DNA Reveals Neolithic Family Tree in France

In the mid-2000s, archaeologists excavating a burial site in France uncovered a 6,500-year-old mystery. Among the remains of more than 120 individuals, one grave stood out.

It contained a nearly complete female skeleton alongside a few assorted bones that looked like they had been dug up and moved from another grave.

Ancient DNA from the enigmatic relocated remains now shows that they belonged to the male ancestor of dozens of the other people buried nearby.

This insight comes from a study that used ancient genomics to build the largest-ever genealogy of a prehistoric family, providing a snapshot of life in an early farming community. The study1 was published on 26 July in Nature.

Ordinary folk

Western Europe is littered with monuments that served as burying grounds for high-status individuals from a period, roughly 7,000 to 4,000 years ago, called the Neolithic.

The dozens of burials at Gurgy ‘Les Noisats’, located about 150 kilometers southeast of Paris, lack any signs of such monuments or rich grave goods, indicating that they might have belonged to commoners, says study co-author Wolfgang Haak, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

His team analysed the genomes of 94 of the 128 individuals recovered from the site, and used the data to determine how they were related to one another.

The researchers expected some individuals to be related, based on the composition of other Neolithic sites.

But they were astounded to discover that around two-thirds belonged to a single family tree that spanned seven generations. The closer people were buried, the more closely related they were.

At the top of the genealogy is the man from the mysterious grave. The jumble of bones was unique to the site, yet no grave goods or other evidence signalled his position or the reason his remains had been exhumed, says study co-author Maïté Rivollat, an archaeologist at the University of Ghent in Belgium.

The researchers have so far failed to extract DNA from the woman buried alongside him. If she is like the other adult women from the site — most of whom were not closely related to anyone else — she might have joined the family from another community.

This points to a social structure similar to those uncovered at some other prehistoric sites in which male descendants tended to stick around, whereas the women moved elsewhere.

Prehistoric social scene

The giant family tree revealed other previously hidden aspects of Neolithic life. All siblings shared the same mother and father, with no-half siblings present.

This suggests that no individuals had multiple partners. “Here it’s fairly straightforward and fairly monogamous,” says Haak. “Is that the standard life of the commoner and the non-elite?”

This contrasts with a later Neolithic burial in the United Kingdom, Hazleton North, where researchers identified a man who had reproduced with four women.

Researchers must build family trees from other ancient burials to figure out what is typical, says Chris Fowler, an archaeologist at the University of Newcastle, UK, who was part of that study.

“This type of work really breathes new life into our understanding of ancient peoples,” says Kendra Sirak, an ancient-DNA specialist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. She’s most curious about the man at the root of the family tree. “I would love to know what made this person so important.”

Giant 1,100-pound bone belonging to sauropod found in France

The femur of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French paleontologists at an excavation site in southwest France where, since 2010, remains of some of the largest animals ever to live on land have been excavated.

The thigh bone of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French paleontologists at an excavation site in southwestern France where remains of some of the largest animals that ever lived on land have been dug up since 2010.

The two-meter-long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.

“This is a major discovery,” Ronan Allain, a paleontologist at the National History Museum of Paris told Reuters. “I was especially amazed by the state of preservation of that femur.”

“These are animals that probably weighed 40 to 50 tonnes.”

Allain said scientists at the site near the city of Cognac have found more than 7,500 fossils of more than 40 different species since 2010, making it one of the largest such finds in Europe.

The scientists believe that the bones are from a sauropod, which is the largest herbivorous dinosaur and first appeared in the late Triassic Period.

These reptiles were the largest of all dinosaurs and the largest land animals that have ever lived, they had a small head a long neck, and a very long tail.

Scientists believe they would spend their time wallowing in shallow water that would help support their bodies.

The dinosaur bone was found covered in clay by volunteers from the National Museum of Natural History.

Neanderthals May Have Created Cave Art in France

The oldest-known engravings in Europe, discovered in a French cave sealed up for tens of thousands of years, likely weren’t crafted by modern humans but rather Neanderthals, a new study finds. 

Within the cave of La Roche-Cotard 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Paris, the researchers analyzed a series of non-figurative markings thought to be made by ancient human fingers, according to a study published Wednesday (June 21) in the journal PLOS One. 

The cave had been sealed up by sediments until the late 19th century. Modern excavations at the site have yielded numerous stone tools whose style is associated with the Neanderthals, suggesting they created the art. 

