Cultural practices associated with modern humans—such as the careful burial of the dead, the creation of elaborate cave art, and the decoration of everyday objects—emerge during this period, reflecting an increasing sense of ritual, symbolism, and aesthetic expression.

Collections of bear bones at several widely dispersed sites suggest that Neanderthals may have worshiped cave bears, especially at Drachenloch above Vättis, in Switzerland, where a stone chest was discovered with a number of bear skulls stacked upon it.

Neanderthals, who also inhabited the entrance of the cave, are believed to have built it.

A massive stone slab covered the top of the structure.

At the cave entrance, seven bear skulls were arranged with their muzzles facing the cave entrance, while deeper in the cave, a further six bear skulls were lodged in niches along the wall.

Next to these remains were bundles of limb bones belonging to different bears.

Neanderthal Burial and Bear Remains at Le Regourdou, France

At Le Regourdou, a prehistoric site in the Dordogne region of southern France, archaeologists will uncover a massive stone slab covering the remains of at least twenty bears, arranged in a rectangular pit. Nearby, the remains of a Neanderthal will be found in a separate stone-lined pit, accompanied by a collection of objects that suggest a deliberate burial.

Possible Ritual Significance

• The Neanderthal burial included items such as a bear humerus, a scraper, a core, and some flakes, which have been interpreted as grave offerings.
• The close proximity of Neanderthal remains and bear remains has led to speculation about a symbolic or ritual connection between Neanderthals and bears, possibly indicating:
  • A ritualistic association with bears, perhaps related to beliefs about the afterlife.
  • A functional use of bear remains in burial practices.
  • A coincidence of site usage, where Neanderthals and bears occupied the same shelter at different times.

A Rare Glimpse into Neanderthal Culture

The Le Regourdou site provides compelling evidence of Neanderthal burial customs and potentially ritual behavior. Whether the bear remains were intentionally placed or coincidental, the site's structured layout and the presence of grave goods suggest that Neanderthals practiced deliberate burial and had symbolic or spiritual concepts.

This discovery reinforces the view that Neanderthals were not merely survival-driven hominins but had complex cultural and cognitive abilities, challenging earlier assumptions about their intellectual and social sophistication.

As humans develop more advanced skills and techniques, evidence of early construction begins to emerge.

Fossil remains of Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and other Homo sapiens subspecies have been found alongside foundation stones and stone pavements arranged in the shape of houses, suggesting a shift toward settled lifestyles and increasing social stratification.

In addition to building on land, early humans also develop seafaring technology. The proto-Australians appear to be the first known people to cross open water to an unseen shore, ultimately peopling Australia—a remarkable achievement in early maritime exploration.

Modern human culture begins to evolve at an accelerated pace, marking a significant shift in behavior and innovation.

Some anthropologists, notably Jared Diamond, author of The Third Chimpanzee, describe this period as a "Great Leap Forward." During this time, modern humans adopt new cultural and technological practices, including:

• Burying their dead, often with grave goods, suggesting ritual or symbolic thought,
• Crafting clothing from hides, improving survival in colder climates,
• Developing advanced hunting techniques, such as trapping pits or driving animals off cliffs, and
• Creating cave paintings and other forms of artistic expression.

As human culture advances, different populations begin to introduce novelty into existing technologies. Unlike earlier hominins, modern humans show regional variations in artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons, and bone needles, demonstrating a previously unseen diversity of tools and personal items.

Anthropologists identify several key markers of modern human behavior, including:

• Tool specialization,
• Adornment with jewelry and symbolic imagery (such as cave drawings),
• Organized living spaces,
• Elaborate rituals, including burials with grave gifts,
• Exploration of harsh or previously uninhabited environments, and
• The development of barter trade networks.

Debate continues over whether these advancements were the result of a sudden cognitive "revolution"—sometimes called "the big bang of human consciousness"—or whether they emerged through a more gradual evolutionary process.

Around 55,000 years ago, global weather patterns begin to fluctuate dramatically, shifting from extreme cold to milder conditions and back within just a few decades.

By 50,000 years ago, the Wisconsin glaciation (known in Europe as the Würm glaciation) is well advanced. Expanding ice sheets in North America and Europe push climatic zones southward, transforming the temperate regions of Europe and North America into Arctic tundra-like landscapes. Meanwhile, rain bands typical of temperate zones shift south, reaching as far as northern Africa.

