Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – An international team of scientists has analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA extracted from eight Neanderthal teeth found in Stajnia Cave, Poland. This research, conducted on remains from a single site north of the Carpathians, has, for the first time, reconstructed the genetic profile of a small group of Neanderthals who lived during the same ancient period.
Background: Stajnia Cave, Poland Credit: M. Żarski, Polish Geological Institute. The rest of the image was created by AncientPages.com
“This is an extraordinary result because, for the first time, we are able to observe a small group of at least seven Neanderthals from Central-Eastern Europe who lived around 100,000 years ago,” says Andrea Picin, professor at the University of Bologna and coordinator of the research. “In most cases, Neanderthal genetic data come from single fossils or from remains scattered across different sites and periods. At Stajnia, by contrast, it has been possible to reconstruct a small group of individuals, providing for the first time a coherent genetic picture of Neanderthals in this part of Europe.”
“We had known for some time that Stajnia Cave preserved exceptional evidence, but these results exceeded our expectations,” say Wioletta Nowaczewska of the University of Wrocław and Adam Nadachowski of the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences, co-authors of the study.
“Being able to identify such an ancient small group of Neanderthals in such a complex site is an important achievement for Polish research and for the study of Neanderthals in Europe.”
The discovery also improves our understanding of how a specific Neanderthal maternal lineage was distributed across western Eurasia. The mitochondrial DNA of the Stajnia Neanderthals belongs to the same branch as that of individuals found in the Iberian Peninsula, south-eastern France, and the northern Caucasus. This indicates that the genetic lineage was once widespread in the region before being replaced by mitochondrial lineages characteristic of more recent Neanderthals.
“A particularly fascinating aspect is that two teeth belonging to juvenile individuals and one belonging to an adult share the same mitochondrial DNA,” adds Mateja Hajdinjak, co-author of the article and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “This suggests that these individuals might be closely related to each other.”
For the first time, the research reconstructs the genetic profile of a small group of Neanderthals from the same site, north of the Carpathians, who lived during the same ancient chronological phase. Credit: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Another important aspect of the study concerns the comparison with the Neanderthal fossil Thorin, discovered in Mandrin Cave in France, which carries a mitochondrial genome similar to that of the Stajnia Neanderthals and has so far been assigned to a chronology of around 50,000 years ago.
“Our study is a reminder that the oldest chronologies must be treated with great caution,” explains Sahra Talamo, professor at the University of Bologna and co-coordinator of the study. “When radiocarbon values approach the limit of calibration, it is essential not to assign more precision than the data can actually support. In such cases, the comparison between archaeology, radiocarbon dating, and genetics becomes crucial.”
From an archaeological perspective, this discovery supports the view that Central-Eastern Europe was not a marginal region in Neanderthal history. Instead, it was a crucial area for studying population movements, biological relationships, and the transmission of technological traditions during the Middle Paleolithic. In this context, Stajnia Cave and southern Poland serve as important reference points for reconstructing not only Neanderthal biology, but also their mobility patterns and the connections between groups spread across large parts of Europe.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer