Today, the Crimean peninsula is at the center of geopolitics because of Russia’s annexation and the war of aggression against Ukraine. International collaboration in research is difficult. Nevertheless, a Viennese research team was recently able to examine samples from the Starosele rock cave in Crimea – and to prove the presence of Neanderthals at this site for the first time. The bone samples came to Germany from Ukraine in the 1990s after an excavation in the cave. “The material was waiting in a basement to be analyzed,” says archaeologist Emily Pigott, a doctoral student at the University of Vienna and lead author of the study, which is now published in the journal PNAS appeared.
