Prehistory · c. 450,000–400,000 years ago · Khryashchi, Rostov Oblast, Russia
Handaxes in southern Russia may be Eastern Europe's oldest Acheulean tools outside the Caucasus
Archaeologists provisionally date the riverside camp at Khryashchi to 450,000–400,000 years ago and think its toolmakers may have come north from the Caucasus.
Khryashchi, Russia Stone handaxes, picks and cleavers from a site in southern Russia may be the oldest known Acheulean tools in Eastern Europe outside the Caucasus. Archaeologists have provisionally dated the site, called Khryashchi, to between 450,000 and 400,000 years ago.
The site lies in the lower reaches of the Seversky Donets River, on the southern Russian Plain. Researchers from the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences studied the tools. They say the large cutting tools show the technical traits of the Early Acheulean.
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Acheulean is a stone-working tradition that first appeared in Africa more than 1.5 million years ago. It later spread across much of Eurasia, and its best-known tools are handaxes shaped on both faces. Similar Early Acheulean assemblages are known from the Caucasus. The team says no industry of this age has been identified elsewhere in Eastern Europe before.
Heavy tools for wood and meat
The most important parts of the assemblage are large cutting and chopping tools. Unlike simple flakes and scrapers, they needed several stages of deliberate shaping. They also appear to have been made for repeated use. The Khryashchi examples are particularly massive, with strong edges and points.
The researchers think the tools could have been used to make spears, clubs and digging sticks from wood, and to butcher carcasses. They propose that some may have been used on large, thick-skinned mammals such as elephants. There is no direct evidence of elephant butchery at the site yet.
Only a few animal bones have come from the cultural layer. They include remains of medium-sized hoofed animals such as horses and deer. The team suggests poor preservation may explain the scarcity, since organic material decays over hundreds of thousands of years. The researchers say the bones in the layer still strengthen the case that hunting and carcass processing took place at the site.
Dated by sediments and ancient environment
The age is an estimate based on the site's geology and ancient environment. Studies of the sediments and past environment led the researchers to propose that people were there at the end of the Oka glaciation or the start of the following Likhvin interglacial. That would be about 450,000 to 400,000 years ago, deep in the Middle Pleistocene. Conditions were relatively cold at the time.
“It can now be assumed that the early hunters’ camp existed at the end of the so-called Oka glaciation or at the very beginning of the subsequent Likhvin interglacial on the Russian Plain.”
Vyacheslav Shchelinsky, archaeologist
The camp stood beside an ancient channel of the Seversky Donets, or ancient Don river system. According to Shchelinsky, the riverbank could have offered aquatic food, stone for tools and places for temporary shelters. It may also have given some protection from predators. Nearby river crossings and watering places could have drawn animals to the spot.
Floods periodically covered traces of human activity, but people kept coming back. The team sees Khryashchi as a camp used again and again by highly mobile groups. They do not think it was a permanent settlement.
A possible route from the Caucasus
The tools closely resemble Early Acheulean industries farther south, in the western Ciscaucasus and on the Taman Peninsula. The researchers propose that the tradition reached the Russian Plain from the Caucasus. The makers, or earlier generations of the same population, may have moved north during the early Middle Pleistocene. This may have happened when the Manych Strait, which at times blocked the way north from the Caucasus, was absent or passable.
This migration idea is based mainly on similar tool traditions and ancient geography. More sites and more precise dates are needed to show how early humans reached the region. No human fossils have been reported from Khryashchi, so it is not known who made the tools.
Future excavations aim to refine the site's chronology, reconstruct its ancient environment and recover more material. Work is expected to continue in 2027.
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