Neanderthals and Climate Adaptation

The Neanderthals, well adapted to cold climates with their barrel chests and stocky limbs, are better suited than Cro-Magnons to retain body heat. However, the rapid and unpredictable climate fluctuations cause ecological upheavals, replacing familiar plants and animals within a single lifetime—a shift to which Neanderthals struggle to adapt.

One major challenge is the replacement of forests by grasslands during the Mousterian Pluvial, an effect of the last Ice Age’s climatic shifts. This change disrupts the Neanderthals’ ambush-based hunting techniques, making it harder for them to secure food. As a result, large numbers of Neanderthals likely perish due to food scarcity and environmental stress, with the crisis peaking around 30,000 years ago.

Neanderthal Burial and Final Strongholds

Despite their decline, Neanderthals appear to be the first humans to intentionally bury their dead, often in simple graves. The last known traces of Mousterian culture, though lacking human remains, have been discovered at Gorham’s Cave on Gibraltar’s remote south-facing coast, dating between 30,000 and 24,500 years ago.

Possible Scenarios for Neanderthal Extinction

Several hypotheses attempt to explain the disappearance of the Neanderthals from the fossil record around 25,000 years ago:

1. Complete Extinction and Replacement: Neanderthals were a separate species from modern humans and became extinct due to climate change and/or competition with Homo sapiens, who expanded into their territories starting around 80,000 years ago. Anthropologist Jared Diamond suggests that violent conflict and displacement played a role in their demise.

2. Interbreeding and Absorption: Neanderthals were a contemporary subspecies that interbred with modern humans, gradually disappearing through genetic absorption.

3. Volcanic Catastrophe: A Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption around 40,000 years ago, followed by a second eruption a few thousand years later, may have severely impacted Neanderthal populations. Evidence from Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia supports this theory, with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis showing a distinct Neanderthal lineage separate from modern humans.

Energy Needs and Survival Challenges

Neanderthals had higher caloric requirements than any other known human species. They required 100 to 350 more calories per day than an anatomically modern human male (68.5 kg) or female (59.2 kg). This higher energy demand may have made them especially vulnerable when food sources became scarce, further contributing to their extinction.

Ultimately, by 25,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappear from the fossil record, leaving behind traces of their culture—but no direct descendants in the modern human genetic lineage.

Northeastern Eurasia (49,293 – 28,578 BCE): Upper Pleistocene I — Steppe, Ice, and the Making of the Northern Corridor

Geographic and Environmental Context

During the late Pleistocene, Northeastern Eurasia extended from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, encompassing the mammoth-steppe plains of East Europe and Western Siberia, the Altai–Yenisei uplands, and the Amur–Okhotsk–Bering frontier of Northeast Asia.
It was not a single region but a triadic system of worlds:

• East Europe, the western steppe edge, framed by the Don, Dnieper, and Oka valleys — a land of loess terraces and braided rivers supporting dense megafaunal herds.

• Northwest Asia, the Siberian interior, from the Urals through the Ob–Irtysh–Yenisei corridor to the Altai, where glacial basins and intermontane valleys served as refugia amid vast permafrost plains.

• Northeast Asia, the Pacific rim and Beringian shelf, where tundra-steppe met coastal polynyas, bridging the continents long before human migration reached the New World.

Across these subregions, the environment graded from continental aridity in the west to maritime cold along the Pacific — a spectrum of adaptation that tied Eurasia together along its northern rim.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

The interval encompassed alternating Dansgaard–Oeschger warmings and Heinrich cold pulses leading into the Last Glacial Maximum.

• In East Europe, permafrost advanced to the Dnieper and Don basins; vegetation alternated between steppe grassland and dwarf-shrub tundra.

• In Northwest Asia, continental cold and aridity dominated; the Ob and Yenisei braided into unstable channels; loess and dust storms swept the forelands of the Urals and Altai.

• In Northeast Asia, cold was tempered by oceanic moisture. Ice-edge upwellings in the Okhotsk and Bering seas sustained rich marine ecosystems, even as inland basins froze.

Periodic interstadial thaws re-greened the valleys, drawing herds northward and humans with them; stadials drove retreat to riverine refugia.
The result was a dynamic equilibrium of expansion and contraction rather than a single glacial standstill.

Lifeways and Settlement Patterns

All three worlds supported high-latitude foraging economies built on mobility, storage, and memory of place.

