Fully advanced humans, sometimes referred to as…

Archaeological evidence from Bluefish Caves in Yukon, Canada, suggests human presence around 24,000 years ago based on cut-marked animal bones. Initially controversial when first reported by Jacques Cinq-Mars in the 1980s, recent reanalysis by Lauriane Bourgeon and colleagues has provided stronger evidence for the early dates, though the findings remain debated within the archaeological community. The site is currently being re-investigated with new techniques.

 

Modern human settlement in Ukraine and its vicinity dates back to 32,000 BCE, with later evidence of the Gravettian culture in the Crimean Mountains.

One typical artifact of the industry, once considered diagnostic, is a small pointed blade with a straight blunt back, known as the Gravette point.

These are used to hunt big game including bison, horse, reindeer and mammoth.

Gravettians also use nets to hunt small game.

The origins of the Gravettian people are not clear; they seem to appear simultaneously all over Europe.

The Ends of the Earth, one twelfth of the Earth’s surface, is bordered by the South Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans and includes Subcontinental South America, the Chonos Archipelago, Chiloé Island, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, the remote Juan Fernández Islands (notably home to the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk from 1704 to 1709, an experience thought to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), the even more remote Easter Island, and West Antarctica—the portion of Antarctica that lies within the Western Hemisphere and includes the Antarctic Peninsula.

Easter Island, culturally Polynesian yet governed by Chile, is among the most isolated inhabited islands in the world, positioned in the eastern South Pacific Ocean at the northwestern edge of The Ends of the Earth, along with the equally remote Pitcairn Islands.

The southeastern and southwestern boundaries divide West Antarctica from the much larger East Antarctica.

The northeastern boundary follows the approximate courses of the Colorado and Barrancas Rivers, which flow from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean and are traditionally recognized as the northern limit of Argentine Patagonia.

For Chilean Patagonia, most geographers and historians identify its northern boundary at the Huincul Fault in the Araucanía Region.

HistoryAtlas contains 153 entries for The Ends of the Earths from the Upper Paleolithic period to 1899.

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The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to the time of maximum extent of the ice sheets during the last glacial period, between twenty-six thousand five hundred and nineteen thousand to twenty thousand years ago.

The Younger Dryas will follow the Last Glacial Maximum.

Ice sheets cover the whole of Iceland and all but the southern extremity of the British Isles.

This ice extends northward to cover Svalbard and Franz Josef Land and eastward to occupy the northern half of the West Siberian Plain, ending at the Taymyr Peninsula, and damming the Ob and Yenisei rivers forming a West Siberian Glacial Lake.

Northern Europe is largely covered, the southern boundary passing through Germany and Poland, but not quite joined to the British ice sheet.

Permafrost covers Europe south of the ice sheet down to present-day Szeged and Asia down to Beijing.

The ice covers essentially all of Canada and extends roughly to the Missouri and Ohio Rivers, and eastward to New York City.