The Late Ice Age

Hunter–Gathers in Eurasia (35¸000 to 15¸000 years ago)

The open steppe–tundra plains that stretched from the Atlantic to Siberia were a far harsher environment that the sheltered valleys of southwestern Europe. To live there permantly¸ late Ice Age people had to find sheltered winter base camps and have both ability to build substantial dwellings in a treeless environment. Only a handful of big–game hunting groups lived in the shallow valleys that dissected these plains before the glacial maximum 18¸000 years ago. Thereafter, the human population rose comparatively rapidly¸ each group centered on a river valley where game was most plentiful¸ and where plant foods and fish could be found during the short summers. It was here that the most elaborate winter base camps lay. One such base camp lay at Mezhirich on the Dneipr River¸ a complex of well–built¸ dome–shaped houses fashioned of intricate patterns of mammoth bones. The outer retaining walls were made of patterned mammoth skulls, jaws, and limb bones. The completed oval–shaped dwellings were about 16 feet (4.8 meters) across¸ roofed with hides and sod¸ and entered through subterranean tunnels. The American archaeologist Olga Soffer has calculated that it would have taken some 15 workers about 10 days to built a Mezhirich dwelling, much more effort than would have gone into a simpler base camp or hunting settlement.

Soffer believes that these base camps were occupied by groups of about 30 to 60 people for about six months of the year. Mezhirich was but one of several important base camp locations in the Ukraine¸ sites that contain the bones of a greater variety of game animals than smaller¸ more specialized settlements. The mammoth bone dwellings also yielded many bones from fur¸ bearing animals like the beaver¸ and exotic materials and ornaments such as shiny amber from near Kiev and shells from the Black Sea¸ far to the south. The items from afar exchanged between neighboring communities were predominantly nonutilitarian¸ luxury goods that had social and political significance. Much of the trade may have been ceremonial¸ a means of validating important ideologies¸ of ensuring exchange of information and cooperation in daily life¸ just as it was elsewhere in the late Ice Age world at the time.

Late Ice Age groups settled much of the steppe–tundra as far east as Lake Baikal in Siberia¸ not through a deliberate process of migration¸ but as result of the natural dynamics of forage life. The tundra hunters lived in small¸ highly flexible bands. As the generations passed¸ one band would coalesce into another¸ sons¸ and their families would move away into neighboring¸ and empty¸ valley. However¸ in time a sparse human population would occupy thousands of square miles of steppe–tundra¸ concentrated for the most part in river valleys¸ at times venturing out onto the broad plains¸ and always on the move. It was through these natural dynamics of constant movement¸ of extreme social flexibility and opportunism¸ that people first settled the outer reaches of Siberia and crossed into the Americas.

North and east of Lake Baikal¸ the steppe–tundra¸ extends all the way to the Pacific¸ the home of more Ice Age hunting groups that are known from a handful of settlements along lake shores and in river valleys. They are part of a widespread late Ice Age cultural tradition that reflects a varied adaptations by Homo sapiens to an enormous area of central Asia and southern Siberia from well west Lake Baikal to the Pacific coast by 30¸000 to 20¸000 years ago. However¸ where did these Siberian hunters come from? Did they originate in the west¸ or were their cultural roots in China to the south? These questions have a direct bearing on one of the most debated questions of world prehistory–the date of the first Americans.

Site

Grotte De Chauvet¸ France

On December 18¸ 1994¸ three French cave explorers with an interest in archaeology crawled into a narrow opening in the Cirque de Estre gorge in the Ardéche region of southeastern France. They felt a draft flowing from a blocked duct¸ pulled out some boulders and lowered themselves into a network of chambers adorned with exquisite calcite columns. To their astonishment¸ their lights shone on human hands imprints¸ then paintings of mammoths¸¸ cave lions¸ and other animals. The three explorers were “ seized by a strange feeling. Everything was so beautiful¸ so fresh¸ almost too much so. Time was abolished¸ as if the tens of thousands of years that separated us from the producers of these paintings no longer existed.”

The Grotte de Chauvet is a series of painted and engraved chambers undisturbed since the late Ice Age. Hearths on the floor looked as if they had been extinguished the day before. Flaming torches had been rubbed against the wall to remove the charcoal so they would flare anew. More than 300 paintings adorn the walls (page 5.) They include a frieze of black horses¸ wild oxen with twisted horns¸ and two rhinoceroses facing one another. The horses half–open muzzles; the eyes are depicted in details. There are lions¸ stags¸ and engravings of an owl¸ animals never before seen in painted caves¸ covering an area of more than 30 feet (10 meters). A little father on in the chamber lies a slab which had fallen from the ceiling. A bear skull had been set atop it. the remains of a small fire lie behind it. More than 30 calcite–covered¸ and intentionally placed¸ bear skulls surround the slab. A 30 feet (10 meter) frieze of black figures dominated by lions or lionesses (without manes¸) rhinoceros¸ bison¸ and mammoth lies in an end chamber¸ a human figure with a bison head standing to its right (page 108). The discoverers wrote that it “ seemed to us a sorcerer supervising this immense frieze.”

The artists were masters of perspective¸ overlapping the heads of animals to give the effect of movement and numbers. They even scraped some of the walls before painting them to make the figures stand out better. They would spread the paint with their hands over the rock¸ obtaining values that showed dimension and color tonality.

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates from two rhinoceroses and a large bison point to a 1¸300– year period around 30¸000 B.C.E.¸ making these paintings the earliest securely dated art in the world. Two more dates from torch smears on the walls are around 24¸000 B.C.E.¸ while two charcoal samples on the floor gave readings of about 22¸000 B.C.E.¸ suggesting that humans visited Chauvet on several occasions over at least 6¸000 or 7¸000 years. Whether they painted over that long period is still unknown¸ but AMS dates will ultimately produce some answers.

Grotte de Chauvet was a bear cave¸ a place where these powerful animals hibernated. Interestingly¸ many of the animals on the cave walls represent dangerous members of the late Ice Age bestiary¦ the bear and the lion¸ the mammoth¸ rhinoceros¸ and bison¸ even occasionally the nimble and ferocious aurochs. Perhaps human visitors to the cave¸ with its claw marks¸ hollows¸ prints¸ and scattered bones¸ came to the chambers to acquire the potency of the great beasts¸ whose probably lingered in the darkness.