7,000-year-old goat leather from a Spanish cave links to today’s Bermeya goats

A scrap of tanned goat leather from a cave in southern Spain has now given up its DNA, and the result suggests that people in Neolithic Iberia were already making leather from domestic goats about 7,000 years ago. Among the modern breeds the team tested, the closest genetic match is the Bermeya goat, a breed from northern Spain.

A cave full of well-preserved things

The leather comes from Cueva de los Murciélagos, a cave at Albuñol in the province of Granada. The cave is known for its exceptional preservation, and it saw funerary use during the Early Neolithic. Miners dug through the cave in the 19th century, and the leather turned up in their waste dumps in an area called Sector F. The authors suggest it may once have been a grave good or part of a garment, but the lost context means nobody can say for sure.

A team led by Jolijn Erven at University College Dublin, with Francisco Martínez-Sevilla of the Universidad de Alcalá and Kevin Daly among the researchers, published the work in PLOS ONE on 4 November 2026. Martínez-Sevilla said the preservation of the leather is exceptional.

How old it is and how people made it

Radiocarbon dating placed the leather between 7,246 and 7,008 years before present, which fits the cave’s Early Neolithic phase. Close examination showed that the flesh side had been tanned, that the surface carried softening marks from use, and that four holes pierced the piece. The holes have smooth, sharply defined edges, which the researchers say separates them from insect damage. Hair follicle patterns pointed to goat.

What the DNA says

The genetic work confirmed a domestic goat, Capra hircus, rather than a wild Iberian ibex. The mitochondrial DNA belongs to haplogroup A, the most common lineage in European goats, both ancient and modern. The nuclear DNA identified the animal as female and placed it inside the European goat cluster, close to southern European breeds.

When the team compared the sample with modern breeds, the Bermeya from northern Spain shared the most genetic drift with the leather. The authors read this as a sign of continuity in Iberian goat herds across thousands of years. They also point out that many southern European breeds showed similar patterns that were not statistically significant, and that they tested only four modern Spanish breeds.

The leather also showed no affinity with African goats. Many modern Spanish breeds carry African ancestry, and Bermeya carries less of it than other southern Spanish breeds. The result may mean that the links between Iberian and African livestock developed after the Neolithic.

Why this small scrap matters

The authors describe the data as one of the oldest nuclear genomes from organic remains outside high-altitude and high-latitude regions, where cold helps DNA survive. Warm, dry southern Spain is not an easy place for ancient DNA. Daly described the study as turning an archaeological object into a link with the living present.

The find also shows that Early Neolithic Iberians kept domestic goats and used them for more than meat or milk. Leather making appears to have been part of daily life in the region by 7,000 years ago.

Caveats and open questions

The nuclear coverage is very low, at about 0.0049 times, and the DNA fragments are short, so subtle ancestry signals stay out of reach. The sample also carried human and fox DNA, which suggests handling and later disturbance. The human reads likely reflect wearing or handling of the leather. The researchers call their conclusions an initial framework that more ancient genomes and more modern breeds should test.

So the Bermeya link is a lead, not a family tree. If more ancient goat genomes from Iberia back it up, it could show that some of today’s northern Spanish herds descend from animals that people kept in the earliest farming villages.

Sources

• Erven et al. (2026), Genetic analysis of 7,000 year old preserved goat leather from Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol, Spain), PLOS ONE 21(11): e0358468
• EurekAlert news release: A 7,000-year-old piece of leather reveals a deep history of Spanish goats
• Phys.org: A 7,000-year-old piece of leather reveals a deep history of Spanish goats