Ancient figurative art, including wall paintings, is well-known from European sites, with drawings of horses, lions, and handprints representing famous examples of Upper Paleolithic culture dating back 35,000 years.

For decades, researchers thought that these creations were hallmarks of modern human behavior, but recently, researchers have unearthed older examples of non-utilitarian objects and art in Europe and in other areas of the world, such as a 51,000-year-old chevron-engraved bone in Germany created by Neanderthals; however, Homo sapiens are credited with a 45,500-year-old drawing of a warty pig in Indonesia and a 73,000-year-old hashtag drawing in South Africa.

At the cave of La Roche-Cotard, researchers found eight panels with more than 400 traces of abstract lines and dots. The researchers call these traces “engravings” because they represent the deliberate removal of material carried out with a tool or finger. “This removal of material is neither accidental nor utilitarian,” they wrote in their study, but rather “intentional and meticulous.”

To figure out how the engravings were made, the researchers set up an experiment at a similar cave, in which one person created marks using their fingers, bone, wood, antler, flint and metal points against the rock wall.

Another person then recorded what those marks looked like and used photogrammetry methods — a technique that uses hundreds of photos to create virtual 3D models — to compare the experimental marks with the prehistoric ones. 

The researchers concluded that the experimental finger markings were most similar to the prehistoric engravings.

The researchers also found no direct link between the numerous stone tools discovered in the cave and the engravings, further supporting the finding that Neanderthals created the engravings with their fingers, just as the researchers did. For the most part, the engravings on the cave wall are lines called “finger flutings,” made when someone swiped their fingers flat along the silt-covered wall, the team concluded.

To further refine the date the cave was used and figure out if the finger flutings were those of modern humans or Neanderthals, the researchers used optically stimulated luminescence of the sediments to determine when they were last exposed to daylight.

The analysis revealed that the cave closed up at least 57,000 years ago and possibly as long as 75,000 years ago. 

These early dates mean it’s “highly unlikely” that anatomically modern humans had access to the inside of the cave, the researchers wrote in their study, as current evidence suggests they were not present in France until at least 54,000 years ago, whereas Neandertals appeared there around 330,000 years ago. “We conclude that the LRC engravings are unambiguous examples of Neanderthal abstract design,” they wrote.

April Nowell, a paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in this study, told Live Science in an email that “this study is important because it extends the antiquity of digital [finger] tracings and, for the first time, associates them with a hominin species other than Homo sapiens.” 

But the significance of these engravings remains unclear. “Although the finger tracings at La Roche-Cotard are clearly intentional,” the researchers wrote, “it is not possible for us to establish if they represent symbolic thinking.” 

Nowell agreed that “these tracings do not have to be symbolic any more than when someone traces their fingers in the sand on a beach.” The engravings are, however, important new information about the behavior of our Neanderthal relatives, whose culture was more complex and diverse than previously realized.

The 6,000-year-old settlement found on the island of Corsica

Archaeologists in a French municipality recently excavated the slopes of Punta Campana (island of Corsica) in preparation for a construction project and found an expansive Neolithic site.

The site in Sotta (Sotta is a French municipality on the island of Corsica) contains two distinct settlements, according to a news release from the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives (INRAP).

The first settlement is partially preserved while the second is well preserved.

As part of this excavation, archaeologists have uncovered the existence of a recent Neolithic settlement (Basien) followed by a late Neolithic settlement.

Archaeologists said the first settlement, which dates back to the early fourth millennium B.C., held a stone structure containing the remains of an obsidian knapping workshop.

Within the workshop, there is evidence indicating that ancient people used a variety of methods to make obsidian tools.

According to experts, the site likely experienced significant erosion until the second, more recent settlement was built on top of the workshop.

Terraced Structures

Archaeologists unearthed a terrace system filled with occupation and activities in the second, better-preserved settlement’s, dating to the 3rd millennium BC.

The terraces were topped with an approximately 3-foot tall or fortified wall made of granite blocks, according to researchers.

A stone arc made of granite blocks was located on the first terrace below it. The building methods used in the arc indicate it was used as a roof of some sort, but experts aren’t unknown its yet precise function.

Archaeologists also discovered a staircase and corridor inside the terraced building that appeared to serve as a pathway to the system’s upper level.

