Prehistoric Humans Rarely Mated with Their Cousins

© MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology

At present-day, more than ten percent of all global marriages occur among first or second cousins. While cousin-marriages are common practice in some societies, unions between close relatives are discouraged in others. In a new study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Chicago investigated how common close parental relatedness was in our ancestors.

Publication: Harald Ringbauer, et al., Parental relatedness through time revealed by runs of homozygosity in ancient DNA, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25289-w

Original Story Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology