Kostenki: Where Early Europeans Built Homes From Mammoth Bones
On the Don River, some of Europe’s first modern humans hunted mammoths, carved figurines, and built homes of bone 40,000 years ago.
Sarkel: The Khazar Fortress Now Lost Beneath a Reservoir
On the Don, the Khazars built Sarkel with Byzantine engineers, a brick fortress guarding steppe trade routes, now submerged beneath a reservoir but saved by archaeology.
Tanais: The Northernmost Greek City, Where Wine Met the Steppe
At the mouth of the Don, the northernmost Greek city traded wine for grain and blended Greeks and Sarmatians for centuries.
