Thirty-eight skeletons found in a cave in the Judean wilderness above Jericho six years ago have proved to be members of a single family.
Archaeologists and anthropologists who carried out minute biochemical examinations of the bones found a common genetic defect in all of them, proving that the male and female adults and children were of the same family.
Parchment scraps found disclosed that Yehoya Bar-Levy and his family took refuge in the cave at the time of the Bar-Kochba revolt nearly 2,000 years ago.
They had apparently died of asphyxiation when the Romans built fires at the entrance to the cave.
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