World’s oldest family tree recreated with DNA

It is now the oldest family tree in the world. As recounted by BBC, scientists were able to reconstruct the list of an entire family by going back five generations from an extended family. They drew on DNA and established their tree from that of four women who had all had children with the same man. The task was made more complicated than expected since the bones were scattered in several places of the tomb. A 5,700 year old cellar.

Dating back to the Neolithic, it was found in the Cotswolds, a chain of hills in southwest England whose highest point is Cleeve Hill (330 meters). Their research highlighted the fact that first-generation women had an important place in the family. “Regarding two of the women, all their children and their descendants were in the same room, the one facing south,” detailed the tree’s co-author, David Reich, of Harvard Medical School (Harvard Medical School ).

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Excellent DNA conservation

Regarding the other two women studied, their children were in the north room even if a few ended up in the south room, “probably after a partial collapse of the northern passage”, decrypts David Reich. The family came from a time when farming was introduced to Britain, which could help scientists learn more about their culture. They also found other men alongside the mother but not their biological father. This perhaps suggests that they would have had them with another man.

However, no young girl was found in this tomb, which suggests this time that they would have been buried elsewhere. Maybe with their male partners. A “mystery” for Professor Reich questioned by the BBC. This family tree reveals many instances of polygyny and polyandry. It is “the excellent conservation of DNA in the tomb and the use of the latest technologies in the recovery and analysis of DNA” that made it possible to constitute the tree, specifies Iñigo Olalde, the working geneticist. at the University of the Basque Country.