Levänluhta (; lit. "

alga Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mi ...

's floodmeadow") or Leväluhta is a spring and prominent archaeological site in the village of Orismala in

Isokyrö Isokyrö (; sv, Storkyro) is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the South Ostrobothnia region, from Vaasa. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . In the name of th ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. It was used as an

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

water graveyard from the 5th to the 8th centuries, containing remains of around 100 individuals. It's one of the oldest known burial sites in Finland with preserved human bones, as the waterlogged environment had contributed to an exceptionally good preservation of the remains.

Ancient DNA Ancient DNA (aDNA) is DNA isolated from ancient specimens. Due to degradation processes (including cross-linking, deamination and fragmentation) ancient DNA is more degraded in comparison with contemporary genetic material. Even under the bes ...

of 13 individuals from Levänluhta has been further studied, revealing that most of them had Siberian-derived genetic ancestry like all Fenno-Ugric peoples, with a slightly closer resemblance to

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...

than

Finnish people Finns or Finnish people ( fi, suomalaiset, ) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland. Finns are traditionally divided into smaller regional groups that span several countries adjacent to Finland, both those who are native to these ...

, but the difference was not considerable.''Sanni Översti'' et al
Human mitochondrial DNA lineages in Iron-Age Fennoscandia suggest incipient admixture and eastern introduction of farming-related maternal ancestry
15 November 2019

References

{{reflist

External links

Levänluhta at the Finnish Heritage Agency's online portal
Archaeological sites in Finland Bog bodies Iron Age Scandinavia History of Ostrobothnia (region)