Monumental tombs constructed by the first Neolithic people in Britain may have been physical embodiments of kinship, tracing lineages over centuries.
Researchers at Cardiff University used ancient DNA analysis on individuals contained in the ancient structures, which are located in Caithness and the Orkney Islands and date from 3800–3200 BC.
They found people interred in the same or nearby tombs were typically related along the male line of descent.
The findings, published in the journal Antiquity, suggest paternal relatedness was an important social connection and that funerary landscapes were monumental signifiers of kinship and group identities.
Lead author Professor Vicki Cummings, based at the University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: "These results are consistent with the interpretation that patrilineal descent was traced in this region."
For the people introducing the Neolithic into Britain, this social connection may have been as important as pots, cows and axes.
While specific practices varied between Caithness and Orkney, in both areas shared architecture was constructed for small kin groups and, in the case of two females buried in Orkney, there were even genetic connections across the sea between the mainland and islands.
The team concludes the construction and use of these tombs was likely a means to trace lines of descent and project them into the future, indicating mortuary practices were a key means through which northern Scottish communities expressed group identities.
Professor Cummings added: "It is incredible to think that, more than 5,000 years after these people were deposited in these tombs, we are able to reconstruct how they were related to each other through the analysis of ancient DNA."
This study shows that the people building these monuments placed a particular emphasis on the male line, and that this was shared across a wide geographic area.
Co-author of the research, Professor Chris Fowler from Newcastle University said: "Kinship is a social phenomenon, a measure of social relatedness and belonging which – among many other things - reflects on the biological relatedness of individuals within a community."
Building tombs and entombing the dead as technologies of descent and affinity in Neolithic northern Scotland, is published in the journal Antiquity and available to view here .
