Mass grave in French cave has too many males, too few females. Why?

A mass grave from the Neolithic era found some time back contains the remains of mostly adult males, all of whom were related. The discovery was made by archaeologists and paleo-geneticists from the Université de Bordeaux, along with other researchers from the Université Côte d'Azur, both in France.

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

A dig conducted earlier threw open a mass burial site from the Neolithic at Aven de la Boucle in a cave in southern France. Radiocarbon dating showed that burials were conducted at the site from 2,800 BC to 3,600 BC. This meant that it had been in use for almost 1,000 years.

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The researchers in the current study studied the burial site and conducted a genetic analysis on some of the bodies. The remains of 75 exhumed people were under the scanner and the team analysed the genomes of 37 of them.

Two things jumped out from the analyses - 76 per cent of the remains were male and almost all of them were from a single paternal line. The researchers believe that the discovery of male remains at one site suggests that social status was passed down through the males of the society.

Why few femaleremains?

However, in an effort to understand why so few females were present at the burial site, they came up with two possibilities. Either the females whose remains were found at the site were special in some way, or female remains were removed from the site later.

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The removal of the female remains likely happened because of a need to bring them back to their ancestral home.

Authors in the paper say that in most prehistoric societies, women often left their own homes and went with men belonging to another group. However, this was not the case with males who stuck to their society.

This is probably what happened with the people of this society as well. The males remained together and were buried in the same place. Meanwhile, it is likely that the bodies of some women were dug out and taken back to their original homes and families to let them be with their ancestors.