now possesses massive and indisputable materials proving a long prehistory of agriculture, which began at least at the end of the Middle Paleolithic era», i.e. archaeologists determine the time of the birth of primitive agriculture, 50 or 70 millennia from us.
For its emergence in the form of gathering, a necessary condition was the presence of herb and cereal steppes. And those were not only in the traditional zone – in the south of the Russian Plain, but also in the north, where, for the time 45210 +1430 years ago, pine-birch forests with a herb-grass cover are noted in the basin of the Vychegda and Pechora rivers. 44 millennium BC – the time of new, in comparison with the very warm Mikulinsky interglacial, climatic conditions – Molo-Shcheksninsky interglacial.
About 70 thousand years ago, the Mikulinsky or Ries-Wurms interglacial, which lasted about 60 thousand years, ended. The next Ice Age began, which was named Valdai in Eastern Europe. This name is very arbitrary, because this entire period is divided into two unequal parts: 70 – 24 thousand years ago – the glacial Valdai and 24 – 13 thousand years ago – glacial Valdai.
Moreover, during the ice-free Valdai, a slow increase in cooling alternated with periods of warming.
One of such warmings, very long, was the Mologo-Sheksna interglacial, which lasted with short periods of cooling from 50 millennia to 24 millennia to the present day, and the time from 32 to 24 millennia ago was the warmest.
So, broad-leaved forests spread on the Don, the so-called Kostenkovo-Streletskaya Paleolithic culture develops here, part of the population of which during the Mologo-Shcheksnin interglacial period advanced along the Russian plain to the Oka basin.
A number of archaeologists suggest that the tribes of the Strelets culture at this time inhabited the banks of the Pechora. Researchers note that: «In the north-east of Europe, which includes the vast areas of the Volga and Ural regions, outstanding monuments of the early Paleolithic period have been found in recent years, and a turning point has already been outlined towards intensifying work on their study. Certain areas of the Russian Plain (northwest) in the Molo-Sheksna time may not have been inhabited. It should be emphasized that from the south to the north of the Russian Plain, during the formation and development of the Upper Paleolithic, it was not wandering lipstick hunters who advanced, but the sedentary tribes who built long-term dwellings of various types, leading complex household activities based on hunting and gathering… The hunt for herds of horses and reindeer required the improvement of throwing weapons and, probably, led already at such an early time to the invention of the bow and arrow.
In the same period, spiritual culture was formed and developed.»
Monuments of the spiritual culture of the ancient Stone Age – Paleolithic have been preserved in places of long-term habitation, at the ancient sites of Paleolithic man.
Apparently, in the near future on the territory of the Russian Plain and, in particular, the Russian North, first-class monuments dating back to the Molo-Sheksninsky interstadial, the warmest time of the Valdai glacier, will be opened.
On the territory of Wormwood and Germany, all the monuments of the Ancient Stone Age are concentrated south of the 52nd parallel in the basin of the upper Vistula and in the Silesian Mountains. On the territory of Eastern Europe, they are distributed unevenly. In the western part, such monuments can be traced only up to the 52nd parallel.
In the central part of the Russian Plain, Mousterian sites are known up to the 54th parallel, and the Upper Paleolithic Byzovaya site (in the middle reaches of the Pechora River) is located north of 64° N, about 175 km from the Arctic Circle. Its age is 25450 ± 380 years ago, the Sungir site on Klyazma – just north of 56° N. – its age is 25500 ± 200 years ago. In addition, by the 24th millennium BC include such sites in the northeast of the Russian Plain as Bear Cave in the upper Pechora, Ostrovskaya site, Smirnovskaya and Buranovskaya caves. In the northwest, monuments of this time are unknown.
The cultural traditions of the population of the northern part of the Russian Plain of that distant time are very well represented by the burials of the Sungir site near the city of Vladimir, dating back to the end of the Mologo-Sheksna period. Here, observing a long-established ritual, people who lived in the 24 millennium BC, before burying their dead, sprinkled the bottom of the grave with hot coals, cleaning it, perhaps, with the remains of a funeral feast. Then chalk or other white substance, similar to lime, was poured onto the bottom, and then red ocher was thickly sprinkled over the white layer.
White and red are symbols of purity and blood, snow and fire, already at that distant time, was together, escorting a person to another world. The dead were placed in the grave in richly decorated clothes, with numerous stone and bone tools and weapons; they were covered with fur cloaks and abundantly covered with red ocher.
So in Sungir, in one of the graves, a tall, broad-shouldered man of 55 – 56 years old was buried, lying on his back with his hands folded on his stomach, his head turned to the northeast.
He wore a suede or fur shirt, leather pants and leather moccasin shoes. All the clothes of this man of the 24 millennium BC was embroidered with 3,500 beads carved from mammoth tusks.
On his hands he wore over 20 bracelets made of thin plates cut from mammoth tusks, as well as bracelets made of strung beads. The entire headdress was embroidered with beads and ended at the back of the head with arctic foxes. On the shoulders of the man lay a short fur cloak embroidered with larger beads.
A girl of 7—8 years old and a boy of 12—13 years old were buried next to the man. Their burials were also accompanied by a large number of mammoth bone artifacts. Spears made from split and straightened tusks are of particular interest: 2 m 42 cm for a boy and 1 m 66 cm for a girl. Today it is not yet clear how our distant ancestors straightened and split three-meter tusks, how long, straight; hard and sharp spears were cut out. The children’s clothes were embroidered with beads even richer than the clothes of the man. A total of about 7,500 beads were sewn on it, and the children wore bracelets and rings made of mammoth bones. In addition, the clothes were decorated with graceful ornamented slotted discs, hairpins, fasteners. Archaeologists suggest that the burial of children was not simultaneously the burial of a man and was done much earlier.
This testifies to the fact that before us is not an accidental rich burial, but a stable tradition that has evolved for a long time and has been preserved for thousands of years.
The abstract thinking of a man of the Upper Paleolithic of Eastern Europe was significantly developed, as evidenced not only by the burials of the Sungir, but also by the numerous ornamented articles of that distant time, which are highly perfect examples of Paleolithic art. So on the Don (Kostenki), on products made of bone and flint – female figurines – as a rule, mites-belts on the chest and waist are graphically depicted. Of the decorative elements, the most common is the oblique cross. M. D. Gvozdover writes: «Obviously, this ornament should be considered the most characteristic of the Kostenko culture, especially since rows of oblique crosses are almost unknown in other Paleolithic cultures… The choice of ornament and its location on the object is not caused by technological reasons or material… the placement of ornamental elements and their choice is not due to technological reasons, but to cultural tradition.»
M. D. Gvozdover believes that «the archaeological culture is characterized both by the elements of the ornament, and the type of their location on the ornamental field and the grouping of elements», another type of ornament appears – the meander and swastika motif.
Outstanding Russian researcher V. A. Gorodtsov wrote in 1926, analyzing the North Russian peasant weaving and embroidery: «Until recently it was believed that the meander and the ova are the fruits of the ancient art of Greece, and the swastika is the art of India, but all this turned out to be incorrect, since it was documented that the swastika, meander and oves were the favorite motives of the ornament of the ancient centuries of the Bronze Age, when, perhaps, there were no Greeks or Indians hiding