When Elephants Roamed the Steppe:
A Challenge to Archaeological Assumptions About the Mongolian Paleolithic
37th Meeting of the PIAC, Chantilly 1994
Western archaeologists have long assumed that modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens, moved from Africa into Europe and the southern parts of Asia sometime around the beginning of the Late Paleolithic (40,000 to 12,000 B.C.E.), and did not move north, into areas like Mongolia, until the beginning of the Mesolithic (12,000) B.C.E.).
Recent finds from a cave in western Mongolia, however, may challenge these assumptions. The small Khoit Tsenker cave, located about twenty-five kilometers to the southwest of Manxan Somon, contains wall paintings, made by modern humans, of two animals that could clearly not exist in modern Mongolia. In a study of this cave, the Russian archaeologist, A. P. Okladnikov claims that these are representations of the ostrich and the elephant.[1] If Okladnikov’s hypthesis is correct, and if the humans who made the paintings had contact with these animals in Mongolia, then it follows that this region of Mongolia at one time had climate warm enough to support such animals and humans. Scientists know that the climate of the region became inhositable to animals like the the elephant and ostrich prior to the Mesolithic. Okladnikov’s hypothesis suggests that modern humans must have existed in Mongolia long before Western archaeologists assume possible.
The purpose of this paper is to test the strength of this hypothesis. To do this, I have broken my investigation down into three areas: 1.) drawing upon Paleolithic and contemporary images of ostriches and elephants, I will test his identification of the forms represented in the Khoit Tsenker cave; 2.) drawing upon the lastest theories about the evolution and diffusion of these species, I will see if they could have moved into this region before the Mesolithic; and 3.) drawing upon paleo-climatological and -ecological data, I will investigate whether or not the suitable habitat could have existed for these animals before the Mesolithic.
The preliminary results of my research suggest that these are representations of ostriches and elephants, which could have been created around the time of the last glacial Ice Age (21,000 B.C.E. to 18,000 B.C.E.). These results could lead Western archaeologists to re-examine their assumptions about the evolution and spread of this species of human throughout the world, could extend to the north the area in which Paleolithic elephants are assumed to have existed, and could encourage a re-examination of the importance of Mongolia to the study of the Paleolithic.
[1] Okladnikov, A. P. “The Cave Paintings of Xoit Tsenker Grotto or Sengri Agui of Western Mongolia,” in Central Asian Centers of Primitive Art. Novosibirsk, 1972. Trans. by Larry Moses. Unpublished manuscript, 1993, pp. 17–18.