PrehistoryEarly Neolithic · Cueva de los Murciélagos, Albuñol, Granada, Andalusia, Spain
DNA from 7,000-year-old leather in a Spanish burial cave shows Neolithic farmers were already tanning goat hides
The hide from Cueva de los Murciélagos came from a domestic goat whose closest living relative is a breed from northern Spain.
In brief 3 key points
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- Tanned, perforated goat leather from an Early Neolithic burial
- DNA shows a domestic goat of European ancestry, not a wild ibex
- Closest modern match is the Bermeya breed of northern Spain
A piece of tanned leather found in a burial cave in southern Spain came from a domestic goat that lived some 7,000 years ago, a genetic study shows. It is one of the oldest nuclear genomes recovered from organic remains outside the cold, high-altitude and high-latitude regions where ancient DNA usually survives.
The leather comes from Cueva de los Murciélagos in Albuñol, Granada. The dry cave is known for organic finds that rarely survive elsewhere, and it was used for burials from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. Miners digging for galena there in 1857 had already turned up partly mummified human remains, baskets and clothing.
Hair on one side, tanning on the other
Researchers of the MUTERMUR project found two fragments of skin, probably from the same animal, beneath a block moved by 19th-century miners deep in the cave. The larger piece measures about 35 by 20 cm. It still has hair on one side. The other side shows traces of tanning, and four holes with smooth, sharp edges that the team identifies as made by people, not insects.
A radiocarbon date places the leather at 7,246 to 7,008 years before present, in the earliest phase of the Early Neolithic. Together with human remains from the same area, this suggests it was placed in the cave as a grave good.
A goat line that stayed in Iberia
The DNA was badly fragmented, with reads averaging only 37 base pairs. It was still enough to show that the hide came from a female domestic goat of European ancestry and not from the wild Iberian ibex. Of the modern goats compared, the sample was closest to the Bermeya breed from northern Spain, which the authors read as genetic continuity in Iberian herds from the Neolithic to today.
Other modern Spanish breeds sit closer to African goats, which earlier work explains by later African introgression. The Neolithic sample does not show that shift. The authors stress that one animal and low genome coverage limit what can be concluded.
The leather also carried small amounts of human DNA, probably from the people who handled or wore it, and DNA from a canid, which the team takes as a sign of later disturbance of the burial.
The study was led by Jolijn Erven of University College Dublin and has been published in PLOS One; an earlier version appeared as a preprint on bioRxiv.
Sources (2)
Peer-reviewed studyfrom University College Dublin and MUTERMUR Project
- 7,000-year-old goat leather from Spain reveals DNA link to modern Iberian goats (Archaeology News)
- DNA from 7,000-year-old goat leather in Spain links to modern Iberian goats (bioRxiv)
Paper: Erven et al., Genetic analysis of 7,000 year old preserved goat leather from Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol, Spain), PLOS One (2026)
Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars
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