The global average temperature was roughly 6 degrees Celsius colder than the pre-industrial modern average — a difference that sounds modest but that, applied uniformly across the planet, represented a radical transformation of every major ecosystem.

In Siberia, the Last Glacial Maximum produced conditions that were extreme even by the standards of a region already defined by extremes.

The interior of Siberia was too dry for glaciation — the massive ice sheets that covered the maritime margins of the northern hemisphere did not extend into the continental interior, which lacked the precipitation to feed them.

Instead, the interior remained unglaciated but was characterized by a cold, dry, windswept environment — the steppe-tundra that supported the Pleistocene megafauna and the human communities that hunted them.

The specific temperatures near Lake Baikal during the Last Glacial Maximum were substantially colder than today.