An ancient tomb in New Austria, which may represent the twins’ oldest burial on record, shows a new study.
The 1,000,000-year-old burial is dated to the Upper Paleolithic (period 400,000 to 10,000 years ago), also known as the Old Stone Age. According to the analysis of both children, one of her two children died shortly after birth, while her twin brother lived for about days, or even weeks.
A third infant, about a month old, about a foot (1. meters) away from the funeral home, possibly their cousin, was published online in the journal November, according to the research. Communications Biology.
Researchers found the oval-shaped burial of the twins in 2005 at the Archaeological Site of Krems-Watburg on the banks of the Danube River in the city center of Krems. The remains of the twins were covered with cloth, the red pigment of which was often used. Ancient burials around the world.
The twins remain infants. (Oriya) aw)
The researchers said the double burial also contained 53 beads and a perforated fox incisor and three perforated mollusks made of mammoth ivory, once threaded on the necklace, the researchers said. A huge shoulder blade, placed on the burial, protected the small body interrupted beneath it for millennia.
Another infant had an ocher at a nearby funeral, as well as an inch-long (c-centimeter) mammoth-ivory pin, which was attached to a leather garment at the time of burial, the researchers said.
The discovery made headlines soon after its discovery, and researchers also replicated the twins’ burial, which was exhibited in 2013 at the Natural History Museum in Vienna.
However, scientists still have much to learn about ancient burials. So, in the new project, an interdisciplinary group of researchers collaborated to explain the relationship between these three infants and to determine their gender and age at the time of death.
Grave Good, including a huge ivory garland (top and bottom left) and three shells (second to right). (Oriya) aw)
This study is the first record to use ancient DNA to confirm twins in archaeological records, the researchers said. And not just any twins, but identical twins.
The study, by senior researcher Ron Pinhasi, an associate professor in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Vienna, is “the earliest evidence of a double birth”, according to a statement (translated from German with Google Translate).
Researchers do not know how many normal births there were during the Upper Paleolithic (rates fluctuate by rate and region), but today, twins (both identical and fraternal) occur in about 85 births, while identical twins are born in about 250 births.
“Finding multiple burials from the Paleolithic period is one of its specialties,” said Maria Teschler-Nicola, a biologist and study lead researcher at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. “The fact that enough and high-quality old DNA can be extracted from the skeleton of a fragile child for genome analysis has exceeded all our expectations and can be compared to a lottery ticket.”
Genetic analysis of the third infant revealed that he was related to a third-degree male, possibly a cousin, the researchers found.
To determine at what age infant mortality occurs, the researchers looked at each child’s top second incisor. Tish paid special attention to the so-called “newborn line”, a dark line in the enamel of the teeth that separates the enamel formed after birth from the formation after birth, Tesler-Nicola said.
Those newborn lines, as well as the skeletal development of infants, indicate that twins are either full, or almost full-term, babies. It appears that the group of infant hunters first buried the twins, then reopened the tomb when they buried his brother.
The researchers said the findings confirm a cultural-historical historical practice of re-opening tombs intended for re-entrepreneurial purposes, which had never been documented before in Paleolithic burials, the researchers said.
The team also analyzed chemical elements in the tooth enamel, including isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and barium, stating that each twin was breastfed. Although the twin’s cousin lived for three months, “stress lines” in his teeth indicate that he was having trouble feeding, perhaps because his mother had a breast infection called mastitis, or perhaps because she did not survive the birth.
It is not known exactly why these infants died, but for this Paleolithic hunter-gatherer, the deaths of the twins and their cousins were potentially painful events that set up camp by the Danube a long time ago and buried their children.
“Children were clearly of special importance to the group and were highly respected and respected,” Tesler-Nicola told Live Science.
The extraordinary burial “seems to have been a great loss to the community and their survival from the death of the children.”
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
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