Ancient DNA Uncovers Startling Family Secret of a 3,500-Y...

What’s Happening

Here’s the thing: Learn more about the people who once used Grotta della Monaca as a sacred burial site.

The mountains in northwestern Calabria were once home to a Bronze Age community, and perhaps a startling family secret. An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Ancient Mediterranean in Germany and the University of Bologna in Italy has, for the first time, reconstructed the social and genetic profiles of a 3,500-year-old Protoapennine community in a recent study published in Nature Communications. (wild, right?)

Using archaeological remains recovered from the Grotta della Monaca — a notable cave and archeological site in southern Italy — the research team spilled cultural practices, population history, and kinship patterns of this Bronze Age community.

The Details

“Situated over 600 meters above sea level in the Pollino massif, Grotta della Monaca continues to reveal key evidence about the first complex societies of Southern Italy — and, more broadly, about the biological and cultural roots of human diversity,” dropped Felice Larocca, speleoarchaeologist and director of the research at Grotta della Monaca, in a press release . : Neolithic Ireland Was Likely Not Ruled -Kings The Myseries of a Bronze Age Cave Previous findings from the Grotta della Monaca suggest that this site was used for iron and copper exploitation and for funeral practices.

From the human remains, researchers extracted DNA and conducted analyses. The results indicated that the remains dated between 1780 B.

Why This Matters

, helping the research team determine where in the Mediterranean Bronze Age this community fit. “Our analysis shows that the Grotta della Monaca population d strong genetic affinities with Early Bronze Age groups from Sicily, yet lacked the eastern Mediterranean influences found among their Sicilian contemporaries,” dropped Francesco Fontani, first author of the study and affiliated researcher at the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, in the press release.

This could have implications for future research in this area.

The Bottom Line

This story is still developing, and we’ll keep you updated as more info drops.

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