This skeleton from the early medieval site of Altheim belonged to a woman whose ancestors migrated from northern Europe several generations earlier. Credit: SAM/Harbeck

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, its northern frontier became a melting pot of soldiers, farmers and ‘barbarians’, finds an analysis of ancient genomes from hundreds of burials in southern Germany.

The populations and family practices present after the Empire’s fall in ad 476, in many ways, resemble those of modern Europe.

Seven generations of a prehistoric family mapped with ancient DNA

The findings, published today in Nature 1 , rebut popular ideas of northern barbarian tribes overrunning Roman territory.…