Mezmaiskaya cave
Mezmaiskaya Cave (Мезмайская пещера) is a cave overlooking the right bank of the Sukhoi Kurdzhips (a small tributary of the Kurdzhips River) in the southern Russian Republic of Adygea, located in the northwestern foothills of the North Caucasus in the Caucasus Mountains System.
Archaeology
Neanderthal
Preliminary excavations in Mezmaiskaya cave recovered Mousterian artifacts, dated to about 35,000 B.P. and older, in the middle of the last glacial period.
However, a rib fragment from the partial skeleton of a Neanderthal infant found in the cave was radiocarbon-dated to 29,195 ± 965 B.P., and therefore belonging to the latest lived Neanderthals. The value obtained from the bone itself rather than from associated material gives the most reliable date for this individual.
Ancient DNA was recovered for a mtDNA sequence showing 3.48% divergence from that of the Feldhofer Neanderthal, some 2,500 km to the west in Germany. Phylogenetic analysis places the two in a clade distinct from modern humans, suggesting that their mtDNA types have not contributed to the modern human mtDNA pool.