Early Neolithic genetic data suggest that central Europe’s first farmers lived in equality

An international team of researchers led by Pere Gelabert and Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna and David Reich of Harvard University has produced the most complete set of Early Neolithic genetic data from Central Europe to date.

The results of this study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, reveal that the culture responsible for the expansion of agriculture in Central Europe 8,000 years ago showed no signs of population stratification.

The expansion of agriculture in Central Europe took place in the 6th millennium BC. Within a few generations, farmers from the Balkan region expanded down the Danube valley into present-day France and eastward into present-day Hungary and Ukraine.

The cultural traces of the farmers are homogeneous across this area, spanning thousands of kilometers—but the lack of genetic data from multiple families makes it difficult to understand whether these communities lived in social equality, or to assess which individuals were the ones who migrated across the continent.

Long-distance travelers

A research team of more than 80 geneticists, anthropologists, and archaeologists studying the social particularities of the Linear Pottery Culture (Linearbandkeramik, LBK) has integrated new genetic data from more than 250 individuals with extensive data sets: bone studies, radiocarbon dates, burial contexts, and dietary data. Studying the genetic links between those Neolithic individuals has shown that the LBK people expanded over hundreds of kilometers in just a few generations.

First and corresponding author Pere Gelabert, scientist at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, says, “We have successfully found distant relatives in Slovakia and others in Western Germany, more than 800 km away.”

“In this study,” corresponding author Ron Pinhasi explains, “we report for the first time that families at the study sites of Nitra in Slovakia and Polgár-Ferenci-hát in Hungary do not differ in terms of the foods they consumed, the grave goods they were buried with, or their origins. This suggests that the people living in these Neolithic sites were not stratified on the basis of family or biological sex, and we do not detect signs of inequality, understood as differential access to resources or space.”

Brutality in ancient times

The LBK culture came to an end around 5000 BCE, and various hypotheses have been proposed regarding its collapse. Some suggest that it was a period of social and economic crisis, often associated with episodes of widespread violence. One of the most famous events is the Massacre of Asparn-Schletz (Lower Austria), where more than 100 individuals were recovered from a ditch system.

Along with Herxheim (Germany), this site represents one of the largest known assemblages of violently killed individuals during the Early Neolithic, with skeletons showing signs of violence and multiple fractures. Gelabert stated, “Our meticulous genetic study of the Asparn-Schletz individuals showed that less than 10 were genetically related, which challenges the hypothesis that the massacre represented a single population.”

Previous anthropological studies by a team of bioanthropologists led by Maria Teschler-Nicola from the Natural History Museum Vienna noted a lack of young women, and the new data further confirm a complete absence of relatives. The presence of many children among the victims opens the door to multiple interpretations of this remarkable event of Neolithic violence.