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0REWORKING OBI RAKHMAT GROTTO (UZBEKISTAN): A CONTRIBUTION AFTER THE RECENT mtDNA SEQUENCES ON OR-1
1 2 3
Jesús Gil Fuensanta, Muminov Otabek Uktamovich, Muminov Alisher Gaffarovich
1LASEI-ICFS UAM, Madrid
2 .
National University of Uzbekistan named after Mirzo Ulugbek, Tashkent, Faculty of History
3
National University of Uzbekistan named after Mirzo Ulugbek, Tashkent, Faculty of History
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12605740
Introduction. The Investigations into Obi Rakhmat
The Obi-Rakhmat Grotto (Figures 1 and 2), is placed 1250 m above sea level, and near the confluence of the Chatkal and Pskom rivers, is located 100 km northeast of Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan.
Obi Rakhmat after being discovered by a team from the Institute of History and Archeology of Uzbekistan, headed by A.R.Mukhamedzhanov, the first archaeological excavations there were carried out by M.M.Gerasimov, although later they were directed by our Prehistorian fellow R.Kh.Suleymanov.
From the initial moment of the research, Obi Rakhmat site was assigned by Master Suleymanov to a Middle Paleolithic archaeological sequence based on its cultural sequence, typical of the Mousterian industry.
Later research reaffirmed this temporal spectrum, insisting that the sequence was more typical of the transitional moments of this culture of Neanderthalensis origin towards the Upper Paleolithic (that is, between the years 50,000 to 40,000 BP); On the other hand, this is a key moment to understand the nature of Neanderthal and Sapiens migrations in Central Asia.
The archaeological excavations of the team led by the Tashkent Prehistorian provided human remains of a Neanderthalensis variant and which were ultimately dated ca. 60,000 to 90,000 years BP.
At Obi Rakhmat part of a human maxillary dentition and a fragmented skull were recovered [Suleymanov: 1972]. The human remains were identified as part of a single juvenile individual (OR-1) belonging to the species Homo Neanderthalensis (Figure 3).
Thus, the remains of Obi Rakhmat, OR1, were placed in a middle-late facies (70,000 to 40,000 years BP) of the Middle Paleolithic of central Asia (Glantz et al: 2008).
OR-1 is one of the most notable specimens of classical human Neanderthalensis remains on a global scale. Within this spectrum we only find less than 15 other prominent places throughout the world, with classic Neanderthalensis vestiges presence (125,000 to 50,000 years BP) that is, without any appreciable genetic mixture with humans of the Denisova or Sapiens subspecies.
With a difference of just a dozen thousand years shortly, other later members of Neanderthalensis appeared and although they show classic features, we already enter the framework of a period of Paleolithic prehistory when the expansion of the Sapiens and Denisova migration began and had expanded into Asian territories. Only Mezmaiskaya 1 in the North Caucasus shows a clear Neanderthalensis occurrence in late Middle Paleolithic dates, in a context where other specimens (M 2) demonstrate an obvious divergence of the mtDNA of the classic Neanderthals who lived around the year 125,000 BP and sometime after in Western Europe or in the Caucasus itself. Everything points to different waves of Neanderthalensis populations in the Caucasus-Central Asia region.
The stone industry found at Obi Rakhmat (Figure 4) is composed of core-burins on large flakes, unidirectional retouched blades and flake cores, burins, side-scrapers and Mousterian points, with an use of classical Levallois technique [see Suleymanov: 1972; Krivoshapkin, Kuzmin, Jull: 2010].
This lithic production demonstrates not only a varied capacity for technological applications within the framework of the Mousterian culture but also a prolonged occupation of the cave, which due to technological affinities with other places in the Paleolithic environment, is assumed to be after 80,000 BP but before 50,000/40,000 BP. The prolonged occupation of the cave by populations related to the Mousterian manifests a changing ability based on supposed environmental alterations in the territory, which, based on hunting strategies, would imply early evolutions through this inconstant situation.
New conclusions after the application of mtDNA analysis regarding the issue of investigations into Obi Rakhmat
Actually, the analysis and study techniques on mtDNA arising from the research at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (Germany) not only led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to its authors but also to "a silent revolution" within the framework of studies on ancient world populations; and Early Prehistory is one of the research fields that has benefited the most from these applications.
The innovative investigations of mtDNA analyzes of human beings from the Middle Paleolithic have managed to provide clear clues about possible origins, as well as migration routes, at least in this case, of Homo Neanderthalensis, from Europe to Central Asia.
For nearly twenty years, this type of mtDNA analysis has been carried out with respect to remains from Neanderthalensis populations that lived in the Middle Paleolithic of Eurasia.
One of the first milestones in this framework of the aforementioned team led by Dr. Paabo was on the area of Central Asia and its Neanderthalensis populations, taking advantage of analyses on human remains from The Teshik Tash and Okladnikov Neanderthal sequences that are deposited in GenBank under accession numbers EU078679 and EU078680, respectively [Krause et al: 2007].
Also in the same first decade of the 21st century, re-evaluations of this genetic line occurred within forensic studies on human remains from the Middle Paleolithic through an interdisciplinary team of which Dr. Suleymanov was a part (Glantz et al. 2008).
