What Gerasimov and subsequent researchers uncovered at Mal’ta over the following decades was one of the richest Upper Paleolithic sites in Asia — a location that had been continuously or repeatedly occupied for a significant period and that had produced an extraordinary corpus of material culture.

Figurines carved from mammoth ivory.

Ornaments made from bone and shell.

Stone tools of the kind associated with Paleolithic hunting cultures across a vast geographic range.

And, beneath a stone slab, the remains of a child.

The Child And The Stone

Archaeologists describe the Mal’ta burial with a combination of precision and evident fascination.

It is not a simple interment — not a body placed in a hole with no further ceremony.