THE Flintstones cartoon may have fooled a generation of kids into thinking that dinosaurs lived in the Stone Age, but Fred, Wilma and baby Pebble鈥檚 nuclear family turns out to be a realistic model for how people lived then.
DNA from the remains of people massacred at what is now Eulau in Germany has provided the first evidence of what archaeologists always suspected: that humans have lived in nuclear families for thousands of years.
The evidence for Stone Age nuclear families had been flimsy and based on speculation about relationships between adults and children found buried together as well as extrapolation from the present. But because the Eulau remains were so well preserved, the team was able to extract concrete proof.
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鈥淲e have been inferring the past from the present, but it wasn鈥檛 necessarily true,鈥� says Wolfgang Haak, who led the team at the University of Mainz, Germany.
The new evidence comes from detailed analysis of the remains of 13 people buried in four graves uncovered in 2005. The 4600-year-old skeletons bear the hallmarks of violent deaths 鈥� an arrowhead was embedded in the spine of one female, and several others had axe marks on their skulls and forearms (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ).
DNA analysis of bones and teeth showed that one grave held an adult male and female, and two boys. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a nuclear family,鈥� says molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp of Washington State University in Pullman. 鈥淭he two kids have her mitochondrial DNA and his Y chromosome.鈥�
鈥淒NA from the graves of 13 people provides evidence that Stone Age humans lived in nuclear families鈥�
Exactly when nuclear families became common is still a mystery, says Haak. In prehistoric times women often died giving birth or both parents succumbed to injury or disease so family groups might have been hard to sustain.
Indeed, the female adult in another grave was unrelated to two young siblings beside her. But because they were buried together they probably had some relationship in life, says Haak. The group was an easy target for their murderers, adds Haak. 鈥淭hese were the old and the injured, children and women,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey were not capable of fighting.鈥