OR-1 not only shows a clear Neanderthalensis origin (Ibid.), even without hybridization with Homo Sapiens, but also demonstrates the expansion of types of associated lithic technology, from this period and culture, and which were believed to have appeared more recently according to previous research on the stone industry of the Middle Paleolithic.
Other regions of present-day Uzbekistan have provided important data on the Middle Paleolithic of Central Asia. Within this framework of the research on Obi Rakhmat and the Paleolithic oasis to the immediate northeast of Tashkent, we want to highlight here other study on the Middle Paleolithic in southern Uzbekistan, which highlighted the relationships during Early prehistory that would have existed between the Oasis of Qarshi, the Kashkadarya River and ultimately the territories south of the Amu Darya River, assuming the hypothesis that these waterways have been a crucial part of the path of dispersion of materials, technological ideas and Neanderthalensis populations towards the north of Central Asia, and with it to the southern Siberian region.
In this regard, we take into consideration a couple of archaeological sites linked to Middle Paleolithic industry, in connection with Neanderthalensis populations, and that also were discovered by Dr. Suleymanov at the beginning of this 21st century: the Angillak (Figure 5) and Pashdat sites, both in the region of Kashkadarya, southern Uzbekistan.
Angillak yielded a radiocarbon chronology from the layers of the cave that dates it 42,000 to 27,000 thousand years BP [Toshtevin, Glantz, Suleymanov: 2008].
Stone technology from both sites demonstrates in summary no notable divergence from the ideas employed by the Middle Paleolithic Neanderthalensis humans of the Tashkent oasis to the northeast.
We distinguish in Angillak and Pashdat (Figure 6) those lithic proportions that were convenient to hold during hunting purposes by Neanderthalensis populations.
Unfortunately, until now we have not been able to have human remains from Angillak or Pashdat, both in Kashkadarya, thus missing a piece of the prehistoric puzzle that we consider key to better elucidate and have a broader vision of the Middle Paleolithic emigration through part of the Neanderthalensis populations and their associated technology in the south-western part of Uzbekistan. This is one of the main tasks that we have proposed within the framework of the Paleolithic research in the Kashkadarya region and territories south of the Amu Darya that we have been carrying out in recent years with a joint Spanish-Uzbek SURPAD project [Gil Fuensanta et al: 2019].
But as a tepid preliminary conclusion regarding the Neanderthalensis migration over the Kashkadarya, and due to the association of stone industry artifacts (Figure 6), e.g. serial bladelet production, that is, evidence of evolution within a European Mousterian type assemblage and which may be due to early adaptations (as Obi Rakhmat research by Suleymanov's team suggested) and within the local sequence due to a possible better adaptation to the resources and surrounding environment of the Kashkadarya area in Uzbekistan, during the alleged "main migration" of Middle Paleolithic Homo Neanderthalensis to Central Asia.
The discovery of OR-1 and the studies carried out by Rustam Khamidovich Suleymanov on the Middle Paleolithic make us wonder if perhaps there was a Neanderthalensis expansion a little earlier than previously thought in the Middle Paleolithic of Central Asia, and if it produced a reflux later towards more western territories, towards the Caucasus or Western Europe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Gil Fuensanta, J., Suleymanov, R.Kh., Muminov, O.U., Muminov, A.G., Annaev, J.T. (2019) "Yerkurgan, los valles de Surjandarya y Kashkardarya. Surpad, primeros resultados de un proyecto arqueohistórico Hispano-Uzbeko", Orientalística en tiempos difíciles: actas del VII Congreso Nacional del Centro de Estudios del Próximo Oriente celebrado en UAM Diciembre 2016, eds. Jesús Gil Fuensanta, Alfredo Mederos Martín, pp. 167-182.
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3. Krivoshapkin A.I., Brantingham J., 2001, "The Lithic Industry of Obi-Rakhmat Grotto, Uzbekistan",Actes du XIV Congres UISPP, 2-8 septembre 2001. BAR International Series No. 1240, pp.203-214.
4. Krivoshapkin A.I., Kuzmin Y.V., Jull A.J.T., (2010), "Chronology of the Obi-Rakhmat Grotto (Uzbekistan): First Results on the Dating and Problems of the Paleolithic Key Site in
Central Asia",edited by A J T Jull, "First Results on the Dating and Problems of the Paleolithic Key Site in Central Asia". Proceedings of the 20th International Radiocarbon Conference, RADIOCARBON, Vol 52, Nr 2-3, pp.549-554.
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7. Suleymanov, R.Kh. (1972) Statisticheskoye issledovaniye kuktury peshchery Obi-Rakhmat, Tashkent.
8. Tostevin G., Glantz M., Suleymanov R. (2006) "Preliminary Analyses of the Lithic Assemblages from Anghilak Cave", ^арши шахрининг жахон цивилизацияси тарихидаги урни. ^арши шахрининг 2700 йиллик юбилейига багишланган халкаро илмий анжуман материаллари. Tashkent-Karshi.
Fig. 3 Fig. 4
Archaeological artefacts front Pmhdal Grotto
1 Stone Hoke
2 Side scraper
3 Prismatic plate
4 Nucleus
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
