150,000-year-old rock-shelter in Tajikistan found on 'key route for human expansion' used by Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans

Metal pan containing stone tools and artifacts from Tajikistan, 150,000 to 20,000 years old.

Along a stream in Tajikistan, archaeologists have discovered a rock-shelter that may have been a migration site for Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans over a span of 130,000 years.

Archaeologists have long known that modern humans and our close relatives trekked through the so-called Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) of Central Asia during the Stone Age. Over the years, researchers have investigated the remains of Neanderthals and evidence of Denisovans and modern humans in this region, "making the IAMC a location where the three human metapopulations could have met and interacted," researchers wrote in a new study, published Nov. 4 in the journal Antiquity.