Between Denisovans and Neanderthals: Strashnaya Cave in the Altai Mountains

peer reviewedNew data from Strashnaya Cave have revealed previously unknown complexity in hominin occupation of the Altai Mountains, including the first regional evidence for the presence of anatomically modern human

The Neandertal bone industry at Chagyrskaya cave, Altai Region, Russia

peer reviewedFor a long time, the rich bone industries of the Upper Palaeolithic were opposed to the opportunistic Neandertal bone tools among which the bone retoucher was the most common type. The recent finding of a few shaped bone tools into Mousterian contexts has been taken as an emergence of a “modern behaviour”. However, this outlook is based on biased corpuses. On one side, the large number of unshaped bone tools recently discovered in Upper Palaeolithic assemblages leads us to reconsider what a bone industry can be. On the other side, the increasing discoveries of bone tools in more ancient contexts indicates that this type of production is not strictly linked to Homo sapiens. Chagyrskaya cave, located in the Siberian Altai, brings us the opportunity to discuss this question. Dated around 50,000 years BP, the site yielded a local facies of Mousterian lithic industry associated to several Neandertal remains. A technological and functional analysis of the faunal remains reveal more than one thousand bone tools. Most are retouchers, but a significant part belongs to other morpho-functional categories: intermediate tools, retouched tools and tools with a smoothed end. Even though these tools were mainly manufactured by direct percussion, their number and the recurrence of their morphological and traceological features lead us to consider them as a true bone industry. Far from the Homo sapiens standards, this industry has its own coherence that needs now to be understood

Bone needles from Upper Palaeolithic complexes of the Strashnaya Cave (North-Western Altai)

peer reviewedPaleolithic sites in Altai became widely known not only due to the unique paleoanthropological remains, but also because of the discovery of the traces of the non-utilitarian activity of the earliest ancient humans. In the Initial Upper Paleolithic complexes from the Denisova Cave, a numerous assemblage of ornaments and tools made of bone and antler was discovered. Up to the latest research stage the finds of bone tools were unique among the regional Initial and Early Upper Paleolithic. This situation changed with the discovery in the Upper Paleolithic assemblages from the Strashnaya cave of bone tools including various pendants, needles, points and perforators. One of the most impressive part of the bone industry from the Strashnaya cave are two bone needles. The first proximal-medial fragment of the needle with the eyelet was found at the bottom part of the Upper Paleolithic deposits (layer 33). The second find, a distal fragment, originated from the layer 31а in the upper part of the profile. The main stages of both needles manufacture and utilization were reconstructed. Taking in account the available radiocarbon dates, bone needles from the Strashnaya cave fit into a chronological interval of 44 to 19 kyr. A comparison of the bone needles with the needles from the Paleolithic sites from nearby territories made it possible to reveal analogies in the Initial and Early Upper Paleolithic complexes of the Denisova Cave, the Talbaga site (Transbaikal region ), and in the assemblages from Middle Yenisei Upper Paleolithic sites (Lystinka, Afontova Gora-2)

Reconstruction of the bifacial Technological sequence in Chagyrskaya Cave assemblage

There are three main cultural traditions in Altai’s Late Middle Paleolithic, dating back to MIS4: Denisovan, Kara-Bom, and Sibiriachikha. The Denisovan and Kara-Bom types are technologically and typologically similar and characterized by Levallois and flat parallel flaking, Levallois tools, notched and denticulate tools, as well as simple scrapers. The Sibiriachikha type significantly differs from them due to radial and predominantly orthogonal flaking accompanied by specific tool kit. In the Sibiriachikha assemblages, predominant are convergent tools such as déjeté scrapers and retouched points, typical for the European Micoquian assemblages, associated with Neanderthal human remains. The Sibiriachikha assemblages are characterized by the presence of tool-marker – plano-convex bifaces. The article presents research focused on the reconstruction of bifacial technology and conducted by means of scarpattern analysis, experiments, and mathematical statistics. The research results allowed reconstructing and verifying the main technological stages in bifacial production, distinguishing two main technological sequences of bifacial production via plano-convex and plano-convex alternate techniques. In order to treat complete pebbles, the ‘long’ sequence was used, characterized by a significant amount of technical spalls and waste products such as cortical and partly cortical, fasonnage spalls, and bifacial thinning spalls. In order to produce bifaces from flakes and thin plaquettes, the ‘short’ sequence was used, characterized by fewer technical spalls and waste products. The experiments allowed verifying the obtained results and distinguishing concrete tools used in bifacial production. The combination of statistical analysis and scar-pattern analysis indicated isolated occasions of change in archaeological bifaces

The application of geometric-morphometric shape analysis to Middle Paleolithic bone retouchers from the Altai Mountains, Russia

