Ancient DNA Reveals Daily Life in a 3,500-Year-Old Italian Community

An international team of researchers led by scientists from the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Ancient Mediterranean (Leipzig, Germany) and the University of Bologna (Italy) has reconstructed, for the first time, the genetic and social profile of a Protoapennine community that lived in northwestern Calabria around 3500 years ago. The findings provide unprecedented insight into the population history, kinship patterns, and cultural practices of a Protoapennine community, a cultural horizon attested in Southern Italy around the Middle Bronze Age, whose remains were found in the archaeological cave of Grotta della Monaca.

A cave as a window into the past

Located deep within the Pollino massif, Grotta della Monaca (Sant’Agata di Esaro, Cosenza) is among Calabria’s most important prehistoric sites, known for its early evidence of copper and iron ore exploitation as well as for its funerary use. Through analysis of ancient DNA from human remains dated between 1780 and 1380 BCE, the researchers have revealed how this small mountain community fits within the broader genetic landscape of the Mediterranean Bronze Age.

“Our analysis shows that the Grotta della Monaca population shared strong genetic affinities with Early Bronze Age groups from Sicily, yet lacked the eastern Mediterranean influences found among their Sicilian contemporaries,” explains Francesco Fontani, first author of the study and affiliated researcher at the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Ancient Mediterranean. “This suggests that, while in contact across the Strait of Messina, Tyrrhenian Calabria followed its own demographic and cultural trajectories during prehistory.”

Mobility, kinship and diet

Despite its apparent geographic isolation, the community was not genetically insular. Two individuals exhibited ancestral links to populations from northeastern Italy, suggesting long-distance mobility and gene flow across the peninsula. The genomes also revealed contributions from European hunter-gatherers, Anatolian Neolithic farmers, and Steppe pastoralists—ancestral components common in Bronze Age Europe but here forming a local signature.

The interdisciplinary approach, combining genomic, archaeological, and anthropological data, also uncovered sex- and kinship-based burial organization within the cave’s funerary area. In a striking discovery, the researchers identified a parent-offspring union, the first genetic evidence of its kind ever documented in a prehistoric European context. “This finding emphasizes the distinction between unambiguous biological evidence and its social meaning,” notes Alissa Mittnik, group leader at the Department of Archaeogenetics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and co-senior author of the research. “This exceptional case may indicate culturally specific behaviours in this small community, but its significance ultimately remains uncertain.”

Isotopic and genetic data indicate that the Grotta della Monaca individuals practiced pastoralism, consuming milk and dairy products despite carrying genetic variants associated with adult lactose intolerance. According to Donata Luiselli, co-senior author of the study and head of the Ancient DNA Laboratory at the University of Bologna, this paradox “illustrates how cultural adaptation can precede genetic evolution. These people had developed dietary strategies that allowed them to thrive in a challenging mountain environment, despite lacking genetic tolerance to lactose.”

A small community with great significance

The findings also redefine the role of caves in Protoapennine ritual and social life. Rather than serving as isolated or symbolic spaces, Grotta della Monaca appears to have functioned as a collective burial site that reinforced shared community identity and familial bonds of a small group. Felice Larocca, speleoarchaeologist and director of the research at Grotta della Monaca, emphasizes the site’s importance: “Situated over 600 meters above sea level in the Pollino massif, Grotta della Monaca continues to reveal key evidence about the first complex societies of Southern Italy—and, more broadly, about the biological and cultural roots of human diversity.”

Reference: Fontani F, Larocca F, Cilli E, et al. Archaeogenetics reconstructs demography and extreme parental consanguinity in a Bronze Age community from Southern Italy. Commun Biol. 2025;8(1):1766. doi: 10.1038/s42003-025-09194-2

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