Ancient genomes show social and reproductive behavior of early Upper Paleolithic foragers

DOI
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Present-day hunter-gatherers (HGs) live in multilevel social groups essential to sustain a population structure characterized by limited levels of within-band relatedness and inbreeding.When these wider social networks evolved among HGs is unknown. To investigate whether the contemporary HG strategy was already present in the Upper Paleolithic, we used complete genome sequences from Sunghir, a site dated to ~34,000 years before the present, containing multiple anatomically modern human individuals.We show that individuals at Sunghir derive from a population of small effective size, with limited kinship and levels of inbreeding similar to HG populations. Our findings suggest that Upper Paleolithic social organization was similar to that of living HGs, with limited relatedness within residential groups embedded in a larger mating network.
Date Issued
2017-11-03
Publication Type
Article
Subject(s)
Language(s)
en
Author(s)
Sikora, Martin
Seguin-Orlando, Andaine
Albrechtsen, Anders
Korneliussen, Thorfinn
Ko, Amy
Rasmussen, Simon
Nigst, Philip R.
Bosch, Marjolein D.
Renaud, Gabriel
Allentoft, Morten E.
Margaryan, Ashot
Vasilyev, Sergey V.
Veselovskaya, Elizaveta V.
Borutskaya, Svetlana B.
Deviese, Thibaut
Comeskey, Dan
Higham, Tom
Manica, Andrea
Foley, Robert
Meltzer, David J.
Nielsen, Rasmus
Mirazon Lahr, Marta
Orlando, Ludovic
Willerslev, Eske
Additional Credits
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science
ISSN
0036-8075
Access(Rights)
restricted
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