“This came as a complete surprise to all of us and raises many questions,” says the lead author.

Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of the gold-rich shaft tombs of Mycenae, including their famous gold masks, over 100 years ago sparked much speculation about the relationships of those buried within.

Ancient genome analysis has made it possible, for the first time, to uncover insights into kinship and marriage rules in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. 

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

An international research team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), has conducted a study on over 100 genomes of Bronze Age individuals from the Aegean region.

“Without the great cooperation with our partners in Greece and worldwide, this would not have been possible,” comments one of the study’s lead authors and archaeologist Philipp Stockhammer.

First-Ever Biological Family Tree Of A Mycenaean Family

Recent advancements in ancient DNA research have made it possible to produce extensive data in regions with challenging preservation conditions, such as Greece. 

This has led to the first genetic reconstruction of a family tree for the ancient Mediterranean region, specifically for a Mycenaean hamlet from the 16th century BC. 

This discovery revealed that some of the sons continued to live in their parents’ hamlet as adults, and that one of the wives who married into the house brought her sister into the family as her child was also buried in the same grave.

First-cousin Marriage Was Customary

Another discovery, however, was totally unanticipated: it was highly typical to marry one’s first cousin 4000 years ago in Crete and the other Greek islands, as well as on the mainland.

According to lead author Eirini Skourtanioti, “More than a thousand ancient genomes from different regions of the world have now been published, but it seems that such a strict system of kin marriage did not exist anywhere else in the ancient world.

“This came as a complete surprise to all of us and raises many questions.”

The study team has no idea how to explain this specific marital rule.

“Maybe this was a way to prevent the inherited farmland from being divided up more and more? In any case, it guaranteed a certain continuity of the family in one place, which is an important prerequisite for the cultivation of olives and wine, for example,” adds Stockhammer. 

According to Skourtanioti, “what is certain is that the analysis of ancient genomes will continue to provide us with fantastic, new insights into ancient family structures in the future.”

Source: 10.1038/s41559-022-01952-3 

Image Credit: © Nikola Nevenov