Short answers, pulled from the story.
A local worker digging in a clay pit near Vladimir, Russia, stumbled upon human bones in 1955. This accidental find marked the beginning of decades of international archaeological work at Sungir.
Calibrated carbon analysis dates Sungir between 32,050 and 28,550 BCE. Additional pollen findings point to the Greenland interstadial GI 5 period between 30,500 and 30,000 BCE as the most probable timeframe.
Grave 1 held an adult male while Grave 2 contained two adolescent children placed head-to-head with an adult femur filled with red ochre. Genetic analysis revealed all four individuals were male despite earlier assumptions about female sex for the younger adolescent.
More than 13,000 beads covered these three bodies, requiring roughly 10,000 hours to produce. Red ochre served as an important ritual material covering the burials alongside ivory-beaded jewelry and spears.
Their Y-chromosome belonged to haplogroup C1a2 while maternal lines fell under U8c or subclade U2. All four showed closest genetic affinity to each other compared to other populations and matched closely with individuals from Kostenki.