Experts offered a headline-grabbing theory<\/a>: Neolithic Ireland was ruled by incestuous royal dynasties, or potentially even \u201cgod-kings\u201d similar to those documented in ancient Egyptian<\/a> and Incan empires<\/a>. Dating back roughly 500 years before both Stonehenge<\/a> and the Giza pyramids<\/a>), the UNESCO World Heritage Site<\/a> contains the remains of numerous Stone Age individuals. Combined with evidence of genetic relations in other passage tombs on the island, according to another team led by researchers at the University College Dublin, the Newgrange god-king hypothesis doesn\u2019t hold up to closer scrutiny. Their argument is laid out in a study published on June 22 in the journal Antiquity<\/a>.<\/p>\n The mystery of NG10<\/p>\n Constructed around 3100 BCE, Newgrange<\/a> includes a massive burial mound built from an estimated 196,000 tons of layered earth and stone. The site has featured prominently in Irish culture<\/a> for millennia, with folklore eventually ascribing the chambers as home to the region\u2019s chief god Dagda and his son Aengus<\/a>. Antiquarians first rediscovered Newgrange in 1699 CE, but the most thorough excavation work at the site began in 1962. Experts have continued exploring the Stone Age trove\u2014including the controversial skull fragment known as NG10.<\/p>\n Dating between 3340 and 3020 BCE, NG10 potentially offered, \u201cfar-reaching consequences for our understanding of prehistoric population movement and the structure of that ancient society,\u201d according to the 2020 study\u2019s accompanying report in Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSocially sanctioned matings of this nature are very rare, and are documented almost exclusively among politico-religious elites\u2014specifically within polygynous and patrilineal royal families that are headed by god-kings,\u201d the authors noted at the time.<\/p>\n Contradicting theories<\/p>\n Archeologist Jessica Smyth disagrees. As one of the latest study\u2019s co-authors and an associate professor at University College Dublin, Smyth has serious doubts about NG10\u2019s royal pedigree.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were definitely being selected for burial in passage tombs\u2014the whole community does not end up in these monuments,\u201d Smyth explained in a statement<\/a>. \u201cHowever, we don\u2019t know the reasons behind this selection, and why they were thought to be special.\u201d<\/p>\n Smyth and her colleagues argue that many of the site\u2019s other skeletal remains simply don\u2019t support the idea of pervasive incest among those buried at Newgrange. Instead, they say the genetic clustering<\/a> found amid bones in specific passage tombs more typically reflects distant biological relations such as second cousins and even great-great-great-grand parents.\u00a0 With this knowledge, Smyth and co-authors believe the burials weren\u2019t solely determined by lineage or royal dynasty, but potentially along more communal, egalitarian lines.<\/p>\n \u201cWe now have some really great examples of monuments elsewhere in Europe that contain people with very close biological ties\u2014parents, children, grandparents, etc.,\u201d said Smyth. \u201cThis sort of [ancient DNA] evidence is much closer to the idea of a lineage or dynasty. [But] we do not see this evidence in Irish passage tombs.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, a deceased person\u2019s remains were treated differently during Neolithic Ireland than they are today.<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike today, bodies don\u2019t tend to be buried \u2018whole\u2019 or \u2018intact\u2019 in this time period. Before they end up in megalithic monuments, bodies are broken down, sometimes cremated and even circulated around their communities,\u201d added Smyth.<\/p>\n \u2018A one-off example\u2019<\/p>\n Until recently, archaeologists have largely examined Irish megaliths and their passage tombs individually from each other, instead of in a broader context of the communities that surrounded them. Taken altogether, the team believes it remains difficult to extrapolate dynastic dynamics from a single skull fragment.<\/p>\n![\"Newgrange](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Newgrange-Comparison.png\")
Newgrange before and during excavations (1950 and 1968). Credit: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland \/ Howard Goldbaum<\/a> <\/p>\n
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