Lake Baikal is a 5,390' deep rift valley between the Altai-Sayan mountains and the Baikal range near Russia’s boundary with Mongolia. Like the Río Grande, it began as a series of half grabens. Unlike our local valley, where the dropped block is still connected on one side, the Baikal rift evolved into full grabens.
The Selenga river feeds the lake from the southeast and the Angara drains it to the north. The latter flows through the basalt covered central Siberian Plateau. Because the earth’s crust is thinning along the rift, magma is close to the surface. Hot springs exist both under the lake and in the area.
About 53 miles north of Irkutsk on the left bank of an Angara tributary, bands settled at Mal’ta. A young boy’s skeleton from there has been dated to 24,000 years ago. That would have been during the last glacial maximum. Kelly Graf said areas to the north were unoccupied between 23,000 and 22,000 years ago.
They built several types of structures. Some were rectangular, roughly 10' x 13', with low walls made from stone slabs with mammoth and rhinoceros bones. The roofs likely were poles and skins reinforced by reindeer antlers. Some were larger with several hearths. Others were round, probably just poles, antlers and skins. The floors were 20 to 30 inches below ground. Mikhail Gerasimov thought the last were used in summer, the others in winter.
They probably hunted reindeer. Sergey Vasil’ev said there was no "unambiguous evidence for active mammoth hunting." Instead, they may have used traps. They did collect bones and tusks from places where animals had died in spring floods, fell through soft ice, or were mired by thawed ground.
They supplemented their diet with waterfowl. Nitrogen and oxygen isotopes in the bone collagen from that three- or four-year-old boy indicates 25% to 50% of his ingested protein came from freshwater prey.
On the right sides of the Mal’ta hearths, Gerasimov found stone knives and two-sided blades with bone daggers and carvings of birds made from ivory. The stylized renditions emphasized the necks. The wings were reduced in size.
On the other sides of the hearths, archaeologists found needles, awls, scrapers, knives and ivory necklaces. There also were statues of women that tended to be long and narrow, with tapered ends that could be stuck into the ground. Many depicted facial features and added female symbols, but the artists rarely emphasized body parts as had the Gravettians.
The hearths themselves were in holes with bottoms lined with limestone, perhaps to keep "the permafrost below from interfering with the fire." In structures with one fire, they were in the center.
One of the swan carvings was found in the grave of the young boy. He was buried under a stone slab, and covered with red ochre and charcoal. He was wearing a necklace with a central bird pendant, with three more pendants on each side, and spaced by 120 beads. There also were the remains of an infant added later, some stone tools, and a plaque with symbolic markings on one side. Three snakes resembling the birds’ necks were on the other.
The relationship between Mal’ta and the Gravettians may be more than cultural. In 2014, Eske Willerslev’s team published its analysis of DNA extracted from the boy’s upper arm bone. They found his mother’s contribution was shared with European hunters of the period. His male Y chromosome is found today in western Eurasians.
As a control, Willerslev’s group also analyzed DNA from another Siberian from 17,000 years ago. The remains from Afontova Gora had the same markers. The site was north along the Yenisei river before its junction with the Angara.
The connections between central Europe and settlements on the edge of the Eurasian plate may be difficult to establish. Much of the land between has been modified by thousands of years of weather. In addition, Russia still prevents western scientists from entering some areas.
Notes: The formation of the Río Grande valley from a series of half grabens was discussed in the post for 7 May 2015.
Delporte H. L’Image de la Femme dans l’Art Préhistorique, 1979, translated by Hitchcock, Don Hitchcock, "The Mal’ta - Buret’ Venuses and Culture in Siberia," Don's Maps website; quotation about hearths.
Gerasimov, Mikhail. Work discussed by Delporte.
Graf, Kelly E. "Modern Human Response to the Last Glacial Maximum in Siberia," in Yousuke Kaifu, et alia. Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human Behavior in Paleolithic Asia, 2015.
Richards, Michael P., Paul B. Pettitt, Mary C. Stiner, and Erik Trinkaus. "Stable Isotope Evidence for Increasing Dietary Breadth in the European Mid-upper Paleolithic," National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings 98:6528-6532:2001.
Vasil’ev, S. A. "Man and Mammoth in Pleistocene Siberia," The World of Elephants International Congress, 2001.
Willersle, Eske, Kelly E. Graf, Maanasa Raghavan, et alia. "Upper Palaeolithic Siberian Genome Reveals Dual Ancestry of Native Americans," Nature 505:87-91:2014.
Graphics:
1. Koba-Chan. "Physical Map of Northern Asia," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 26 May 2005.
2. Musser, Karl. "Map of Yenisei River Drainage Basin," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 15 September 2008.
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