Following yesterday's post on a site known a Diring Yuriakh in northeastern Siberia that is 400,000 years old, today's post will look at another ancient Siberian site known as Karama which is just 15 km (less than 10 miles) from the famous Denisova Cave in the Altai.
The map shows the main sites in the Altai region, the red arrows mark Karama, and Denisova Cave.
Non-sapiens humans lived there 400,000 - 800,000 years ago
According to an online article this region, at that time had a relatively benign climate, and a forest cover with animal resources that favored settling there. But these were not modern human beings (we appeared ~300,000 years ago), these people were possibly Denisovans, Neanderthals, or even their predecessors, H. heidelbergensis or Homo erectus who fashioned cobble tools similar to the primitive Oldowan lithic industry:
"The earliest evidence of penetration of the Paleolithic man into the Altai is the Karama site dating back 400–800 thousand years. In red-color deposits of the lower Pleistocene, some large-size pebbles were found with roughly chopped-off sharp edges used as primitive stone implements like side scrapers, choppers, and choppings, which constituted the pebble-tool industry typical of the early Paleolith epoch. In that age, the climate in the Anui Valley was mild and favorable for the life of the primitive man. The occurrence of such deciduous species as elm, hornbeam, linden, maple, and oak, exotic for the contemporary flora of the Altai, in the birch and pine forests of the region testify to it. Numerous and diverse fauna inhabited the rich vegetation of the forests. Small and medium-sized mammals such as badger, marmot, hare, etc., made a significant part of the diet of hunters of the time. As for large prey, primitive men used to make a living by gathering the remains of meals of such predators as hyenas, wolves, or bears."
Most of the literature on this site is in Russian language (thank God there is a Google translating tool!). The site was excavated by Anatoly P. Derevianko and published in 2001 and 2002 according to his colleague M. Shunkov, both from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
These appear to be the first two publications on Karama, and they are cited in the literature, but I have not been able to find them:
Derevianko, A.P., M.V. Shunkov and V.A. Ulianov. 2001a. Novoe rannepaleoliticheskoe mestonakhozhdenie v Gornom Altae. Problemy arkheologii, etnografii i antropologii Sibiri i sopredelnykh territorii. 7:115-19. (In Russian).
Derevianko, A.P. and M.V. Shunkov. 2002. Middle Paleolithic industries with foliate bifaces in Gorny Altai. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 1:16-42.
One paper, Early Paleolithic Site of Karama in Altai: Initial Research Results, Archaeology, ethnography and anthropology of Eurasia 3 (23) 2005, provides an dating, when it ncludes that "Taken together, the palynological study materials of the section, along with other analytical data, allow us to correlate the accumulation time of the deposits in the middle and lower strata of the section with the Early Neopleistocene, i.e., to determine their age in the range of 400,000-800,000 years."
The old date for this site is ratified by a presentation given by A. P. Derevianko, M. V. Shunkov, 2008: Early Paleolithic of Altai, see p. 127 in the abstracts listed which provides sediment dating for this Early Paleolithic site.
An article about Derevyanko (who seems to be an authority on Denisovans and their migrations across Asia), includes the image shown above, which depicts: on the upper left side, the Karama site, the same image can be seen in Derevyanko and Shunkov's 2005 paper captioned Fig. 1. View of the Karama site in the Anuy Valley., the lower left stone tool is seen in Fig. 17 of that same paper as Fig. 17. "2 - beak-shaped tool", and the excavation (lower righgt) can be seen in the paper as Fig. 9, the excavation #2 at Karama -but full of diggers.
Cobble, Oldowan-like tools
Shunkov, 2005 (English) describes the stone tools as follows: "... Paleolithic artifacts, which have been attributed to the Lower Paleolithic pebble industry judging form the morphology of the finds. The assemblage of the products of primary reduction include pebbles showing signs of core preparation with plain striking platforms and negative scars of parallel detachments and short non-faceted spalls. The collection of typologically distinct tools includes longitudinal and transverse racloirs; denticulate and notch-denticulate tools fashioned on short spalls, and cutting tools of the chopper/chopping tool type with a convex flattened cutting edge and a trimmed massive back. Most pebble tools from Karama are characterized by archaic morphological features and a comparatively advanced technology of secondary treatment." So they are primitive (cobbles) yet their finishing is advanced.
The original dates for the site were much earlier 1.77 to 1.95 million years, but it was refined to a lower limit of 800,000 years (see Kuzmin, Y.V., Kazanskii, A.Y., 2015 in Debatable questions of Siberia settlement by early humans. Stratigr. Geol. Correl. 23, 114–118 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0869593815010074) who writes: "... Judging by the results of a preliminary study of the Zasukhino site in Trans-Baikal, early humans could have appeared in Siberia about 1 million years ago, but additional research is required in order to obtain reliable information..." Regarding Karama, he this paper considers that the site "corresponds to MIS 16–19", roughly 620,000 to 780,000 years ago.
Regarding the stone tools, this paper confirms the technology employed by the people at Karama and, again, its antiquity:
"Archaeological materials of Karama are represented by Early Paleolithic pebble industries. They are characterized by irregular and parallel flaking. The primary flaking products include core-like pebbles with smooth or roughly prepared striking platforms, as well as flakes with sub parallel dorsal patterns and prepared platforms. The tool set is dominated by longitudinal, diagonal and transverse side-scrapers (as a rule naturally-backed or negative-backed), followed by massive-base choppers with straight, convex, or concave working edge. Next in importance are notches, denticulates and beaked tools formed mainly by Clactonian notches. The rest of the inventory is constituted by large pebble tools with an intentionally shaped thorn-like projection, core-like endscrapers formed by steep or abrupt retouch, massive tools with wide-angle working part, knives on “citrus slices” with clear traces of utilization, flakes bearing intermittent retouch.
Thus the site of Karama contains a sequence of Early Paleolithic horizons occurring in clear stratigraphic conditions. They yielded an expressive pebble industry, which can tentatively be dated to the period of 600–800 kya. For the time being this is the oldest archaeological assemblage with reliable stratigraphic and palynological data known in Northern and Central Asia."
A similar content is found in another paper by Kuzmin and Kazansky, 2019 (Chronology of the Lower Palaeolithic Site of Karama (Gorny Altai): Facts and Problems, Stratum plus. 2019. No 1), whose abstract places it not older than 800 kya. It reads as follows:
"Factual information and its interpretation regarding the geological age of the Lower Palaeolithic site of Karama (Altai Mountains, Siberia) are considered. It is demonstrated that palynological data do not allow to date this site to earlier than ca. 800 kya; archaeological data are consistent with this estimate. The viewpoint of V. S. Zykin with coauthors, according to which the age of Karama is ca. 1.95—1.77 mya, finds no support in the light of the available geological and paleomagnetic evidence. The so-called “Karama suite” of the Upper Pliocene of Altai Mountains in reality does not exist. For the time being there are no reliable data indicating than the initial peopling of Siberia took place prior to ca. 1 mya."
Siberia to America?
This post and the previous one have shown the presence of humans in Northern Siberia long before the previously accepted dates. 500,000 to 800,000 years ago some humans (Denisovans? H. erectus? H. heidelbergensis? were thriving in this region, fashioning tools that were primitive (not the Acheulean tools of erectus, or Mousterian tools of Neanderthals). Again, it makes one wonder, why didn't they continue their journey across Siberia and reach America?
My next post will explore this interesting hypothesis.
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