Moscow students found a pit with a palisade of bones and teeth

This is the first such ice age installation in Russia.

The cave installation of the teeth and bones of ancient animals, presumably related to the Ice Age, was first discovered by historians of Moscow State University. Lomonosov in one of the caves of the Chelyabinsk region.

According to Moscow State University, the installation was found in the Serpievskaya-2 cave, the third underground monument with Paleolithic wall images in our country (after Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves).

Students of the Faculty of History drew attention to a hole surrounded by a kind of palisade of bones. Bones and teeth of large animals of the Ice Age – horse, bison, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, wolf – were specially driven around the pit and even fixed with specially selected stones.

According to the head of the South Ural archaeological expedition of Moscow State University, Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladislav Zhitenev, pits and pits with bones are quite widely known at open-type Paleolithic sites. As a rule, they served either as storage, a kind of lockers or refrigerators. But they were rarely found in caves. In Russia, until recently, nothing like this structure (it is about 14 thousand years old) has not been found at all.

In addition to bone remains, individual charcoal and grains of colorful pigment (red ocher) were found in the pit. Above the pit and next to it, on the walls, the prehistoric artist created images, among which the figure of a reindeer stands out – a very rare image for the ancient artists of the Southern Urals.

Research on ancient artifacts continues. Specialists took measures to protect the cave from strangers.