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 © 

Neanderthals: they dispersed across Asia in 2000 years

When I look at the long distances covered by our ancestors across the Old World and the Americas, I often wonder how long did it take them to trek across the continents. Today I found a paper that modelled how long it took the Neanderthals to move from Western Europe, in the Caucasus, to Altai.

I was surprised to find that it could have taken around 2,000 years.

The paper by Coco E, and Iovita R (2025) (Agent-based simulations reveal the possibility of multiple rapid northern routes for the second Neanderthal dispersal from Western to Eastern Eurasia. PLoS One 20(6): e0325693. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325693) used a computer simulation to find out how a group of hunter-gatherers would move from a starting point into new territories without any previous knowledge of what lies ahead. The program places "cost barriers" like deserts, glaciers, wider rivers, that slow down progress and require detours or more effort to cross them. The simulation did not consider sites where Neanderthal remains have been found, yet the routes it traced coincide with many of them!. Below is a map from this paper (Fig. 2) of these paths during different periods. The authors consider that advancing and retreating ice shields during glacial periods pushed the Neanderthals into refugia further south, to warmer climates, and that they pushed north during the warmer periods.

The simulations end at Altai, where we know that Denisovans and Neanderthals mixed.

How long did it take?

The paper states that "it is possible that Neanderthal dispersals would have taken slightly longer than 2000 years. However, the model still suggests dispersal could have occurred relatively quickly. Such a dispersal may have left few vestiges along the route, as Neanderthals would have spent relatively little time in any one location."

The authors find that their arrival to Altai was inevitable, forged by the geographic constraints and landscape: "This suggests that Neanderthal dispersal to the Altai is an inevitable outcome of local movement decisions defined by geography."

Further research would be required, in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to locate sites and provide additional data. The paper did not model beyond Altai. I wonder what direction would the simulation take into China, or even towards the northeast, into the tip of Asia and across Bering, into America.<7p>

Could these same paths have been used by the H. Georgicus of Dmanisi, Georgia, in the Caucasus, ~2 million years ago, to reach East Asia?

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

The Neanderthal from Chagyrskaya

A recent paper (A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Chagyrskaya Cave by Fabrizio Mafessoni et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2020, 117 (26) 15132-15136; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2004944117) reported the sequencing of a third Neandertal genome. It complements the other two, one from the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, the other from the Vindija cave in Croatia.

The Neandertal from Chagyrskaya -a site which is roughly 66 miles (106 km) from Denisova is significant because Chagyrskaya specimen lived around 80,000 years ago, the Denisovan Neandertal lived roughly 110,000 years ago and Vindija's specimen has been dated to around 50,000 years ago.

But despite the geographical closeness between Chagyrskaya and Denisova, Chagyrskaya is closer to the European Neanderthals: it "...shares more derived alleles with Vindija 33.19 and other later Neandertals in the Caucasus and in Europe than with the older Denisova 5 Neandertal from the Altai".

The authors also found that " that Vindija 33.19 is more closely related than Chagyrskaya 8 to Neandertal populations that contributed the majority of the DNA to present-day populations." that is, modern humans are closr to Vindija Neandertals than to the Chagyrskaya one.

Finally, they conclude that "Chagyrskaya 8 is thus related to Neandertal populations that moved east sometime between 120 and 80 kya. Interestingly, the artifacts found in Chagyrskaya Cave show similarities to artifact assemblages in central and eastern Europe, suggesting that Neandertal populations coming from western Eurasia to Siberia may have brought their material culture with them. Some of these incoming Neandertals encountered local Denisovan populations, as shown by Denisova 11, who had a Denisovan father and a Neandertal mother related to the population in which Chagyrskaya 8 lived."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2020 by Austin Whittall © 

HST and Scladina Neanderthals

A A recent paper by Stephane Peyregne et al., (Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe, Science Advances 26 Jun 2019: Vol. 5, no. 6, eaaw5873 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw5873) looked into the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of some ancient European remains and compared them to that of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

What they found is indeed interesting, and unexpected.

The team sampled the remains of two Neanderthal people, which lived roughly at the same time (some 125,000 years ago), relatively close to each other in Western Europe: a male femur (thigh bone) discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave, Germany, back in 1937 -this sample was named HST. They also analyzed a jaw bone belonging to a girl found in 1993 in Scladina, Belgium.

