INCEST ‘WAS SANCTIONED’ IN STONE AGE NEWGRANGE Shock findings in study of 5,000-year-old remains
Newgrange chamber
SOCIALLY sanctioned incestuous relationships were common in Ireland during the Stone Age, a new study has discovered.
The finding centres around the remains of an adult male found at the 5,000-year-old Unesco passage tomb at Newgrange in Co Meath.
The study, involving Trinity College Dublin and University College London and published in Nature, uses genetic sequencing to reveal the man’s relatives were buried in other passage tombs more than 100km away, pointing to a powerful elite at the top of Irish Neolithic society.
The man was buried within the most ornate chamber with specialised ritual inventory and winter solstice solar alignment that would have been viewed only by a select few.
Professor Dan Bradley of Trinity College Dublin 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.”
INBREEDING
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. Overall, the researchers observed no increase in inbreeding during the Neolithic period here.
Dr Thomas Kador from UCL added the new evidence matched up with tales from mythology.
He said: “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,.
“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.”