Mammoth bone dwellings on the Russian Plain #006

Members of the community made not only household items from bones and tusks. Among the products found in Mezhirich and Mezin, there are many mammoth bones covered with a pattern made of red ochre. The ancient inhabitants decorated not only their homes, but also their clothes; this is evidenced by necklaces of seashells, amber, bone beads and teeth of a wolf, bear, bison, used as pendants. The art of the ancients was not only decorative; for example, stylized figurines were found in Mezin and Mezhirich.

It is noteworthy that the material for jewelry itself was sometimes delivered from afar. The shells found in Mezin were from marine sediments 600 — 800 km from the parking lot, and the amber found in Mezhirich was from sediments near Kiev (150 km from Mezhirich). All this testifies to the intensive exchange links between the ancestral groups of hunter-gatherers. These connections extended from Mezhirich to the Black Sea.

The above facts allow us to reproduce a map of seasonal movement between permanent camps of hunter-gatherers engaged in hunting large animals, as well as collecting bones for the production of tools and the construction of dwellings.

The size of the dwellings in Mezhirich indicates that the community consisted of at least 50 people. What kind of social organization was characteristic of these communities? Some assumptions can be made based on the study of cultural remains. The fact that people occupied permanent habitats means that they were able to resolve conflict situations between communities. Wandering groups resolved conflicts simply by diverging in different directions. In communities that made large stocks of food and built homes, there had to be special means to maintain peace. Their nature is unknown, but perhaps they were associated with the development of the social structure of ancient society. In some settlements, uneven filling of storage pits is noted, indicating that some farms could accumulate more reserves than others. The construction of unusual type dwellings made of mammoth bones is also associated with a certain orientation of labor organization. All this can be explained in the emergence of differences among the members of the community. The division of society into groups with unequal social status could not have arisen earlier than the Upper Paleolithic, when specific dwellings were built from mammoth bones. Therefore, excavations in Mezhirich and other places of the Russian Plain help to understand an important stage in social history: the period when individual differences in Paleolithic society were born. This conclusion remains controversial, and further research is needed to confirm it.

Excavations in Mezhirich and other places allow us to learn a lot about the builders of dwellings made of mammoth bones. It is known that they were sufficiently provided with food in a relatively rich environment. The results of the excavations indicate that the Russian Plain was an important region of Late Paleolithic man's habitat, where there was a complex system of adaptation of hunter-gatherers to the environment and a new step in social development could be made. With its user-friendly interface, large selection of games, and generous welcome bonuses, 777slots aims to provide an entertaining and rewarding online gambling experience.