But new analysis and studies are rejecting these theories, denying the myth of violent and unexpected barbarian invasions. This time, molecular anthropology is reexamining the details of distant eras. As is the transition from the Antiquity to the Medieval era, which was the subject of a study published in the journal Nature. The fall of the Roman Empire was not a moment, but a process, and the barbarian invasions were neither violent, nor unexpected, nor a cause. Through techniques, it has been possible to reconstruct the geographical origins of the populations that inhabited the ancient border line of the Empire, in the southern part of today’s Germany, their daily customs and traditions, family structures and even life expectancy.
The genetic heritage of the bones of about 250 people who lived in the years 400-700 AD was analyzed and confronted with about 2900 ancient, medieval and modern genomes.
The results show that small groups of individuals originating from northern areas of Europe had begun to migrate southward much earlier than what we consider the end of the empire. They had even adopted a typical Roman lifestyle. The data show that in the first moments of their descent, the northern immigrants lived separately from the rest of the community, in agricultural lands and peripheral areas, where land was given in exchange for a pact of marriage restrictions, which provided security for the maintenance of separate genetic characteristics. Analyzing the genetics up to the 6th century, two main and separate genetic compositions emerge, one typically northern, the other typically Mediterranean but also with admixtures of southeastern Europe, up to central Asia, characterized by a diversity of genetic traces, reflecting the diversity of the Empire.
But after the fall of Roman power, these two separate worlds gradually began to approach and merge with each other on a biological level, through marriages. Thus, northern immigrants and Romans began to create new communities not only genetic but also cultural, unions that continued linearly until the 7th century, giving origin to the profile of the populations of central Europe.
The integration process was linear and not at all violent or invasive, on the contrary gradual and natural in the mixing of races, but also of Roman culture, which seems to have been completely assimilated by the northern migratory waves. Other information emerges from this study, based on bone analysis, on life expectancy. On average, men lived about 43.3 years, while women 39.8, with a difference perhaps related to the higher mortality in women as a result of complications of pregnancy and the birth process. However, despite the shorter life span, 80% of children grew up with grandparents at home, and grew up with these family figures. And this is the moment where the family model that would characterize Europe for centuries to come is even more radicalized.
Detailed genealogical trees have also been reconstructed, attesting to the confirmation of family nuclei consisting of parents and children, including adopted children and grandparents. In line with the influence of Christianity and the maternal line of Roman practices and customs, monogamy was the norm, and researchers have found and verified very rare cases of unions with multiple partners.
Incest was totally rejected and unaccepted, unlike the societies of early ancient PES histories, and tribal ties up to the sixth degree were avoided and forbidden, a practice that was very deep in Roman norms. Also, the analyses show the tendency of patriarchy, that is, the practices that were women leaving the paternal home to live later with the husband’s family. So the fusion between races and populations happened gradually, and scientific evidence does not support at all the history that we have learned, according to which, the barbarian invasions put an end to the Great Roman Empire. There were other socio-political, military, economic, etc. factors that influenced its decline.