Imagine the moment when an ordinary act of digging a cellar in your own yard suddenly unveils a secret frozen in time for millennia, and over time it becomes clear that the traditional Ukrainian house — or rather its ancient prototype — is the first known land-based dwelling in human history.
This is exactly what happened in 1965 in the quiet Ukrainian village of Mezhyrich in the Kaniv region, when Zinoviy Novytsky’s shovel struck something far more important than soil — a mammoth jawbone, ultimately uncovering astonishing huts that bear witness to human ingenuity and adaptability, dating back to around 15,000 BCE.
The initial discovery quickly grew from a single bone into a collection hinting at a remarkable past, and as more bone fragments emerged from the ground, archaeologists were called to the site and realized the profound historical significance of this place.
Their meticulous research eventually led to the discovery of not just one, but four ancient dwellings (houses), each carefully constructed from the skeletal remains of woolly mammoths.
The scale of this prehistoric structure is impressive: it is estimated that 149 mammoth bones formed the structural frameworks of these unique huts, and the arrangement of the bones indicates a deliberate and sophisticated understanding of structural integrity by the ancient builders.
Massive skulls served as fundamental supports, while the long limb bones formed walls and roofs, skillfully interwoven to create stable and remarkably sturdy dwellings.
The discovery of these mammoth-bone huts has given humanity invaluable insight into the lives of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers—their ingenuity in using the environment around them, as well as their capacity for complex social organization and architectural innovation.
The Mezhyrich site is an extraordinary window into the distant past, showcasing the first example in human history of active and highly organized adaptation of individual and collective consciousness to the challenges of a dangerous environment.
In other words, when looking at a typical Ukrainian house, it is important to remember that 17,000 years ago, near Kyiv, people who lived here were the first in the world to build version 1.0 of it — made from mammoth bones — and that is no small thing.
About humanity, just in case — the primary general article from the PSY-pedia.