Here, we apply geometric-morphometric shape analysis to Middle Paleolithic bone retouchers from Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. The cave contains evidence of the easternmost manifestation of the Micoquian industry, associated with Neanderthals at end of MIS4 and the beginning of MIS3. Taphonomic and scar pattern analyses were performed first on random samples exhibiting appropriate characteristics. Several retouchers produced on intentionally modified blanks were identified in our sample, suggesting that some of the Chagyrskaya Cave bone retouchers can be described as formal tools. All retouchers from Chagyrskaya Cave exhibit a similar general morphology. The most variable group is comprised of complete retouchers without blank modifications. Retouchers exhibiting minor damage affect the general pattern of variability and it is not possible to identify them only by means of geometric-morphometric shape analysis. Complete retouchers with blank modifications fall within the range of variability of complete retouchers without blank modification, suggesting intentional shaping of blanks to conform to a standard template. The range of variability of the bone retouchers does not differ significantly from that of the most highly modified lithic artifacts at Chagyrskaya – plano-convex bifaces – which may indicate intentional shape control for such artifacts. Geometric-morphometric analysis indicates that the anatomical origin of bone blanks does not significantly influence the retouchers’ shape, which may point to strict blank selection and, at the same time, intentional modification. Our results raise questions regarding the integration of retouchers into a complex, multidimensional “chaine-op´eratoire” as well as the nature of Neanderthal cognitive abilities. Geometric-morphometric shape analysis represents a major step forward in the study of prehistoric retoucher

A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Chagyrskaya Cave

We sequenced the genome of a Neandertal from Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains, Russia, to 27-fold genomic coverage. We show that this Neandertal was a female and that she was more related to Neandertals in western Eurasia [Prüfer et al., Science 358, 655–658 (2017); Hajdinjak et al., Nature 555, 652–656 (2018)] than to Neandertals who lived earlier in Denisova Cave [Prüfer et al., Nature 505, 43–49 (2014)], which is located about 100 km away. About 12.9% of the Chagyrskaya genome is spanned by homozygous regions that are between 2.5 and 10 centiMorgans (cM) long. This is consistent with the fact that Siberian Neandertals lived in relatively isolated populations of less than 60 individuals. In contrast, a Neandertal from Europe, a Denisovan from the Altai Mountains, and ancient modern humans seem to have lived in populations of larger sizes. The availability of three Neandertal genomes of high quality allows a view of genetic features that were unique to Neandertals and that are likely to have been at high frequency among them. We find that genes highly expressed in the striatum in the basal ganglia of the brain carry more amino-acid-changing substitutions than genes expressed elsewhere in the brain, suggesting that the striatum may have evolved unique functions in Neandertals

Archaeological evidence for two separate dispersals of Neanderthals into southern Siberia

Neanderthals were once widespread across Europe and western Asia. They also penetrated into the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, but the geographical origin of these populations and the timing of their dispersal have remained elusive. Here we describe an archaeological assemblage from Chagyrskaya Cave, situated in the Altai foothills, where around 90,000 Middle Paleolithic artifacts and 74 Neanderthal remains have been recovered from deposits dating to between 59 and 49 thousand years ago (age range at 95.4% probability). Environmental reconstructions suggest that the Chagyrskaya hominins were adapted to the dry steppe and hunted bison. Their distinctive toolkit closely resembles Micoquian assemblages from central and eastern Europe, including the northern Caucasus, more than 3,000 kilometers to the west of Chagyrskaya Cave. At other Altai sites, evidence of earlier Neanderthal populations lacking associated Micoquian-like artifacts implies two or more Neanderthal incursions into this region. We identify eastern Europe as the most probable ancestral source region for the Chagyrskaya toolmakers, supported by DNA results linking the Neanderthal remains with populations in northern Croatia and the northern Caucasus, and providing a rare example of a long-distance, intercontinental population movement associated with a distinctive Paleolithic toolkit

Evidence for early dispersal of domestic sheep into Central Asia

Archaeological and biomolecular investigations of ancient sheep remains from the site of Obishir V in southern Kyrgyzstan reveal that domestic livestock and Neolithic lifeways reached the heart of Central Asia by ca. 6,000 BCE, thousands of years earlier than previously recognized. The development and dispersal of agropastoralism transformed the cultural and ecological landscapes of the Old World, but little is known about when or how this process first impacted Central Asia. Here, we present archaeological and biomolecular evidence from Obishir V in southern Kyrgyzstan, establishing the presence of domesticated sheep by ca. 6,000 BCE. Zooarchaeological and collagen peptide mass fingerprinting show exploitation of Ovis and Capra, while cementum analysis of intact teeth implicates possible pastoral slaughter during the fall season. Most significantly, ancient DNA reveals these directly dated specimens as the domestic O. aries, within the genetic diversity of domesticated sheep lineages. Together, these results provide the earliest evidence for the use of livestock in the mountains of the Ferghana Valley, predating previous evidence by 3,000 years and suggesting that domestic animal economies reached the mountains of interior Central Asia far earlier than previously recognized.N

Genetic insights into the social organization of Neanderthals

International audienceGenomic analyses of Neanderthals have previously provided insights into their population history and relationship to modern humans1-8, but the social organization of Neanderthal communities remains poorly understood. Here we present genetic data for 13 Neanderthals from two Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia: 11 from Chagyrskaya Cave9,10 and 2 from Okladnikov Cave11—making this one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date. We used hybridization capture to obtain genome-wide nuclear data, as well as mitochondrial and Y-chromosome sequences. Some Chagyrskaya individuals were closely related, including a father-daughter pair and a pair of second-degree relatives, indicating that at least some of the individuals lived at the same time. Up to one-third of these individuals' genomes had long segments of homozygosity, suggesting that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals were part of a small community. In addition, the Y-chromosome diversity is an order of magnitude lower than the mitochondrial diversity, a pattern that we found is best explained by female migration between communities. Thus, the genetic data presented here provide a detailed documentation of the social organization of an isolated Neanderthal community at the easternmost extent of their known range