МАЭ № 6080-14

Mesolithic man from Yuzhny Oleniy (Southern Reindeer) Island (Onega Lake)

circa 1939

plaster

Yuzhny Oleniy Island, situated in the northeastern part of Lake Onega, is the location of a huge cemetery excavated by V.I. Ravdonikas in 1936-38. Ravdonikas and his colleagues attributed the cemetery to the late Neolithic. Gerasimov, however, argued that the site is much earlier, dating to the early Neolithic or even Mesolithic. Recent science-based (radiocarbon) dating techniques demonstrated that he was right: Yuzhny Oleniy indeed dates to the Mesolithic (7th – 6th millennia BC). The male cranium from burial 12, which Gerasimov used for this reconstruction, has Mongoloid features. New genetic data have supported Gerasimov’s observation: the analysis of DNA extracted from the bones of those people shows them to be close to western Siberians. Their remote descendants might have been the Sami (Lapps). The man’s headgear is decorated with beaver incisors, which are numerous in the graves.

Anthropological plastic reconstructions, lifetime masks. 19th - 20th centuries