DNA Reveals the Mystery of the Origin of the Bulgarians 2

In 1972, an excavator operator on the outskirts of Varna placed the world’s oldest gold into a shoebox. It was six and a half thousand years old. Older than the pyramids. Older than Sumer. But the real shock awaited scientists not in the gold, but in the DNA of those who had left it behind. This video is a journey through five thousand years of Bulgarian genetic history. From the first farmers to a result no one expected.

The material is based on scientific articles, predominantly from pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:

Autosomal DNA of modern Bulgarians
— Sarno et al., 2025. Genetic diversity of modern Bulgarians: ancient and recent ancestral contributions: PMC11980028

Y-chromosome of modern Bulgarians
— Karachanak et al., 2013. Y-chromosome diversity in modern Bulgarians: new insights into their origins: PMC3590186

Ancient DNA of Bronze Age Thracians
— Modi et al., 2019. Ancient mitochondrial genomes from Bronze Age Bulgaria: new insights into the genetic history of Thracians: PMC6443937

Genetic history of the Balkans in the first millennium CE
— Olalde et al., 2023. The genetic history of the Balkans from the Roman frontier to Slavic migrations: PMC10752003

The Neolithic and farming migrations of Southeastern Europe
— Mathieson et al., reviewed in “Ancient DNA from South-East Europe”: PMC4460020

East Eurasian haplogroups and the Proto-Bulgarians
— Karachanak-Yankova et al., 2015. Distribution of East Eurasian Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplogroups across Eurasia: evidence on the genetic origin of the Bulgarians. Advances in Anthropology, SCIRP. The article is not in PMC, but is openly available: scirp.org/journal/doi.aspx?DOI=10.4236/aa.2015.54019

Proto-Bulgarian mtDNA
— Nesheva et al., 2015. Mitochondrial DNA indicates a West Eurasian origin for the ancient Proto-Bulgarians. Human Biology, 87:19–28. The article is not in PMC. The results are cited and corroborated in the studies by Modi (PMC6443937) and Karachanak-Yankova (SCIRP, 2015).