In the Iron Age, many Celtic elites were buried in lavish tombs filled with ceremonial wagons, jewelry, furniture, and dining wares. Such burials have made historians wonder: How did these individuals acquire such wealth? According to a new study, they got it from their mothers.
Researchers recently performed genetic tests on 31 skeletons found in seven rich burial sites in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, all dating between 616 and 200 BC.
Their analysis revealed that two men occupying two of the richest graves, located about six miles apart, were related. According to the study, which was published this month in the journal Nature Human behaviorancient people may have been an uncle and nephew – more specifically, a man and his sister’s son.
“This result shows that political power in this society was most likely inherited through a biological succession, comparable to a dynasty,” study co-author Joscha Gretzinger, a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said in a statement.
The Celts were a group of Central European tribes with similar cultural and religious traditions. First mentioned by ancient Greek writers around the fifth century BC, the tribes flourished during the Iron Age. The rich burial mounds in question were made by the “early Celtics,” a group whose social structures “remain enigmatic,” the researchers write.
New genetic testing illuminates an intriguing custom of this mysterious people: “a practice of matrilineal dynastic inheritance among early Celtic elites,” as the study puts it.
In other words, the early Celtics did not just inherit power from their families; power seems to have been passed down specifically through female lines. Scholars believe that the younger deceased acquired the wealth apparent in his burial through his mother’s family.
As such, “avunculate matrilineal organization”—inheritance through the maternal uncle—is more common in populations that engage in frequent extramarital affairs, which lowers confidence in a child’s true paternity, according to the researchers. In such societies, “men are genetically more likely to be more closely related to their sisters’ children than to those of their wives, ultimately favoring investment in [their] sisters’ children.”
This practice may also explain another finding: Two of the tomb’s occupants were born to parents who were first cousins.
“If a ruler has children of his own, but also passes power to his sister’s children, then there may be an incentive to merge the direct line and the sister’s lineage, which would then result in first cousin mating through the female line,” study co. – says author Stephan Schiffels, a population geneticist at the Max Planck Institute Live ScienceChristina Killgrove e. “But we cannot prove such a scenario from the genetic data.”
Leaving aside the practices of conception and inheritance, uncle and nephew also have another distinction. As study co-author Dirk Krausse, a government archaeologist for Baden-Württemberg, says. Living science, the two men are among the tallest Iron Age Germans ever recorded: They were both about 11 feet. Researchers attribute their stature to the nutritious diets they must have enjoyed as a wealthy and powerful family.
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