HISTORYWhat Ancient Korean DNA Reveals About Society7 min read

A Burial Complex Holds Surprising Answers

In the hills of Gyeongsan, in southeastern South Korea, a cemetery called the Imdang-Joyeong burial complex has sat quietly for roughly 1,500 years. Its tombs date to the fourth through sixth centuries A.D., during the Three Kingdoms period — one of the most formative eras in Korean history. Archaeologists have long known the site was significant. But it took modern genomic technology to reveal just how much information was encoded in the bones buried there. A new study published in April 2026 in the journal Science Advances analyzed the DNA of 78 skeletons from the complex, and the findings have reshaped what researchers understand about the Silla kingdom and the people who lived — and died — within it.

How Researchers Read 1,500-Year-Old Genetics

Extracting usable genetic data from ancient skeletons is technically demanding. Bone degrades over centuries, and DNA fragments into smaller and smaller pieces. The international research team behind this study had to work with genome-wide data — broad surveys of genetic markers across the entire genome — rather than single-gene tests. This approach allowed them to calculate precise degrees of biological relatedness between individuals buried at the site. They identified 11 pairs of first-degree relatives, such as parents and children or full siblings, and 23 pairs of second-degree relatives, such as grandparents and grandchildren or aunts and nieces. These numbers are far higher than chance would predict for an unrelated group of people, which immediately suggested the burials were organized around family connections.