The Middle and the Early Upper Paleolithic around the Black Sea

Abstract

The territories around the Black Sea occupy a key position in investigating connections between Asia and Europe. Particular attention should be devoted to land bridges that connect the Near East and Europe given the suggestion that Homo erectus spread from Africa via the Near East to Asia and then to Europe and that archaic modern humans migrated along a similar route. Anatolia together with the Balkans, and Transcaucasia with the Kuban basin, were important terrestrial bridges. Unfortunately, research into the Paleolithic in these territories is poorly developed. Many blank areas exist including Anatolia, a large part of the Balkans, and the eastern and southern part of Transcaucasia. Western Transcaucasia, the Kuban basin, Crimea, and the regions between the lower Danube and the Dneper are better explored. Studies of the prehistory of the territories around the Black Sea were conducted separately within the various regions attached either to Central-Eastern Europe or to the Near East. As a result, no synthetic work has been written so far that approaches the question of the Paleolithic in the Pontian perspective. The present paper is the first attempt to expound the cultural interrelations which existed around the Black Sea during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic. The territories which construct the littoral around the Black Sea are distinct both ecologically and geomorphologically. In addition, the paucity of research and the few radiometric determinations make it difficult to correlate the paleoclimatic sequences. It should be remembered that employing paleontological criteria (biozonation) for archaeological dating of assemblages, in particular of Lower and Middle Paleolithic age, is impeded by the conservative character of fauna and flora in the Transcaucasian region. Several species which are typical of earlier periods in Europe persisted much longer. This was caused by the isolation of the Pleistocene fauna and the presence of faunal refugia in the Caucasus.