Inside a limestone cave in southern Poland, eight small teeth sat embedded in sediment for roughly 100,000 years. Now, a team of geneticists and archaeologists has coaxed mitochondrial DNA from those teeth and identified at least seven distinct Neanderthal individuals, all from the same archaeological layer. Published in April 2026 in Current Biology, the study makes Stajnia Cave the site of the oldest Neanderthal group ever genetically profiled in Central-Eastern Europe, and one of the few places on the continent where scientists can examine multiple members of what may have been a single community.
A decade of discoveries at Stajnia
Stajnia Cave, tucked into the Polish Jura near Kraków, has been yielding Neanderthal evidence since the late 2000s. The first tooth recovered from the site was described in a 2010 Naturwissenschaften paper that documented a specimen found alongside Micoquian stone tools north of the Carpathian Mountains. Micoquian technology, characterized by carefully shaped bifacial hand axes, is a hallmark of Neanderthal toolmaking across Central Europe during the Middle Palaeolithic. The tooth’s age placed it in a relatively mild climatic window between major glacial advances, showing that Neanderthals pushed into this periglacial landscape when conditions briefly allowed it.
A 2020 study in Scientific Reports sharpened the picture further. Researchers dated a molar labeled S5000 to Marine Isotope Stage 5a, a warm interval roughly 80,000 to 85,000 years ago, and described it as the oldest Neanderthal specimen from Central-Eastern Europe at the time. Additional teeth found during 2010 excavations were later reported in the Journal of Human Evolution, where morphological and preliminary genetic analysis confirmed that the cave preserved not a single stray Neanderthal but a recurring presence across time.
The 2026 Current Biology study builds directly on that foundation. By extracting complete mitochondrial genomes from eight teeth found within a single stratigraphic phase, the research team, which includes Andrea Picin, Wioletta Nowaczewska, Adam Nadachowski, Mateja Hajdinjak, and Sahra Talamo, has scaled up from isolated specimens to something far more revealing: a group-level genetic portrait. As Picin noted in a University of Bologna press release, the recovery of multiple mitochondrial genomes from a single layer “allows us for the first time to look at the genetic structure of a Neanderthal group in Central-Eastern Europe rather than at isolated individuals.”
What the maternal lineages show
Mitochondrial DNA passes from mother to child, making it a direct record of maternal descent. Among the seven-plus individuals identified at Stajnia, the researchers found both diversity and clustering within the mitochondrial lineages. Some individuals shared relatively recent maternal ancestors, suggesting close family ties. Others belonged to distinct branches of the broader Neanderthal mitochondrial tree, indicating that the group was not simply one extended family but drew from multiple maternal lines.
That pattern matters because it offers a rare look at the internal genetic makeup of a Neanderthal group rather than the usual approach of comparing lone fossils separated by thousands of kilometers and tens of thousands of years. Stajnia provides something closer to a snapshot of a living community. Sahra Talamo, a co-author and specialist in archaeological dating, emphasized in the same press release that the site’s value lies in “having several individuals from the same context, which is extremely rare for Neanderthals and lets us move beyond single-specimen studies.”
Comparative phylogenetic work places these lineages in a wider Eurasian context. A 2024 Cell study (Slimak et al., “Long genetic and social isolation of Neanderthals before extinction,” doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.07.048) on the Mandrin Cave Neanderthal known informally as “Thorin,” found in southeastern France, positioned that specimen’s mitochondrial genome relative to S5000 from Stajnia and other published Neanderthal sequences. Separately, a Scientific Reports analysis of Mezmaiskaya 3, a Neanderthal from the northern Caucasus, explicitly compared its mitochondrial clade to the Stajnia S5000 lineage. Together, these cross-site analyses suggest that the maternal lineages preserved in southern Poland shared deep ancestry with populations in both western Europe and the Caucasus, pointing to long-distance genetic connections despite shifting ice sheets and mountain barriers.
What remains uncertain
For all its richness, the Stajnia dataset has clear limits. Mitochondrial DNA tracks only the maternal line. Without full nuclear genomes, which have not yet been published for these teeth, researchers cannot reconstruct paternal lineages, estimate effective population size, or measure inbreeding levels within the group. Questions about possible admixture with early modern humans or with Denisovans also remain out of reach.
The dating carries its own caveats. The roughly 100,000-year age estimate for the newly profiled individuals rests largely on stratigraphic context, meaning the teeth are dated by the sediment layers they were found in rather than by direct measurements on each specimen. That framework is consistent with the MIS 5a age obtained for S5000, but direct uranium-series dating applied tooth by tooth would tighten the chronology considerably. Radiocarbon dating is not feasible this far back in time.
The mechanisms behind the genetic connections to distant Neanderthal populations are also ambiguous. The shared mitochondrial ancestry with specimens from France and the Caucasus could reflect continuous gene flow across a wide range, episodic migrations during warmer climatic windows, or deep common roots followed by long stretches of regional isolation. The Thorin study in Cell emphasized that many late Neanderthal groups were small, fragmented, and periodically cut off from one another. Where the Stajnia community fits within that picture, whether as a long-lived local population or a brief occupation by migrants passing through a climatic corridor north of the Carpathians, is still being worked out.
How Stajnia reshapes the genetic map of Neanderthal Central-Eastern Europe
Most of what scientists know about Neanderthal genetics comes from western and southern European sites or from well-preserved caves in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Central-Eastern Europe, despite sitting at a geographic crossroads, has been underrepresented in the genetic record. Stajnia begins to fill that gap.
The strongest claims rest on primary peer-reviewed research. The Current Biology paper provides direct evidence for eight teeth, at least seven individuals, and successfully recovered mitochondrial genomes. The earlier Scientific Reports study on S5000 anchored the site’s significance with direct dating. The Naturwissenschaften article established that Stajnia preserved securely contextualized Middle Palaeolithic material. Institutional press releases from the University of Bologna, circulated through EurekAlert and Phys.org, add framing and researcher quotes but do not introduce independent data.
For now, the results offer a robust but partial glimpse into a small Neanderthal community living on the northern edge of their habitable range about 100,000 years ago. The mitochondrial genomes tie at least seven individuals into a broader network of maternal lineages stretching from western Europe to the Caucasus. But the absence of nuclear DNA, specimen-level dating for each tooth, and detailed environmental reconstructions means that questions about social organization, mobility patterns, and Stajnia’s precise role in Neanderthal population history remain open. Future work adding nuclear genomes, refined chronologies, and additional sites across the region will determine whether this genetic snapshot can be developed into a fuller narrative of how Neanderthals survived, moved, and ultimately disappeared from Central-Eastern Europe.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
