Parents clasped the hands of their children in a 4,600 year-old...

This handout photo courtesy of “Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt” (State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt) shows a photograph of the burial of a family of four (Eulau grave 99) by Juraj Lipták. Parents clasped the hands of their children in a 4,600 year-old grave which researchers believe to be the oldest evidence discovered so far of the nuclear family in early human development, according to a study published on November 17, 2008. The remains of 13 people believed to have been killed during a violent raid were laid out in an unusual pattern for the Neolithic period in a gravesite discovered in Germany in 2005.Several pairs were buried face-to-face with their hands and arms interlinked in four nearby graves which researchers believed were once covered in burial mounds. Two of the gravesites were sufficiently well-preserved to allow for DNA analysis.