While the Aurignacian was diffusing to the west in the Indian-summer of the warm period, the onset of the new colder era in the east drove mammoths out of central Asia about 38,000 years ago. Those who depended on them may have followed. The merger of two cultures along the upper Danube river led to the development of the Gravettian. These were the first people to experiment with hardening clay with fire. They also left evidence of bone needles, basketry and cordage, perhaps for snares.
Their technology was slow to penetrate the west. Still 59 Gravettian sites have been located on the Iberian peninsula.
It disappeared about 22,000 years ago. The climate had continued to deteriorate with the expansion of the glaciers around 25,000 years ago. Much of northern and central Europe became uninhabitable arctic desert. Animals and plants retreated to refuges of the Pyrenees and Cantabrian mountains, where the Solutrean appeared about 20,000 years ago and disappeared about 5,000 years later. They were the first Europeans to throw their spears.
People living along the Danube moved east onto the Russian plains, where their Gravettian tools evolved into Epigravettian. The map below shows the Solutrean in rust and the late Gravettian in plum. White represents glaciated areas.
Still farther east, in the mountainous region beyond Lake Baikal, Cro-Magnon culture became more complex, sometime after 30,000 years ago. Evgeny Rybin said, the reasons for the divergent life style in the open steppe were not yet identified, but could include "interactions between migrating human communities, ecological, and/or demographic stress."
Another merger of hitherto independent groups occurred in southern France where people were crowed together in refuges. Again, a new technical culture developed, this time around 16,000 years ago when the climate began warming. During the Magdalenian era, large central sites developed around mountain caves that functioned as civilization centers. Groups came together for ceremonies, but lived in smaller camps.
The map below shows the extent of the Magdalenian.
While tools changed through time, regional variations that arose from the local fauna persisted. Western areas of Europe relied on reindeer and tended to frequent caves, while eastern parts exploited mammoths in open-air sites. In northern Spain, individuals continued to eat horse and red deer.
Leslie Freeman said, during the unstable but generally warm Aurignacian of MIS3, 13 species were reported from 15 Cantabrian occupation layers with sites averaging 4.5 animals. Horse and red deer were the most common.
The number of species rose in the Solutrean as animals migrated south during the cold MIS2 years. He counted 19 species, with 8 occupation layers averaging 7.3. Horses were the most common. He believed the Pleistocene species of Equus tended to be associated with the open vegetation of colder climates.
During the severe conditions of the early Magdalenian, the number of species dropped to 9. Many of the 14 occupation sites only had 3. In the later Magdalenian, as the climate began to warm again, the variety rose to 22, and the average to 5.4 in 11 sites. Red deer was the most common. Cervus elaphus prefer woodlands that thrive in slightly warmer environments.
Notes:
Freeman, L. G. "The Significance of Mammalian Faunas from Paleolithic Occupations in Cantabrian Spain," American Antiquity 38:3-44:1973. He was counting occupation layers; any archaeological site can have more than one occupation. He was only including those that had identifiable animal remains.
Jochim, Michael. "The Upper Paleolithic," in Sarunas Milisauskas, European Prehistory, 2011 second edition.
Rybin, Evgeny P. "Middle and Upper Paleolithic Interactions and the Emergence of ‘Modern Behavior’ in Southern Siberia and Mongolia" in Yousuke Kaifu, et alia, Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human Behavior in Paleolithic Asia, 2015.
Graphics:
1. Wobble. "Map of Europe 20,000 years Ago," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 25 February 2007.
2. Sémhur. "Location Map of Homo Sapiens during Magdalenian Culture, between 19,000 - 12,000 BP," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 6 February 2010.
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