Alcune considerazioni sulla storia antica degli ungheresi (Parte II)

Abstract

The study of the origins and protohistory of the Magyars has long attracted considerable interest both nationally and internationally. Despite extensive research, many questions remain unresolved, due to the scarcity of written sources and their problematic reliability and interpretation. In recent years, however, archaeogenetic investigations have introduced new perspectives, allowing the issue to be addressed with greater rigour. Until the nineteenth century, the theory of kinship between the Huns and the Magyars, attested in medieval Hungarian chronicles, was widespread even in scholarly circles. Simultaneously, historical linguistics established Hungarian as a Finno-Ugric language closely related to Mansi and Khanty. Initially, these two perspectives were not considered mutually exclusive: it was assumed that the Huns could be among the ancestors of the Magyars, while acknowledging that Hungarian belonged to the Finno-Ugric languages. The divide between the two models emerged in the late nineteenth century, when historians subjected the chronicle sources to critical scrutiny, revealing their dependence on Western texts and thereby reducing their documentary value. In this context, the linguistic paradigm gradually imposed itself as the main interpretive framework for the origins of the Magyars, a paradigm which, in light of the most recent archaeogenetic findings, now appears to be substantially confirmed in its general outlines. This article seeks to analyze these developments from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on the contribution of genetic data to the redefinition of the debate on Hungarian ethnogenesis.