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Post by Admin on Aug 11, 2024 3:06:28 GMT
A collaborative effort between the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments in Baden-Württemberg and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, has yielded groundbreaking insights. For the first time, the genomes of Celtic individuals from several burial mounds have been reconstructed. This research, published in Nature Human Behaviour, reveals significant information about the Celts’ familial and societal structures.  The burial mounds of Eberdingen-Hochdorf and Asperg-Grafenbühl, known as Fürstengräber, are among the most opulent burials in German prehistory, featuring gold artifacts and elaborate bronze vessels. The new genetic analysis has confirmed that two princes buried in these mounds, located about 10 kilometers apart, were biologically closely related.  Dirk Krausse of the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments remarked, “It has long been suspected that the two princes from the burial mounds in Eberdingen-Hochdorf and Asperg-Grafenbühl were related, but only now has this assumption been confirmed by the new analyses.” Evidence for dynastic succession among early Celtic elites in Central Europe The early Iron Age (800 to 450 BCE) in France, Germany and Switzerland, known as the ‘West-Hallstattkreis’, stands out as featuring the earliest evidence for supra-regional organization north of the Alps. Often referred to as ‘early Celtic’, suggesting tentative connections to later cultural phenomena, its societal and population structure remain enigmatic. Here we present genomic and isotope data from 31 individuals from this context in southern Germany, dating between 616 and 200 BCE. We identify multiple biologically related groups spanning three elite burials as far as 100 km apart, supported by trans-regional individual mobility inferred from isotope data. These include a close biological relationship between two of the richest burial mounds of the Hallstatt culture. Bayesian modelling points to an avuncular relationship between the two individuals, which may suggest a practice of matrilineal dynastic succession in early Celtic elites. We show that their ancestry is shared on a broad geographic scale from Iberia throughout Central-Eastern Europe, undergoing a decline after the late Iron Age (450 BCE to ~50 CE). www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01888-7 |
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Post by Admin on Aug 14, 2024 17:26:54 GMT
Evidence for dynastic succession among early Celtic elites in Central Europe
The European Iron Age north of the Alps is characterized by the two key archaeological cultures Hallstatt (800 to 450 BCE) and La Tène (after 450 BCE until the beginning of the Roman period around 50 BCE), which have been, to a different degree, described as ‘Celtic’1,2. Today regarded problematic as an ethnonym, the name ‘Celtic’ was first mentioned in Greek sources from the late sixth century BC, and it is abundantly used in antique sources for societies associated with the La Tène culture3,4. Apart from this historical record and its association with the later Hallstatt and La Tène cultures, there is also a connection to linguistic evidence for a common prehistoric language family across large parts of Europe (the Celtic languages). Indeed, the pan-European patterns and linguistic evidence for cultural connections during this time are complex and encompass a vast region from the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles throughout Central Europe and as far east as Anatolia (during the third century BCE). While older research assumed an exclusive emergence of this later pan-European phenomenon in a relatively narrowly defined area northwest of the Alps, newer perspectives suggest a model of polycentric emergence in a wide area between the Atlantic coast and southwestern Germany5. One of these core regions was located in present-day eastern France, Switzerland and southwestern Germany. Between 600 and 400 BCE (Hallstatt D and La Tène A), this area stands out in its archaeological importance, as highlighted by rich ‘princely’ burials (‘Fürstengräber’).
These burials are characterized by monumental burial mounds6,7,8 and luxurious grave goods such as ceremonial wagons, furniture, gold jewellery, imported goods from the Greek and Etruscan cultural spheres, or extensive drinking and dining services. Such rare and precious objects have typically been considered indicative of outstanding social status. Throughout the early Iron Age, warrior and sacral-religious representations within those princely burials increasingly conglomerated, merging worldly and spiritual power9, perhaps more comparable to sacral kings10,11 rather than mere chieftains12. After their death, members of this princely elite were entombed below imposing monuments and became commemorated as heroic ancestors13,14. As this development progressed, some of these individuals were buried and worshipped in a god-like manner11 in large ceremonial complexes, such as the burial monuments near the Glauberg in Hesse, erected in the early La Tène period around 400 BCE15. Accordingly, those monumental princely burials would represent the manifestation of dynastic systems of power, in which political hegemony was at least partially based on biologically inherited privilege10,11, a hallmark of early complex societies16.
