The oldest traces of Paleolithic man in Northern Asia are known in Transbaikalia с 1300, 900 and 800 kyr BP and in the Gornyi Altai с 800 kyr BP (Lbova et al, 2003, Shunkov, 2005, etc.). In the Middle Pleistocene the oecumene was in the southern mountain belt of Siberia (SMBS) extending to the Amur (Laukhin, 2004). The powerful wave of migrations to the north from SMBS is known in the Middle Pleistocene с 260-250 kyr BP (Laukhin, Drozdov, 2005). Probably migrations from the SMBS occurred also before and after the Middle Pleistocene, but until the Karginsky time they did not result in settling over great expanses to the north of SMBS. 50 kyr ago the Late Paleolithic culture was formed on the basis of the local Moustierian culture in SMBS (Derevianko, Shunkov, 2004).

The bearers of the Moustierian and Late-Paleolithic cultures for 20 kyr coexisted in SMBS. As can be judged from the amount of artifacts, the density of population was gradually increasing, basically due to Late Paleolithic people. By the middle of the Karginsky time the density of SMBS population probably reached a limit, because with the beginning of the Konoshchelye cooling (32-30 kyr BP) there appeared a shortage of hunting grounds in SMBS. The Late Paleolithic man began to settle on high river terraces and low watersheds. Mousterian people lost the competition with better socially and technically organized Late Paleolithic population, but the abandoned ecological niches were still scarce. At the same time that cooling leveled environmental difference between SMBS and northern uplands of northeastern Asia. The Paleolithic man, who was adapting for a million years to mountain environments of Northern Asia, migrated to the east and north-east of Asia. It took him 1-2 kyr to penetrate into the Chukchee Peninsula north of the Arctic Circle. The final settling in this area took no more than 4-5 kyr, because it was going on not by frontal diffusion, but radially from refuges, which were mastered by first migrants 32-30 kyr BP.

However, ecological niches favorable for the Paleolithic man north of SMBS were scarcer, and their demographic capacity was insignificant. Only lacking diversity, "unfavorably monotononous" environments of the flatlands stayed unpopulated. First attempts to spread onto the plains were undertaken in the Karginsky time, as seen from the Yana site on 71°N (Pitul'ko et al, 2004) and in the upper reach of river Kemchug in the southeast of the West Siberian Plain (Zenin et al, 2002). Although the Paleolithic man, adapted to mosaic mountainous environments, was not yet able to master plains. It took с 10 kyr of ecological, technological and social development to do it. Flatland expanses were finally conquered only during the Sartan time, i.e. с 18 kyr and later. The origin of the industry of middle stages of the Upper Paleolithic was probably one of the results of adaptation to flatland environments. The giant periglacial hyperzone formed in Northern Eurasia at the LGM has resulted in migrations of Late Paleolithic hunters over huge distances in the wake of mammoth fauna grazers. This led to noticeable unification (for example, microlitization) of the Upper Paleolithic industry (Derevianko et al, 2003) and to modification of social organization. Earlier separate tribes or their small groups lived in favorable ecological niches of mountains, whereas hunting on the plains demanded larger collectives. This work was supported by RFBR, grant 04-06-80024.

Reference:

Laukhin S.A. Migrations of Paleolithic man and initial settling in Northern Asia. Correlation of Pleistocene Events in the Russian North. International Workshop Abstracts. 4-6 December 2006. Saint-Petersburg, 2006, p. 54.