The Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site, or Yana RHS, is a 27,000 year-old site above the Arctic Circle in Siberia, if you can imagine. And it might hold the key (or one of them) to the first colonization of the Americas.
Location of the Yana RHS site in eastern Siberia. Base map: Norman Einstein
Located on the Yana River 1200 kilometers west of the Bering Strait, the site is the oldest site within the Arctic circle--and I fully admit the notion of being in the arctic circle at all is daunting, let alone without polar fleece. Found within the site are redeposited mammoth, bison and horse bones showing butchering marks; stone tools including scrapers and a hammerstone; and bone tools including a beveled foreshaft.
The site is pretty old, not to mention pretty cold: but its location in eastern Siberia may represent evidence that human migration into Beringia during the early parts of the Last Glacial Maximum was possible.
Comments
Thanks for an informative overview. Sounds like a marvelous place to visit I’ve got this particular site on my bucket list/wish list, though something on this north american side of the land bridge is far more likely. Are there any good photo surveys to go along with this?
By the way, you’ve used the word ‘minors’ where I’m pretty sure you meant to use the word ‘miners’ for the people who discovered the ancillary site.
Cheers
Would you believe they were very very young miners? No, I didn’t think so.
Thanks for the correction!
Kris