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Post by Admin on Aug 17, 2024 21:47:41 GMT
Fig. 1: Fine-scale familial relationships and patterns of individual mobility between early Celtic sites.  The map shows the locations of the reported sites in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany (n = 7). The ellipses and arrows on the map indicate the approximate geographical origin areas and general directions of individual mobility based on new and previously published strontium and oxygen isotope values from 67 individuals37. Supplementary data can be found in Supplementary Fig. 2.8. Additionally, the site plans of Magdalenenberg (MBG), Eberdingen-Hochdorf (HOC) and Asperg-Grafenbühl (APG) are shown, as well as the dates of their respective central burials (red colour at MBG indicates cremation burials). The sex of the sampled individuals, the respective sample IDs (without site prefixes) and detected familial relationships are indicated. Supplementary data can be found in Supplementary Figs. 2.1–2.3 and Supplementary Tables 2.1–2.4. Among the individuals studied, we identify several close biological relationships (Fig. 1, Supplementary Note 2 and Supplementary Figs. 2.1–2.3). Most prominently, this includes two of the richest burials in European prehistory, the central graves of Eberdingen-Hochdorf (HOC001) and Asperg-Grafenbühl (APG001), for which we identify a second-degree relationship. Both male individuals share the same mtDNA haplotype J1b1a1 (featuring two private mutations), which suggests relatedness on the maternal line (Supplementary Fig. 2.5). The isotopic data (Supplementary Fig. 2.9 and Supplementary Table 1.2) of the two are very similar, consistent with the biologically available strontium in the middle Neckar region25 and point to a local origin for both individuals. We integrated archaeological estimates of burial dates, osteological estimates for age at death and multiple lines of genetic evidence to derive a Bayesian model for the pedigree that connects both individuals, using latent variables for unobserved family members. Constrained in particular by the distribution of plausible ages of motherhood26, we obtain marginal posterior probabilities for 11 possible pedigrees consistent with first- and second-degree genetic relatedness and identify an avuncular relationship as the most likely (86%), with HOC001’s sister being APG001’s mother, compared with a maternal grandparent–grandchild model (6.6%) with HOC001’s daughter being APG001’s mother, and many less likely scenarios (parents, siblings or cousins) (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Note 3). These results are consistent with previous conjectures about their relationship based on their temporal order and archaeological data27. Our Bayesian pedigree model also predicts birth dates and ages of motherhood of unobserved family members (Fig. 2b for the most likely model), allowing a glimpse into the probable life histories of these princely individuals. The close biological relationship between the two may also explain their exceptional body heights. While male individuals from elite graves are already significantly taller than males from secondary burials (two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum exact test; W = 67, P = 0.004067), HOC001, followed by his relative APG001, are the tallest individuals in the complete osteological record of Iron Age southern Germany10 (Supplementary Fig. 2.10). This highlights the possibility that, besides better nutrition28,29, also genetic relatedness may have contributed to this social differentiation in body height. |
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2024 2:06:12 GMT
Fig. 2: Latent pedigree model connecting the princely graves of Hochdorf (HOC001) and Asperg (APG001).  a, We analyse several plausible pedigrees connecting the two individuals and compute a posterior probability (shown on the x axis) given priors from genetic, archaeological and anthropological evidence, including, for example, plausible ages for motherhood (Supplementary Note 3). Females are shown as circles and males as squares; HOC001 is shown in red and APG001 in blue. The labels on the x axis correspond to the tested models: (1) HOC001 is the uncle of APG001. (2) HOC001 is the maternal grandfather of APG001, which requires cryptic background relatedness on the mitochondrial lineage. MT, mitochondrial. (3) HOC001 and APG001 are double first cousins. (4) HOC001 is the paternal grandfather of APG001. (5) HOC001 and APG001 are half-siblings. (6) HOC001 is the father of APG001. (7) HOC001 and APG001 are full siblings. (8) APG001 is the uncle of HOC001. (9) APG001 is the father of HOC001. (10) APG001 is the maternal grandfather of HOC001. (11) APG001 is the paternal grandfather of HOC001. An avuncular relationship between the two individuals is the most likely scenario, with 86% posterior weight. b, Marginal posterior distributions obtained using Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling for burial dates (unobserved but constrained by priors), birth dates as well as the birth date of their respective mother are shown as kernel-density smoothed histograms. |
