The Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine contains key Middle to Upper Paleolithic transitional archaeological sites, including the site of Starosele, where archaeologists have now discovered a 5-cm-long fragment of a Neanderthal bone between 46,000 and 44,000 years old. They’ve also found that genetically, this individual is closely related to Neanderthals from the Altai via its mitochondrial DNA, suggesting long-range migrations of Neanderthal groups across Eurasia. These migrations during favorable climatic conditions likely involved the spread of the Micoquian stone tool industry, indicating both cultural continuity and regional mobility during the Late Pleistocene.
A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.
The Crimean Peninsula contains numerous well-preserved, stratified Paleolithic sites, with many spanning within the transitional period in terms of bioculture and hominin occupations of approximately 47,000 to 42,000 years ago.
Based on previous radiocarbon dates, the peninsula has been described as a refugium for late surviving Neanderthals just before their disappearance.
Starosele, a rock-shelter that is positioned within a steep canyon that comprises four distinct cultural layers, has been studied since 1952.
“The site’s archaeological layers contain rich cultural material,” said Emily Pigott, a doctoral student at the University of Vienna, and her colleagues.
“Levels 1, 2, and 4 are associated with stone tools from an archaeological industry called the Crimean Micoquian stone tool industry, which is linked to Neanderthals.”
In the study, the authors aimed to screen for potential human remains among thousands of fragmented bones from the Starosele site.
Of the 150 bone fragments they analyzed, 97.3% had sufficient collagen preservation for taxonomic identification.
Around 93% belonged to horses and deer, with smaller numbers of mammoth and wolf remains, suggesting that Paleolithic humans in Crimea relied heavily on horse hunting.
Remarkably, one bone fragment — only 49.8 mm long and 18.8 mm wide — was identified as a hominin.
Radiocarbon dating revealed an age range of 46,000 to 45,000 years old, close to the transition from the disappearance of Neanderthals to the dispersal of Homo sapiens in western Europe.
“This was an extremely exciting discovery, especially since previous human remains at Starosele were thought to be Homo sapiens from much later periods,” Pigott said.
“When the radiocarbon results came back, we knew we had found a truly Paleolithic human.”
“Across Eurasia, very few human fossils are known from this crucial period when Neanderthals disappeared and Homo sapiens replaced them, and still fewer with genetic information.”
The researchers then sequenced a mitochondrial genome from this bone, indicating the individual belongs to the Neanderthal lineage.
The individual’s mitogenome clusters with other Neanderthal mitogenomes previously generated from the Siberian Altai region.
“Surprisingly, this individual was most closely related to Neanderthals from Siberia’s Altai region, more than 3,000 km to the east, but also with Neanderthals that once lived in regions of Europe such as Croatia,” the researchers said.
“The findings confirm previous studies suggesting that Neanderthals once dispersed over vast distances across Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene, from as far west as central Europe to central Eurasia.”
“This work places the Crimean Peninsula at the crossroads of this Neanderthal migration corridor.”
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Emily M. Pigott et al. 2025. A new Late Neanderthal from Crimea reveals long-distance connections across Eurasia. PNAS 122 (45): e2518974122; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2518974122
