World’s Earliest Nuclear Family Found

Lest anyone think that the nuclear family is some sort of recent, artificial construct, ScienceDaily reports :

The earliest evidence of a nuclear family, dating back to the Stone Age, has been uncovered by an international team of researchers, including experts from the University of Bristol. The researchers dated remains from four multiple burials discovered in Germany in 2005. The 4,600-year-old graves contained groups of adults and children buried facing each other — an unusual practice in Neolithic culture.

One of the graves was found to contain a female, a male, and two children. Using DNA analysis, the researchers established that the group consisted of a mother, father, and their two sons aged 8-9 and 4-5 years: the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family in the world (so far).