Markina Gora

an Upper Paleolithic site near the city of Voronezh. It is located on the second terrace above the flood-plain of the right bank of the Don River on a promontory called Markina Gora. In 1954 the Soviet archaeologist A. N. Rogachev discovered a burial there containing an almost complete skeleton of a man of 20 to 25 years of age. The man from Markina Gora was of short stature (160 cm) and had a small brain cavity (1,165 cc). The presence of various characteristics of the modern Negroid type (prognathism, a wide nasal opening) led some scientists (G. F. Debets) to believe that the man from Markina Gora was close to the Grimaldi race. Other characteristics (the shape of the orbits, the very prominent nose) contradict this conclusion. The skeleton’s age dates to about 30,000 years B.C.