At Eulau a mother, father and two sons killed in a raid were buried facing each other, the oldest family proven by DNA

In 2005 archaeologists at Eulau found four graves, dug at the same time, holding 13 people: children from newborns to about 10 and adults of 30 or more. No teenagers or young adults were among them. Several pairs lay face to face with arms and hands linked. One woman had a stone projectile point in a vertebra. Another had skull fractures. Several had wounds on forearms and hands from fending off blows. In November 2008 Wolfgang Haak and colleagues reported in PNAS that one grave held a mother, a father and their two sons, the oldest molecular evidence of a nuclear family. The mother faced one son and the father the other. Related children were buried facing their adult kin; unrelated children were placed behind the adults. Strontium in their teeth showed the women grew up in a different region from the men and children, so wives had moved to their husbands' community. DNA survived in only two of the four graves. Haak said, "Their unity in death suggests a unity in life," and warned that the find does not make the nuclear family universal.