Socio-cultural practices may have affected sex differences in stature in Early Neolithic Europe

[Tautalus]

Abstract
The rules and structure of human culture impact health as much as genetics or environment. To study these relationships, we combine ancient DNA (n = 230), skeletal metrics (n = 391), palaeopathology (n = 606) and dietary stable isotopes (n = 873) to analyse stature variation in Early Neolithic Europeans from North Central, South Central, Balkan and Mediterranean regions. In North Central Europe, stable isotopes and linear enamel hypoplasias indicate high environmental stress across sexes, but female stature is low, despite polygenic scores identical to males, and suggests that cultural factors preferentially supported male recovery from stress. In Mediterranean populations, sexual dimorphism is reduced, indicating male vulnerability to stress and no strong cultural preference for males. Our analysis indicates that biological effects of sex-specific inequities can be linked to cultural influences at least as early as 7,000 yr ago, and culture, more than environment or genetics, drove height disparities in Early Neolithic Europe.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01756-w

PDF (not downloadable)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01756-w.epdf

Pre-print posted May 5, 2023 (with downloadable pdf)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.21.529406v2

 

[MOESAN]

Socio-cultural differences respective to sexe can producea lot of results. But if it was only question of this to justify differences in stature among sexes (genders!) of a population the results (obtained in life and not genetically) would disappear when disappear these socio-culturel differences. But seemingly some regions of the globe maintained high differences in stature according to sexe, even if at first sight boys and girls were treated in a same way in modern times, as in Norway, if I recall well.
ATW if socio-cultural act, to be genetically integrated and kept after, it needs an action on Y chromosome in some way, I think?!?