132 Genomes from Bury Tomb Show Genetic Replacement at 3000 BC Megalith Site

The study sequenced genomes from two distinct burial phases in the same monument near Paris. Pre-3000 BC individuals cluster with northern French and German Early Neolithic groups and show multi-generational kin burials consistent with extended family use. Post-collapse remains instead align with Iberian and southern French ancestries and exhibit single-lineage dominance with far higher selectivity. Pathogen screening recovered Yersinia pestis and Borrelia recurrentis, yet mortality profiles and the scale of replacement point to combined demographic, climatic, and social stressors rather than plague alone.

This reframes the end of western European megalith construction as a population-level event rather than cultural diffusion. Comparable signals appear in contemporaneous Scandinavian and German datasets, suggesting the decline extended across the Atlantic façade. The shift from inclusive to lineage-restricted burial practices implies incoming groups imposed new social structures, echoing later Bell Beaker patterns but occurring centuries earlier.

Next steps require dense sampling across the Paris Basin and Loire to test whether replacement was synchronous or staggered. Integration with high-resolution paleoclimate proxies and lipid residue data from ceramics could quantify the relative weight of drought versus migration pressure.

Additional aDNA from non-funerary contexts will clarify whether the pre-collapse population truly vanished or simply ceased using megaliths.