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Driving out of Yakutsk, we headed for an
archaeological site that resembled nothing
so much as muddy mounds sticking up through the roadside scrub. Here,
61-year-old Yuri Machonov claims to have found evidence of the world's
earliest human habitation.
Dressed in military fatigues and looking very much like Josef
Stalin (a man he admires), Machonov walked briskly toward the mountains,
swigging a beer. "This site's been inhabited down through the ages, as
you can see," Machonov said. Within minutes, Sven Haakanson had collected
a handful of tiny arrow points, stone tool flakes, and even bits of
ceramic pottery from the surrounding area.
Others in our group were distracted by
mosquitoes.
  
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