The team discovered two other similar but more refined terraced systems at the site. It is still unknown what these structures were used for, but archaeologists believe they could have been used for food storage, metallurgy, or other artisan activities.

Archaeologists discovered thousands of unusual copper and other metal artifacts at the Neolithic site, particularly in the terraced area. Some remain indicated traces of melting that took place at the site.

Cattle teeth and unusual cranial skeletal remains that appeared to have been burned were also discovered, according to INRAP.

Archaeologists also unearthed ceramics, flint, obsidian, quartz, arrowheads, polishers, axles, wheels, and tools. Further studies on the finds are ongoing.

2,000-Year-Old Parisii Cemetery Unearthed in France

Just metres from a busy train station in the heart of Paris, scientists have uncovered 50 graves in an ancient necropolis which offer a rare glimpse of life in the French capital’s precursor Lutetia nearly 2,000 years ago.

Somehow the buried necropolis was never stumbled upon during multiple road works over the years, as well as the construction of the Port-Royal station on the historic Left Bank in the 1970s.

However, plans for a new exit for the train station prompted an archaeological excavation.

Camille Colonna, an anthropologist at France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), told a press conference that there were already “strong suspicions” the site was close to Lutetia’s southern necropolis.

The “Saint Jacques” necropolis, the largest burial site in the Gallo–Roman town of Lutetia, was previously partially excavated in the 1800s.

However, only objects considered precious were taken from the graves, with the many skeletons, burial offerings and other artifacts abandoned.

The necropolis was then covered over and again lost to time.

The INRAP team discovered one section that had never before been excavated.

“No one has seen it since antiquity,” said INRAP president Dominique Garcia.

Colonna said the team was also “very happy” to have found a skeleton with a coin in its mouth, allowing them to date the burial to the 2nd century AD. The excavation, which began in March, has uncovered 50 graves, all of which were used for burial — not cremation, which was also common at the time.

Ferryman of Hades

The remains of the men, women and children are believed to be Parisii, a Gallic people who lived in Lutetia, from when the town on the banks of the Seine river was under the control of the Roman Empire.

The skeletons were buried in wooden coffins, which were now only identifiable by their nails.  More than half were buried alongside offerings such as ceramic jugs and goblets.

Sometimes a coin was placed in the coffin, or even in the mouth of the dead, a common practice at the time called Charon’s obol.

In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of Hades, and the coin was considered a bribe to carry the souls of the dead across the river Styx. The archaeologists also found shoes inside the graves, identifying them by the small nails that would be been in the soles.

Colonna said the shoes were placed “either at the feet of the dead or next to them, like an offering”.

Jewellery, hairpins, and belts were also discovered.

The entire skeleton of a pig and another small animal was discovered in a pit where animals were thought to have been sacrificed to the gods. Unlike the excavation in the 1800s, this time the team plans to remove everything from the necropolis for analysis.

“This will allow us to understand the life of the Parisii through their funeral rites, as well as their health by studying their DNA,” Colonna said.

Garcia said that the ancient history of Paris was “generally not well known”.

The unearthed graves open “a window into the world of Paris during antiquity,” he added.

The naked Venus statue was discovered in a Roman garbage dump in France

Archaeologists from the French National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research (Inrap) has been uncovered a trove of artifacts, including two statues of the goddess Venus, in a Roman-era quarry-turned-trash-dump in the city of Rennes, France.

Artifacts dating back to 1800 years included statues of Venus, as well as a pottery kiln, clothes pins, and coins.

Archaeologists reported earlier this month that they had discovered a quarry that was probably important in constructing Roman Rennes while excavating before a development project.

The founding of the city of Rennes dates back to 100 A.D. Back then, it was still the Condate Riedonum, which was a Roman town.

The foundations for several of Condate’s walls and streets were constructed using tiny slabs of Brioverian schist that were extracted during the first and second centuries of our era.

 The excavation of such a set can teach archaeologists more about the management and organization of the quarry, as well as the gestures of the quarry workers (tools used, extraction techniques), the evolution of the working face over time, and the development of the quarry in successive levels.

During the quarry excavation, a piece of the mother-goddess Venus genetrix, depicted with her chest covered in fabric, was found.

The statuette dates from between the 1st to 2nd century AD and depicts a 10cm tall naked Venus made from terracotta. She is shown holding her hair which is held in place by an imposing headdress.

