Incest and snobbery all the rage in Neolithic age
TCD team’s sensational insight on 5,000-year-old bones
THE Neolithic Irish elite were so fond of their privileged positions they kept everything in the family – even when it came to love and partnerships.
New research shows that they had a highly developed class system – basically they were super snobs.
The remains of a well-to-do man of the times – which were uncovered
Family ‘were only worthy partners’
at the 5,000-year-old Newgrange tomb – are crucial to the new revelations.
A study involving Trinity College Dublin and University College London, published in Nature, uses genetic sequencing to reveal the man’s relatives were buried in similar passage tombs, more than 100km away, pointing to a powerful social elite.
The man was buried within the most ornate chamber in the tomb, with specialised ritual inventory, and winter solstice solar alignment that would have been viewed only by a select few. Professor Dan Bradley, of Trinity, said: ‘The prestige of the burial makes this very likely a socially sanctioned union, and speaks of a hierarchy so extreme that the only partners worthy of the elite were family members.’
The researchers sequenced 44 whole genomes from Irish Neolithic people, alongside relevant ancient genomes. These were merged with an ancient dataset to allow for more detailed analysis of population structure and estimation of inbreeding.
Dr Thomas Kador from UCL, said the new evidence matched up with tales from mythology.
‘In Irish mythology there is a tradition associating the tombs of the Boyne Valley with incestuous relationships among ancient royals and deities, and it is striking how these stories resonate with our findings,’ he said.
‘Irish folklore and literary scholars have long suggested that these stories, first recorded in the Middle Ages, date back to a longstanding oral tradition.
‘However, nobody would have assumed that such traditions could stretch back to the Stone Age,’ he said.