Jinsitai Cave China - Neanderthal tools 40 kya

In yesterday's post about the habitats of Neanderthals and Denisovans where I mentioned a lone outpost of Neanderthals in Northeastern China known as Jinsitai Cave, I recalled that I wrote a short post about it back in 2019. Today we will revisit this spot, and learn what else has been discovered and published about it.

Originally described by Feng Li et al., in 2018 (Li, F., Kuhn, S. L., Chen, F., Wang, Y., Southon, J., Peng, F., Shan, M., Wang, C., Ge, J., Wang, X., Yun, T., & Gao, X. (2018). The easternmost Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) from Jinsitai Cave, North China. Journal of Human Evolution, 114, 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.10.004). These researchers found similarities between the tools found at Jintai and those from Altai (3,000 km or nearly 1870 mi. west). This could imply that there was a cultural bond between people living in both locations, or that they were the same group. The tools themselves resembled the Mousterian technology used by Neanderthals in Western Eurasia. Were they made by Neanderthals? They could have also been made by Denisovans or even modern humans.

No definite Neanderthal remains have been found in Eastern Asia, but the tools found at Jinsitai are Mousterian-like. They were dated to around 45,000 years ago (47-42 ky) which is relatively recent. At that time modern humans had already left Africa and had spread across Eurasia. The Neanderthals used an older Middle Paleolithic stone knapping technique while modern humans had newer, Upper Paleolithic industries.

They lived there until around 39,000 years ago (40-37 ky) and moved on, or were replaced by others.

The cave itself is located in northern China, close to the border with Mongolia. (35°14'23.4" N, 115°28'32.7" E), see it in Google Maps.

First excavated in 2000-2001 and described by Wang et al. 2010, who found 5,000 tools, but dug up almost the whole cave, disturbing most of its sediments. Wang reported that there were different layers showing distinct stone tools: "Three cultural layers come down in one continuous line. The Lower cultural stratum is dominated by the Small Tool Industry. A lot of cobble tools and Levallois tools are found in the Middle cultural stratum. The Microblade Industry in Upper cultural stratum is superior to the Small Tool Industry, according to the tool types, retouched technique and selected raw materials." Howver Feng Li says that the information was limited, and the dig used poor methods. So they went back to reassess the site. Some of the tools that were unearthed are shown below.

Jinsitai stone tools

Another paper, by Wang et al., 2023 mentions that "the upper layers contained a Late Upper Palaeolithic assemblage of microblades and bifacially thinned points, alongside the traditional core-and-flake (small flakes) industry which is typical in contemporaneous sites in northern China. The lower layers were dominated by core-and-flake industry, while some distinctive Levallois flakes were described as Mousterian-like artefacts. Some researchers regard the presence of this Mousterian-like industry at Jinsitai as evidence of a population dispersal or technological diffusion from the west."

This study focused on dating animal bones and confirmed that the bone collagen and radiocarbon show that humans occupied the site starting around 47,000 to 44,000 years ago, and continued there until the Holocene. They found camel bones, dated to 37-20 ky BP an unusual species, showing that humans not only hunted larger prey like mammoths, but also mid-sized animals.

Recent research by Khatsenovich et al., 2023 describes a site where Middle Paleolithic tools were found, located in in southern Mongolia. It is the Tsagaan Agui Cave in the Gobi Altai Mountains (44°42'53.3" N, 101°10'13.4" E, see it in Google Maps). The authors report that "Preliminary technological and typological analyses reveal the non-Levallois Mousterian character of the Middle Paleolithic industry at Tsagaan Agui Cave" this is a lithic industry that is characteristic of Neanderthals, who created it 300 ky ago. The Tsagaan Agui cave is ~1000 km west (660 mi) from Jinsitai, and roughly the same distance from Denisova Cave, which is further west, in the Altai (1200 km - 740 mi)

This, together with other findings published in 2025 (see my post Neanderthals in China 55 ky ago) show that the human landscape in Eastern Asia was dynamic at the time that the first people reached America. 40,000 years ago, modern humans were walking across Siberia and we have the Tianyuan remains (40 ky) and Ust'Ishim man (45 ky) date from this period. It is concievable that Neanderthals had been living in China for hundreds of thousands of years, and that they could have advanced northeast to Beringia and into America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Western and Eastern Neanderthals Were Very Divergent

New research published last week revealed the genetic makeup of a Neanderthal man (Denisova 17) who lived in the Denisova cave in Altai, 110,000 years ago. The paper reached some surprising conclusions.

