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Incest uncovered at the elite prehistoric Newgrange monument in Ireland

The huge, elaborate, 5,000-year-old tomb at Newgrange, Ireland, is thought to have been built for a powerful elite. DNA of a man buried there reveals a case of incest. Was this a strategy to maintain a dynastic bloodline?
  1. Alison Sheridan

    1. Alison Sheridan is a research associate and emerita principal curator in the Department of Scottish History and Archaeology, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh EH1 1JF, UK.

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A study of the DNA of Ireland’s Stone Age inhabitants has produced spectacular results, with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of prehistoric population movement and the structure of that ancient society. Writing in Nature, Cassidy et al.1 report their striking discoveries from this project.

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Nature 582, 347-349 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01655-4

References

  1. Cassidy, L. M. et al. Nature 582, 384–388 (2020).

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  2. Sheridan, J. A. in Entre archéologie et écologie, une préhistoire de tous les milieux. Mélanges offerts à Pierre Pétrequin (eds Arbogast, R.-M. & Greffier-Richard, A.) 303–314 (Presses univ. Franche-Comté, 2014).

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  3. Cassidy, L. M. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 368–373 (2015).

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  4. Sánchez-Quinto, F. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 9469–9474 (2019).

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  7. Thomas, J. The Birth of Neolithic Britain: An Interpretive Account (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013).

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  8. Sheridan, J. A. in The Neolithic of Europe: Papers in Honour of Alasdair Whittle (eds Bickle, P., Cummings, V., Hofmann, D. & Pollard, J.) 298–313 (Oxbow, 2017).

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  9. Sheridan, J. A. J. Irish Archaeol. 3, 17–30 (1986).

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  10. Rivollat, M. et al. Sci. Adv. 6, eaaz5344 (2020).

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