• In East Europe, loess-terrace camps overlooked reindeer and mammoth migration corridors. Semi-recurrent bases at Kostenki, Sungir, and along the Dnieper combined hunting, butchery, and craft production.

• In Northwest Asia, the Altai foothills and Minusinsk Basin hosted recurrent winter shelters, while open Ob–Yenisei valleys served for summer mammoth and bison hunts.

• In Northeast Asia, river-mouth camps and coastal flats supported dual economies of inland big-game and maritime sealing and fishing. Seasonal movements linked river confluences, upland passes, and shelf-edge hunting grounds.

Each subregion achieved local stability through broad prey portfolios and cyclical mobility tuned to glacial rhythms.

Technology and Material Culture

A shared Upper Paleolithic technological grammar spanned the entire northern corridor:

• Blade and microblade industries, adapted to portable composite weapons, formed the technological backbone from the Don to the Anadyr.

• Bone, antler, and ivory were fashioned into points, awls, harpoons, and eyed needles — evidence for tailored fur clothing and cold-weather dwellings.

• Obsidian sources in the Altai and Kamchatka and flint quarries in the Don basin anchored far-flung exchange networks.

• Personal adornment — beads of tooth, ivory, shell, and amber — and ochre burials underscored enduring symbolic systems linking the Eurasian north to the rest of the Upper Paleolithic world.

The breadth of these parallels reveals not isolation but interoperability across extreme distance.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

Northeastern Eurasia was defined by movement — the continual negotiation between ice, water, and wind.

1. The Steppe–River Network: Don–Volga–Ural–Ob–Yenisei channels allowed seasonal following of herds and diffusion of tool types and ornaments.

2. The Altai–Mongolia Crossroads: A mountainous hinge connecting western and eastern populations, where genetic and cultural exchanges mixed Siberian and East Asian lineages.

3. The Amur–Okhotsk–Bering Rim: Shelf and river corridors provided both overland and coastal pathways toward Beringia, the eventual gateway to the Americas.

These arteries made the northern fringe not an end of settlement but a conveyor of innovation and populationbetween continents.

Cultural and Symbolic Expressions

Symbolic behavior mirrored subsistence breadth.
Engraved bones, ivory figurines, and ochred burials appear in all three subregions, expressing a shared spiritual engagement with animals and ancestors.
Altai and Don sites yield portable art and ivory figures, while the Amur and Lena valleys preserve carved bone and antler motifs of reindeer and mammoth.
Fire-ringed hearths and ritual hearth renewals suggest continuity of place and group identity across generations.
In these expressions, the northern peoples joined the global Upper Paleolithic symbolic sphere while imprinting it with an Arctic signature of endurance and cyclical return.

Environmental Adaptation and Resilience

Resilience depended on technological insulation, ecological diversity, and social connectivity.
Fur clothing, hide shelters, and stored fuel allowed wintering at 60–70° N; seasonal migration between coast, river, and plateau distributed risk; and wide alliance networks permitted exchange of mates, materials, and knowledge across immense ranges.
When one valley froze, another thawed — and people already knew the way.

Genetic and Linguistic Legacy

Populations rooted in this corridor carried the genetic foundations of later Arctic and Beringian peoples.
From East Europe through the Altai to the Amur, gene flow linked Eurasia’s west and east, seeding the ancestry of the First Americans and shaping linguistic substrates later echoed in circumpolar families.
Northeastern Eurasia thus became the cradle of the circumpolar continuum — a trans-Beringian cultural ecology that would persist for tens of millennia.

Transition Toward the Last Glacial Maximum

By 28,578 BCE, ice sheets and permafrost deepened, narrowing the habitable band to river valleys and steppe oases.
Yet humans remained throughout, their territories contracting but not vanishing.
The East European plains anchored the west, the Altai–Yenisei belt sustained the interior, and the Amur–Bering coast reached outward toward a new continent.

Northeastern Eurasia therefore stands as a model of The Twelve Worlds principle: its subregions were self-contained in ecology yet outward-looking in connection, bound less by shared geography than by the long, unbroken thread of movement — the first great northern highway of the human story.

Northeast Asia (49,293 – 28,578 BCE): Upper Paleolithic I — Mammoth-Steppe, Sheltered Coasts, and First Long Ranges

Geographic and Environmental Context

Northeast Asia includes eastern Siberia east of the Lena River to the Pacific, the Russian Far East (excluding the southern Primorsky/Vladivostok corner), northern Hokkaidō (above its southwestern peninsula), and extreme northeastern Heilongjiang.