The mtDNA of the Scladina girl and the HST man, both from Western Europe, were most similar to the mtDNA of the Altai Neandertal (from the Altai region in Asia), 3,300 miles (5.300 km) west of Scladina and Hohlenstein-Stadel.

Their mtDNA was quite different from the mtDNA of later European Neanderthals that lived in the same region 80,000 years later.

HST and its unique mtDNA

The HST an carried mtDNA that was very different from that of all other Neanderthals, it had more than 70 mutations that distinguish it from the others' mtDNA. The bone was dated to approximately 124 kya. (62 to 183 kya), but its mtDNA split from that of other humans 270 kya.

The girl's remains are of a similar age: 127 kya (95 to 173 kya) but her mtDNA was more similar to that of an Asian Altai Neanderthal.

In fact both Scladina and the Altai Neanderthal grouped together in a branch of their own, with HST at the root and all other later Neanderthals on a separate branch.

The image below shows the branch that groups the Scladina girl with Atai Neanderthals and the HST Branch (inside the red square). As you can see, they are quite differentiated from that of all the other Neanderthals and Modern Humans (we are shown on the upper part of the diagram).

MtDNA of Neanderthals, Sima de los Huesos, Denisovan and Modern Humans

The fact that these three older Neanderthals are grouped together (see red square in image above) means that they share a common lineage of mtDNA; they all lived more or less at the same time (some 125 kya) and spanned a wide geographic area from the North Sea to the Altai in Siberia.

All more recent Neanderthals who lived roughly 40,000 years ago (green square in the image above) shared a common ancestor who lived some 97 kya, and belong to a branch that diverges from that of these three older Neanderthals.

These "modern" Neanderthals' mtDNA is derived from that of the "older" group.

The interesting part is that the Denisova Neanderthal (see "Denisova 11" in the image) which lived 90 kya in the Denisova cave in Central Asia, and is a hybrid of Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother, has mtDNA which is closer to the more recent Neanderthals of Western Europe than to the Altai Neanderthal that lived in that same Denisova cave! 120,000 years ago.

This means that the ancient mtDNA of Altai Neanderthals was replaced by the "new" mtDNA shared by Denisova 11 and all other modern Neanderthals, so these later western European Neanderthals migrated east into Siberia and repopulated the Altai.

What about the Nuclear DNA?

The team looked into the nuclear or autosomal DNA of both Scladina and HST specimens and compared them with that of other Neanderthals.

They found that from a nuclear DNA point of view HST and Scladina were "more closely related to Vindija than they are to the Altai Neandertal". Vindija is a cave in Northern Croatia.

We see that all Neanderthals, old and recent share a common root for their nuclear DNA, but there are two branches: one with the Altai Neanderthal, and the other with all the other Neanderthals.

So it may be reasonable to suppose that all known Neanderthals (old and recent) share a common origin, and that it split as they migrated into Western Europe (HST and Scladina) and Siberia (Altain Neanderthals), this explains their branching.

Regarding the Atai Neanderthal, (see Prüfer K, Racimo F, Patterson N, et al. The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains, Nature. 2014;505(7481):43–49. doi:10.1038/nature12886) it was found to be (see Figure 2b in that paper) on the most diverged and basal branch within Neanderthal's nuclear DNA and therefore furthest away from the Vindjia specimens).

See image below, which I adapted from (here) and Fig. 2 of Peyregne et al.; it depicts the Nuclear DNA branching.

So we can imagine a very early migration of Neanderthals into Siberia (ancestral to Altai Neanderthal) who did not leave descendants.

The Western Neanderthal population (which included HST and Scladina) had settled Europe 125 kya and its descendants later migrated across Eastern Europe, entered Asia and settled in the Altai region replacing this eastern population in Asia.

The very odd HST mtDNA

The very divergent mtDNA carried by HST split from that of all other Neanderthals some 270,000 years ago. This is far older than expected by the team (they'd estimated less than 150 kya).

And they believe that this is due to the fact that "HST carries some ancestry from a genetically distant population.".

