Titel
Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
Autor*in
Mario Novak
Centre for Applied Bioanthropology, Institute for Anthropological Research
Autor*in
Iñigo Olalde
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, CSIC - Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Autor*in
Harald Ringbauer
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
... show all
Abstract
Paleogenomic and bioanthropological studies of ancient massacres have highlighted sites where the victims were male and plausibly died all in battle, or were executed members of the same family as might be expected from a killing intentionally directed at subsets of a community, or where the massacred individuals were plausibly members of a migrant community in conflict with previously established groups, or where there was evidence that the killing was part of a religious ritual. Here we provide evidence of killing on a massive scale in prehistory that was not directed to a specific family, based on genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 of the 41 documented victims of a 6,200 year old massacre in Potočani, Croatia and combining our results with bioanthropological data. We highlight three results: (i) the majority of individuals were unrelated and instead were a sample of what was clearly a large farming population, (ii) the ancestry of the individuals was homogenous which makes it unlikely that the massacre was linked to the arrival of new genetic ancestry, and (iii) there were approximately equal numbers of males and females. Combined with the bioanthropological evidence that the victims were of a wide range of ages, these results show that large-scale indiscriminate killing is a horror that is not just a feature of the modern and historic periods, but was also a significant process in pre-state societies.
Stichwort
Neolithic periodAncient DNARadioactive carbon datingSkullArchaeological datingHomozygosityMitochondriaPaleogenetics
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1422885
Erschienen in
Titel
PLOS ONE
Band
16
Ausgabe
3
ISSN
1932-6203
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Verlag
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Zugänglichkeit
Rechteangabe
© 2021 Novak et al

Herunterladen

Universität Wien | Universitätsring 1 | 1010 Wien | T +43-1-4277-0