TASS, January 27. Russian and foreign anthropologists have found new evidence in two caves in Altai that Neanderthals had entered the south of Siberia more than once, as previously thought, but at least twice new following different routes. Findings of scientists and the importance of this discovery for science are explained in an article published in PNAS.
"The results of our excavations in the Denisova and Chagyrsky caves show that Neanderthals entered South Siberia at least twice. Eastern Europe and the North Caucasus, three to four thousand kilometers west of Altay, became the home of the ancestors of the last Neanderthal immigrants," scientists say.
Despite the similarity, modern people and Neanderthals developed in completely different ways. The ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals, as scientists believe today, split about 650 thousand years ago, and the first continued to live in Africa and gradually colonized, the second migrated north and settled in Europe and Asia.
The discovery and decoding of Neanderthal DNA, including the joint work of Russian and European paleogenetics, allowed scientists to discover how and when these ancient people entered different parts of Eurasia for the first time and traces of their contact with Cro-Magnons. an ancient human species, Denisovans.
A comparison of their genomes showed that the ancestors of the last Neanderthals living in Europe and southern Siberia had been separated for some time, and after that the representatives of these two groups almost never touched each other. On the other hand, scientists recently deciphered the "species" hybrid of Altay Denisovan and "Europe" Neanderthal women, and showed that such contacts are still possible.
"Cultural" immigrants from Europe
A group of Russian and foreign scientists led by Anatoly Derevyanko, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the scientific director of the SB RAS Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, found new fossil evidence that showed that Neanderthals migrated to the Altai and South Siberian territories several times and conducted excavations in the Chagyrskaya cave.
It is located approximately 100 kilometers west of the Denisova Cave. This cave began to attract the attention of anthropologists about ten years ago when tools were found that could belong to both late Neanderthals and early Cro-Magnons. Paleogenetics then discovered DNA fragments on the territory of the cave, which turned out to be closer to the European Homo neandertalens than the neighboring Denisova cave "cousins".
As noted by Derevyanko and colleagues, this discovery led many scientists to suspect that Siberia was populated by Neanderthals in various waves of migration from different sources and starting at different times. Russian and foreign anthropologists have checked whether this is really so by accurately measuring the age of Neanderthal and recent remnants of instruments, and also by examining the production techniques in detail.
Overall, these measurements confirmed his colleagues' hypothesis. Local Neanderthal helicopters and scrapers were similar to those of the Mikok culture, where the last European Homo Neanderthali living in Croatia and the North Caucasus was more than their neighbors' similar vehicles in Denisova Cave. They belong to the older Mousterian culture, which penetrated Altay in a different way.
On the other hand, scientists have made some unexpected discoveries. In particular, the age of the vehicles turned out to be significantly lower than the genetic predictions that Neanderthals lived in the Chagyr cave, but it was also very close to the time when the Mikok culture appeared. According to the researchers, this is another important argument in favor of the presence of various waves of migration in Homo neanderthalensis.
Derevyanko and his colleagues argue that the presence of two different Neanderthal populations in Altay at about the same time, and the presence of one of these genetic relationships with European groups Homo neanderthalensis, suggests that these ancient people were not "hosts". however, they can migrate over long distances and carry their unique culture with them. This greatly changes scientists 'ideas about Neanderthals' behavior and life.
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