They propose two scenarios:

1. "Admixture between Neandertals and ancestors or relatives of modern humans could explain the origin of this later Neandertal mtDNA... If several mtDNAs were introduced into the Neandertal population by such a putative gene flow, then the deeply divergent mtDNA in HST may represent the remnants of the mitochondrial diversity of this introgressing population... This would imply that this admixture into Neandertals occurred later than the previously suggested lower boundary of 270 ka ago".
2. "An alternative source for the deeply divergent mtDNA in HST could be an isolated Neandertal population, for example, a population that separated from other Neandertals before the glacial period preceding HST and Scladina (~130 to 190 ka ago...). Such an isolated population may have preserved the mtDNA that was later re-introduced during a warmer period between 115 and 130 ka ago (the “Eemian” period) when these populations met again and gene flow resumed."

Discussion

I ask: Can we reasonably expect a group to remain in isolation for 15,000 to 75,000 years and maintain their mtDNA without mutations? This "isolated group"notion is identical to the Beringian Standstill Hypothesis which states that the humans who would people America remained isolated in Beringia for tens of thousands of years.

But the Beringian mutated while the isolated Neanderthals did not! This is weird, same situation and two different outcomes:

The Beringians suffered mutations that gave their descent, the modern Native Americans a distinctive mtDNA that is not found in Asia is said to have arisen during the "standstill": after their ancestors left Asia, but before they dispersed into the Americas.

Yet the isolated ancestors of the Neanderthals retained their original mtDNA without anyn mutations.

So in one case it is mtDNA "stasis" and in another "mutation". You can't have it both ways. One or other or perhaps even both theories are wrong.

In this context, the admixture theory seems reasonable, but why should we have to assume admixture? Let's read it in the paper's words:

"It seems unexpected that HST carries an mtDNA lineage that diverged ~270 ka ago from other mtDNAs, given the recent population split times from the Vindija ancestors and the low levels of genetic diversity in the nuclear genomes of Neandertals".

In other words, as their nuclear genome is very similar to that of the Vindija Neanderthals, who lived 80 ky later than HST, their mtDNA can't be 270 ky old.

They add:

"An explanation could be related to a replacement of mtDNAs in Neandertals that has been suggested to explain the discrepancy between the mtDNA divergence time (<470 ka ago) and the population split times based on nuclear DNA (>520 ka ago) between modern humans and Neandertals.
The Sima de los Huesos hominins, and perhaps other early Neandertals, carried mtDNAs that shared a common ancestor with Denisovan mtDNAs more recently than with those of modern humans, whereas later Neandertals carried mtDNAs that shared a more recent common ancestor with the mtDNAs of modern humans.
Admixture between Neandertals and ancestors or relatives of modern humans could explain the origin of this later Neandertal mtDNA".

We see that once again there is a discrepancy between mtDNA and nuclear DNA divergence dates, you'd expect both to be the same age. In this case it is 470 ky vs. 520 ky.

In a previous post on this subject (Sima de los huesos is now.... closer to Neanderthals than Denisovans!) I gave an explanation for this conundrum as follows:

The common mtDNA shared by Denisovans and Sima de los Huesos but not the nuclear DNA could be explained as follows:

• A native archaic population lives in Eurasia (descendants of H. erectus?) with its specific autosomal DNA and mtDNA; they are the ancestors of Denisovans and a pre-Sima de los Huesos people.
• A later wave of proto-Neandertal reach Europe, they are more successful and breed with the native women (kill the men and keep the women) of the native pre-Sima de los Huesos stock.

The original archaic mtDNA is preserved in their offspring -since it is transmitted by the mothers to their children-, but the nuclear DNA is now admixed with that of the proto-Neandertals.

After many generations we have a European lineage with mtDNA similar to the original ancient stock (Homo erectus?) and therefore shared with Denisovans, but a nuclear DNA which will be more like that of Neanderthals which were formed by this admixture.

A similar event must have taken place with the Neanderthals.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

The Diego blood group and the peopling of America

The Diego Blood group system was discovered by chance in 1953. At that time, a woman who lived in Caracas, Venezuela gave birth to her second child. The newborn became ill with hemolytic jaundice which was caused by an incompatibility between baby and mother's blood. The samples were sent fot analysis and the outcome wwas a new private antigen which was named after the baby, Diego (he died shortly after).

Further studies identified two different variants Dia and Dib. The first was found to be quite frequent among Amerindians and some Asian populations but absent among Caucasians, Africans and Australian Aboriginals. The second variant was common around the world.

