Kostenki: Early Upper Palaeolithic Sites on the River Don

Kostenki is a group of more than twenty Old Stone Age sites clustered along the River Don near Voronezh in south-western Russia. Occupied from roughly 45,000 to 20,000 years ago, the sites contain some of the earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe, along with ivory figurines, decorated objects and large structures built of mammoth bone. One site, Kostenki 14, has also produced one of the oldest human genomes sequenced from Europe.

The landscape

The sites lie on the right (western) bank of the Don, where steep ravines cut into a high river terrace. Springs at the foot of the slopes and the chalky bedrock attracted people, and the animals they hunted, for tens of thousands of years. Layers of wind-blown loess and slope deposits buried successive camps, preserving them in sequence.

During the last Ice Age this region was part of the “mammoth steppe”, a cold, dry grassland stretching across northern Eurasia. Mammoth, horse, reindeer, bison and hare were common, and mammoth bones and tusks were a key raw material.

Discovery and research

Mammoth bones had long been known at Kostenki, but the first scientific excavation was carried out by the geologist and zoologist Ivan Polyakov in 1879. He found stone tools alongside the bones, establishing that people had lived there in the Ice Age.

Systematic work began in the 1920s and 1930s under Pyotr Efimenko, whose excavations at Kostenki 1 uncovered a long living area with a row of hearths down its centre. After the Second World War Alexander Rogachev directed decades of research and defined many of the local archaeological cultures. From the 1990s Mikhail Anikovich, John Hoffecker and other Russian and American colleagues refined the dating. A state museum-reserve now protects the area, with a pavilion over one of the mammoth-bone structures.

The earliest layers

The most important discovery of recent decades concerns the oldest layers. At several sites a thin band of volcanic ash runs through the deposits. Its chemistry matches the Campanian Ignimbrite, a huge eruption near present-day Naples about 39,000-40,000 years ago whose ash spread across eastern Europe.

In 2007 Anikovich, Hoffecker and colleagues reported Upper Palaeolithic artefacts lying beneath this ash at Kostenki 12 and Kostenki 14, with dates of roughly 45,000-42,000 years ago. The finds included blades, bone tools, perforated shells and a carved ivory piece. Some shells came from the Black Sea coast, hundreds of kilometres to the south, implying exchange or long-distance movement.

These results placed modern humans on the East European Plain at about the same time as their earliest appearance in central and western Europe. They also showed that early Homo sapiens could cope with the cold continental climate of the interior.

The early dates have not gone unchallenged. Radiocarbon dating near its upper limit of around 50,000 years is difficult, and small amounts of contamination can make samples appear younger or older than they are. Some researchers have argued for slightly younger ages for parts of the sequence, but the position of the artefacts beneath the Campanian Ignimbrite ash provides an independent check that they are older than about 39,000 years.

A sequence of cultures

Because so many sites lie close together, and many contain several superimposed layers, Kostenki has been used to define a series of local archaeological cultures. These are groups of sites sharing similar tool types, not necessarily separate peoples.

• Spitsyn culture: named after Kostenki 17 (Spitsynskaya), with blade tools and ornaments of pierced teeth and shells, among the earliest Upper Palaeolithic industries of the region.
• Streletskaya culture: marked by small triangular points worked on both faces. Because it combines older and newer techniques, archaeologists debate whether it was made by modern humans or by late Neanderthals.
• Gorodtsov culture: found above the volcanic ash at Kostenki 14 and other sites, with distinctive bone tools and a mix of stone tool types.
• Kostenki-Avdeevo culture: a Gravettian culture of about 30,000-22,000 years ago, named after Kostenki 1 and the site of Avdeevo near Kursk, with shouldered points, figurines and large settlements.

The coexistence of these industries within a small area, sometimes at overlapping dates, suggests that several groups with different traditions used the Don valley over the millennia.

Life on the mammoth steppe

Animal bones from the sites show that people hunted a range of animals. In the early layers horse is often the most common species, while hare and arctic fox were probably trapped for their fur, which would have been vital in the cold winters. Mammoth bones were used as building material and fuel, and ivory for tools, ornaments and figurines; some of this material may have come from animals that died naturally.

Trees were scarce on the open steppe, so burning bone alongside the limited supply of wood was an important way to keep warm. Pits dug into the frozen ground near some structures may have served as storage for meat or fuel.

The perforated shells, tooth pendants and decorated objects found throughout the sequence show that, even under harsh conditions, people invested time in personal ornament and in maintaining contacts with distant regions.

The Kostenki 14 skeleton and genome

In 1954 Rogachev excavated a crouched burial of an adult male at Kostenki 14, also known as Markina Gora. The skeleton was later dated to about 38,700-36,200 years ago.

In 2014 a team led by Andaine Seguin-Orlando and Eske Willerslev sequenced its genome. The Kostenki 14 man belonged to the same deep lineage as later European hunter-gatherers, showing that the basic genetic structure of Europe’s Ice Age population had formed very early. Like all people of non-African ancestry, he also carried DNA inherited from Neanderthals, in segments longer than those of people today, reflecting interbreeding only a few thousand years before his lifetime.

Figurines and mammoth-bone structures

Later layers belong to the Gravettian period, roughly 30,000-22,000 years ago. Kostenki 1 yielded small female figurines carved in mammoth ivory and soft marl, part of the wider European tradition that includes the Venus of Willendorf in Austria. Animal figures and decorated ivory and bone objects were found too.

Several sites contain large arrangements of mammoth bones. At Kostenki 11 a circular structure about 12.5 m across was built around 25,000 years ago from the bones of more than 60 mammoths. A study published in 2020 found burnt wood and plant remains inside, and suggested it may have served for storage, processing or ritual rather than as an ordinary dwelling. Similar, smaller structures are known at Mezhyrich in Ukraine.

Timeline

• c. 45,000-42,000 years ago: Earliest Upper Palaeolithic occupation at Kostenki 12 and 14.
• c. 40,000-39,000 years ago: Ash from the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption falls over the region.
• c. 38,700-36,200 years ago: The Kostenki 14 man is buried.
• c. 25,000 years ago: The large mammoth-bone circle at Kostenki 11 is built.
• 1879: Ivan Polyakov makes the first scientific excavation.
• 1954: Alexander Rogachev excavates the Kostenki 14 burial.
• 2007: Dates for layers beneath the Campanian Ignimbrite ash are published in Science.
• 2014: The Kostenki 14 genome is published.

Why it matters

Kostenki is one of the longest and richest records of Ice Age life in eastern Europe. It shows modern humans arriving early on the cold plains, maintaining long-distance contacts, carving figurines and building monumental mammoth-bone structures, and its genome links these people to the wider story of Homo sapiens spreading out of Africa.