Paleogeneticists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have analysed ancient
Artistic illustration of marriage principles in Crete. Image: Eva Skourtanioti
Scientists analyzed complete DNA data for 102ancient people who lived in Crete, mainland Greece and the islands of the Aegean, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. The study showed that for most of the Neolithic, the inhabitants of these territories were genetically homogeneous. At the same time, from the end of the Neolithic and in the early Bronze Age, a strong “eastern” influence was observed, associated with the migration of people to Europe from the Caucasus and from Asia.
The most surprising result, however,turned out to be the discovery of an extremely high number of traces of closely related marriages in the DNA of the inhabitants of Crete and the islands of the Aegean Sea. About 4 thousand years ago, it was a very common practice in this area to marry your first cousin.
More than a thousand ancient genomes have now been decipheredfrom different regions of the world, but it seems that such a strict system of consanguineous marriages did not exist anywhere else in the ancient world. This came as a complete surprise to all of us and raises many questions.
Eirini Skurtanioti, paleogeneticist and study co-author
The authors of the study believe that the formationThis practice may have been influenced by several factors, including geographic features and the need to maintain a local community to grow olives. They believe that future research will help to better understand the marriage practices of this region.
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On the cover: an illustration of life in Crete. Image: Nikola Nevenov