Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02400-5On discovering that one of the largest prehistoric mass graves of Europe predominantly held violently killed women and children, we used a battery of methods to investigate how this gender-selective and age-selective pattern reflected the strategic disruption of power networks and lineages in the Early Iron Age.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02399-9In this analysis of biomolecular and archaeological data from a ninth-century BCE mass grave in the Carpathian Basin, Fibiger et al. find evidence for the targeted killing of mostly unrelated women and children, challenging views of prehistoric violence.

Women and children moving through Europe became victims of mass violence.

Nature - Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture