Sungir

Coordinates: 56°10′34″N 40°30′09″E / 56.17611°N 40.50250°E / 56.17611; 40.50250
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Sungir
Сунгирь
Kostenki
class=notpageimage|
Sunghir and contemporary burials and cultures c. 40,000~30,000
Sungir is located in Vladimir Oblast
Sungir
Location of Sungir
Sungir is located in Russia
Sungir
Sungir (Russia)
Alternative nameSunghir
LocationVladimir Oblast, Russia
Coordinates56°10′34″N 40°30′09″E / 56.17611°N 40.50250°E / 56.17611; 40.50250[1]
Typeopen-air site

Sungir (

Klyazma River. It is dated by calibrated carbon analysis to between 32,050 and 28,550 BCE.[1] Additional pollen finds suggest the relative warm spell of the "Greenland interstadial (GI) 5"[2]
between the 30,500 and 30,000 BCE as most probable dates.

The settlement area was found to have four burials: the remains of an older man and two adolescent children are particularly well-preserved, and the nature of the rich and extensive burial goods suggests they belonged to the same class. In addition, a skull and two fragments of human femur were also found at the settlement area, and two human skeletons outside the settlement area without cultural remains.[3]

History

This site was discovered in 1955, in the course of local digging from clay pits. Some 4,500 square kilometers (1,700 sq mi) were excavated in sixteen field seasons between 1957 and 1977 (Bader 1965; 1967; 1978; 1998). Archeology teams from the Geological Institute of the

Oxford University, and the University of Arizona
in the United States have all worked on the excavations and related studies to review the findings from the site.

They determined that the cultural layer was located in what is called Bryansk soil, related to the period (thirty-two to twenty-four millennia ago) of the corresponding

interstadial of the Valdai Ice age of the Late Pleistocene
. Evidence of only surface dwellings on the site led the team to conclude it was likely used seasonally.

Burials

Map of the site. The grave is located at the center-right. At the bottom left: a hillfort. The river is at the bottom.

Graves 1 and 2 at Sungir are described as "the most spectacular" among European

jewelry, clothing, and spears. More than 13,000 beads were found (which would have taken 10,000 hours to produce). Red ochre, an important ritual material associated with burials at this time, covered the burials.[4]

The children are considered a twin burial, thought to have ritual purpose, possibly sacrifice.

mtDNA,[3] which may indicate the same maternal lineage, but new analyses determined they were not siblings.[citation needed
]

M.M. Gerasimov

The site is one of the earliest examples of

religious practices. The extraordinary collection of grave goods, the position of the bodies, and other factors all indicate it was a burial of high importance.[3]
Two other remains at the site are partial skeletons.

The remains are held by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of R.A.S., Moscow. In 2004, the International Seminar, "Upper Paleolithic People from Sunghir, Russia," was hosted by the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, U.K. It is the second of two major conferences about this site.[3]

Two books have been published in Moscow about the findings. Upper Palaeolithic Site Sungir (graves and environment) (1998) was the first complete publication about the site, including an inventory of artifacts, reconstruction of the Paleolithic man's clothes, archaic counting and calendar. The second part of the book displays the reconstruction of the environment by geological, palynological, zoological data.[3]

The second book, Homo Sungirensis (2000) edited by T.I. Alexeeva et al., includes articles published since the first book, and new anthropological data derived from morphology, palaeopathology, X-ray study, histology, trace elements and molecular genetic analyses. It has an illustrated catalogue of all the skeletal materials.[3]

Archaeogenetics

Mal'ta and Afontova Gora) and modern European populations, within a principal component analysis of ancient and present-day individuals from worldwide populations.[7]
Oase
Initial Upper Paleolithic wave
"East-Eurasian"
The image above contains clickable links
Phylogenetic position of ancient Upper Paleolithic Eurasian specimens.

In 2017, researchers successfully sequenced the DNA of multiple individuals from Sungir (c. 34,000 years BP), including one from Burial 1 (Sunghir I) and three from Burial 2: the two adolescent burials (Sunghir II and Sunghir III) and the adult femur accompanying the burial (Sunghir IV). The younger adolescent from Burial 2, Sunghir III, yielded

third-degree relatives or closer).[1]

However, when compared against other populations, the individuals at Sungir are genetically closest to each other. The individuals at Sungir show closest genetic affinity to the individuals from

U2, which is close to the ones observed among the Kostenki specimens.[1]

DNA analysis on a

Seima-Turbino phenomenon and prior to related Goths and Rus' people invaded this area becoming ancestors of Tauri and Bastarnae.[citation needed
]

References

  1. ^
    PMID 28982795
    . SI belongs to haplogroup U8c; the sequences for the three individuals from the double burial (SII to SIV) are identical and belong to haplogroup U2, which is closely related to the Upper Paleolithic Kostenki 12 (8) and Kostenki 14 (10) individuals. Phylogenetic analyses of the Y chromosome sequences place all Sunghir individuals in an early divergent lineage of haplogroup C1a2 (fig. S8 and tables S12 to S15). Y chromosome haplogroup C1, which is rare among contemporary Eurasians, has been found in other early European individuals, including the ~36,000-year-old Kostenki 14 (11).
  2. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2018-09-18. Retrieved 2016-02-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)[full citation needed]
  3. ^ a b c d e f The Sunghir archaeological site Archived 2013-10-03 at the Wayback Machine, hosted by Institute for Bioarcheology, Moscow State University, accessed 24 September 2013
  4. ^
    S2CID 10673096
    .
  5. ^ Formicola, Vincenzo. "From the Sunghir children to the Romito dwarf: aspects of the Upper Paleolithic funerary landscape." Current Anthropology 48.3 (2007): 446-453.
  6. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.223
    .
  7. ISSN 2399-3642
    .
  8. ^ "I-A16681 YTree v8.06.01". YFull.com. 27 June 2020. Retrieved 17 July 2020.

Further reading

  • Upper Palaeolithic Site Sungir (graves and environment) (Posdnepaleolitischeskoje posselenije Sungir), ed. by N.O. Bader, Y.A. Lavrushin. Moscow: Scientific World. 1998.
  • Homo Sungirensis. Upper Palaeolithic man: ecological and evolutionary aspects of the investigation, ed. by T.I. Alexeeva, N.O. Bader, A.P. Buzhilova, M.V. Kozlovskaya, M.B. Mednikova. Moscow: Scientific World, 2000.
  • The People of Sunghir. Burials, Bodies, and Behavior in the Earlier Upper Paleolithic., Erik Trinkaus, Alexandra P. Buzhilova, Maria B. Mednikova, Maria V. Dobrovolskaya. Oxford University Press, New York 2014

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sungir&oldid=1189536230"
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article: Sungir. Articles is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license; additional terms may apply.Privacy Policy