This is the paper: D. Massilani,S. Peyrégne, et al. A high-coverage Neandertal genome from the Altai Mountains reveals population structure among Neandertals, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (13) e2534576123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2534576123 (2026).

Key findings:

• Population Replacement. The Denisova 17 Neanderthal man was closer to the older (~120 kya) Altai Neanderthal from Denisova (a woman known as Denisova 5) than to more recent European Neanderthals (the Vindija Cave woman, from Croatia and the Goyet female) and to the Neanderthal woman from Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai region (80 kya, called Chagyrskaya 8 (Chag 8 for short). Suggesting that more recent Neanderthals replaced the older population in Altai.
• Denisovan admixture. The 120 and 110 kya Neanderthals from Denisova Cave (Denisova 17 and Denisova 5) had Denisovan admixture. This is not seen in the later Neanderthals of Western Europe or Chagyrskaya Cave.
• The estimated age of the common ancestor of the Y chromosome of Denisova 17 and modern human beings is ~395 ± 44 kya.
• The Eastern Neanderthals lived in groups of less than 50 individuals, these were smaller, and also more isolated than those of Western Eurasian Neanderthals.
• Replacement. The Western Neanderthals moved eastwards across Eurasia and replaced the older Eastern Neanderthals. But there was no admixture so the authors conjecture that both populations never met "perhaps because the older Neandertal population disappeared before the younger population from the west appeared in the Altai Mountains... Western-derived Neandertals are thought to have replaced the Eastern Neandertals in the Altai Mountains, and presumably elsewhere, sometime between ~110,000 and ~70,000 y ago."
• Interaction with modern humans: comparing non-African modern human genes with Neanderthal genes and counting the matches, the authors find that Western Neanderthals, especially the Vindija type were closest to the Neanderthals who admixed with humans. Those matching Eastern Neanderthals were four-times smaller. I wonder if modern humans leaving Africa mated with Western Neanderthals, who may have carried Eastern alleles? or perhaps they also intermingled with Eastern Neanderthals.

Mutation Rate and Divergence

The most interesting part is how divergent both Western and Eastern Neanderthal were, when compared to modern human beings. The paper states that:

"... it is striking that the allele frequency differentiation between Eastern Neandertals (D5 and D17) and Western Neandertals (Vi33.19 and others) (FST = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.29 to 0.31) exceeds that of even the most differentiated pairs of present-day populations, such as the Mbuti of Central Africa and the Papuan Highlanders of New Guinea (FST = 0.27, 95% CI: 0.26 to 0.27). The divergence between Mbuti and Papuan is estimated to have occurred 130 to 220 kya, resulting in separate genetic drift along the two lineages over 260 to 440 ky. The divergence between Eastern and Western Neandertals occurred about 35 ky before D5 and D17 and about 80 ky before Vi33.19 lived resulting in separate genetic drift along the two Neandertal lineages over about 115 ky. This suggests that Neandertal populations reached greater levels of differentiation over shorter timescales than modern humans did. This is also illustrated by the modest differentiation between a ~45,000-y-old modern human genome from Siberia (Ust’Ishim) and present-day populations (FST = 0.052, 95% CI: 0.049 to 0.056)."

The authors suggest that the small bands of Neanderthals underwent higher genetic drift, that led to high frequencies of different alleles in the two populations. So even though they were not far apart in Eurasia, they were, nevertheless isolated from each other. The point is that "Neandertal populations accumulated allele frequency differences more rapidly than the ancestors of present-day human groups." So much for the molecular clock and its regular ticking rate.

In my previous posts on the MUC19 allele that introgressed into humans from Denisovans via Neanderthals wo were not related to the Altai Neanderthal (Denisova 5), I wondered if the Neanderthals who were ancestral to the Chagyrskaya and Vindija individuals but not to Denisova 5, the Altai Neanderthal were the ones who had admixed with modern humans. This paper seems to suggest it was them.

If there was an Early peopling of America by Neanderthals, it was surely done by the Older Eastern Neanderthal Group.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©