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Stone Age hoi polloi buried over a span of 800 years at a mass grave in France mostly belong to the same male line of descent , DNAextracted from skeleton reveals .
The findings stress the importance of patrilineality in the social structure of these 5,000 - year - sure-enough communities , researchers say .
The mass burial site in France was used by the same Stone Age group for centuries.
The internet site — located in Aven de la Boucle , a limestone cave in southerly France — contained the remains of roughly 75 person , the bulk of whom were adults when they died . scientist analyzed the genomes of 37 of the deceased andradiocarbon datedtheir bones , which were scatter throughout the land site , according to a discipline print Aug. 28 in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society B.
investigator come upon that hoi polloi were bury there repeatedly between 3600 and 2800 B.C. and that 76 % were manly . Most of these workforce belonged to the same agnatic line , known as G2 , that is passed down between males via theY chromosome .
This determination suggests that social condition may have been passed down paternally and that having this kinship made men more likely than women to be buried at the web site .
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" study that all [ the ] men involved in kinship telling carry that same haplogroup ( G2 ) , this take into account us to bring up thehypothesisof a patrilinear system , " report co - authorMélanie Pruvost , a paleogeneticist at the University of Bordeaux in France , told Live Science in an electronic mail . " In other language , the tie to a specific manful blood seems to be a preponderant factor to get to the collective grave . "
But this does n’t explain why several cleaning woman were bury there , too . Pruvost proposed a few possible explanations for this .
" Maybe only a limited issue of female individual were countenance or chose to be included in the collective burial , " Pruvost articulate . Another possibleness is that " bones belonging to female individual were preferentially removed from the cavity after putrefaction occurred and propel elsewhere , " she said .
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" As it is often the case in prehistorical group , women often go out their ancestral community to live with their reproductive collaborator in what we call a patrilocal residence system , " Pruvost add . " We can for object lesson imagine that some distaff individuals would preferentially generate to be buried within their hereditary community . "
However , it ’s not clear why this Neolithic group selected this site to inter their dead for so long . It ’s potential that the fix had significant meaning for them .
" We can imagine that this place symbolise something authoritative for the community(ies ) in relation to its emplacement , its characteristics , or even maybe specific mass who were buried there , " Pruvost say . " There might be a thousand dissimilar reasons for this choice , and it is extremely unlikely that archaeology will ever be able to fructify those rationality apart . "
In increase to the skeletal remains , investigator receive a wealth of artefact in the cavity , let in ceramic and items craft from animate being bone that were possibly " used to secure either pall or clothing , " Pruvost said .
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