• Anchors: the Lower/Middle Amur and Ussuri basins, the Sea of Okhotsk littoral (Sakhalin, Kurils), Kamchatka, the Chukchi Peninsula (with Wrangel Island offshore), northern Hokkaidō, and seasonally emergent shelves along the Bering Sea and northwest Pacific.

Ancient North Siberians and the Deep Eurasian Split

The earliest securely identified human population associated with Northeast Asia belongs to a previously unknown lineage now termed the Ancient North Siberians (ANS). Genomic evidence from the Yana River sites (Yana RHS) indicates that these peoples were established in northeastern Siberia by at least 38,000 years ago, well before the Last Glacial Maximum.

The ANS diverged from Western Eurasians shortly after Western Eurasians themselves separated from East Asians, placing the ANS at a pivotal early junction in Eurasian population history. Culturally and biologically distinct, they adapted to extreme high-latitude environments long before the formation of later Siberian populations.

Crucially, these early inhabitants are not ancestral to most later Siberians and do not represent a continuous population into the Holocene. Instead, they form an early, now largely vanished branch of Eurasian humanity whose genetic legacy survives only in diluted form.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Last Glacial Maximum (c. 26,500–19,000 BCE) dominated the latter half of this interval: colder, drier conditions; permafrost pushed south; sea level ~100 m lower exposed broad coastal plains.

• Inland mammoth-steppe mosaics (grass–forb) alternated with open larch; coastlines were wider, with ice-edge polynyas supporting marine life.

Subsistence and Settlement

• Big-game foraging focused on mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, bison, and reindeer on river terraces (Aldan–Amur–Anadyr).

• Coastal scouts used intertidal flats and pack-ice edges to take seals, walrus, seabirds, and winter fish.

• Camps clustered at confluences, aeolian bluffs, and paleo-shorelines; repeated seasonal use left dense knapping scatters and hearths.

Technology and Material Culture

• Blade and microblade industries from local obsidian (e.g., Hokkaidō, Kamchatka) and high-quality chert; hafted composite points for thrusting/spear-throwing.

• Bone/antler/ivory harpoons, awls, eyed needles; tailored cold-weather clothing and boots.

• Personal adornment: drilled tooth/shell pendants, beads, engraved bone; ochre widely used.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• River highways: Lena–Aldan–Amur trunks guided seasonal migrations.

• Shelf-edge “kelp highway” along the Okhotsk–Bering coasts supported over-ice travel in winter and nearshore voyaging in summer.

• Wrangel–Chukchi–Beringia arcs linked Northeast Asia to the sub-glacial refugium on the far side of the strait.

Cultural and Symbolic Expressions

• Carved animal figurines and engraved bones reflect close predator–prey cosmologies.

• Ochre burials and hearth-centered activity zones suggest shared Upper Paleolithic mortuary and domestic traditions.

Environmental Adaptation and Resilience

• High mobility between coast–river–upland zones diversified diets and buffered risk.

• Cold-weather tailoring, layered shelters (snow/skin windbreaks), and fuel provisioning enabled wintering at high latitudes.

Genetic and Linguistic Legacy

• Ice-age Northeast Asian groups contributed key ancestry to Beringian populations; these, in turn, fed the founding gene pool of the First Americans.

• Deep links formed here between Arctic–sub-Arctic foragers that later radiated across the North Pacific rim.

Transition Toward the Next Epoch

By 28,578 BCE, foragers in Northeast Asia had mastered periglacial ecologies and coastal shelves. As climate wobble and deglaciation approached, river and shoreline corridors would become even more crucial for movement, exchange, and eventual trans-Beringian dispersals.

Southern Indian Ocean (49,293–28,578 BCE): Upper Pleistocene I — Glacial Frontiers and the Subantarctic Living Sea

Geographic & Environmental Context

During the height of the last Ice Age, the Southern Indian Ocean world—composed of the Southeast Indian Ocean subregion (Kerguelen east of 70°E, Heard, and McDonald Islands) and the Southwest Indian Ocean subregion(western Kerguelen, the Îsles Crozet, and Prince Edward–Marion Islands)—stood as a scattered constellation of volcanic outposts astride the circumpolar current.

