UDC 903.2 The article is devoted to the problem of co-existence of various Middle Paleolithic variants at the beginning of the last Glaciation (OIS 5) in southwestern Eastern Europe. Three archaeological complexes from the cultural layers of the sites of Ketrosy, Shipot-2 and Osypka located in the middle Dniester river valley in the Chernivtsi region are considered. Ukraine. The complexes studied by the author belong to the deposits of the floodplain facies of the alluvium of the second above-floodplain terrace of the river. The deposits, according to the unanimous opinion of geologists who studied this region, belong to the very beginning of the Wurm (last) glaciation, which corresponds to stages c and d of the oxygen-isotope stage (OIS) 5, i.e. older than 100 thousand years ago. Stone industries represent two different variants of the Middle Paleolithic and refute the hypothesis of Ukrainian colleagues about the uniformity of the existing Middle Paleolithic region. Key words: Late Pleistocene, Middle Paleolithic strata, south-west of Eastern Europe, Dniester Valley, floodplain alluvium. Introduction At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the study of the Early and Middle Paleolithic of Eurasia showed a significant increase in the source base and significant progress in the development of issues related not so much to Paleolithic archaeology as to related sciences studying natural processes in the Pleistocene. This knowledge significantly expanded the understanding of the history of the development of the culture of the oldest people who lived in the Eurasian space in the Quaternary period. First of all, this applies to the neighboring territories of Crimea and Middle Transnistria, where Paleolithic monuments are numerous and well-studied. Here, thorough interdisciplinary research was conducted on a number of reference monuments, which allowed us to formulate and raise a number of important scientific problems. The results of these studies have turned out to ... Читать далее