Reconstructed setting· The columns of time
Mammoth steppe
129 ka → 11.7 ka
A cold grassland that exists nowhere today: dry, treeless, full of flowering herbs, and grazed by mammoth, horse and steppe bison.
What the evidence shows
Artemisia and grasses dominate the pollen record of full-glacial eastern Beringia, and sedimentary ancient DNA identifies mammoth, horse and steppe bison as the grazing megafauna of the biome. Shrubs are absent from the scene on purpose, and the reason is a date: the spread of birch and willow scrub is what marks the collapse of this biome, between 13.9 and 13.2 thousand years ago. Drawing shrubs would place the end of the world inside the picture of the world.
Bounds and conventions
No modern landscape is a good analogue, which makes this the hardest of these backdrops to draw honestly. The reconstruction rests on pollen and sedimentary DNA from eastern Beringia; the same biome reached as far as western Europe, where it need not have looked identical.