Unraveling ancestry, kinship, and violence in a Late Neolithic mass grave

Abstract

The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300-2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the deceased. From a population genetic viewpoint, the people from Koszyce are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in competition for resources and violent conflict. Together with the archaeological evidence, these analyses provide an unprecedented level of insight into the kinship structure and social behavior of a Late Neolithic community.

Keywords: ancient DNA; archaeology; kinship; migration; violence.

Fig. 1.

The mass grave at Koszyce, southern Poland. (A) Photograph of the 15 skeletons and grave goods buried at Koszyce site 3 (reproduced with permission from ref. 2). (B) Map of Poland showing the location of Koszyce and four other Globular Amphora/Złota group sites included in this study.

Fig. 2.

Genetic affinities of the Koszyce individuals and other GAC groups (here including Złota) analyzed in this study. (A) Principal component analysis of previously published and newly sequenced ancient individuals. Ancient genomes were projected onto modern reference populations, shown in gray. (B) Ancestry proportions based on supervised ADMIXTURE analysis (K = 3), specifying Western hunter-gatherers, Anatolian Neolithic farmers, and early Bronze Age steppe populations as ancestral source populations. LP, Late Paleolithic; M, Mesolithic; EN, Early Neolithic; MN, Middle Neolithic; LN, Late Neolithic; EBA, Early Bronze Age; PWC, Pitted Ware culture; TRB, Trichterbecherkultur/Funnelbeaker culture; LBK, Linearbandkeramik/Linear Pottery culture; GAC, Globular Amphora culture; Złota, Złota culture.

Fig. 3.

Kinship. (A) Artistic reconstruction of the Koszyce mass burial based partly on phenotypic traits inferred from the ancient genomes (reconstruction by Michał Podsiadło); (B) Schematic representation of the burial and pedigree plots showing kinship relations between the Koszyce individuals inferred from genetic data. (C) kinship network based on kinship coefficients inferred from IBS scores for pairs of Koszyce individuals showing first- and second-degree relationships. Kinship coefficients and R scores are reported in Dataset S7 and plotted in SI Appendix, Fig. S9.