Analysis of Infants’ Skeletons Yields Clue About 4th Century Behavior

Israeli archeologists have performed DNA analysis on the skeletons of 100 infants retrieved from a sewer under a 4th century Roman bathhouse in Ashkelon and found, to their surprise, that many of the infants were male. Infanticide of girls was common during the period, and researchers had expected that all of the skeletons would be female.

Inscriptions in the bathhouse and erotically illustrated lamps from the site suggest that the bathhouse also served as a brothel, the team reports in the Jan. 16 Nature. They conclude that pregnant prostitutes simply discarded their infants immediately after birth, regardless of their sex.