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Comment by pkkkzip | Hacker News Reader

Prior to industrial revolution, mass immigration was difficult, not only because of logistics but tribalism.

Hungarians mass migrated about a thousand years ago from the Ural Mountains, several thousands of kms from present Hungary. Germans mass migrated to Hungary hundreds of years ago, especially after Mongols and Turks killed most of the population there. Italians lost their appetite to coriander because the mass migration of Germanic people around and after the fall of Rome.

It was more difficult, but it happened many-many times.

Yea, and like you just proved, it was very difficult. Hence the choice to do it in large groups.

And they left very little trace in the genes of modern Hungarians. They did leave their language, of course.

The Turks ruined a large part of Europe but their genetic footprint in Turkey is only about 8%.

Where are you getting these numbers from ?

Without digging up old cemetaries (if they’d still exist) and sequencing DNA, there’s a lot of assumotions and conjecture

If I sort out 20 Spaniards from different provinces and regions, you wouldn't guess if they were Spaniards, French, South Germans, North/South Italians or even Irish.

Yeah, and some also look Moorish, middle eastern, Sephardic, etc. too. Not a big surprise when you learn about the migrations that happened in Spain during the past 2000 years or so. We are a mixed bunch.

Yeah, South Italians/moorish, close enough.

Tell it the Vandals, the Goths, the Huns, the Angles (I.e English), the Normans, the Danes, the Mongols, the Turks, etc.

Not really no. Any student of linguistics is quickly dispelled of this notion

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