Pre-bronze Age men so violent most died before fatherhood

THE pre-bronze Age was so bloody that most men were wiped out in their youth before they had children, a new study has found.

Between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago, genetic diversity in men collapsed to an extent that scientists say there was only one man for every 17 women to mate with.

The Stanford University study came to the conclusions after looking to the diversity in males’ Y chromosomes, which collapsed in the space of 2,000 years.

It left anthropologists and biologists perplexed – but a simple explanation has now been suggested.

Outlining their reasoning the journal Nature Communications, the collapse has been put down to the generations of war between patrilineal clans, whose membership was determined by male ancestors.

Sociologist Tian Chen Zeng, of Stanford University, looked at the “bottleneck” figures and came up with the theory.

The diversity of women, meanwhile, was unaffected.