Stone Tools Continuity of the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Population of the Lower Kama River Region

A widespread thesis concerning population continuity in the Lower Kama region during the Late Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic is challenged in the article. The thesis in question has been based upon the similarity of the stone tools complex of the earliest Neolithic cultures in the region – those of the Stroke-ornamented and Combed Ware and the preceding Mesolithic monuments. It is argued that the similarity of the stone tools referring to the Mesolithic and the Neolithic results from mechanical admixture of Mesolithic flint in the Neolithic layers, which had produced the leveling of cultural differences. This view is supported by the presence of individual Neolithic monuments, where the stone tools corpus is practically lacking archaic features connected with the local Mesolithic.