New perspectives on Neanderthal dispersal and turnover from Stajnia Cave (Poland)

Abstract

The Micoquian is the broadest and longest enduring cultural facies of the Late Middle Palaeolithic that spread across the periglacial and boreal environments of Europe between Eastern France, Poland, and Northern Caucasus. Here, we present new data from the archaeological record of Stajnia Cave (Poland) and the paleogenetic analysis of a Neanderthal molar S5000, found in a Micoquian context. Our results demonstrate that the mtDNA genome of Stajnia S5000 dates to MIS 5a making the tooth the oldest Neanderthal specimen from Central-Eastern Europe. Furthermore, S5000 mtDNA has the fewest number of differences to mtDNA of Mezmaiskaya 1 Neanderthal from Northern Caucasus, and is more distant from almost contemporaneous Neanderthals of Scladina and Hohlenstein-Stadel. This observation and the technological affinity between Poland and the Northern Caucasus could be the result of increased mobility of Neanderthals that changed their subsistence strategy for coping with the new low biomass environments and the increased foraging radius of gregarious animals. The Prut and Dniester rivers were probably used as the main corridors of dispersal. The persistence of the Micoquian techno-complex in South-Eastern Europe infers that this axis of mobility was also used at the beginning of MIS 3 when a Neanderthal population turnover occurred in the Northern Caucasus.

A 41,500 year-old decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)

“…S1 ). During the excavations, a series of Neanderthal remains were found 13 , 14 within a large collection of bones of Late Pleistocene steppe-tundra species, and Middle and Upper Paleolithic artefacts 14 (see Supplementary Sects. 1 to 4 ).…”

“…3 ). A recent reassessment of the archaeological record of Stajnia Cave reveals that post-depositional frost disturbances and modern distortions displaced artefacts and human remains between layers 14 . Since most of the lithics collected in layer D1 are associated with the Central and Eastern European Micoquian and very few are classified as Upper Paleolithic (Supplementary Figs.…”

The first record of Cuon alpinus (Pallas, 1811) from Poland and the possible impact of other large canids on the evolution of the species

“…The cave loam is divided into 15 lithostratigraphic layers accumulated between MIS 5c and MIS 1. The faunal assemblage is dominated by cold-adapted species (Marciszak, 2012;Stefaniak, 2015;Żarski et al, 2017;Picin et al, 2020).…”

Badania kopalnego DNA – możliwości i ograniczenia

“…Dane uzyskane z obliczeń zegara molekularnego metodą maksymalnej parsymonii, poszerzone o informacje z datowania metodą radiowęglową osadów sedymentacyjnych, wskazują, że badany ząb można datować na okres MIS 5a, czyli 71-82 tys. lat temu [58]. Szansa na odnalezienie szczątków na tyle dobrze zachowanych, że możliwe byłoby wyizolowanie dobrze zachowanego aDNA, jest niezwykle mała.…”