School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland.
J Hum Evol. 2012 Dec;63(6):770-80. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.08.004. Epub 2012 Oct 18.
Neanderthal populations of the southern and northern Caucasus became locally extinct during the Late Pleistocene. The timing of their extinction is key to our understanding of the relationship between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMH) in Eurasia. Recent re-dating of the end of the Middle Palaeolithic (MP) at Mezmaiskaya Cave, northern Caucasus, and Ortvale Klde, southern Caucasus, suggests that Neanderthals did not survive after 39 ka cal BP (thousands of years ago, calibrated before present). Here we extend the analysis and present a revised regional chronology for MP occupational phases in western Georgia, based on a series of model-based Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dated bone samples obtained from the caves of Sakajia, Ortvala and Bronze Cave. This allows the establishment of probability intervals for the onset and end of each of the dated levels and for the end of the MP occupation at the three sites. Our results for Sakajia indicate that the end of the late Middle Palaeolithic (LMP) and start of the Upper Palaeolithic (UP) occurred between 40,200 and 37,140 cal BP. The end of the MP in the neighboring site of Ortvala occurred earlier at 43,540-41,420 cal BP (at 68.2% probability). The dating of MP layers from Bronze Cave confirms that it does not contain LMP phases. These results imply that Neanderthals did not survive in the southern Caucasus after 37 ka cal BP, supporting a model of Neanderthal extinction around the same period as reported for the northern Caucasus and other regions of Europe. Taken together with previous reports of the earliest UP phases in the region and the lack of archaeological evidence for an in situ transition, these results indicate that AMH arrived in the Caucasus a few millennia after the Neanderthal demise and that the two species probably did not interact.
南、北高加索地区的尼安德特人群体在晚更新世期间局部灭绝。他们灭绝的时间对于我们理解欧亚大陆的尼安德特人和解剖学上的现代人（AMH）之间的关系至关重要。最近对北高加索的梅兹马伊斯卡亚洞穴（Mezmaiskaya Cave）和南高加索的奥尔塔瓦尔德克莱德（Ortvale Klde）的中更新世末期的重新定年表明，尼安德特人在 39ka cal BP（距今几千年，校准后为现在）后没有存活下来。在这里，我们扩展了分析，并基于对从 Sakajia、Ortvala 和青铜洞穴中获得的放射性碳定年骨样本的一系列基于模型的贝叶斯分析，为格鲁吉亚西部的中更新世职业阶段提出了修订后的区域年表。这使得能够为每个有日期的水平的开始和结束以及三个地点的中更新世职业的结束建立概率间隔。我们对 Sakajia 的结果表明，晚中更新世（LMP）的结束和旧石器时代晚期（UP）的开始发生在 40200 到 37140 cal BP 之间。毗邻的 Ortvala 地点的中更新世结束得更早，在 43540-41420 cal BP（在 68.2%的概率下）。青铜洞穴中中更新世层的年代测定证实它不包含 LMP 阶段。这些结果表明，尼安德特人在 37ka cal BP 后没有在南高加索地区存活下来，支持了在北高加索和欧洲其他地区报道的同一时期尼安德特人灭绝的模型。再加上该地区最早的 UP 阶段的先前报告以及没有原地过渡的考古证据，这些结果表明，AMH 在尼安德特人灭绝后的几千年才到达高加索地区，这两个物种可能没有相互作用。
