In recent days, a groundbreaking study dedicated to the genetic genealogy of the Piasts – the first Polish royal dynasty – was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

“Genetic genealogy of the Piast dynasty and related European royal families”

Michał Zenczak, Luiza Handschuh, Małgorzata Marcinkowska-Swojak, Ireneusz Stolarek, Michał Golubiński, Anna Juras, Dawid Trzciński, Maciej Chyleński, Artur Dębski, Aleksandra Losik, Tomasz Jasiński, Anna Wrzesińska, Marzena Matla, Hanna Kóčka-Krenz, Andrzej B. Legocki, Józef Dobosz & Marek Figlerowicz 

Nature Communications volume 17, Article number: 3224 (2026)

Full article link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71457-1 

The authors of the study include geneticists, biologists, bioinformaticians, anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Adam Mickiewicz University. The initiator of the interdisciplinary research and the leader of the team that conducted it is Prof. Marek Figlerowicz.

The Piasts are widely recognized as one of the great royal dynasties that shaped the political structure of medieval Europe in the 10th century CE. Despite their significance as founders and rulers of the early Polish kingdom, little was known about their origins, the conditions of Poland’s transformation into a medieval monarchy, or the mechanisms behind the emergence of independent political entities in 10th-century Central and Eastern Europe.

The newly published paper presents interdisciplinary research on Piast necropolises distributed throughout Poland. In eight of these sites, the remains of 33 individuals—most likely members of the first Polish royal dynasty—were discovered. Multidirectional archaeogenomic analyses confirmed the identity of ten Piasts. Based on the genomic data obtained, maternal lines (mitochondrial haplogroups) were identified, linking the identified Piasts with over 200 historical figures from 10 European royal dynasties. This group includes: 108 Piasts, 32 Rurikids, 12 Gediminids, 23 Arpads, 15 Přemyslids, 13 Hohenzollerns, 10 Habsburgs, 8 Wettins, 5 Angevins, 4 Wittelsbachs

The paternal line (Y-haplogroup R1b-BY3549) identified in the Piasts is currently very rare. This same lineage was found in ancient DNA databases in three individuals who inhabited North-Western Europe (present-day France, the Netherlands, and England) and lived during or before the Piast era. Collectively, these findings suggest that the Piasts were not of local origin. They confirm the hypothesis that the state-building processes occurring in the 9th–11th centuries in Central and Eastern Europe were induced not only by local elites but also by newcomers from the outside.