Researchers studying the remains of a prehistoric woman who lived around 10,500 years ago in what is now Belgium have produced a reconstruction of her face using ancient DNA.
A team led by scientists from Ghent University found that the woman would have had blue eyes and slightly lighter skin than most other people from the Mesolithic period in Western Europe who have been analyzed to date, according to a statement from the university on Tuesday.
Isabelle De Groote, an archaeologist at Ghent University who leads the research project on Mesolithic Belgium, told CNN that the woman came from the same population group as the Cheddar Man, who lived in what is now the United Kingdom at around the same time, but had lighter skin.
The findings challenge previous assumptions that European hunter gatherers shared the same genetic makeup, and demonstrates that there was already considerable variation in skin color among different populations, said De Groote.
“From the skull we could also tell that she was somewhere between 35 and 60 years old,” De Groote told CNN on Wednesday.
“She also had a nose with a high nasal bridge, which is similar to Cheddar Man,” De Groote added. “She also has strong brow ridges despite being a female.”
The woman’s remains were found in the Margaux cave in Dinant during an archaeological dig in 1988-1989 alongside the bodies of eight other women, said De Groote.
This was “an unusual finding” as most Mesolithic burial sites contain a mixture of men, women and children, she added.
“Many of the skeletons were sprinkled with ochre, a practice associated with ritual or symbolic behavior,” said De Groote.
Most of the bodies were carefully covered with stone fragments, while one individual had cut marks on her skull that were made after her death, she added.
“Also interesting is that this burial cave was used over a period of several hundreds of years so that they were places of memory that people would go back to despite their mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle,” said De Groote.
“These findings point to complex burial customs and raise intriguing questions about the social structure and cultural practices of this early hunter-gatherer community,” she added.
Philippe Crombé, an archaeologist at the university who is part of the project team, said that the ancient woman’s skin color was “a bit of a surprise,” but there’s a limited pool of Mesolithic people with whom to compare.
“All individuals so far analyzed on ancient DNA in Western Europe have belonged to the same genetic group,” he said.
“So it’s a bit of a surprise, but on the other hand, it is to be expected that in the wide area of Western Europe there’s some variability, as there is today.”
When the remains were recovered there was no way to conduct research into ancient DNA, said Crombé.
“Techniques have developed since the excavation,” he told CNN on Wednesday, adding that the interdisciplinary project is “a re-analysis of old excavations using state of the art methods.”
Crombé detailed how “quite good quality” DNA was taken from the woman’s skull, allowing for the creation of “a very detailed reconstruction.”
Her skin color, hair color and eye color is all based on ancient DNA, while other elements such as her jewelry and tattoos are based on archaeological data obtained from other excavations in the River Meuse basin, which also allowed them to build a picture of her daily life.
At one excavation – a former campsite on the banks of the river – scientists found stone tools, bones from wild game and fish remains, said Crombé, providing evidence that these people would have been nomadic.
“They’re still moving around because they are entirely dependent on natural resources: wild game, wild plants, fish,” he said. “So that forced them to move through the landscape and to move their settlements.”
Many questions remain about these Mesolithic communities, which were the last hunter-gatherers in Western Europe, said Crombé.
Now the team are analyzing the remains to piece together the relationships between people who were buried together, and also plan to study the extent to which they would have eaten fish, he added.
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