Archaeologists Unearth Stone Age Settlement In Russia

Archaeologists have unearthed a 22,000-year-old settlement near Moscow that once was inhabited by early Stone Age hunters of woolly mammoths.

The excavated dwellings provide the oldest evidence of humans in the Moscow region, The Moscow Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

It previously had been thought that the region - in an ice age at the time - had been too cold to support human life, said Hizri Amirkhanov of the Institute of Archeology and leader of the dig.

The site in Zaraisk, 125 miles southeast of the capital, has yielded tools, jewelry and the remains of 15 mammoths killed by the hunters. The only human remnant found so far is an arm bone.

After three years of excavation, the breakthrough came this summer when archaeologists discovered two round dwellings with roofs made from mammoth bone.