Genetic identification of members of the prominent Báthory aristocratic family

Archaeogenetic analysis revealed East Eurasian paternal origin to the Aba royal family of Hungary

“…Importantly, based on shared IBDs, these families exhibit distant connections to medieval and early modern Hungarian noble lineages, including the Corvins (4) and the Báthorys (5). The shared IBDs between some Abasár samples and members of the Árpád dynasty align with historical records, which document at least one marriage between the two families.…”

“…On the European PCA (Figure 4 and Extended Figure 2), the majority of the samples clustered together, separate from the cloud of Central European populations, shifted to the direction of the conquering Hungarians, with some outliers falling within the variance of present-day Hungarians. The Abasár cluster overlaps with the genomes of the Árpád dynasty, as well as with the two Báthorys, a prominent dynasty of late medieval Hungary and Poland (5). Notably, the Abasár cluster also overlaps with the cluster of other samples from the cemetery of the Báthory family at Pericei (Extended Figure 3).…”

“…HUAS55B and HUAS59B belonged to the same R0b haplotype, consistent with the result of the kinship analysis. Most of the mitochondrial lineages (14/18) have been detected in preceding populations of the Carpathian basin (31)(32)(33) and several were present in the late medieval Hungarian elite cemetery of the Báthory family (5). Based on the comparison with our published ancient whole mitogenome database (31), eight lineages have a feasible Near Eastern (H13a1d, R0b and T2) and/or Steppe origin (H28, T1a1, I1b, HV14a and J1c5a), while the remainder are most probably of European origin.…”

“…Similarly, to the mitochondrial lineages, most of the Y-chromosomal lineages (12/17) had European origin. A considerable number (7/17) were detected in preceding periods of the Carpathian basin, and several were prevalent among contemporary Hungarian elite (5,32). Besides the royal lineage, only one Hg with obvious Asian origin was detected: R1a1a1b2a2a3c2~.…”

“…Such combined methods enabled the identification of Richard III's skeleton (1), the remains of Romanov family members (2), or Birger Magnusson, the founder of Stockholm (3). This approach was also the key to identify the famous Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus' descendants (4), or the members of the Báthory family, one of the most prominent aristocratic families of Medieval Central Europe (5). Archaeogenetic methods have also facilitated the identification of members of the Árpád dynasty, Hungary's first royal family, and to analyse their genomic heritage (6)(7)(8)(9).…”