Anthropology
Related: About this forumDNA reveals inbreeding, smallpox and violent ends among cave-dwelling Christians in medieval Spain
By Anders Götherström, Ricardo Rodriguez Varela
published 2 days ago
It's unclear why people chose to live in the caves, but DNA is shedding light on their lives.
An aerial photo of a tall cliff wall with cave openings on the bottom
Las Gobas cave in Spain hosted a medieval community. (Image credit: Anders Götherström and Ricardo Rodriguez Varela)
In a new study, we have sequenced DNA from a Christian community in medieval Spain that lived in artificial caves carved into a rocky outcrop.
This is one of several medieval cave communities known to have lived on the Iberian peninsula which includes both Portugal and Spain. Why these groups favored caves over more conventional village dwellings is a subject of longstanding debate for archaeologists. While it may be tempting to speculate about hermits or religious groups, theres scant evidence to support such theories.
Our study, published in Science Advances, explores the possibilities, adding genetic analysis to what we know about the physical remains of people from the sites cemetery. DNA was able to shed light on the ancestry of this community, their relationships to each other and the diseases that afflicted them.
The combined information reveals a story of inbreeding, occasional bouts of violence and disease during a fascinating period in history. One possibility is that some of the earliest settlers were people with military experience, though its unclear whether they were professional soldiers or not.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/dna-reveals-inbreeding-smallpox-and-violent-ends-among-cave-dwelling-christians-in-medieval-spain
RandySF
(70,613 posts)brewens
(15,359 posts)Hopefully it won't be long before they are all back in caves, getting diseases and beating each others brains out. And leaving the rest of us alone.
Groups like the Kingston Clan live primitively compared to their surrounding communities because the patriarch won't allow money spent on lifestyle improvements. Breeding close to the patriarchal line is preferred.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,668 posts)wnylib
(24,373 posts)shed some light on those cave communities. I'd think that they must have been mentioned by some writers of the times, i.e. monks in monasteries, or royal record keepers.
agalisgv
(256 posts)"Between the 8th and 11th centuries AD...underwent a massive upheaval and population shifts due to invasions from the first Muslim dynasty, the Umayyad Empire."
Link:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/christianity-survived-dna-cave-conquest-plague-b2603606.html