - said on Monday Prof. Figlerowicz.

Mieszko I/photo: Shutterstock

The scientist noted that the topic of the origins of the Piast dynasty has for years been of interest not only to scientists, but also to the entire society.

- Some believed that the Piasts came from our lands; they were proverbial ploughmen or wheelwrights who had lived in Greater Poland for a long time. Others believed that they came from Moravia. Still others claimed that the ancestors of the Piasts could have been the Vikings. We have no historical or archaeological data. The only way we could investigate this matter was to test DNA and determine who the Piasts were related to - he said.

Scientists searched Poland, identifying remains that could be attributed to the Piasts with great probability. Prof. Figlerowicz noted that it was not easy: in many places they came across empty coffins, in others - mixed bones. The analysis of samples taken from the largest Piast necropolis located in the Płock cathedral proved groundbreaking.

- We managed to identify at least ten representatives of the Piast dynasty, about whom we can state with a very high probability that they are definitely the Piasts we are looking for. Analysis of their genomes showed that almost all of them belong to one haplogroup Y line - that is, they are indeed people who are related in the paternal line. Then we tried to determine who they could be related to - he said.

According to Prof. Figlerowicz, the results of his team’s research may open up new perspectives for historians and archaeologists – also in the context of research on other royal dynasties.