DNA from ancient Irish tomb reveals incest and an elite class that ruled early farmers

Twenty-five kilometers north of Dublin, a masterpiece of Stone Age engineering rises from the hills: a circular structure 12 meters high, almost the area of a U.S. football field, and made up of more than 200,000 tons of earth and stone. Some of the first farmers to arrive in Ireland erected this monument, called Newgrange,  nearly 1000 years before Stonehenge or Egypt’s first pyramids were built. Archaeologists have assumed it was a ceremonial site and communal tomb—an expression of an egalitarian society................

NG10’s DNA also reveals his unusual parentage. In a paper published today in Nature, Cassidy and her co-authors draw on parallels in the historical record to argue that the son of an incestuous union buried in such a prominent tomb points to a hereditary ruling class. “Matings like that are taboo pretty much universally, with very few exceptions,” she says.

Those exceptions include Egyptian pharaohs, who were considered deities who needed to marry each other. Royal siblings in Hawaii and the Incan empire were also known to marry, concentrating power in one family. “I believe we’re seeing a similar social dynamic at play among colonists of Neolithic Ireland,” Cassidy says........... Click to read more

more links

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3