While inhabiting Sungir, at least five of the site's occupants perished. According to Russian physical anthropologists, these consisted of a 60 year-old man, a 7 to 9 year-old girl, a 13 year-old boy, an unsexed headless adult and an adult female skull.
Each of the three intact individuals were lavishly decorated with thousands of painstakingly prepared ivory beads arranged in dozens of strands, perhaps basted to their clothing. Although it is almost certain that the three individuals buried intact at Sungir were members of the same social group, there are remarkable differences among them in details of body decoration and grave offerings. The man was adorned with 2,936 beads and fragments arranged in strands found on all parts of his body including his head, which was apparently covered with a beaded cap that also bore several fox teeth.
His forearms and biceps were each decorated with a series of polished mammoth-ivory bracelets (25 in all), some showing traces of black paint. They were thin, flat strips of mammoth-ivory, cut longitudinally along the tusk. They were pierced at each end, some with one hole, others with two, apparently to keep the ivory bent into a circle. What appear to be brush strokes from the application of pigment are visible on at least one specimen. Around the man's neck, he wore a small, flat schist pendant, painted red, but with a small black dot on one side.
In the book "The Mind in the Cave" David Lewis-Williams cites Sungir as evidence that humanity's natural state is subject to a ruler. He cites this as one of the cognitive "advantages" we enjoyed over Neanderthals, leading to our success and their failure. But if the human condition is so amenable to rulership, why is the royal burial at Sungir so exceptional? Why have we not found more burials like it?
Lewis-Williams himself unwittingly offers us the reason why. Sungir was situated along the mammoth migratory routes. There was such a glut of mammoth meat once a year, that these foragers could afford to remain stationary. Thus they developed a complex society, including royalty.
The Site of Mal'ta (Siberia) Russia
The vast territory of North and Central Asia represents a poorly understood region in the prehistoric era, despite intensive excavations that have been conducted during the past century. The earliest human occupation in this region, probably began sometime around 40,000 years ago. Small groups of big-game hunters likely migrated into this region, as a result of the second out of Africa (OOA) migration. They confronted a harsh climate and long, dry winters. By about 20,000 B.C., two principal cultural traditions had developed in Siberia and northeastern Asia: the Mal'ta and the Afontova Gora-Oshurkovo cultures.
The Mal'ta tradition is known from a vast area spanning west of Lake Baikal and the Yenisey River. The site of Mal'ta, for which the culture is named, is composed of a series of subterranean houses made of large animal bones and reindeer antler, which had likely been covered with animal skins and sod to protect inhabitants from the severe, prevailing northerly winds. Among the artistic accomplishments evident at Mal'ta are remains of expertly carved bone, ivory, and antler objects. Figurines of birds and human females are the most commonly found items.
Note: It should be noted that the Mal'ta Culture may more correctly be associated with the "Eastward" second wave of migration out of southern Africa that occurred about 55-50,000 B.C. However, lacking similar type figures from China, we associate the Mal'ta Culture with Grimaldi.
Note: The Paleolithic art of Europe and Asia, falls into two broad categories: mural art and portable art. Mural art is concentrated in southwest France, Spain, and northern Italy. The tradition of portable art, predominantly carvings in ivory and antler, spans the distance across western Europe into North and Central Asia. It is suggested that the broad territory in which the tradition of carving and imagery is shared, is evidence of cultural contact and common religious beliefs. Some of the most well known examples are the so-called Venus figurines. One such figurine, illustrated here, is from the site of Mal'ta and dates to around 22,000 B.C. It is carved from the ivory of a mammoth, an extinct type of elephant highly prized in hunting that migrated in herds across the Ice Age tundra of Europe and Asia. Like most Paleolithic figurine carving, the image is carved in the round in a highly stylized manner. Typically, there are exaggerated characteristics such as breasts and (steatopygia) buttocks, which may have been symbols of fertility.
The Kostenki Sites, Russia
The Kostenki - Borshevo sites (34,000 B.C.) are a group of more than twenty settlements from the same culture, on the right bank of the Don River, south of Voronezh. The basic excavations were conducted in the 1920s - 1930s by P. Yefimenko, and in the 1940s - 1960s by A. N. Rogachev.
The villages of Kostenki and Borshevo contained five cultural layers. In the upper layer were preserved the remains of dwellings with hearths located along the central longitudinal axis of the dwellings, together with storage pits. Flint tools and hoes made from mammoth tusks, bone digging implements, a baton from deer horn, and about forty female statuettes made from both ivory and marl/limestone, figurines of a bear, cavelion and anthropomorphous marl heads. Triangular flint tools are found in the lowermost layer with a concave base, retouched with a pressure process.
At Kostenki II (Zamyatnina site) were found the remains of a round dwelling made of mammoth bones, seven or eight metres across, with the fireplace in the center.
At Kostenki IV (Aleksandrovka site) there was preserved in the upper of two cultural layers, the remainders of two round dwellings approximately six meters in diameter with the hearth at the center of each. Among the findings here were ground, drilled disks of slate. In the bottom layer there were two long dwellings, with a length of 34m and 23m, and a width of 5.5m, in which were found flint leaf-like tips processed by pressure retouching. In the second layer were found fragments of human bones, partially burnt, as well as flint miniature plates (microliths?) and needle shaped points (burins?).
Kostenki XI contained not less than five cultural layers. In the upper layer the remains of a round dwelling 9 metres in diameter made from large mammoth bones were discovered. In the lower layers there were interesting findings of triangular flint tips, analogous to those found in the lower layer of Kostenki I.
Kostenki XIV (Markina Mountain, Markina Gora), contained four cultural layers.
At Kostenki XV (Gordocovskaja site) the ochred burial of a child of about six years was found. With this burial were flint and bone tools, and over 150 drilled teeth of the Arctic Fox.
Borshevo II contained three cultural layers, dated from the end of the late Palaeolithic through to the Mesolithic. In the top layer, the camp of a temporary settlement of horse hunters, mammoth bones were absent, but there were reindeer bones. The flint tools were of the microlith type, which could have been used for arrow heads.
The Kostenki - Borshevo sites (34,000 B.C.) are a group of more than twenty settlements from the same culture, on the right bank of the Don River, south of Voronezh. The basic excavations were conducted in the 1920s - 1930s by P. Yefimenko, and in the 1940s - 1960s by A. N. Rogachev.
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