UPPSALA, SWEDEN—Paleogenomicist Federico Sánchez-Quinto of Uppsala University and his colleagues suggest European megalithic societies may have invested social power in male family lines across multiple generations, according to a Science Magazine report. The researchers investigated possible relationships among 18 men and six women buried in four megalithic tombs in Scotland, Ireland, and Sweden between 4500 and 3000 B.C. Analysis of nuclear DNA samples obtained from the remains suggests there were close kinship ties among the men buried at the Scottish site and among those buried at the Swedish site. In addition, at least six of the nine men buried in the Primrose Grange tomb, on the northwest coast of Ireland, may have descended from the same paternal line over as many as 12 generations. One of these men may also have been the father of a man whose remains were found in another megalithic tomb about a mile away. Critics of the study note the small number of individuals in the test sample, the fact that women received identical high-status burials when interred in megalithic tombs, and a separate genetic study that found a lack of close kinship ties among individuals buried at another megalithic tomb in Ireland. To read about new insights into a standard of measurement that appears to have been used at Stonehenge, go to “Epic Proportions.”
