Ancient Roots of Middle Eastern Consanguinity

Analysis of runs of homozygosity (ROH) in >3,500 ancient Eurasian genomes shows that very long ROH—signatures of close‑kin marriage—are not explained by time since the Holocene but instead track Iran/Levant Neolithic ancestry. This implies that marriage practices producing close parental relatedness in parts of the modern Middle East predate Islam and may have persisted from the Neolithic onward. — If close‑kin marriage has deep prehistoric roots, cultural and policy debates that attribute high modern consanguinity solely to recent religion or modern institutions need reframing, with implications for public health, migration narratives and how societies are interpreted historically.