Together, these two subregions formed the northern ramparts of Antarctica’s climatic realm: bleak, wind-lashed, yet biologically exuberant. Their high plateaus and coastal shelves were carved by ice and pummeled by the Southern Ocean’s furious westerlies.  Kerguelen, the “Great Southern Land” of the subantarctic, spanned nearly 7,000 square miles of basaltic uplands, glaciers, and fjorded coasts—dwarfing its neighbors. To the west, the Crozet and Prince Edward groups rose as serrated volcanic cones; to the east, Heard and McDonald smoldered on the oceanic horizon. Sea levels 60–90 m lower than today broadened their near-shore benches, but their cliffs and mountains ensured that even exposed shelves were narrow.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

Throughout this span, the Last Glacial Maximum gathered strength.

• Atmosphere & Temperature: Mean annual temperatures were several degrees colder than today, and precipitation fell mostly as snow. Ice caps mantled Kerguelen’s highlands and the summits of Heard and Crozet.

• Winds & Currents: The westerly storm belt intensified; katabatic outflow from Antarctica sharpened the pressure gradient, amplifying the “roaring forties” and “furious fifties.”

• Ocean Systems: The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) tightened around the islands, churning nutrient-rich upwellings that fueled one of Earth’s great marine food webs.

• Sea Level: Lower global sea level expanded intertidal zones and ice-free headlands but did little to change the islands’ rugged relief.

The result was an environment at once extreme and thriving—a cold oceanic oasis in which ice, wind, and water sustained a chain of life from krill to whale.

Ecosystems & Biotic Communities

Though uninhabited by humans, these islands pulsed with ecological energy.

• Terrestrial life: Sparse subantarctic tundra—mosses, lichens, cushion plants, and graminoids—colonized lee slopes and moraines. On Kerguelen’s western plateaus and Heard’s lower benches, periglacial soils nurtured mats of hardy vegetation that trapped moisture and nitrogen from seabird guano.

• Avifauna:  Albatrosses, petrels, skuas, and penguins established immense rookeries, their cycles governed by ice advance and retreat.

• Marine mammals:  Seals and elephant seals hauled out on the few ice-free beaches; whales traced annual feeding migrations through the ACC’s plankton blooms.

• Marine productivity: Krill, squid, and small pelagic fish flourished in cold upwelling zones, knitting together a trans-oceanic ecosystem that linked Antarctica, Africa, and Australasia.

These biological systems recycled nutrients with astonishing efficiency; seabird guano and seal carcasses fertilized soils, and winds redistributed minerals across the ocean surface—an unbroken loop of energy long before any human witness.

Human Absence and Global Context

Elsewhere across the planet, Upper Paleolithic peoples perfected blade industries, tailored clothing, and art traditions, but no seafarers had ventured this far south. The subantarctic islands lay well beyond the reach of any Pleistocene navigation system. Their extreme latitude, relentless weather, and lack of fuel or timber would have defeated even the most adaptable hunter-gatherers.

Their absence, however, highlights a global contrast: while Eurasian and African foragers filled temperate landscapes with symbols and settlements, the Southern Indian Ocean remained the great unpeopled wilderness, its only networks those of wind, current, and migration.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

Even without humans, the region was laced with biological highways:

• The ACC carried nutrients and drifting plankton eastward around the world, feeding a continuous belt of marine life.

• Migratory whales and seabirds followed these currents seasonally, moving between Antarctic feeding grounds and temperate breeding sites.

• The islands themselves acted as stepping-stones for non-human travelers—rookeries, haul-outs, and rest sites—linking ecosystems thousands of kilometers apart.

These corridors, carved by wind and current, pre-figured the oceanic routes that human mariners would one day exploit.

Symbolic and Conceptual Dimensions

To the Ice-Age imagination, had these lands been known, they would have represented the edge of the habitable world—a mythic margin where ocean, ice, and sky merged. In reality they lay beyond any cultural horizon, silent witnesses to global climatic drama, unmarked by tools or fire.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Across glacial cycles, these ecosystems displayed remarkable resilience:

• Vegetation persisted in sheltered micro-refugia, recolonizing freshly deglaciated ground after each cold surge.

• Seabirds and seals adjusted breeding sites in rhythm with ice extent.

• Nutrient cycling remained intact through redundancy: if one rookery failed, others thrived along the current.

This flexibility forged an enduring ecological template that would persist into the Holocene and still defines the subantarctic today.

Transition Toward the Glacial Maximum

By 28,578 BCE, glaciers on Kerguelen and Heard had reached their broadest limits, and sea ice brushed the northern edge of the ACC. Yet life endured in astonishing abundance.

