This family was probably too tight-knit by modern standards.
DNA extracted in present-day Ireland from the remains of an entombed man — believed to have been middled-aged — in 3200 B.C. indicates that his parents were likely parent and child or brother and sister, according to a remarkable new study published in Science.
Although incest is a culturally verboten practice, genetic traces at the 5,000-year-old Newgrange monument in County Meath, Ireland, indicate extremely close hereditary family bonds.
Additional DNA from more than 40 people buried at other nearby sites shows that they were all likely genetically linked.
During roughly the past 10 years, scientists have been scrutinizing archaic DNA to track the millennia-era development of farmers who trekked from present-day Turkey across Western Europe.
“Maybe we’ve been arguing too far that (these people were egalitarian,” noted University College Dublin archaeologist Jessica Symth.
Newgrange, which was constructed centuries before the first of Egypt’s great pyramids, includes a passageway leading to a central chamber. The entrance was built in such a way that a ray of sunlight illuminates the chamber at dawn on the winter solstice.
“It’s clearly a place of public ritual and must have taken a lot of manpower to construct,” said geneticist Lara Cassidy.
The DNA also reveals the peculiar parentage. In a paper published in Nature, Cassidy and her colleagues examine parallels in the historical records to assert that the son of an incestuous union buried in such a distinct crypt indicates a hereditary ruling class.
“Matings like that are taboo pretty much universally, with very few exceptions,” explained Cassidy.
