The Hominin origin of the Ranis Lower Paleolithic Residual Chamber of Humans and the Origin of H. sapiens

The work shows that theLRCJ at Ranis was made by hominins. It seems that the early groups of H. sapiens went to the higher mid-latitudes as far as the modern day British Isles. It is non-genetically identified, but a human deciduous tooth from Grotte Mandrin27 seems to suggest that Humans invaded southeastern France as early as 54,000 cal bp. If confirmed, this evidence would create a complex mosaic picture of Neanderthal and H. sapiens groups in Europe between about 55,000 and 45,000 cal bp. On the basis of the archaeological and zooarchaeological evidence, the pioneer H. sapiens groups were small and possibly left no notable genetic traces in the later Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe28. The Kent’s Cavern maxilla7,29, 30 is believed to have been associated with stone tools, which is why the early presence of H. sapiens can be seen. Archaeological and mtDNA data add up to suggest that the populations of central and eastern Europe were connected at Ranis. There is a relationship between the RanisLRCJ and the other bifacial point industries in central Europe. If the Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) Bohunician35 of Moravia and the LRJ are related technocomplexes36, then the LRJ is part of the IUP expansion into Europe. The Zlat k H. sapiens skull from the Czech Republic contains the remains of two people who were killed by a cobra at Ranis. Notably, nine out of ten Ranis mtDNA genomes cluster with the Zlatý kůň individual and one clusters with the Fumane 2 individual, both of whom are other early H. sapiens individuals who lived around the same time in Europe as the Ranis specimens described here. This connects the LRJ hominins to a wider population network of initial H. sapiens incursions into Europe. An important gap in the history of Neanderthals and H. sapiens is filled by the demonstration that the LRJ was produced. The hypothesis that Neanderthals disappeared from northwestern Europe well before the arrival of H. sapiens—which is largely based on the chronological hiatus observed between Neanderthal-made late Middle Palaeolithic assemblages and H. sapiens-made Aurignacian assemblages38—can now be rejected.

A Palaeolithic technocomplex in Ranis, France: a descendance of Neanderthals and H. sapiens

Quelle Unité pour le Chtelperronien? Apport de l’Analyse Taphonomique et Techno-Économique des Industries Lithiques de Trois Gisements Aquitains de Plein Air: Le Basté, Bidart (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) et Canaule II (Dordogne). PhD thesis, Univ. Bordeaux 1 occurred in 2011.

The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic LRJ9,10 technocomplex extends across northwestern and central Europe (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. 1b). Neanderthals and H. sapiens 11 have been attributed to it. The stone tools that the LRJ uses are considered to be Early Upper Palaeolithic12, which is a classification given by the production of partial-bifacial blade points. By contrast, the LRJ has alternatively been interpreted as a local development by Neanderthals5,10, as the bi-directional blade production differs from the predominantly uni-directional blade production system of the succeeding Upper Palaeolithic made by H. sapiens. Additionally, the occasional presence of bifacial leaf points in some LRJ assemblages suggested a Middle Palaeolithic origin. Neanderthals and H. sapiens groups were present in Europe tens of thousands of years before the present.

We came back to Ranis in 2016 to identify the people who made the LRJ. We reopened the main 1934 trench and excavated adjacent squares to bedrock (Extended Data Fig. 1b and Supplementary Figs. 2b and 3–8 are included. Among the basal layers, layer 11 (Hülle: XI, Fig. 1a) has a low density of undiagnostic, possibly Middle Palaeolithic artefacts17. The overlying layer 10 has no equivalent in the 1932–1938 stratigraphy and is followed by layers 9 and 8, which we correlate with the LRJ layer X or Graue Schicht of the Hülle excavation (Fig. 1a). The following layer 7 is sealed by a roof collapse event. A large rock of 1.7 m thickness (Extended Data Fig. 1c and Supplementary Figs. 6 and 8) separates layer 7 from layer 6-black/dark spotted (Hülle: VIII), which contains younger Upper Palaeolithic artefacts. Hlle couldn’t get to the key layers because of the large rock. 1b.

We carried out a combination of two proteomic screening approaches (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time-of-flight mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry) and morphological identification on bone specimens from the 2016–2022 and 1932–1938 excavations (Methods). The 13 hominin bone specimen we were able to retrieve was in the Data Table 1. Three of those bones were derived from the layer 8 excavation, while one of the other bones was derived from the layer 9 excavation. Among material from the 1932–1938 excavation, we identified nine additional hominin bone specimens, four through proteomic analysis, all from layer X (specimen IDs: R10318, R10355, R10396 and R10400), and five through morphological analysis from boxes labelled with layer X, layers IX and X, or layers X and XI (specimen IDs: R10873, R10874, R10875, R10876 and R10879; Fig. 1a and Supplementary Table 5). The boxes with mixed layer tags from the 1932–1938 excavation are a result of the expedited excavation methods from the 1930s. The hominin remains were in most cases, however, excavated on the same day or within a day of the discovery of LRJ artefacts in the same squares (Extended Data Fig. 2).

11 hominin remains were tested to find out if their ancient mitochondrial DNA was preserved. Between 4,413 and 175,688 unique reads mapping to the human mtDNA reference genome were recovered per skeletal fragment. These mtDNA reads had elevated frequencies of cytosine (C)-to-thymine (T) substitutions (32.6% to 49.6% on the 5′ end and 19.0% to 47.9% on the 3′ end, respectively; Supplementary Figs. 14–24), which are indicative of ancient DNA. Positions shown to be informative for differentiating between H. sapiens, Neanderthal and Denisovan mtDNA genomes enabled us to identify each of the 11 skeletal fragments as belonging to ancient H. sapiens (Supplementary Table 18). There was enough data for reconstructing the near complete mtDNA genomes from 10 of the 11 bones. Five of these mtDNA genomes showed no pairwise differences among them for the positions covered, suggesting that they stemmed from either the same individual or maternally related individuals (Supplementary Fig. 25 and Supplementary Table 19). The correlation between layers 9 and 8 with layer X is provided by four of these fragments. It appears that it is the product of a different individual, as shown by the stable isotopic values. Notably, whereas nine of the ten reconstructed mtDNA genomes belonged to haplogroup N, one (16/116-159199) was identified as belonging to haplogroup R. When placed onto a phylogenetic tree with other ancient humans, the mtDNA genomes with an N haplogroup cluster together with the mtDNA genome of Zlatý kůň, an individual from the Czech Republic, whose chronological age is around 45,000 years before present on the basis of genetic estimates3 Supplementary fig. 26 and 27 are included. The estimated mean genetic dates of the Ranis mtDNA genomes ranged from 49,105 to 40,918 years before present (Supplementary Table 22 and Supplementary Fig. 26), consistent with the radiocarbon dates from layers 9 and 8.