Researchers who analyzed genomes from early medieval graves in modern-day Germany hypothesize that people from the former Roman Empire formed families with Germanic people soon after the empire fell Analysis of a skeleton from an early medieval site Harbeck / State Collection for Anthropology Munich After hundreds of years of colonial dominance in Europe, the western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century C.E., weakened by internal strife and attacking Germanic tribes. The empire’s long reign and dissolution left a massive legacy on Europe’s modern history—including its ancestries. In a study recently published in the journal Nature , researchers analyzed more than 250 genomes from early medieval graves in what’s now southern Germany. They discovered a family tree of diverse Roman and northern European lines, which they say twisted together around the collapse of Rome to form a new community.…