Teshik-Tash 1 is a

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an Extinction, extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ag ...

skeleton discovered in 1938 in Teshik-Tash Cave, in the Bajsuntau mountain range,

Uzbek SSR Uzbekistan (, ) is the common English name for the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbek SSR; uz, Ўзбекистон Совет Социалистик Республикаси, Oʻzbekiston Sovet Sotsialistik Respublikasi, in Russian: Уз ...

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...

. The remains were discovered in 1938 by A. P. Okladnikov. They were found in a shallow pit, reported to be associated with five pairs of

Siberian ibex The Siberian ibex (''Capra sibirica''), also known as the Altai ibex, Central Asia(n) ibex, Gobi ibex, Himalayan ibex, Mongolian ibex or Tian Shan ibex, is a species of ibex that lives in central Asia. It has traditionally been treated as a subs ...

horn cores. Through dental analysis the skull was said to have been an 8 to 11-year-old child. The horn cores were found around the perimeter of the grave surrounding the cranial remains. This has led a number of researchers to believe the child was ritually buried. The site was excavated in five cultural layers of sediment with

Mousterian The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the l ...

artifacts. Lack of adequate published material on the excavation and the numerous Ibex bones (761) found led to this interpretation being questioned. Paul Mellars, questioning the ritual interpretation suggested that the bones may not have been deliberately placed. Others (e.g., Gargett) believe it is no burial at all.

Date

The remains are not dated. Based on the archaeology, fauna, and

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of an animal. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside ...

itself, it is thought to come from the

Middle Palaeolithic The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Pale ...

(300,000 to 40,000 years ago).

Skull

Reconstruction

The Teshik-Tash skull was reconstructed from 150 bone fragments.The Mousterian child from Teshik-Tash is a Neanderthal: a geometric morphometric study of the frontal bone. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, , 11/2012, Volume 149, Issue 3, pp. 365 – 379. Retrieved 2014-04-23. The skull was crushed due to the several layers of sediment that lay on top of it.

Controversy

The Teshik-Tash skull’s dental analysis placed the age of the hominid between 8–9 years old at the time of death. The size of the skull was relatively larger than that of a modern child’s skull of the same age. Archaeologists suggested that this was because Neanderthals have a faster rate of growth than modern ''Homo sapiens'' adolescences. The skull is larger and taller and exhibited typical Neanderthal traits such as an occipital bun, oval-shaped foramen magnum, shovel-shaped incisors, supraorbital ridge, and the absence of a strong chin. Other midfacial features of the skull such as the lingual of the mandibular foramen were said to be more characteristic of modern humans than Neanderthals. The morphological features of the Teshik-Tash skull lead researchers to question the classification as some argued that it was closer in morphological association with

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

''Homo sapiens''. Statistical analysis of 27 linear measurements placed the Teshik-Tash skull and mandible outside the variation of the Neanderthals and associated it with Upper Paleolithic humans.

DNA analysis

mtDNA analysis was conducted on the Teshik-Tash skull which confirmed that the skull was Neanderthal. Further genetic research concluded that near-eastern Neanderthals were somewhat segregated from northwestern European Neanderthals and early Neanderthals along the Mediterranean. This data is suggested through consistent low levels of gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans in the Near East.

Significance

Prior to the discovery of the Teshik-Tash skull in 1938, it was thought that Neanderthals had not spread east enough to reach Central Asia. New hominin remains from Uzbekistan. Journal of Human Evolution, , 2008, Volume 55, Issue 2, pp. 223 – 23. Retrieved 2014-04-23.

References

External links

* {{coord, 37, 57, 57, N, 67, 09, 23, E, display=inline,title 1938 archaeological discoveries Neanderthal fossils Prehistoric Uzbekistan Mousterian