Levänluhta (; lit. "

alga Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular microalgae, suc ...

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

Isokyrö Isokyrö (; ) 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 the municip ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. It was used as an

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

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 sources (typically Biological specimen, specimens, but also environmental DNA). Due to degradation processes (including Crosslinking of DNA, cross-linking, deamination and DNA fragmentation, fragme ...

of 13 individuals from Levänluhta has been further studied, revealing that most of them had some 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 ne ...

than

Finnish people Finns or Finnish people (, ) are a Baltic Finns, 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 cou ...

, 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 (administrative region)