Sibiryachikha variant of the Altai Middle Paleolithic: discussions and research perspectives

The article discusses the general results, debatable issues and prospects of research on the complexes of Late European or Chagyrskaya Neanderthals in the Altai and other territories of North and Central Asia. The history of the study of the Sibiryachikha complexes is given, where the search for cultural and technological analogues of the sites in the Okladnikov cave among the known Micoquian assemblages at the end ofthe 20th century is argued. The reasons for the different attributions of the Sibiryachikha complexes before the discovery of the second key site of this variant, the Chagyrskaya cave, are established. Archaeological, chronological and palaeogenetic data proved the migration of late European Neanderthals with the Micoquian tradition of lithic processing to the Altai region, which posed a number of new research questions and tasks for researchers. Thus, for the Altai area under study, the following questions are debatable: the chronology ofthe Sibiryachikha complexes, if the optically stimulated ages do not coincide with the dates obtained by the molecular clock method; questions ofthe variability on the Sibiryachikha complexes; ways of adaptation of the newcomer population to new ecological conditions or preservation of the existing traditions. For territories outside the Altai, the most important problem is to reconstruct the distribution routes of Neanderthal populations. At present, a pathway near the northern coast of the Caspian Sea, favoured by the palaeoecological conditions of MIS 4, has been proposed. An alternative point of view is to identify several sites as Mycoccian, located to the south, from the Krasnovodsk peninsula, through the northern coast of Lake Balkhash, to the territory of modern Tuva. Possible solutions to the problems discussed and directions for further research are suggested.