Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre

Paleogenomic and bioanthropological studies of ancient massacres have highlighted sites where the victims were male and plausibly died all in battle, or were executed members of the same family as might be expected from a killing intentionally directed at subsets of a community, or where the massacr...

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Autores principales: Novak, Mario, Olalde, Iñigo, Ringbauer, Harald, Rohland, Nadin, Ahern, James, Balen, Jacqueline, Janković, Ivor, Potrebica, Hrvoje, Pinhasi, Ron, Reich, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946188/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33690651
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247332
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author Novak, Mario
Olalde, Iñigo
Ringbauer, Harald
Rohland, Nadin
Ahern, James
Balen, Jacqueline
Janković, Ivor
Potrebica, Hrvoje
Pinhasi, Ron
Reich, David
author_facet Novak, Mario
Olalde, Iñigo
Ringbauer, Harald
Rohland, Nadin
Ahern, James
Balen, Jacqueline
Janković, Ivor
Potrebica, Hrvoje
Pinhasi, Ron
Reich, David
author_sort Novak, Mario
collection PubMed
description Paleogenomic and bioanthropological studies of ancient massacres have highlighted sites where the victims were male and plausibly died all in battle, or were executed members of the same family as might be expected from a killing intentionally directed at subsets of a community, or where the massacred individuals were plausibly members of a migrant community in conflict with previously established groups, or where there was evidence that the killing was part of a religious ritual. Here we provide evidence of killing on a massive scale in prehistory that was not directed to a specific family, based on genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 of the 41 documented victims of a 6,200 year old massacre in Potočani, Croatia and combining our results with bioanthropological data. We highlight three results: (i) the majority of individuals were unrelated and instead were a sample of what was clearly a large farming population, (ii) the ancestry of the individuals was homogenous which makes it unlikely that the massacre was linked to the arrival of new genetic ancestry, and (iii) there were approximately equal numbers of males and females. Combined with the bioanthropological evidence that the victims were of a wide range of ages, these results show that large-scale indiscriminate killing is a horror that is not just a feature of the modern and historic periods, but was also a significant process in pre-state societies.
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spelling pubmed-79461882021-03-19 Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre Novak, Mario Olalde, Iñigo Ringbauer, Harald Rohland, Nadin Ahern, James Balen, Jacqueline Janković, Ivor Potrebica, Hrvoje Pinhasi, Ron Reich, David PLoS One Research Article Paleogenomic and bioanthropological studies of ancient massacres have highlighted sites where the victims were male and plausibly died all in battle, or were executed members of the same family as might be expected from a killing intentionally directed at subsets of a community, or where the massacred individuals were plausibly members of a migrant community in conflict with previously established groups, or where there was evidence that the killing was part of a religious ritual. Here we provide evidence of killing on a massive scale in prehistory that was not directed to a specific family, based on genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 of the 41 documented victims of a 6,200 year old massacre in Potočani, Croatia and combining our results with bioanthropological data. We highlight three results: (i) the majority of individuals were unrelated and instead were a sample of what was clearly a large farming population, (ii) the ancestry of the individuals was homogenous which makes it unlikely that the massacre was linked to the arrival of new genetic ancestry, and (iii) there were approximately equal numbers of males and females. Combined with the bioanthropological evidence that the victims were of a wide range of ages, these results show that large-scale indiscriminate killing is a horror that is not just a feature of the modern and historic periods, but was also a significant process in pre-state societies. Public Library of Science 2021-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7946188/ /pubmed/33690651 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247332 Text en © 2021 Novak et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Novak, Mario
Olalde, Iñigo
Ringbauer, Harald
Rohland, Nadin
Ahern, James
Balen, Jacqueline
Janković, Ivor
Potrebica, Hrvoje
Pinhasi, Ron
Reich, David
Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
title Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
title_full Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
title_fullStr Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
title_full_unstemmed Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
title_short Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
title_sort genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946188/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33690651
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247332
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