 The second and more thorough example is Venus Anadyomene, who emerged from the sea. She is naked and is wringing the water from her hair with her right hand.

Venus is a Roman goddess associated with love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory.

According to Roman mythology, she was an ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy.

Excavations of the accumulated layers of Roman rubbish has revealed a multitude of finds, including fragments of ceramic tableware, several terracotta statuettes of deities, coins and items of adornment (fibulas).

Innovative Construction Technique Spotted in Notre Dame

In 2019, a fire broke out inside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, severely damaging the iconic medieval building. However, the catastrophic fire gave researchers an opportunity to study the building’s architecture like never before.

A few months after the inferno was extinguished, researchers discovered that the stones used to build the Gothic-style cathedral were held together using iron staples, a technique that had never been documented before in a building from this time period, according to a study published March 15 in the journal PLOS One.

Notre Dame was constructed in multiple phases starting in the early 12th century and continuing for the next 300 years, according to the Notre Dame Cathedral website.

“This is the first building of its kind in which we see this,” lead author Maxime L’Héritier, a professor in the Department of History at Paris 8 University, told Live Science. “This shows [that the builders] at the time were trying to experiment with new forms of construction.”

L’Héritier and his team analyzed 12 of the iron staples, which measure approximately 20 inches (50 centimeters) long and were part of the “iron skeleton” holding the building together, L’Héritier wrote in an essay for the archaeology publication Sapiens.

The staples offered additional reinforcements to the cathedral’s stonework, including holding together the large arches in the nave of the building’s towering 226-foot-tall (69 meters) twin towers.

Without the staples’ support, this architectural feat would likely have been impossible to accomplish in 1160, when construction of the building began, according to the study.

“When we studied other Gothic churches of that time period, none used iron in their construction,” L’Héritier said. “We believe that the staples were what enabled them to build this structure at such a terrific height.”

Researchers radiocarbon dated the iron staples and discovered that they were used during one of the initial construction phases, “confirming that the production date of the staples was the same as the masonry, which also dated to around 1160,” L’Héritier said.

However, L’Héritier cautioned that it will take further analysis to know the iron’s exact origins.

“We’re trying to figure out if it’s local or more distant,” L’Héritier said. “There also seems to be different ore sources depending on whether the construction occurred in the 12th or 13th centuries. We do know that the [cathedral’s] bishop died at the end of the 12th century, so it’s possible that a new ore resource was used years later. We should know more in a year or two.”

In the four years following the blaze, Notre Dame has been undergoing reconstruction and is expected to reopen to visitors in December 2024, according to AP News.

Monumental Roman complex discovered in France

In the city of Reims in northeastern France, archaeologists have discovered an ancient Roman-era monumental complex dating from the 2nd – 3rd century AD.

The structure consists of two porticoed galleries 65 ft lengthy forming the arms of a U. Greater than 20 rooms occupy the galleries, from corridors to residing areas with chalk flooring and fireplaces. 9 of the rooms had been a part of the traditional baths. 5 of them had a hypocaust underfloor heating system; lots of the pilae stacks (sq. tile piles) that supported the ground are nonetheless in place and in glorious situation.

Within the empty house between the galleries are two rectangular masonry buildings that had been possible a part of backyard. One of many two was a basin or fountain. Two pressurized water pipes had been discovered that stuffed the basin and/or fed the water function.

Archaeologists discovered painted plasters adorned with floral motifs. Some of the pigments used, such as a blue similar to “Egyptian blue,” are extremely rare.

This discovery typifies a very simple set. The large number of rooms, their organization, the wealth of the decorations, the two large galleries, the hydraulic network, and the archaeological elements discovered (ceramics, architectural blocks, copper alloy tableware, and so on) allow for two interpretations. These relics could be the domus (house) of a wealthy individual or a spa complex, possibly open to the public, given the monumentality.

The Porte de Mars, the largest remaining Roman triumphal arch from the third century A.D., is just 100 meters (328 feet) away from the monumental complex. One of four imposing gates in the city walls, the arch was named after a nearby Temple of Mars.

In the third century, this was a very prestigious location, but by the beginning of the fourth, the area had all but been abandoned, and its buildings had been quarried for recycled construction materials.

The construction of Reims’ 4th-century walls may have caused the shift. For the next 1400 years, the neighborhood was used for agriculture before becoming a populated area at the end of the 18th century.