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gamy - tech desoxyribonucleic acid psychoanalysis of skeletons inter 8,000 years ago in France reveals that the last hunter - collector groups in Europe belike developed cultural strategies to stave off inbreeding , a new study suggests .
An investigation into the genome of 10 people who lived between 6350 and 4810 B.C. revealed few biological links among these modest communities , according to a study published Feb. 26 in the journalPNAS .
The remains of a hunter-gatherer man who was buried in a rich grave in what is now France.
Most of the individuals the research worker tested were bury at Téviec and Hoedic ( also spelled Hœdic ) , two coastal archeologic internet site in northwestern France that are notable for two reasons : They check a large phone number of well - preserved human skeletons , and they date to the period when Western Europe was transition from forage to farming .
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In the Brittany region of France , the " Neolithic transition " occurred around 4900 B.C. , result in major changes to resolution convention , technology , diet and burial practices . Hunter - collector grouping were for the most part replaced by land community , with some old genetic evidence showing that members of Orion - collector groups leave their communities and pair with Farmer . But the question of whether genes flowed the other means — from sodbuster to foragers — had not previously been answered .
look at the genome of citizenry buried at Téviec and Hoedic , the research team discovered that all of the individuals were genetically similar to other Western European hunter - gatherer groups , with no grounds that they mixed with the first farming mathematical group , which existed contemporaneously in northwesterly France .
Even though these prehistoric hunter - gatherer groups had a small number of people and did not mate with larger land groups , " contrary to expectation , individual bury together did not have close-fitting biologic kin relationships , " the research worker wrote in their study . In fact , most of the biologically pertain twain they found had third - grade — such as cousin , half - uncle , majuscule - grandparent — relationships .
" We bang that there were distinct social units — with different dietetical habit — and a pattern of group emerge that was probably part of a strategy to avoid inbreeding , " subject area lead researcherLuciana Simões , a geneticist and postdoctoral research worker in the Department of Organismal Biology at Uppsala University in Sweden , said in astatement .
Christina Bergey , an assistant professor of genetics at Rutgers University in New Jersey who was not involved in the study , told Live Science in an email that the work is " super exciting " because the genomes the team sequenced caducous luminance on human culture at the polar point of the Neolithic transition .
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" Many the great unwashed often erroneously equate hunt - and - gathering with simplicity or even rudeness , " Bergey read , but avoiding inbreeding require societal sophistication . " Perhaps complex social boundary and identity persisted , even as most of our mintage move toward agricultural fellowship , " she sound out .
One vista of the complexness of Orion - gatherer social relationships can be run into in a grave at the site of Hoedic , which include the haggard corpse of a distaff adult and a young missy , who , to the research worker ' surprisal , were not genetically related .
" This intimate that there were strong social bond paper that had nothing to do with biological affinity and that these relationships remained important even after destruction , " study co - authorAmélie Vialet , a reader at France ’s National Museum of Natural History , said in the statement .
