Archaeology of the Indo-European Fatherland. A. G. Vinogradov
rich colors are red paint.»
It should be noted that in the textile decor of many peoples of Eurasia, such a traditional combination of red and white survived to the 20th century. And this is especially characteristic of East Slavic ornamentation in general and North Russian, in particular. It is in such a strict and ancient red-white color scheme that the ornaments of «a charming complex of swastika signs in the patterns of North Russian skilled craftswomen» are made, in which, according to V. A. Gorodtsov, «a vivid memory of the most ancient universal symbols is hiding.» – the researcher exclaims. And this is not surprising. Having studied the Mezin Upper Paleolithic site, I. G. Shovkoplyas believed that the commonality of ornamental complexes indicates the affinity of the groups using these complexes. He believed that the population of Kostenki II on the Don, the Mezinsk site in the Dnieper and the East Siberian sites of Malta and Buret was closely related. He’s writing: «… a very distant resettlement of certain groups of East European Late Paleolithic population, possibly also originating from the Middle Dnieper basin (the Middle Dnieper ethnocultural region), probably, the location of Malta and Buret sites in Eastern Siberia should also be explained, extremely close and even identical in many manifestations of their material and spiritual culture (flint tools, bone products, character of dwellings, etc.) with sites of the Middle Dnieper basin, first of all with the same Mezinsk. Not excluded that the inhabitants of the sites of the
Mezin culture in the Middle Dnieper basin, on the one hand, and the named Siberian sites – on the other, had a common origin and even for some time constituted one population group at an early stage of their history. " 26 To the cited above, it should also be added that the inventory of the Upper Paleolithic Buzovaya site, located 175 km. from the Arctic Circle, which is 25—29 thousand years away from us, has much in common with the complex of the lower layer Kostenki I, 12 on the Don and dates back to the same time that, according to the conclusions of I. G. Shovkoplyas testifies to the genetic kinship of human groups that left these sites. At present, for most researchers, the population of the Urals at the end of the Mologo-Sheksna time seems indisputable.
Ornaments Kostenki II on the Don
Ornaments Malta Buret
Ornaments Kargopol
The exceptional development and perfection of the norms of ornaments, sculptures, relief’s dating back to this time convince that their roots should be sought in the more ancient Mousterian era, in that period of the Mikulinsk interglacial (130—70 thousand years ago), when human groups already mastered the Pechora basin and the coast of the Arctic Ocean and when the climate of the north of Eastern Europe did not differ from the modern climate of England and Southern Germany.
Ice sheet during the maximum stage of the Valdai glaciation The discovery in the last decades of first-class Paleolithic monuments in the north of the European part of our country (Bear Cave is located at 65° N), with lots of flint inventory and even wall painting, is an outstanding event.
It shows once again that in the ancient Stone Age human groups widely populated the north of Eastern Europe, those territories of the future Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kostroma, Vyatka regions and the Komi Republic.The warm young Sheksninsky time was replaced about 20—18 millennia ago by a sharp cooling when the overgrown Scandinavian ice sheet reached its maximum development. The data of modern science indicate that the limit of the distribution of the Valdai glaciation went in the latitudinal direction from Vilnius to Smolensk, and then to the northwest to the Rybinsk Reservoir, Lake Kubensky and Nyandoma. Further to the northeast, the border is not reliably established.
At this time, in the territory of England and Ireland, free of glacier, stretched the tundra and subarctic meadows. Birch woodland (park tundra) was common in Western Europe, and the woodlands with birch and birch-pine forest stands occupied most of Central Europe and then a relatively narrow strip along the coast of the future Baltic Sea, and then Baltic glacial lake, to the northeast. Real forests or as they are called «typical forest boreal formations», in the western and middle parts of Europe at that time there were very few and they were mainly in the valleys of large rivers and intermontane basins.
Within the Russian plain, forests occupied, unlike Western Europe, a large area in the form of a wide strip crossing it in the direction from the southwest to the northeast. These were birch, pine, spruce and fir forests.
Paleogeographers note that: «in a number of areas there already existed forests with the participation of broad-leaved species such as oak and elm …vegetation of the steppe type was widespread in the southern part of the Russian Plain. It is interesting to note that during the maximum of the Valdai glaciation, when almost the entire territory of England was covered with a glacier, and habitable sections were tundra and arctic meadows, primitive people and animals such as the wolf, cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, bull and mammoth lived only 50 km. from the edge of the glacier. At the same time, meadow steppes with spruce-birch and pine forests were widespread in the Upper Volga basin. In the Oka basin, during the maximum glaciation, spruce-pine forests of the north-taiga type were noisy. In the area of the village of Pokrovskaya on the Puchka River (near Lake Kubensky, at 60°N), directly at the edge of the glacier, about 38 species of flowering and spore plants grew and the woodland consisted of birch, spruce, larch. Need to mark, that the actual tundra type of vegetation in Eastern Europe was a relatively narrow strip along the border of the Scandinavian ice sheet. But in Central Europe the tundra occupied, apparently, «the entire strip between the Scandinavian ice sheet in the north and the Alpine glacier in the south, and in the Atlantic part their distribution was even greater.»
If during the period of the maximum stage of the Valdai glaciation (20—18 thousand years ago) almost the entire territory of Western Europe, with the exception of the south-west of France, the upper reaches of the Danube and the foothills of the Eastern Carpathians, was occupied by subarctic meadows and tundra with birch and deciduous woodlands, then in Eastern Europe from the upper Dniester began a wide strip of meadow steppes with pine, deciduous and birch forests, passing through the Pripyat basin, Middle Dnieper, the middle course of the Oka. Expanding in the direction from southwest to northeast, in the northwest it reached the Upper Volga (in the Yaroslavl region) and the middle Vychegda in the north. The entire southeast of Eastern Europe at that time was occupied by cereal steppes, reaching in the northeast up to 55° N, in a number of areas there were forests with the participation of broad-leaved species such as oak and elm. Thus, plant zones were located in the submeridian direction, «sharply different from basically the breadth of zonality of the modern vegetation cover of Eurasia, „that“ can be considered as one of the most characteristic features of the nature of Europe in the era of glaciation.»
Vegetation. Maximum Valdai Glaciation
In most of the European territory of our country, there was no glacier during the maximum of the Valdai glaciation. And of course, in the presence of those natural conditions that existed then, it is unlikely that the population left these lands. Experts believe that during the peak of the Valdai glaciation during the period of the greatest cooling, the outflow of the population from the territories bordering the edge of the glacier went «south to the mountains, south-west to the territory of the Central Massif of France and along the Sudeten and Carpathians towards the Russian Plain», with its meadow steppes and forests, and hence with an abundance of food. However, it should be noted that the entire territory of the Baltic States, Northern Belarus, the North-West of Smolensk, Leningrad, Novgorod and a significant part of the Tver regions were covered with glacier and their settlement occurs only at the end of the Late Glacial, at the turn