Denisova Cave is a rockshelter with important Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic occupations. Located in the northwestern Altai Mountains some 6 km from the village of Chernyi Anui, the site shows human occupation from the Middle Paleolithic to the Late Middle Ages, beginning ~125,000 years ago.
The cave, formed from Silurian sandstone, is ~28 meters above the right bank of the Anui River near its headwaters. It consists of several short galleries extending out from a central chamber, with a total cave area of some 270 sq m. The central chamber measures 9x11 meters, with a high arched ceiling.
Pleistocene Occupations at Denisova Cave
Excavations in the central chamber at Denisova have revealed 13 Pleistocene occupations between 30,000 and ~125,000 years bp. The chronological dates are by and large radiothermalluminescence dates (RTL) taken on sediments, with the exception of Strata 9 and 11, which have a handful of radiocarbon dates on charcoal. The RTL dates on the lowest are considered unlikely, probably only in the range of 125,000 years ago.
- Stratum 9, Upper Paleolithic (UP), Mousterian and Levallois, ~46,000 (OIS-2)
- Stratum 11, Initial Upper Paleolithic, Altai Mousterian, ~29,200-48,650 BP (OIS-3)
- Strata 20-12, Later Middle Paleolithic Levallois, ~69,000-155,000 BP
- Strata 21 and 22, Initial Middle Paleolithic Levallois, Mousterian, ~171,000-182,000 BP (OIS-5)
Climate data derived from palynology (pollen) and faunal taxa (animal bone) suggests that the oldest occupations were located in birch and pine forests, with some large treeless areas in higher elevations. The following periods fluctuated considerably, but the coldest temperatures occurred just before the Last Glacial Maximum, ~30,000 years ago, when a steppe environment was established.
Denisova Cave Upper Paleolithic
Although the site is for the most part stratigraphically quite intact, unfortunately a major discontinuity separates the two UP levels 9 and 11, and the contact between them is significantly disturbed, making it difficult to securely separate the dates of the artifacts in them.
Denisova is the type site for what Russian archaeologists have called the Denisova variant of Altai Mousterian, belonging to the Initial Upper Paleolithic period. Stone tools in this technology exhibit use of the parallel reduction strategy for cores, large numbers of laminar blanks and tools fashioned on large blades. Radial and parallel cores, limited numbers of true blades and a diverse series of racloirs are also identified in the stone tool assemblages.
Several remarkable art objects have been recovered within the Altai Mousterian layers of the cave, including decorative objects of bone, mammoth tusk, animal teeth, fossilized ostrich egg shell and mollusk shell. Two fragments of a stone bracelet made of drilled, worked and polished dark green chloritolite was discovered in these UP levels at Denisova.
A set of bone tools including small needles with drilled eyes, awls and pendants, and a collection of cylindrical bone beads has also been found in the Upper Paleolithic deposits. Denisova contains the earliest evidence of eyed needle manufacture in Siberia.
Human Remains at Denisova
Very few hominid remains have been recovered from Denisova, consisting of two teeth of an undetermined hominid and other small fragments of bone from the Upper Paleolithic levels. It is unclear whether these are Neanderthal or Anatomically Modern Human.
In 2010, Nature reported that a small fragment of bone, a phalanx (finger bone) of a child aged between 5 and 7, and found within levels 9 and 11, had been examined by Johannes Krause and colleagues of the Neanderthal Genome Project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. This finger was found to have mtDNA unlike either Neanderthals or Anatomically Modern Humans, and is believed to represent the descendant of a previously unrecognized hominid migration out of Africa.
mtDNA analysis of a tooth from the cave has found to be similar to that of the finger bone; and DNA analysis of the phalanx continues to support the identification of a previously unidentified species of human, to be called Denisovan.
Denisova and Archaeology
Denisova Cave was discovered over a century ago, but its Pleistocene deposits were not recognized until 1977. Since then, extensive excavations by the Russian Academy of Sciences at Denisova and nearby sites of Ust-Karakol, Kara-Bom, Anuy 2 and Okladnikov have recorded considerable evidence about the Siberian Middle and Upper Paleolithic.
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