title: Twenty-five thousand-year-old triple burial from Dolní Vĕstonice: an ice-age family?
abstract: In 1986 a paleolithic triple burial was discovered near Dolní Vĕstonice (Czech Republic). The occurrence of anatomic variants in all three skeletons gave rise to speculations that the buried individuals may have been closely related. To test this hypothesis the skeletons were submitted to a systematic kinship analysis based on odontologic and other non-metric traits. Statistical tests showed that the coincident occurrence of several rare traits in the individuals is highly unlikely to occur at random. This and further data included in the analysis therefore suggest that the three individuals buried together were genetically related and actually belonged to one family.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Forensic Medicine, Düsseldorf University, Germany.
authors.forename: K W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Alt
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pichler
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Vach
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Klíma
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vlcek
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sedlmeier
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002048:Burial / Q000266:history*; D018153:Czech Republic; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D005580:Fossils; D014644:Genetic Variation; D049690:History, Ancient; D015186:Hominidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D010163:Paleontology; D013223:Statistics as Topic