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First excavated in the 1880s and noted during mining. Afontova Gora has cultural and genetic links to the people from Mal’ta-Buret’. It is around 7 hundred km north west.

Afontova Gora is a complex, consisting of multiple stratigraphic layers, of five or more campsites
Finds shows evidence of mammoth hunting and were likely the result of an eastward expansion around 18-20,000 years ago.

Dating back to the pleistocene. Sites on the Yenisei river yielded horse, mammoth, reindeer, steppe bison, large canids, arctic fox, and arctic hare remains
Tens of thousands of artifacts have been discovered. Tools and carvings from stone, bone, antler, and ivory.

Blond hair
Phenotypic analysis shows that one of the Afontova Gora specimens had DNA associated with blonde hair colour. This makes the site easiest known to originate this colour tone. 8 to 10,000 years later. This was found in other ancient north Eurasian populations. From Sweden, to Ukraine and other parts of Russia. Among the human remains. It could have originated here.

The “Princess of Xiaohe”, one of the Tarim mummies are closely related
One of the rare Holocene populations who derive most of their ancestry from the ancient north Eurasians. The Tarim mummies, are closely related. Specifically to the Mal’ta buret and Afontova Gora populations. More than any other ancient populations, they can be considered as “the best representatives” of the Ancient North Eurasians. Despite their time distance of around 14,000 years. They are considered one of the rare holocene populations with similar ancestry.

Afontova Goras sites have provided valuable insights into the prehistoric cultures and lifestyles of the people who inhabited the region during the late pleistocene. Uncovered tools, artifacts, and traces of human activity. Archaeological studies have contributing to our understanding of how ancient populations adapted to the challenging environment and conditions during the last Ice Age.

Bibliography:
Reich, David (2018). Who We are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (https://books.google.com/books?id=uLNSDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA96). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198821250

Drozdov, N. I; Artemiev, E. V (2007). “The Paleolithic site of Afontova Gora: Recent findings and new issues”. Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia. 29 (1): 39–45.doi:10.1134/S1563011007010033 (https://doi.org/10.1134%2FS1563011007010033). S2CID 162267751 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:162267751).

Mathieson et al. 2018, p. 52-53 “Supplementary Information page 52: “The derived allele of the KITLG SNP rs12821256 that is associated with – and likely causal for blond hair in Europeans is present in one hunter-gatherer from each of Samara, Motala and Ukraine (I0124, I0014 and I1763), as well as several later individuals with Steppe ancestry. Since the allele is found in populations with EHG but not WHG ancestry, it suggests that its origin is in the Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) population. Consistent with this, we observe that the earliest known individual with the derived allele (supported by two reads) is the ANE individual Afontova Gora 3, which isdirectly dated to 16130-15749 cal BCE (14710±60 BP, MAMS-27186: a previously unpublished date that we newly report here). We cannot determine the status of rs12821256 in Afontova Gora 2 and MA-1 due to lack of sequence coverage at this SNP.”.