Published:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017
Published in:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114 (2017) 38, Seite 10083-10088
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1706355114
ISSN:
0027-8424;
1091-6490
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
SignificancePaleogenetic and isotope data from human remains shed new light on residential rules revealing patrilocality and high female mobility in European prehistory. We show the crucial role of this institution and its impact on the transformation of population compositions over several hundred years. Evidence for an epoch-transgressing maternal relationship between two individuals demonstrates long-debated population continuity from the central European Neolithic to the Bronze Age. We demonstrate that a simple notion of “migration” cannot explain the complex human mobility of third millennium BCE societies in Eurasia. On the contrary, it appears that part of what archaeologists understand as migration is the result of large-scale institutionalized and possibly sex- and age-related individual mobility.