Mal’ta did not stand alone in the archaeological record.

A few kilometers from the Mal’ta site, another Upper Paleolithic site called Buret’ had been excavated and produced material culture closely related to what was found at Mal’ta — so closely related that researchers often speak of the “Mal’ta-Buret’ culture” as a single archaeological horizon, a network of related communities sharing material traditions, artistic conventions, and presumably some degree of social interaction.

The Buret’ site produced its own female figurines, similar in style to those from Mal’ta, and its own evidence of Pleistocene animal exploitation and symbolic life.

The two sites together establish that the culture represented at Mal’ta was not an isolated anomaly — it was a regional tradition, evidence of a population that occupied the Lake Baikal region during the Last Glacial Maximum and that maintained a distinctive cultural identity in the challenging conditions of late Pleistocene Siberia.