The genetic profile of the oldest group of Neanderthals in Central-Eastern Europe
There were at least seven individuals, who lived around 100,000 years ago: the study – coordinated by scholars from the University of Bologna – stems from the analysis of ancient mitochondrial DNA from eight teeth found in the Stajnia cave in Poland
"In most cases, Neanderthal genetic data come from single fossils or from remains scattered across different sites and times: at Stajnia, instead, it was possible to reconstruct a small group of individuals, for the first time providing a coherent genetic picture of Neanderthals in this part of Europe"
The genetic profile of a small group of Neanderthals who lived around 100,000 years ago has been reconstructed for the first time from the analysis of ancient mitochondrial DNA from eight teeth found in the Stajnia cave in Poland (pictured). The study – coordinated by scholars from the University of Bologna and published in Current Biology – also made it possible to better understand the distribution of a particular Neanderthal maternal lineage spread across Western Eurasia.
"This is an extraordinary result because, for the first time, we have the opportunity to observe a small group of at least seven Neanderthals from Central-Eastern Europe who lived around 100,000 years ago", says Andrea Picin, professor at the Department of Chemistry "Giacomo Ciamician" - CHIM of the University of Bologna and coordinator of the research. "In most cases, Neanderthal genetic data come from single fossils or from remains scattered across different sites and times: at Stajnia, instead, it was possible to reconstruct a small group of individuals, providing for the first time a coherent genetic picture of Neanderthals in this part of Europe”.
From an archaeological perspective, the discovery reinforces the idea that Central-Eastern Europe was not a marginal periphery in Neanderthal history, but a key area for understanding population movements, biological connections and the spread of technical traditions in the Middle Palaeolithic.
Based on the analysis of mitochondrial DNA – which is inherited exclusively through the maternal line – the scholars were in fact able to establish that the Neanderthals found in the Stajnia cave fall within the same branch as other individuals discovered across Europe: from the North Caucasus to south-eastern France, and as far as the Iberian Peninsula. This genetic component – the researchers suggest – must therefore have been widespread before being replaced by those typical of more recent Neanderthals.
"A particularly fascinating aspect is that two teeth that belonged to young individuals and one that belonged to an adult share the same mitochondrial DNA", adds Mateja Hajdinjak, co-author of the article and a Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "This suggests that these individuals could be closely related to one another".
Another important aspect of the study concerns the comparison between the data that emerged from the teeth from the Stajnia cave and those from the Neanderthal fossil Thorin, discovered in 2025 in the Mandrin cave in France. Genomic analyses carried out on this fossil had attributed it to an unprecedented genetic lineage, which remained isolated from that of other Neanderthals found in Europe, and dated it to around 50,000 years ago. However, the new comparison showed that the Neanderthal fossil Thorin carried a mitochondrial genome similar to that of the Stajnia Neanderthals.
"Our study is a reminder that the oldest chronologies must be treated with great caution", explains Sahra Talamo, professor at the University of Bologna and co-coordinator of the study. "When radiocarbon values approach the limit of calibration, it is essential not to attribute more precision than the data can actually support: in these cases, the comparison between archaeology, radiocarbon and genetics becomes decisive".
The Stajnia site and southern Poland thus become a privileged vantage point for reconstructing not only Neanderthal biology, but also their movements and the connections between groups distributed across vast areas of Europe.
"We have long known that the Stajnia cave preserved exceptional evidence, but these results have exceeded our expectations", state Wioletta Nowaczewska of the University of Wrocław and Adam Nadachowski of the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences, co-authors of the study. "Being able to identify such an ancient small group of Neanderthals at such a complex site is an important milestone for Polish research and for the study of Neanderthals in Europe".
The study was published in Current Biology, under the title "First multi-individual Neanderthal mitogenomes from north of the Carpathians", and was coordinated by Andrea Picin and Sahra Talamo of the Department of Chemistry "Giacomo Ciamician" - CHIM of the University of Bologna. The Bones Lab of the Department of Cultural Heritage - DBC at the University of Bologna contributed to the palaeoanthropological study of the teeth.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Genetics (Germany), the University of Wrocław (Poland), Queen's University Belfast (Northern Ireland), the University of Bristol, the University of Leeds (England), the University of California, Irvine (USA), the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Università LUM Giuseppe Degennaro, the University of Palermo (Italy), the Collège de France (France), the Polish Geological Institute, and the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland) also took part.
Professor Picin is the Principal Investigator of the FIS 2 POOL research project (FIS-2023-01196); the study also benefited from the support of the RESOLUTION (ERC Starting Grant No. 803147), DYNASTY (PRIN No. 20209LLK8S_001) and EURHOPE (FARE Prot. R20L4N7MS5 CUP J53C2200374000) projects, coordinated by Professor Talamo.