Editing Selenga (section)

=== Archaeology ===
At the end of the 19th century, evidence of Paleolithic culture was discovered in the Selenga River basin. The artifacts found were collections of stone implements. During 1928 and 1929, G. P. Sosnovskii, under the purview of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., directed an archaeological Stone Age study in the Selenga Valley near Kiakhta. In this expedition, Sosnovokii discovered remains of local Paleolithic culture in an area that stretched from "the valley of the Selenga River from the Mongolian Frontier down to [[Selenginsk]]."<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last1=Okladnikov|first1=A. P.|author2-link=Chester S. Chard|last2=Chard|first2=Chester S.|date=April 1961|title=The Paleolithic of Trans-Baikal|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/278736|journal=American Antiquity|volume=26|issue=4|pages=486–497|doi=10.2307/278736|jstor=278736 |s2cid=163736250 |issn=0002-7316|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

The "Buriat-Mongol Archaeological Expedition from the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R and the Institute of Culture of the Buriat-Mongol A.S.S.R", undertook a Paleolithic study in the Trans-Baikal region from 1947 to 1958. Directed by A. P. Okladnikov, the study uncovered 30 new sites, including one that covered the area from Selenginsk to the Selenga River mouth, which provided evidence of a Paleolithic-type culture. Among these 30 sites was one called Ust-Kyakhta-3.<ref name=":1" /> While Ust-Kyakhta-3 was discovered in 1947, it was only later excavated in 1976 and 1978, yielding "more than 40,000 stone artifacts [and] abundant faunal remains". Further archaeological work in 2012 at the site found two human tooth fragments.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last1=Yu|first1=He|last2=Spyrou|first2=Maria A.|last3=Karapetian|first3=Marina|last4=Shnaider|first4=Svetlana|last5=Radzevičiūtė|first5=Rita|last6=Nägele|first6=Kathrin|last7=Neumann|first7=Gunnar U.|last8=Penske|first8=Sandra|last9=Zech|first9=Jana|last10=Lucas|first10=Mary|last11=LeRoux|first11=Petrus|date=June 2020|title=Paleolithic to Bronze Age Siberians Reveal Connections with First Americans and across Eurasia|journal=Cell|volume=181|issue=6|pages=1232–1245.e20|doi=10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.037|pmid=32437661 |issn=0092-8674|doi-access=free}}</ref>

In a study published in volume 181 of the journal ''[[Cell (journal)|Cell]]'', the link between Native Americans and their ancestors in East Asia was established using one of the tooth fragments found at the Ust-Kyakhta-3 site.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite web|last1=Price|first1=Michael|date=2020-05-20|title=Oldest cousin of Native Americans found in Russia|url=https://www.science.org/content/article/oldest-cousin-native-americans-found-russia|access-date=2022-05-20|website=Science {{!}} AAAS}}</ref>