sculptures, and reliefs belonging to this time convinces us that their roots should be sought in the more ancient Mousterian era, in that period of the Mikulinsky interglacial (130 – 70 thousand years ago), when human collectives were already mastered the Pechora basin and the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and when the climate of northern Eastern Europe did not differ from the modern climate of England and southern Germany. 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 a large number of flint implements and even wall paintings, is an outstanding event. It once again testifies to the fact that in the ancient Stone Age, human groups widely settled in the north of Eastern Europe, i.e. the territories of the future Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kostroma, Vyatka regions and the Komi Republic.
The warm Mologo-Shcheksninskoe time was replaced by a sharp cold snap about 20—18 millennia ago, when the overgrown Scandinavian ice sheet reached its maximum development.
The data of modern science indicate that the limiting boundary of the distribution of the Valdai glaciation was in the latitudinal direction from Vilnius to Smolensk, and then to the northwest to the Rybinsk reservoir, Lake Kubenskoe and Nyandoma. Further to the northeast, the border has not been reliably established.
At this time, the Atlantic tundra and subarctic meadows stretched across the glacier-free territory of England and Ireland. Sparse birch forest (park tundra) was widespread in the western part of Europe, and light forest with birch and birch-pine stands occupied most of Central Europe and then followed a relatively narrow strip along the coast of the future Baltic Sea, and then the Baltic Glacial Lake, to the northeast. True forests, or as they are called «typical forest boreal formations», in the western and middle parts of Europe at that time were very few, and they were mainly in the valleys of large rivers and intermountain basins.
Within the Russian Plain, forests occupied, in contrast to Western Europe, a large area in the form of a wide strip crossing it in the direction from southwest to northeast. These were birch, pine, spruce and fir forests. Paleogeographers note that: «in a number of regions there already existed forests with the participation of such broad-leaved species as oak and elm; in the southern part of the Russian Plain, steppe vegetation was widespread.» It is interesting to note that during the maximum of the Valdai glaciation, when almost the entire territory of England was covered with glacier, and habitable areas were tundra and arctic meadows, primitive people and animals such as wolf, cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, bull and the 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 rustled. In the area of the village of Pokrovskaya on the Puchka River (near Lake Kubenskoye, at 60° N), about 38 species of flowering and spore plants grew directly at the edge of the glacier, and the open forest consisted of birch, spruce, and larch.
It should be noted that the actual tundra type of vegetation in Eastern Europe was a relatively narrow strip running 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 of their distribution was even greater.»
So, 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 sparse forest, then on the territory of Eastern Europe from the upper reaches of the Dniester began a wide strip of meadow steppes with pine, larch and birch forests, passing through the Pripyat basin, the Middle Dnieper, the middle course of the Oka. Expanding in the direction from the southwest to the northeast, it reached in the northwest to the Upper Volga (in the Yaroslavl region) and the middle Vychegda in the north. The entire southeast of Eastern Europe was at that time occupied by cereal steppes, reaching 55° N in the northeast; in a number of regions there were forests with the participation of such broad-leaved species as oak and elm. Thus, the vegetation zones were located in the submeridian direction, «sharply different from the mainly latitudinal zonation of the modern vegetation cover of Eurasia», which «can be considered as one of the most characteristic features of the nature of Europe in the era of glaciation.»
On most of the European territory of our country, there was no glacier, even during the maximum of the Valdai glaciation. And of course, given the natural conditions that existed then, it is unlikely that the population left these lands.
Moreover, 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 on the edge of the glacier went «south to the mountains, to the southwest to the territory of the Massif Central of France and along the Sudetenland and the Carpathians towards the Russian Plain», with its meadow steppes and forests, and therefore with an abundance of food.» However, it should be noted that the entire territory of the Baltic States, Northern Belarus, the North-West of the Smolensk, Leningrad, Novgorod and a significant part of the Tver region wer e covered glacier and their settlement occurs only at the end of the Late Glacial, at the turn of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic.
It remains to be assumed that with the climate change towards the worsening, and then with the arrival of the glacier, the population that left these territories, to a large extent, moved to the east of the Russian Plain and the Urals. Archeology confirms that «by the beginning of the cold snap, vast settlements existed in the center and north of the Russian Plain… these monuments allow us to draw a certain conclusion about the significant population of the periglacial zone of the Ostashkovsky glacier during the period when the climate became more and more severe. The population was sedentary and provided itself with supplies of livelihood for the winter.»
It should be noted that in the «strong and long-term dwellings of the population of the Russian Plain» of that time, there are a large number of «grater pestles and real grain-grinding slabs of granite, quartzite and Shoksha sandstone». «The authors of the» Paleolithic of the USSR «note that only on the Russian Plain, these devices for obtaining flour» by ordinary methods similar to those used in agricultural crops «are found» in such quantities, starting with the Mousterian industries (i.e., no later than 50 millennium BC) and passing like a red thread through almost all the different cultural and different times of the late Paleolithic industries.»
P. P. Efimenko back in 1958, speaking about the outstanding monument of the Paleolithic era – the Kostenki site on the Don, wrote that «the oldest cultural horizon Kostenok I …, which still retains the living features of the Mousterian technique, belongs interglacial. If this is really so, then the upper horizon of the site… can be attributed with a high degree of probability to the end of the same interglacial or the early stages of the Wurm», i.e. to 70—50 thousand ago. P. P. Efimenko, the remains of a large ground dwelling (31 m long and 8 m wide, i.e. 248 square meters) with eight hearths and a complex heating system were uncovered in layer I of Kostenki.
There were grain pits – storage rooms next to the dwelling. Apparently, these pantries were filled with precisely those grasses that made up the meadow cereal steppes that stretched during the Valdai (Ostashkovsky) glaciation up to the Middle Pechora. These were barley, rye, oats, wheat and flax in their wild sowing forms, which L. S. Berg called «plants of long daylight hours», since they need at least 18 hours of indirect solar radiation per day for normal vegetation, an abundance of moisture in the soil and lack of overheating from direct sunlight. Such conditions are south of 55—56 N just missing.
Note that even Academician I. Lepekhin, a student of M. V. Lomonosov in the 18th century, discovered wild sown rye and wild flax in the Kaninskaya tundra, and in 1861, ears of this wild Kanin rye, flour and bread were presented at an agricultural exhibition in Arkhangelsk, baked from it. Moreover, it was noted