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An ancient bone fragment discovered in Crimea’s Starosele Cave changes our view of how and where Neanderthals migrated.
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The fragment, now known as Star 1, is genetically similar to Neanderthal remains previously found in eastern Siberia.
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Links with Neanderthals thousands of miles to the east and west may indicate that Crimea was a crossroads during the migration.
Hidden in a dry canyon deep in the Crimean mountains is the Paleolithic site of Starosele Cave. Archaeologists who recently excavated the site sifted through animal bones and eventually found a fragment belonging to a Neanderthal who lived 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. They did not know that this person’s relatives were found all the way to the eastern edges of Siberia.
Starosele Cave is known for the human remains that have surfaced since its discovery in the early 1950s. So far they have all turned out to be medieval or post-medieval. There was even the famous “Starosele child”, which is believed to symbolize the transition between Neanderthals and wise man until later analysis showed that these were also medieval burials. Although the remains of endangered Neanderthals were found in the region that appeared to be a refuge for these hominins, DNA could not be extracted from them.
Now, ancient DNA from a Neanderthal bone fragment known as Star 1 reveals how they migrated.
Late Neanderthal and early modern human remains are rarely found in Eurasia. Even animal remains from Paleolithic sites are difficult to identify after being gnawed by carnivores, worn away by erosion and taphonomic processes, and transported by humans. Evolutionary anthropologist Emily Pigott of the University of Vienna and her team used Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to identify genera and species in the bone samples. This minimally destructive technique separated a Neanderthal bone fragment, most likely a humerus or femur, from the bones of the ancient fauna.
“Genetically, Star 1 is closely related to Neanderthals from Altai through its mitochondrial DNA, suggesting a long-distance migration of Neanderthal groups through Eurasia,” Pigott said in a recent study published in PNAS. “These migrations under favorable climatic conditions likely included the spread of the Mycocine lithic tradition, indicating both cultural continuity and regional mobility during the Late Pleistocene.”
Whoever this person was, radiocarbon dating of Star 1 revealed that they lived in the Crimean Micoki technological period, when the stone was hammered thin and retouched on both sides to make bifacial tools and weapons. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA, which resides in the cell’s mitochondria and is inherited from the mother’s side, has shown that its origin is far from local. This bone fragment has been associated with others from three sites in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Denisova Cave, Chagyrskaya Cave, and Okladnikov Cave are approximately 1,864 miles (3,000 km) to the northeast.
Pigott and her team continued their research, creating habitat suitability models that show that paleoclimates during interglacial periods, when vast ice sheets that had frozen during ice ages melted, were most favorable for travel. It is believed that Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov were seasonal hunting camps. Researchers have discovered what the route Neanderthals likely used to travel from eastern Siberia to the Crimean peninsula may have been, and the groups share more than just genes.
Fauna bones dating from around the same period, some still bearing knife marks, indicate that they hunted horses, bison and other animals that roamed the steppes where they lived. The stone tools excavated from Starosele are also very similar to those from Okladnikov and Chagirskaya. Pigott’s findings support previous studies that concluded that Neanderthals had to spread over long distances and that the discovery of Star 1 may indicate that Crimea was at the crossroads of a route that stretched from what is now central Europe to the edge of Siberia.
“It is likely that Neanderthals were present in Altai during two, maybe even three, different periods,” she said. “Our results show that Starosele was part of a broad Neanderthal dispersal network linked by genes, traits and behaviour.
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