Archaeology of the Indo-European Fatherland. A. G. Vinogradov
to the Trans-Urals, to the lands of Western Siberia and further east, up to Altai. Maybe, it was then that the division of the unified boreal parent language into three independent branches occurred – the Early Indo- European language, which continued to develop in Eastern Europe, the Early Uralic language, which was formed in the Trans-Urals and early Altai language.
Paleolithic sites in Eastern Europe
Mesolithic
About 13.5 – 13 thousand years ago, global warming began and 12 millennia ago, a new postglacial time begins – the Holocene. In the north of the European part of our country, its beginning was noted, as in Western Europe, by a transition zone, an important property of which was the presence of sharp climatic fluctuations: warming belling (12,400 – 12,000 years ago), cooling of the average Dryas (12,000 – 11,800 years ago), warming Allered (11,800 -11,000 years ago), cooling of the Late Dryas (11,000 – 10,300 years ago), Polovtsian warming (10,300
– 10,000 years ago), Pereyaslav cooling (10,000 – 9,500 years ago).
Already 11,900 – 10,300 years ago, summer temperatures in Europe were approaching modern. 31 This time was marked in Eastern Europe by a significant reduction in the area of the glacier. So already about 13600 years ago, the Klimetsky island on Lake Onega was abandoned by a glacier, and the Luga glacier zone was formed about 13,200—1,300 years ago. At 8 kb the eastern border of the glacier was on the border of Karelia and Finland.
Dryas vegetation
Subsequently, there was an increase in heat supply, up to the so-called Holocene climatic optimum, which came about 8 thousand years ago. Already 12
thousand years ago, on the site of the current swamps of the Yaroslavl and Leningrad regions, spruce, birch and pine forests grew and after 2—3 millennia – linden and elm. During the late glacial warming, birch, pine and spruce forests spread on the territory of the Russian Plain; in the south of the Pskov region there were thermophilic plants, for example, sea buckthorn. The White Sea has been freed from mainland ice and in the next millennium it was connected with the Barents Sea by two straits. In the north of the Pechora lowland 10—9 thousand years ago, woody vegetation developed the territory, moreover, «it was established that the degradation of the last ice sheet of the Pechersk Lowland, as well as of the entire north-east of the European territory of the USSR, occurred in an unusual way, fundamentally different from the degradation of the Scandinavian ice sheet.»
Researchers suggest that the destruction of the ice sheet was accompanied and may have been caused by processes of a seismic nature, catastrophic earthquakes. The Baltic is getting warm. On the island of Gotland over a period of time from 9700 to 9000 years ago, temperatures increased by 15° C, reaching modern values. Since the end of 7 thousand BC forests of the northern taiga appearance has advanced to the Barents Sea, the tundra on the continent has completely disappeared. In the place of modern middle taiga, southern taiga forests appeared with the participation of oak, elm, maple, and hazel. In relation to the current situation, the northern border of the middle taiga has advanced 450—550 km to the north. Broad-leaved forests in the west of the Russian Plain have grown to a strip width of 1200—1300 km. in the meridional direction. Dark coniferous spruce taiga occupied an area three times smaller than at present. Between 8,200 and 6,000 years ago, deciduous forests advanced south, and the zone of real steppes was limited only to a narrow strip of the Black Sea coast.
In the forest belt of Eastern Europe in the Holocene begins a new period of the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic (10—5 thousand years BC) – the time of settlement and development of the northern and north-western territories. Ice liberation took place in many ways. Modern researchers suggest that there was an influx of population from the south-west from the Volga-Oka and Baltic-Dnieper regions.
This is not unexpected after all; people followed a long beaten path. Recall that analyzing the inventory of the Upper Paleolithic sites of the Dnieper (Mezin culture), Don (Kostenki), Siberia (Malta and Buret) and Pechora (Buzovaya site), the researchers suggested a genetic relationship between the human groups that left these sites. In addition, significant areas of the north of the Russian Plain, located between the eastern border of the glacier (Mologa blade) and the Ural Range, covered and at the peak of the glacier with mixed forests and meadow grass steppes, hardly abandoned by humans. In the Mesolithic era with improved climatic conditions, with the increase in the zone of broad-leaved forests, the population in these territories should naturally increase, because it is broad-leaved forests that «have high biological productivity and extremely favorable conditions for the extraction of plant and animal food».
During the Mesolithic, almost the entire territory of the Leningrad, Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vologda regions, Karelia and a significant part of the Arkhangelsk region were in the subzone of deciduous forests.
Holocene vegetation
In the Mesolithic era, man develops the Arctic. A large number of sites of this time were identified in the basin of the Northern Dvina, Vychegda, Pechora.
Already 12—11 millennia ago, human groups mastered the Arctic coast of the Kola Peninsula. At the turn of 7—6 BC Mesolithic settlements appear in the West Siberian Arctic, in Taimyr, in the Lena, Indigirka and Kolyma basins. Mastering new territories, tribes or groups of tribes transferred their labor skills, cultural traditions, rituals and rituals that developed long before the Mesolithic period to great distances.
In the northern part of Eastern Europe, 8900—8300 years ago, «areas are distinguished that are separated by a line from the Kola Peninsula to the Urals, to a latitude of 60° N and further to Lake Baikal. To the north of this line during the indicated period it was warmer (in places more than 5° C), than now, south is colder.»
The same situation persists in the following time 4 – 3 thousand BC, when thermophilic vegetation has spread widely, and climate warming and mitigation «was not observed everywhere, but in a number of regions of the northern hemisphere, approximately between 45 and 70° north latitude, south was a relative cooling strip».
It was during this period, called the Atlantic, that a maximum of broad-leaved, which appear in the north of Eastern Europe already in the second half of the boreal, i.e. in 8 thousand BC.
Natural areas in the Paleolithic
Natural areas in the Mesolithic
S. V. Oshibkina writes that: «Natural conditions, according to most researchers, were especially important in the early period of history, when they determined the economic activity of a person, although they probably had no decisive significance in the historical development of society. There is an opinion that the most significant restructuring of society took place at the boundary between the Paleolithic and Neolithic and was associated with sharp changes in natural conditions at the beginning of the postglacial period.»
Many modern researchers believe that during the Middle Stone Age -Mesolithic in the north-west of Eastern Europe, there was a significant influx of population from the south-west from the Volga-Oka and Baltic-Dnieper regions, where, based on the Late Paleolithic Swider culture, new ones arise, already Mesolithic cultures. At the same time, a number of archaeologists believe that the origins of Swidersk culture, the finale of which falls on the beginning of 8 thousand BC, should be sought in the southeast among the Late Paleolithic cultures of the Kostenkovsk-Borshevsky region on the Don.
It was previously noted that 25—29 thousand years ago,