Ancient DNA is capable of revealing hitherto secret aspects of our ancestors and tracing the family tree of a Neolithic community in France, which had generally stable health and nutritional conditions and a supportive social network.
The Neolithic way of life, based on agriculture, emerged in the Near East around 12,000 years ago and contributed to the modern way of life, as the ability to produce and store additional food led them to develop new social customs based on wealth and to form hierarchies. social.
A study by French and German scientists published today in Nature analyzed DNA from 94 individuals at the Gurgy Les Nosats site (northern France), dated to approximately between 4,850 and 4,500 BC, which made it possible to reconstruct two family trees.
The first connects 64 individuals over seven generations and is the largest lineage reconstructed from ancient DNA to date, while the second connects twelve individuals over five generations.
Exploration of the lineages revealed a strong patrilineal pattern, with each generation linked almost exclusively to the previous one through the biological father, connecting the entire de Gurgy group through the paternal line.
The combined evidence of mitochondrial lineages and stable strontium isotopes revealing a non-local origin of most of the women suggested the practice of patrilocality, meaning that children stayed where they were born and had children with women outside of Gurgy.
Settling in the male partner's community of origin is known as virilocality.. Rather, most of the adult daughters of the lineage are missing, consistent with female outbreeding, which could indicate a reciprocal exchange system.
The “new entrants” women were only very distantly related to each other, meaning they must have come from a network of close communities, rather than a single close group, according to the Max Planck Institute (Germany), one of the signatories. of the study.
The “founding father” of the cemetery
The analysis of family trees indicates the existence of a large number of full siblings and that they had reached reproductive age, explained the first author of the research, said Maïté Rivollat, from the University of Ghent (Germany).
“Combined with the expected equal number of women and the significant number of stillborn babies, it indicates large family sizes, a high fertility rate, and generally stable health and nutritional conditions, which is quite surprising for such an ancient time. “, he pointed.
Another notably unique feature in Gurgy is the lack of half-sibs, suggesting serial neither polygamous nor monogamous reproductive associations (or the exclusion of offspring from these unions from the main burial ground), compared to the so far only other example of practices of union of neolithic megaliths.
Under this patrilocal system, a male individual from whom all members of the larger family tree descended could be identified as the “founding father” of the cemetery.
Her burial is unique at the site, as her remains were interred as a secondary repository within the grave of a woman, from whom no genomic data could be obtained.
The researchers believe that his bones must have been brought there from the place where he died to be reburied in Gurgy.
“He must have been a very important person to the founders of the Gurgy site to be taken there after a primary burial elsewhere,” explained Marie-France Deguilloux of the University of Bordeaux, co-lead author of the study.
Although the main lineage spans seven generations, the demographic profile suggests that a large family group spanning several generations arrived at the site.. Other data suggests that the group must have left an earlier site and some three or four generations later, roughly a century, moved elsewhere.
These findings could provide the basis for further archaeogenetic studies to gain a general perspective on the potentially diverse social organization of Neolithic societies in Europe.
