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

www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN New perspectives on Neanderthal dispersal and turnover from Stajnia Cave (Poland) Andrea Picin 1*, Mateja Hajdinjak2, Wioletta Nowaczewska 3, Stefano Benazzi 4,1, Mikołaj Urbanowski5, Adrian Marciszak6, Helen Fewlass 1, Paweł Socha 7, Krzysztof Stefaniak 6, Marcin Żarski 8, Andrzej Wiśniewski 9, Jean‑Jacques Hublin1,10, Adam Nadachowski 11 & Sahra Talamo 1,12 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. Reconstructing the adaptability and behavioural plasticity of archaic humans to ecological changes and faunal turnovers has been a major goal in paleoanthropology and an increasing number of investigations over the past decade have revealed complex scenarios of hominin migrations, interbreeding, and extinctions1–3. During the Pleistocene, climatic deteriorations and the extension of the Scandinavian ice sheet in the Northern hemisphere caused demographic decline across the mid-latitude territories of Europe4,5. A broad consensus suggests that, rather than tracking favourable habitats to the south, archaic humans demised during the harsh glacial stages, and, only after an increase of the average temperatures, new groups from refuge zones repopulated the northern areas4. This model is in close accordance with phylogeographical studies of several vegetal and faunal taxa indicating postglacial colonisation from Iberia, Italy, the Balkans, and western A sia6. However, which of these glacial refugia had major roles in the human repopulation processes during the Pleistocene and which routes were followed in resettling the northern territories is still little known. Since late Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 9, Neanderthals occupied the western regions most affected by climatic fluctuations and the occupational hiatuses documented in Northwestern and Central Europe during the glacial cycles indicates recurrent episodes of r ecolonisation7–10. An important climatic change that altered the habitat 1 Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. 2Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. 3Department of Human Biology, Wrocław University, ul. Kuźnicza 35, 50‑138, Wrocław, Poland. 4Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Via degli Ariani 1, 48121 Ravenna, Italy. 5Independent Researcher, Warsaw, Poland. 6Department of Palaeozoology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Wrocław University, Sienkiewicza 21, 50‑335 Wrocław, Poland. 7Division of Palaeozoology, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology, Wrocław University, ul. Sienkiewicza 21, 50‑335 Wrocław, Poland. 8Polish Geological Institute, National Research Institute, Rakowiecka 4, 00975 Warsaw, Poland. 9Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław, Szewska 48, 50‑139, Wrocław, Poland. 10Collège de France, 11 Place Marcellin Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France. 11Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, Sławkowska 17, 31‑016, Kraków, Poland. 12Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician, University of Bologna, Via Selmi 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy. *email: Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:14778 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71504-x 1 Vol.:(0123456789) www.nature.com/scientificreports/ of Neanderthals in the northern territories occurred during the Last Glacial (MIS 5d—MIS 3) after the warm forested environment of the Eemian (MIS 5e) shifted to more open steppe/taiga habitats favouring the migration of cold adapted fauna from the Arctic (e.g. woolly mammoth, woolly rhino, reindeer)11. The abrupt drop of the temperatures and the increased aridity caused a demographic contraction in Central-Eastern Europe and, only during the climatic ameliorations of the interpleniglacial periods (MIS 5c, MIS 5a, and MIS 3), Neanderthals returned to the regions above 48° N latitude12. The new ecological settings and the expansion of the territory of migratory species fostered Neanderthals to develop novel strategies for coping with resource acquisitions in xeric grassland. In Central Europe and the Eastern European Plains, Neanderthals enhanced the common flake based toolkits with different types of asymmetric bifacial tools, leaf-shaped artefacts and bifacial s crapers13,14. This new techno-complex is generally known as Micoquian (or Keilmessergruppen in the German literature) and is documented in a vast area from the Saône River to the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Generally, the evidences from Germany to Poland with fringes in Hungary and north-eastern France are named Central European Micoquian whereas the examples from the eastern Carpathians and the Lower Volga are classified as Eastern Micoquian. Even though the settlements of these territories have been intermittent due to the recurrence of climatic deteriorations, the production of Micoquian stone tools lasted from the MIS 5c/MIS 5a to the end of the Middle Palaeolithic13–16. This technological continuity is restricted to the Mammuthus-Coelodonta biome and is absent in the regions facing the Mediterranean suggesting that this new technical behaviour permitted greater adaptive flexibility to the low biomass and the extreme seasonality of the boreal environment. Recently, genetic studies on human fossils identified a population turnover of Altai Neanderthals by western European Neanderthals at ~ 90 ka1. This dispersal is contemporaneous with the emergence of Micoquian bifacial tools in Central and Eastern Europe (SI Sect. 1)13, and their spread in the Altai region is recorded at Chagyrskaya Cave17,18. After MIS 4, a second populati (...truncated)