The Avar group from the southeastern Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld) had a mixed European-Asian haplogroup composition with four Asian haplogroups (C, M6, D4c1, F1b) at 15.3%, but a predominantly European (H, K, T, U), haplogroup composition (Fig. 2). In the conqueror population the most common Eurasian haplogroups were detected. West-Eurasian haplogroups (H, HV, I, J, K, N1a, R, T, U, V, X, W) were present at a frequency of 77%, and Central and East-Eurasian haplogroups (A, B, C, D, F, G, M) at 23%. The most widespread haplogroups of the conqueror population were H and U with frequencies 22% and 20% respectively (Supplementary Table S5). Five individuals from the 9th–10th centuries from the west Hungarian Vörs-Papkert site were excluded from any statistical analysis because of their offside geographical location and cultural differences from the Avar and Hungarian sites. Their mtDNA belonged to the common European J and H haplogroups, but with rare haplotype variants in ancient and modern mtDNA databases (see Supplementary Table S15 for database references). The number of typed mtDNA from the 10th–12th century contact zone metapopulation13 was enlarged by four 10th century samples from present-day north Croatia. One belonged to a characteristic European H10e haplotype; another belonged to U7 haplotype, mainly distributed in modern Southwest Asia and Southern Europe; a third belonged to the Southwest Asian N1b1 type; the fourth U5a2a haplotype was common in modern Eurasia (private database, see Material and Methods, Supplementary Table S15).