One of the graves contained a woman with three children, at least two of whom were not hers. The researchers suggest the woman might be their aunt or a stepmother. Another grave contained a family of four, according to the analysis — making it the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family ever obtained.
“Normally a family doesn’t die at the same time,” Dr. Haak said. So that was one clue to what happened. Others were found in bones: fractured skulls, an arrowhead in a spine and signs of defensive injuries to arms and hands.
You might answer quite a lot of interesting questions if you could find first-order relatives in the archaeological record.