Dia was also found among Polish people, and it is conjectured that it reached Europe via the Tartar - Mongol invasions in the 1300s.

The two variants arise from a mutation in the SLC4A1 gene. Where an amino acid change provokes Dia. As it is not found in all Asian populations it may have arisen in a confined area of Asia and moved into America with part of these people when they migrated into the New World.

In America there are two variants Di(a-) common in South America and NW North America while the other one D(a+) is found elsewhere. This may be due to the fact that the Di(a-) people are the remnants of a first wave of migrants, later over ran by a Di(a+) population. This theory was proposed by M. Layrisse and J. Wilbert [1] who wrote:

"The Diego blood group is an exclusive Mongoloid gene marker, although it is not present in all Mongoloid populations. The absence of the gene in Waica Indians and its very low frequencies in Warrau and Yaruro Indians of South America suggest that it represents a genetic characteristic of Marginal American Indians. Since Marginal Indians are considered to be early comers to the New World, we suggest that Diego-negative t populations were the first to arrive and to extend throughout South America, while the Diego-positive tribes came later."

Interestingly this theory would be completed by a later third wave that peopled the Arctic region where the Dia type is absent.

A recent paper by Bégat C, Bailly P, Chiaroni J and Mazieres S [2] gives another explanation:

"...For this purpose we assumed that the geographic distribution of the DI*A allele coding for Dia is not random but rather coincided with cultural traits according to the gene-culture comigration concept.
[...]
High frequencies were observed in the Peruvian Andes, on the Guyanese Plateau, in the southeastern Amazonian Basin, in a region comprising the Brazilian state of Pará, and along the Tapajos, Xingu and Araguaia tributaries of the Amazon River. Low frequencies occurred mainly in North America, in Chaco and at southern tip of South America. The DI*A allele was totally absent in the Arctic (Eskimo and Tlingit), Panama Isthmus (Bribri and Teribe), Tierra de Fuego (Alacalufe), and a few pocket areas in North America (Cherokee), Northern Brazil/Southern Venezuela (Ninam and Yanomama), and the Chaco area (Ayoreo, Zamucoan). [2]

They go on to explain that the Ayore suffered from a "severe founder effect", and this may explain the lack of DI*A in them. Then they explain its absence among the Panama Isthmus populatons because these Chibchan-speakers "predecessors have lived in isolation from Central and South Amerindians since the early Holocene" [2].

The Fuegians lack this allele because of "isolation by distance with ensuing drift" [2] and its void in Northern North America is due to a "Secondary migration ... of non-Amerind-speakers, i.e., Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene speakers, from Alaska to Greenland and Southwestern North America.", they back-migrated into Siberia too, and that explains the link between their language and the Yeniseian languages in Siberia where the Yeniseian speakers also lack the Di*A allele. Then came even more gene flow carrying the DI*B allelle into the boreal part of the New World.

Frequency

• 5% Chinese
• 12% Japanese
• 54% South American Natives
• 4% North India
• 0.47% Polish
• 0.01% Other Caucasians

I must admit that the Diego blood Group is an oddity, found in many non-African It has an exclusively Amerindian variant the Dia variant but, and this is interesting: An antibody of the Diego antigen, Anti-Di(a), is the cause of hemolytic transfusion reactions and also of hemolytic disease of the newborn (like happened to the baby, Diego). The presence of this antigen, or Dia alloimmunization has been observed among different Asian and South American Amerindian populations. A study by Baleotti et al., (2014) [3] found that:

"...HLA-DRB1*07:01 allele was overrepresented in Dia-alloimmunized patients compared to nonimmunized patients and to healthy donors.
... Individuals carrying the HLA-DRB1*07:01 allele present an increased risk for Dia alloimmunization..."

This means that those with the lowest frequency of this type of HLA, which in the map below would mean those native to the areas shaded in blue or pale blue, would not have the Anti-Di(a) antigen, because they have Di(a). And the map is clear: The Americas and east Asia. But! why is Australia, Melanesia and Africa also blue?

Also the Altai region (i.e. Denisova-land) is blue. Could the Australia -Melanesia - Americas mean some Denisovan introgression? But what about Southern and Western Africa?.

Could this imply some introgression there, in Africa, of an archaic hominin? See my post an ancient Y chromosome lineage, which mentions a possible archaic-human admixture in a Nigerian site known as Iwo Eleru, where human skeletal remains with both archaic and modern features were found and dated to ~13 kya.

