Biological history of the human populations inhabiting Central Europe in the first ages of the common era

Little is known about the genetic makeup of the populations inhabiting East-Central Europe in the first millennium CE, a period during which the transformation from Late Antiquity to Christianity brought substantial socio-cultural changes to Europe . Slavs form the largest ethno-linguistic group in modern Europe and yet their appearance in Central Europe has been the subject of debate for ~200 years, driven by two conflicting hypotheses. The first assumes that Slavs came to Central Europe no earlier than the 6th century CE whereas the second postulates they inhabited the territory of present-day Poland long before the Migration Period (375–568 CE). Despite progress in ancient DNA technologies, testing these hypotheses, and addressing the origins of the Slavs , is not trivial as cremation was the prevailing custom in Central Europe from the late Bronze Age until the Middle Ages.