24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians

[starroute]

9. There's a theory that Lake Baikal drained into the Mediterranean

I never heard of this before -- but it seems plausible. The Siberian glaciers damned the rivers that now flow into the Arctic Ocean, creating huge glacial lakes that could only drain to the west. The resulting network of lakes and rivers flowing across open tundra would have been very conducive to the spread of Ice Age mammoth hunters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Siberian_Glacial_Lake

It is theorized that while drainage to the Arctic Ocean basin (e.g. by the Ob and Yenisei Rivers) was prevented, the lake would eventually overflow to the Mediterranean Sea through a circuitous route that would include the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea. This would have resulted in water from the Selenga River and Lake Baikal draining over a course of some 6,000 miles (9600 km), considerably longer than any river's course today.



Lake Baikal is the comma-shaped blob just above the red outline of present-day Mongolia.