Were ancient Ireland’s ‘incestuous elites’ just a myth? A tomb older than Stonehenge has new answers

That final question has been the source of stunning theories with incredible implications. For years, many archaeologists and geneticists believed that a small, powerful elite ruled over Neolithic Ireland and commissioned monuments like Newgrange as a reflection of their social dominance.

That theory gained momentum in 2020, when DNA analysis of a skull fragment discovered in the tomb revealed that the buried individual – referred to by researchers as NG10 – was the product of an incestuous union between two siblings, or a parent and child.

Some experts interpreted this as compelling evidence of a dynastic elite that practised incest to preserve a sacred bloodline – not unlike royal traditions in ancient Egypt. This, in turn, painted a picture of Neolithic Ireland as a deeply hierarchical society ruled by a tightly knit, closely related few.

So, did a sacred royal family, buried at Newgrange, really rule over Neolithic Ireland? Or might the evidence have been misinterpreted?

That is the conclusion of new research led by scholars from the University of York and University College Dublin – ‘The ‘king’ of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber’ – published in the journal Antiquity. Their findings cast serious doubt on these earlier assumptions and instead paint a very different picture of the society that built this monument.

The cosmic history of Newgrange

Newgrange is one of several monumental passage tombs built during the Neolithic period (c4000–2500 BC) across Ireland and western Britain. Located in County Meath, the monument consists of a circular mound around 85 metres in diameter, ringed with standing stones and containing a narrow interior passage that aligns precisely with the rising sun on the winter solstice.

Each year, on or around the winter solstice, the rising sun illuminates the chamber at the heart of the tomb for a few minutes via a precision-engineered ‘roof-box’ above the entrance. It’s an astonishing feat of prehistoric engineering that reflects both a deep understanding of astronomy, and a symbolic reverence for cosmic cycles of light and dark.

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And Newgrange isn’t alone. Across Neolithic Europe, other monuments reveal similar concerns: Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales aligns with the summer solstice sunrise; Maeshowe in Orkney aligns with the winter solstice sunset; and Stonehenge captures both summer and winter solstice points.

For much of the 20th century, these Neolithic feats were seen as evidence of powerful and centralised leadership: they were thought to point to a social elite that wielded enough power to be capable of coordinating complex constructions and mustering vast amounts of labour.

The theory of Newgrange’s incestuous elites

In 2020, the NG10 DNA discovery appeared to add even more credence to that view. The rarity of such incestuous unions in ancient and modern populations led to comparisons with the Egyptian pharaohs and Inca royalty, both of whom famously practised incest as a tool to preserve divine bloodlines.

NG10’s relationship to the other occupants of the tomb seemed to support the idea of a ruling family, possibly dynastic in nature, whose status was maintained through carefully guarded lineage.

It was a powerful theory, selling Newgrange as a royal tomb that served as the resting place of Ireland’s earliest sacred elites.

New research at Newgrange reaches different conclusions

However, the new study challenges that interpretation, arguing that it dramatically stretches what the evidence can tell us. Can we really know that a powerful, incestuous elite ruled Ireland with an iron fist?

“The evidence all points to a much more collective ethos,” says Professor Penny Bickle, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology. “There are not wide disparities in diet, houses are relatively flimsy, and they are all similar to each other. There are no large settlement systems or trade mechanisms, and we also don’t see production of craft on the scale that we see in other ancient societies such as in ancient Egypt, where incest was thought to be practised by the ruling elite.”

So, according to Bickle and her colleagues, the archaeological evidence around Newgrange tells a different story. Nearby homes were modest and uniform. There is no evidence of grand residences, no wealth concentration and no consistent pattern of close-relative burials across Neolithic Ireland. This all points to a much more equal social structure than previously assumed.

And, Bickle adds, it’s not necessarily certain that NG10 had specific links to Newgrange. “It is by no means clear that the monument was the first burial site of NG10 and the tomb grew in stages, so tracing who this individual was is a very difficult task indeed,” Bickle explains. “As it stands, the incestuous origins of NG10 are a one-off compared to all of the DNA data we have for Neolithic Ireland.”

In other words, NG10 could be a genetic anomaly, rather than evidence of an all-powerful ruling dynasty.

Prehistoric Irish burial practices

If NG10 wasn’t a king, then who did get buried in monuments like Newgrange?

“People were definitely being selected for burial in passage tombs – the whole community does not end up in these monuments,” says Associate Professor Jessica Smyth, of University College Dublin. “However, we don’t know the reasons behind this selection, and why they were thought to be special.”

What’s also clear is that burial practices in Neolithic Ireland differed sharply from those in modern times, so applying 21st-century expectations to the past can be misleading.

“Unlike today, bodies don’t tend to be buried ‘whole’ or ‘intact’ in this time period,” Smyth adds. “Before they end up in megalithic monuments, bodies are broken down, sometimes cremated and even circulated around their communities.”

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This process of disarticulation and redistribution means that the people who placed the bones into tombs like Newgrange may not have known – or even cared – about the biological identity of the individuals involved. In NG10’s case, the community may have had no knowledge of their parentage at all.

A new interpretation of Newgrange and Neolithic Ireland

Rather than a symbol of elite power and dynastic control, Newgrange might instead reflect the ritual and cooperative culture of a Neolithic society bound by shared beliefs, agricultural rhythms and ancestral commemoration.

Its solstice alignment still speaks to an extraordinary grasp of time and the cosmos, and its scale still demands coordination. But the latest research suggests these achievements were communal, rather than commanded.

“There are still many questions to solve here,” says Bickle. “But building this picture means looking at the monument together with the society that was built up around it.”