The life of people of the Stone Age was inextricably linked with the natural environment, so scientists studying their settlements try to understand not only what ancient dwellings and their inhabitants looked like, but also what kind of landscape surrounded people, what the climate was like, what plants and animals existed around, the scientists said.
They emphasized that the climate of the late Ice Age gradually changed, and with it, the natural environment of man changed. Knowledge of the natural habitat of the Upper Paleolithic inhabitants, dating back to about 40-10 thousand years ago on the territory of the East European Plain, helps to understand how people adapted to changing natural conditions.
Sampling from boreholes near the Byki-2 site. Svetlana Bricheva
Russian scientists have used a combination of geophysical and archaeological methods for the first time to search for unknown Paleolithic settlements. The specialists discovered an unexplored cultural layer of an ancient site on the territory of the Byki archaeological site in the Kursk region thanks to the reconstruction of its paleolandscape. The results of the study are presented in L’Anthropologie. The study was carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation.
Description of samples from boreholes near the Byki-2 site. Vladimir Stepchenkov
The modern relief at the site of the Byki camps in the modern Kursk region, where our nomadic ancestors periodically came, differs significantly from the ancient one, including due to the fact that in the 1970s, sewage treatment facilities were built here, said the project manager, head of the geophysical group of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, research fellow at the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University Svetlana Bricheva.
Ground penetrating radar profiling near the Byki-2 site. Svetlana Bricheva
She explained that using geophysical methods, scientists found out that 21-18 thousand years ago the area under study was covered with elevated sand dunes alternating with rounded depressions. The ancient people chose the elevations for their camps because they provided a good view, and the depressions, which were lakes at the time, served as a source of water.
Volunteer archaeologists are working at the Byki-2 excavation site. Natalia Akhmetgaleeva
“Ground-penetrating radar and magnetic exploration are often used to study archaeological sites that are later than the Paleolithic. But the Stone Age people did not leave behind structures that we could detect using these methods. Therefore, we had a purely geological task: we tried to identify traces of ancient relief forms hidden under later deposits and reconstruct how they looked before. This is the first time this complex has been used for Paleolithic sites on the East European Plain,” Bricheva explained.
See also... New method for observing individual atoms confirms century-old quantum mechanical theory |
She emphasized that the cooperation between archaeologists from the Kurchatov Museum of Local History and geophysicists from the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Lomonosov Moscow State University turned out to be very productive.
Bricheva et al. / L’Anthropologie
“The results of our joint work lie in unraveling the very mechanism of how our ancestors adapted to the peculiarities of the terrain microrelief and learned to use it. In particular, we assume that sandy hills, on the one hand, could serve as a convenient observation platform, and on the other, their leeward sides could be used as shelter from strong winds. The comprehensive approach we used opens up broad prospects for searching for new sites of ancient man in the Kursk Seim region and provides food for new hypotheses about the life strategies of ancient man,” added project participant, head of the Kurchatov Paleolithic Expedition, chief researcher of the Kurchatov Museum of Local History Natalia Akhmetgaleeva.
The authors plan to apply the proposed approach to the study of other Paleolithic sites on the East European Plain, such as the Avdeevka site in the Kursk region, the Khotylevo site in the Bryansk region, and the Zaraysk site in the Moscow region.
See also... Complete list of HTML/Javascript event handlers with examples List of required documents for a website in the Russian Federation |
No related posts found...
