Discussion

The prehistory of Dvuglaska Cave seems straightforward on the basis of the work by Abramova and associates, and on our own small effort in perimortem taphonomy. There is practically no evidence for human presence in any of our 205 pieces of bone. Only the one black-colored piece of bone may be linked to human activity, i. e., accidental burning in a campfire. We did find an eyed bone needle and a polished bone splinter in the 20 000-year-old horizon (the same horizon from which we obtained charcoal that carbon-14 dated at 17 000 BP. Our other charcoal sample came from deeper in the broadside and provided a date of 29 000 BP). At the older depth we found no sign of human presence.

On the other hand, the severe bone damage and the evidence of unequivocal carnivore processing, including the critically important acid erosion of bone, all point to the cave as having been used much more by hyenas and other carnivores than by humans. Moreover, the site’s defensively poor location for human occupancy, as well as the very limited amount of stone and bone artifacts, stone tool manufacturing debris, and lack of hearths can best be interpreted to mean that Dvuglaska was used only on a rare and temporary basis by humans. While humans had unquestionably left a few stone and bone artifacts in the cave, requiring us to classify Dvuglaska as an archaeological site, in our view the cave’s deposits are overwhelmingly more paleontological than archaeological. While we do not doubt that Abramova found actual Mousterian artifacts in Dvuglaska Cave, our failure to do so raised some question in our mind about those artifacts. However, John F. Hoffecker (personal communication, April 19, 2003), who has examined them, assured the senior author that they are man-made.

The combination of hyenas, a tailoring needle, and other evidence of human presence in the middle Yenisei basin at ca. 20 000 BP is potentially important for a better understanding of why the colonization of the New World was so late in comparison with all other parts of the Old World except Polynesia. We will go into more detail later about this combination. We only mention this subject now to help the reader appreciate that we feel that the lives of hyenas, other carnivores, and the northern dispersal of humans seemingly are competitively linked.