'Lady in the well' sheds light on ancient human population movements

[June 02, 2020]  By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The bones of a woman of Central Asian descent found at the bottom of a deep well after a violent death in an ancient city in Turkey are helping scientists understand population movements during a crucial juncture in human history.

Researchers have dubbed her the "lady in the well" and her bones were among 110 skeletal remains of people who lived in a region of blossoming civilization running from Turkey through Iran between 7,500 and 3,000 years ago.

The study provided the most comprehensive look to date of genetics revealing the movement and interactions of human populations in this area after the advent of agriculture and into the rise of city-states, two landmarks in human history.

The remains of the "lady in the well," found in the ruins of the ancient city of Alalakh in southern Turkey, illustrated how people and ideas circulated through the region.

Her DNA showed she hailed from somewhere in Central Asia - perhaps 2,000 miles (3,200 km) or more away. She died at about 40 to 45 years old, the researchers said, probably between 1625 BC and 1511 BC. Her body bore signs of multiple injuries.

"How and why a woman from Central Asia - or both of her parents - came to Alalakh is unclear," said Ludwig Maximilian University Munich archaeologist Philipp Stockhammer, co-director of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean and co-author of the study published in the journal Cell.

West Asia, which includes Anatolia (present-day Turkey), the Northern Levant and the Southern Caucasus is seen in a partial map obtained by Reuters June 1, 2020. An international team of researchers showed populations from Anatolia and the Caucasus started genetically mixing around 6,500 BC and that small migration events from Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago brought further genetic mixture to the region. The orange marker shows the route from Central Asia. DNA from a lone ancient woman revealed proof of long distance migration during the late Bronze age about 4,000 years ago from Central Asia to the Mediterranean Coast. Courtesy of Max Planck-Harvard Research center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean/Handout via REUTERS

"Trader? Slaves? Marriage? What we can say is that genetically this woman is absolutely foreign, so that she is not the result of an intercultural marriage," Stockhammer added. "Therefore, a single woman or a small family came this long distance. The woman is killed. Why? Rape? Hate against foreigners? Robbery? And then her body was disposed in the well."

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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