New analysis of the burial and DNA of two men buried in the Stone Age Dolmen of Menga in Antequera, southern Spain, has granted researchers clues to their ancestry, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
According to the study, radiocarbon-dating shows that the two men were buried during the early medieval period (between the 8th and 11th centuries BCE), roughly 5,000 years after the dolmen’s construction in 3,800 BCE.
Researchers also discovered that the two were buried approximately 190 years apart.
Both individuals were found lying face-down in the tomb's atrium, with their heads pointing southwest along the structure's central axis, and without any grave goods.
Due to the warm climate, researchers only managed to extract usable DNA from the remains of one of the men, estimated to have been around 45-years-old, called Menga1.
The DNA of the second man, who is believed to have been more than 45 years old, was too fragmented for analysis and had an "intrusion of roots into some of the bones."
Results of the analysis showed that Menga1 was a genetically mixed individual. On his father's side, he carried a genetic lineage present in Spain since at least the Chalcolithic period, and on his mother's side, a genetic lineage that, while mainly present in Europeans, has also been found in present-day North Africans.
The combination of Iberian Iron Age, North African, and Levantine genetic sources found in Menga1, the study explained, is consistent with the ancestry of other individuals from Roman and early medieval Iberia.
DNA does not reveal religious, cultural affiliation
On its own, Menga1's ancestry does not give details of what his religious or cultural affiliation may have been, since individuals of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and pagan backgrounds all lived in the area at the time, and could have carried similar genetic profiles.
Further, the study noted that, similar to many other Islamic burial practices at the time, the two men were buried in single graves, without coffins, with their bodies facing in the direction of Mecca. However, the alignment of both burials along the axis of a major Neolithic monument sets them apart from known Islamic cemeteries in the area.
The "fact that both individuals were buried at the entrance of a monument which already at their time was extremely old, and with their heads pointing towards the interior of it, may be significant, indicating that these two men revered the dolmen," study co-author Leonardo García Sanjuán, a professor at the University of Seville, told Live Science in an email.
“Altogether, this suggests that their worldview may have been a mixture of Islamic and pagan [beliefs].”