The study of ancient artifacts found in the southern regions of Russia allowed scientists to establish that people inhabited this territory a million years earlier than previously thought.
Until recently, it was believed in the scientific community that ancient people settled on the territory of the modern Rostov region, Taman and Dagestan about 1 million years ago. However, in the course of a traceological study of animal remains, whose age is two million years, it turned out that these artifacts have traces of human influence.
The survey of antiquities was carried out by the researchers of the Institute of History and Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with experts from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the study, the scientists used the leg bone of an extinct camel species found by Soviet archaeologists in 1954. Modern research methods have allowed scientists to find traces of stone tools processing on the bone. This circumstance allowed scientists to establish the fact of settlement of people in the southern territories of Russia in the period corresponding to the second million years BC. e., Evgeny Girya, an employee of the Experimental-traceological laboratory of the IIMK RAS, explained to the press.
Anna Gidenko