[8][9] In particular, modern-day Native Americans, Kets, Mansi, and Selkup have been found to harbour a significant amount of ancestry related to MA-1.

Better known later for his contribution to the branch of anthropology known as forensic facial reconstruction, Gerasimov made revolutionary discoveries when he excavated Mal'ta in 1927.

[12] These dwellings built from mammoth bones were similar to those found in Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasia, such as in the areas of France, Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine.

Yet it lacks typical skreblos (large side scrapers) that are common in other Siberian Paleolithic sites.

The lack of these features, combined with an art style found in only one other nearby site (the Venus of Buret'), make Mal'ta culture unique in Siberia.

Portable art, typically some type of carving in ivory tusk or antler, spans the distance across Western Europe into Northern and Central Asia.

The wide variety of forms, combined with the realism of the sculptures and the lack of repetitiveness in detail, are definite signs of developed, albeit early, art.

The researchers conclude that the similarity between the figurines may be either due to cultural diffusion or to a coincidence, but not to common ancestry between the populations.

[23] Discussing this easternmost outpost of paleolithic culture, Joseph Campbell finishes by commenting on the symbolic forms of the artifacts found there: We are clearly in a paleolithic province where the serpent, labyrinth, and rebirth themes already constitute a symbolic constellation, joined with the imagery of the sunbird and shaman flight, with the goddess in her classic role of protectress of the hearth, mother of man's second birth, and lady of wild things and of the food supply.

The term Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) has been given in genetic literature to an ancestral component that represents descent from the people similar to the Mal'ta–Buret' culture and the closely related population of Afontova Gora.

"[28] The "ANE-cline", as observed among Paleolithic Siberian populations and their direct descendants, developed from a sister lineage of Europeans with significant admixture from early East Asians.