Stajnia

A late entry for content: Andrea Picin and friends add one more Neander to the throng. This molar, S5000, comes from Stajnia Cave in Poland - so, not so far from the Neander Thal itself. h/t hbdchick.

The culture is "Micoquian", layer MIS 5a. This, Picin's crew date 80–70 kBC. Since said crew nowhere speak of its Y chromosome, I assume she's a girl. Her mitochondrion is, I think, ancestrally one of ours like many postEemian Neanders. She's closest to Mezmaiskaya Cave 1, that being Adygea in old Circassia. Anyway we're talking Poland - and this Euxinelike turns out unlike the Neanders to its west.

The shared maternal ancestor of Mezmaiskaya, Stajnia, and the western Neanders broke off 170 kya with a wider band 203–138 kya (201–136 kBC for what that's worth). Then, 152 (124–182) kya: Mezmaiskaya-Stajnia broke from the rest. All before the Eemian 123 kya and when those western Neanders actually lived 120 kya. That Ice Age coast would have been further from the Mezmaiskaya cave than it is now, but not very. S5000 at 80–70 kBC is younger than the westerners, but - the paper observes - the oldest in the Baltic.

It's an interesting move from the Euxine to the Baltic watershed... foreshadowing the Indo-European journey.

After 70 kBC, Stajnia isn't in scope, except as a constraint. The paper observes Neander populations crashing until 55 kBC. It blames the climate. The population expanded back into the north European forest - but not into the Med. This paper thinks the northern Alps and the Pannonian were the Neanders' refugia. But I'd have left that to an appendix.