What The Ice Kept For Us

The permafrost of northeastern Siberia is one of the most remarkable natural archives in the world.

Beneath the tundra surface, in sediment that has been frozen continuously for thousands of years, an extraordinary quantity of biological material is preserved: mammoth tusks, woolly rhinoceros horns, the complete bodies of Ice Age horses and bison, the organic remains of plant communities that no longer exist, and — rarely — the biological remains of the ancient humans who inhabited this landscape.

The Yana River terrace is one of the sites where this natural archive yields human material.