Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sungir dates by calibrated carbon analysis to between 32,050 and 28,550 BCE, making it one of the earliest records of modern Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Additional pollen evidence points to Greenland interstadial 5, between 30,500 and 30,000 BCE, as the most probable period of occupation.
Sungir is situated about 200 km east of Moscow, on the outskirts of Vladimir, near the Klyazma River in Russia.
Three individuals were found in the primary graves: an adult male in Grave 1 and two adolescent children buried head-to-head in Grave 2, along with an adult femur filled with red ochre. More than 13,000 ivory beads, ivory spears, and ochre-covered clothing accompanied the burials, and researchers estimate the beads alone would have required 10,000 hours to produce.
Genetic analysis conducted in 2017 showed that none of the four tested Sungir individuals were third-degree relatives or closer, meaning the two adolescent children buried together were not siblings. They did share the same mitochondrial DNA haplogroup, suggesting the same maternal lineage, but this was not a close family relationship.
All four tested Sungir individuals belonged to a subclade of Y-chromosome haplogroup C1 known as C1a2, which was common in early West Eurasian populations but is rare among Europeans today. Their maternal haplogroups differed: Sunghir I carried U8c, while Sunghir II, III, and IV all belonged to a subclade of haplogroup U2.
Sungir was discovered in 1955 during local clay pit digging. Formal excavations ran across sixteen field seasons between 1957 and 1977, conducted by teams from the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, the University of Groningen, Oxford University, and the University of Arizona.