Interactions in bones but not stone: Anomalous cultural transmission gaps in Romania's Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition

The Late Pleistocene archeological record shows emerging patterns of population turnover frequently associated with technological change between c. 50–40 thousand years ago. In Europe, this is thought to be related to indigenous population admixture and/or the diffusion of developing technologies by Homo sapiens resulting in a widely distributed spatiotemporal patchwork of industries with combinations of Middle and Upper Paleolithic traits. The Late Pleistocene record of Romania forms an anomaly in these scenarios. On the one hand, the country has important Pleistocene archives that preserve direct evidence of early modern humans with Neandertal genetic introgression. On the other hand, Romania shows no evidence of novel technology during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. Here, we review the Late Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic archeological record of Romania supplemented with new radiocarbon ages and excavation data to clarify the validity of this current archeological interpretation. We conclude that while Neandertals and modern humans were in regional contact, raw materials eccentricities and incomplete empirical knowledge of past intergroup cultural transmission have obscured our ability to identify indicative material cultural signals indicating that current methods of understanding hybridized material culture are incomplete. •Romania's Late Pleistocene record is key for the reconstruction of the neandertal to Homo sapiens turnover c. 40 ka.•Romania shows humans/Neandertal introgression but lacks technological transitions seen elsewhere.•Romania's Paleolithic record faces challenges due to raw material eccentricities and incomplete knowledge of past cultural transmission.