New Dates for Rock Art in Siberia and Mongolia

NOVOSIBIRSK, RUSSIA—The Siberian Times reports that Vyacheslav Molodin, Dmitry Cheremisin, and Lidia Zotkina of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Jean-Michel Geneste of the University of Bordeaux; and Catherine Cretin of France’s National Museum of Prehistory discovered additional images while examining weathered rock art in Russia’s Altai Republic, and some 12 miles away in northwestern Mongolia. When the engravings were discovered in the 1990s and early 2000s, the images were thought to be between 8,000 and 10,000 years old, and researchers were not sure if they depicted extinct or imagined creatures. The new study identified an additional image of a woolly rhinoceros and a baby woolly mammoth, which went extinct some 15,000 years ago. The images were also shown to have been made with stone implements. In addition, the patina on the stones indicates the images are older than previously thought. The international team of researchers concluded the images in the two locations had been drawn in the so-called Kalgutinsky style, which dates to the Upper Paleolithic period. To read about another discovery in Siberia's Altai region, go to "Siberian William Tell."