Paleoanthropologists analyzed a tooth discovered in 1961 among a collection of materials from the Akhshtyr cave site in the Caucasus. Although the tooth was previously thought to belong to a sapiens, the scientists rejected this hypothesis. It appears the discovery belongs to a member of an extinct evolutionary lineage distinct from Neanderthals. The scientists published their findings in the journal Archaeology, Ethnography, and Anthropology of Eurasia.
The first archaic humans (Homo erectus) arrived in the Caucasus as early as 1.8 million years ago, as convincingly demonstrated by numerous finds from Dmanisi, Georgia. However, archaeologists have so far uncovered very few anthropological finds in this region dating back to later eras, predating the arrival of anatomically modern humans. However, there are exceptions. For example, in Mezmaiskaya Cave, located in the southern Krasnodar Territory, scientists discovered the remains of three Neanderthals and even isolated DNA from them.
However, this doesn't mean that representatives of other ancient human species couldn't have visited the region located at the intersection of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe. Perhaps this information will now be supplemented by a discovery from the Akhshtyr cave site, located in the Adler district of Sochi. The first archaeological exploration of this site took place in the 1930s under the direction of the renowned Soviet archaeologist Sergei Zamyatnin. The expedition uncovered a rich collection of materials, the earliest of which dated to the Mousterian period, or the Middle Paleolithic.
Anthropologist Alisa Zubova of the Kunstkamera and her colleagues from St. Petersburg devoted an article to one of the cave's finds. According to the scientists, back in 1961, while sorting through a collection of animal remains from this site, researchers identified a human tooth and determined that it belonged to a member of our species. However, the analytical methods available at the time did not allow for a definitive determination of whether this was indeed the case.
Now, scientists have thoroughly analyzed the discovered tooth, a large, permanent second maxillary molar belonging to an adult. Using various methods, including internal structure analysis, they compared the morphological features of the tooth with similar molars from representatives of many species: early and late sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, various Middle and Late Pleistocene humans from China, Homo erectus, and others.
Analysis revealed that the tooth possessed a number of archaic morphological features. It likely belonged neither to modern humans nor to Neanderthals. No molars similar in structure have yet been found in Europe. It was most similar to late archaic humans from China, and in some respects, to the Denisov-4 tooth from the Altai cave of the same name, as well as to a specimen from Manot Cave in Israel, the species status of which remains uncertain.
It's difficult to draw any far-reaching conclusions from a single discovery. However, researchers have cautiously suggested that perhaps some archaic evolutionary lineage of ancient humans was present in the Caucasus, which could well have been of Asian origin. However, this can only be confirmed or refuted once more data accumulates.
Just recently, N+1 reported on the first reliably confirmed Denisovan skull. For this, scientists isolated mitochondrial DNA from the dental calculus of the so-called Dragon Man, whose remains were found in Harbin. They supported their findings by analyzing ancient proteins preserved in the individual's temporal bone.