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2024 23:56:34 GMT
A second unique finding is the long-distance third-degree biological kinship between the richly furnished female MBG009 from Magdalenenberg and the secondary burial HOC003 from Eberdingen-Hochdorf, a pair of relatives spanning more than 100 km and around 100 years (Fig. 1). The mature male HOC003 is not related to any of the other secondary burials or the central grave of the Eberdingen-Hochdorf mound. Consistently, HOC003 shows isotopic values consistent with him being raised in the region around the Kapf, the settlement associated with Magdalenenberg (for details on isotopic results, see Supplementary Note 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2.9), although an origin north of Eberdingen-Hochdorf would also be possible. Such a close inter-site relationship over a large geographic distance is exceedingly rare in the archaeogenetic record (to our knowledge, there is only one comparable case of a second-degree relationship so far30). Based on the chronological difference between the graves, an ancestral relationship between both individuals (such as great-grandmother and great-grandson) appears most probable. Within this group of relatives, we additionally identify a third-degree relationship between MBG009 and the young adult male MBG003. Both individuals share the same mtDNA haplotype H1c9, indicating that the close kinship probably derives from the maternal line.
We identified a third inter-site group of relatives, consisting of the two second-degree relatives MBG004 (an adult female) and MBG016 (an adult male), and their more distant relatives MBG017 (the central princely burial) and another secondary burial at Eberdingen-Hochdorf, HOC004, who share identity-by-descent (IBD) fragments typical for relatives of sixth to eighth degree (as inferred using ancIBD31; Supplementary Tables 2.6 and 2.7, and Supplementary Fig. 2.4), indicating that all four individuals share a recent common ancestor (Fig. 1). Both MBG016 and MBG004 are exceptional within the burial community: While the sparsely furnished grave of MBG016 is the only grave that overlaps with another burial and is atypically oriented, the grave of MBG004 is extraordinarily wealthy. Both individuals belong to an early phase of the mound and were thus potentially associated with the founding family32,33,34. MBG004 is buried in close vicinity to another female, MBG005, a young adult, who shows no genetic relationship to MBG004 and strontium isotopes typical for the middle Neckar region25, where the sites of Eberdingen-Hochdorf, Asperg-Grafenbühl and Ditzingen-Schöckingen are located. We note that the biological relatedness detected between the central and secondary burials is consistent with interpretations of the Magdalenenberg as a ‘kin group’ burial mound for an ‘enlarged family’12.
Interestingly, this third inter-site group of relatives exhibits significantly more southern European ancestry than the rest of our analysed individuals (93.6 ± 1.9% versus 59.9 ± 3.9%; two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum exact test; W = 0, P = 0.0002259) and, consequently, significantly more Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry (55.6 ± 0.9% versus 48.4 ± 1.1%; two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum exact test; W = 0, P = 0.0002259) (Supplementary Fig. 2.8) (for details on EEF ancestry decomposition, see Methods and Supplementary Notes 2 and 4). This might indicate a non-local, southern European origin of the ancestors of the Magdalenenberg elite. Consequently, we applied MOBEST35 to perform spatiotemporal interpolation of their genetic affinity to ~5,660 previously published ancient genomes, obtaining similarity probabilities across early Iron Age Europe that can be interpreted as proxies for geographical origin (Supplementary Note 2). We detect for all four of these samples (MBG004, MBG016, MBG017 and HOC004) a putative transalpine origin in northern Italy, while all other tested Hallstatt individuals’ origins are located north of the Alps, close to their respective sites (Fig. 3a,b). Remarkably, these individuals feature excess EEF ancestry on the X chromosome in comparison with the autosomes (83.5 ± 9.9% versus 55 ± 1.1%). Applying the formula described in Mathieson et al.36, we find evidence that the EEF admixture was significantly female biased (Z = −2.86), suggesting an excess of females over males with south-European origin among their ancestors. In contrast, we detect no difference in EEF ancestry on the X chromosome and the autosomes in the rest of the sampled Hallstatt population (43.6 ± 5.7% versus 49 ± 0.6%) and, consequently, no evidence for sex-biased admixture in the main group (Z = 0.93).
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