The map below shows the global distribution of DRB1*07:01:01:01, (Source).

And this is the image from [2] showing the distribution of the Diego factor in America (black = none, dark blue= high)

I have the impression that Diego factor is archaic, not the result of a bottleneck.

Sources
[1] M. Layrisse, J. Wilbert, Science (1961). Absence of the Diego Antigen, a Genetic Characteristic of Early Immigrants to South America, 13 October 1961, Vol. 134 no. 3485 pp. 1077-1078 DOI: 10.1126/science.134.3485.1077
[2] Bégat C, Bailly P, Chiaroni J, Mazieres S (2015) Revisiting the Diego Blood Group System in Amerindians: Evidence for Gene-Culture Comigration. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0132211. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132211
[3] Baleotti, W., Ruiz, M. O., Fabron, A., Castilho, L., Giuliatti, S. and Donadi, E. A. (2014), HLA-DRB1*07:01 allele is primarily associated with the Diego a alloimmunization in a Brazilian population. Transfusion, 54: 2468–2476. doi: 10.1111/trf.12652

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Yeti nests

 


View Larger Map
Map showing Kemerovo. Altai is between it and Urumqi.


Recently, I have been following some articles online regarding the Siberian Yeti. I am skeptical about this particular Yeti, but I want to share it with my readers.

Siberia is quite far from Patagonia yet both places share some common features which may link any hominids in one place with those in the other:

• Empty spaces - not crowded with human beings
• A relatively unpolluted and natural environment
• A similar environment: mountains, forests, lakes and steppes
• Myths regarding ape-men
• Similar people (Central Siberia is the alleged home of the native American people) - perhaps similar myths?

As Siberia is the home of Denisovans and Neanderthals also lived in Western-Central Asia, it is the likely source of American hominid cryptids.

Well, an online article published in the Daily Mail's November 15, 2011 edition, mentions "Yeti 'nests'".

The intertwined saplings shown in the photographs seem to be flimsy evidence and the footprint in the ice may be "man made". Personally I tend to believe that the authorities at Kemerovo Region are fishing for tourists interested in sighting the Yeti and promoting their region as a Yeti haven. (see my Oct. 2010 post about Cryptids and Tourism which mentions Russian Yetis.


On the other hand, as you can see in the map above or int the map of Kemerovo published in the article, that it is very close to Altai (where Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan meet), home of Denisovans.

They have also found some tufts of hair. Lets wait for the DNA tests to reveal who they belong to.

Well, that is all for now!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

Neanderthals migration to America - Part I

 

A revised view of Neanderthal's distribution in Asia and possible entry route into America. Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall

The map above shows what I drew in a previous map but puts it in context. You can see the entry route of modern humans (H. sapiens) into Asia through Sinai and the southern tip of the Red Sea and the tip of the Persian Gulf (see the lower sea level and the coast line during Ice Ages).
Ice sheets covered the high mountains of Eurasia and blanketed the northern part of Europe and central Asia.

These ice fields cut off the drainage of Siberian rivers (which flow north) and acted as ice dams, forming the biggest lakes that the world has ever seen Lakes Komi and West Siberian Lake. The water backed up and found a southern outlet into the Aral Sea and from there to the Caspian Sea, which filled in its current depression (nowadays this "sea" is below sea level) and led it to flow west into the seas of Azov and from there into the Black sea, at that time a lake as were all the others (freshwater due to glacial ice melt and not salt water as they have now).

These rivers were mighty barriers to Neanderthal and would have been uncrossable, they were a barrier to further expansion, as was the northern glaciers.

We have seen that Neanderthal reached the mouth of the Indus River, on the border between Pakistan and India. Why did they stop there? Perhaps ancient H. erectus population in India impeded it, or the weather / vegetation was too balmy for the Neanderthals, used to living in the icy tundra.

They would have gone north, from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran towards Altai, where their most distant remains have been found (to date).

I see nothing that would have made them stop there. They could have gone southeast, into what is now China, but perhaps there was no game to hunt or, again, H. erectus blocked the way.

They would have followed the southern edge of the tundra, just north of the mountains that separate Mongolia from Russia, on and on, towards Beringia, and once across it, into America.

Lets go into details! in my next posts.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall ©