Environmental conditions and human occupation of northern Eurasia during the Late Valdai

Diverse palaeogeographic data indicate that all of northern Eurasia was characterized by extremely severe climatic conditions during the last glaciation (Wurm, Valdai, Sartan). Significant climatic deterioration began in the second half of the Valdai, about 35 000 BP - a time, as the archaeological record indicates, when Upper Palaeolithic groups successfully colonized the central part of the East European or Russian Plain. During the Early and Middle Pleistocene only the southernmost areas of the USSR (the southern part of the Russian Plain, the Caucasus, and Central Asia) were occupied. The distribution of these early sites indicates that human groups living before the last glaciation most probably did not inhabit areas north of 50° latitude. Thus, human occupation of these northern latitudes, paradoxical as it may seem, coincides with the time when the climate and environmental conditions deteriorated considerably in northern Europe. The interval between 30000 and 24 000 BP did see some climatic amelioration in the form of a warmer Bryansk interval, this amelioration was quite relative.