The Earliest Evidence of the Manufacturing of Solutions and Viscoplastic Mixtures from Paint Pigments on the Russian Plain in the Middle Paleolithic

The article presents the results of studying a series of small individual pigment particles discovered in the cultural layer of the Chelyuskinets II site, which is part of the Lower Volga Middle Paleolithic group together with the Eurasian reference site Sukhaya Mechetka and the Zaikino Pepelishche site. Preliminary results of OSL dating indicate the age of the cultural layer in the range of 150–165 thousand years BP (mid-MIS 6). The pigments of different types, including those with traces of anthropogenic impact, discovered in the area of the site studied in 2024 allow us to classify Chelyuskinets II as a circle of a few early Middle Paleolithic sites with clear evidence of various ways of using colorful pigments. The study confirms the artificial origin of pasty materials, represented by small ocher fragments, indicating the preparation and use of special suspension masses. The transformation of the raw material into a paint paste is a technological chain analogous to the production of adhesives. It is based on the idea of artificially obtained stickiness/adhesiveness properties, but with different characteristics. Such masses/solutions, in turn, reflect the existence of practices of painting objects with a permanent alteration of the surface color. A series of fragments of suspension masses from Chelyuskinets II is the earliest known evidence in Eastern Europe for the preparation and use of viscoplastic masses or thick suspensions based on mineral paint pigments, which allows us to put forward a hypothesis about the significant role of such materials in the study of the development of complex cognition and cognitive evolution of Neanderthals, which occurred in parallel with similar processes in humans of a modern physical type.