A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society

The nature and distribution of political power in Europe during the Neolithic era remains poorly understood . During this period, many societies began to invest heavily in building monuments, which suggests an increase in social organization. The scale and sophistication of megalithic architecture a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Nature (London) 2020-06, Vol.582 (7812), p.384-388
Main Authors:	Cassidy, Lara M, Maoldúin, Ros Ó, Kador, Thomas, Lynch, Ann, Jones, Carleton, Woodman, Peter C, Murphy, Eileen, Ramsey, Greer, Dowd, Marion, Noonan, Alice, Campbell, Ciarán, Jones, Eppie R, Mattiangeli, Valeria, Bradley, Daniel G
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Adult Archaeology Burial - history Consanguinity Cultural heritage Datasets Design and construction Discovery and exploration DNA, Ancient - analysis Elite (Social sciences) Family - history Female Genetic aspects Genome, Human - genetics Genomes Genomics Haplotypes - genetics Hierarchy, Social - history History, Ancient Human remains Humans Incest Incest - history Ireland Location Male Megalithic monuments Mesolithic Neolithic Political aspects Political power Royal houses Siblings Social aspects Societies - history Stone Age Tombs
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Summary:	The nature and distribution of political power in Europe during the Neolithic era remains poorly understood . During this period, many societies began to invest heavily in building monuments, which suggests an increase in social organization. The scale and sophistication of megalithic architecture along the Atlantic seaboard, culminating in the great passage tomb complexes, is particularly impressive . Although co-operative ideology has often been emphasised as a driver of megalith construction , the human expenditure required to erect the largest monuments has led some researchers to emphasize hierarchy -of which the most extreme case is a small elite marshalling the labour of the masses. Here we present evidence that a social stratum of this type was established during the Neolithic period in Ireland. We sampled 44 whole genomes, among which we identify the adult son of a first-degree incestuous union from remains that were discovered within the most elaborate recess of the Newgrange passage tomb. Socially sanctioned matings of this nature are very rare, and are documented almost exclusively among politico-religious elites -specifically within polygynous and patrilineal royal families that are headed by god-kings . We identify relatives of this individual within two other major complexes of passage tombs 150 km to the west of Newgrange, as well as dietary differences and fine-scale haplotypic structure (which is unprecedented in resolution for a prehistoric population) between passage tomb samples and the larger dataset, which together imply hierarchy. This elite emerged against a backdrop of rapid maritime colonization that displaced a unique Mesolithic isolate population, although we also detected rare Irish hunter-gatherer introgression within the Neolithic population.
ISSN:	0028-0836 1476-4687