The Southern Indian Ocean, though untouched by humans, was already a complete, self-regulating world—a chain of volcanic fortresses girdling the planet’s coldest sea. Its twin subregions, Southeast and Southwest Indian Ocean, illustrate precisely the principle that unites The Twelve Worlds: even where no people walked, each subregion lived as its own coherent ecology, bound more closely to kindred zones across oceans than to any continental neighbor. When humanity finally reached these latitudes, the template for adaptation—ice, wind, nutrient, and endurance—was already written in the land itself.

Southeast Indian Ocean (49,293–28,578 BCE): Subantarctic Islands in the Ice Age

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of Southeast Indian Ocean includes Kerguelen east of 70°E and Heard Island and McDonald Islands. These remote volcanic islands rise from the southern Indian Ocean far below the subtropical belt, edging into the subantarctic climatic zone. Kerguelen forms the largest landmass, with its basaltic plateaus, glacial valleys, and fjord-like inlets. Heard Island and the tiny McDonald group lie further east, dominated by the active stratovolcano Big Ben on Heard and barren rocky islets in the McDonalds. Rugged coasts, strong currents, and exposure to prevailing westerlies made these lands biologically and climatically distinct from equatorial or continental environments.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

During this Upper Paleolithic age, global sea levels were 60–90 meters lower than today, reflecting the Last Glacial Maximum’s approach. The islands’ coasts were broader, though steep cliffs and volcanic forms kept much of the shoreline dramatic. The climate was colder, windier, and drier, with glaciers expanding across Kerguelen’s uplands and icefields growing around Big Ben. Snow and ice accumulation carved valleys and extended tongues of ice to the sea. The surrounding Southern Ocean was cooler, nutrient-rich, and dynamic, sustaining upwellings that intensified productivity of marine ecosystems.

Subsistence & Settlement

No humans had yet arrived; these islands remained untouched by people until the modern era. Yet ecosystems flourished. Subantarctic tundra vegetation—mosses, lichens, cushion plants, and grasses—covered exposed surfaces. Freshwater lakes and meltwater streams hosted hardy invertebrates. The seas teemed with krill, fish, and squid, supporting colonies of seabirds and seals. Penguins likely ranged widely across the Southern Ocean during this period, using ice-free coasts for rookeries in warmer interludes. These animal communities created ecological patterns of nutrient cycling and guano fertilization that shaped the islands’ soils long before human presence.

Technology & Material Culture

Though humans had no presence here, this period corresponds globally to advances in Upper Paleolithic stone industries—blade technologies, bone tools, and art traditions in other regions. If transoceanic voyaging had improbably reached these latitudes (something for which there is no evidence), survival would have required mastery of cold-weather adaptations: sewn clothing, sea mammal hunting, and ocean-going craft. The absence of such settlement highlights the remoteness and environmental extremity of the Southeast Indian Ocean islands compared with other subantarctic or continental zones.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

The islands lay within the great circumpolar circulation of winds and currents—the roaring forties and furious fifties. Oceanic systems here acted as a conveyor belt for nutrients and migrating species. Marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and whales followed seasonal routes past Kerguelen and Heard, feeding on the plankton-rich waters. Seabirds traversed vast distances, linking the islands ecologically to Antarctica, Africa, and Australasia. Although no humans traveled these corridors at this time, the patterns they would later rely on—migratory pathways, productive fisheries—were already established.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

There were no cultural expressions tied to these islands in this age. Symbolic activity was flourishing elsewhere: cave paintings in Europe, ritual burials in Asia, and ornaments in Africa. If known, such remote islands might have carried a liminal symbolic weight as places beyond the margins of human habitation. But in this period, they remained outside the human imaginative sphere.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Ecosystems on Kerguelen and Heard demonstrated resilience to glacial fluctuations. Plant life endured in sheltered microclimates, retreating and re-expanding as glaciers advanced and retreated. Bird and seal populations adapted to shifting ice fronts, relocating rookeries and haul-out sites. The islands thus exemplified how subantarctic ecologies reorganize under climatic stress, laying groundwork for the resilience patterns observed into the Holocene.

Transition

By 28,578 BCE, the glacial maximum was approaching, with ice sheets at their most extensive. The Southeast Indian Ocean islands stood as icy outposts, ecologically vibrant but humanly unvisited. Their landscapes were already etched by glaciers, storms, and ocean swells—patterns that would persist until humans finally encountered them millennia later.