Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Mal'ta-Buret' culture is an Upper Paleolithic archaeological culture dated generally to 24,000-23,000 BP, located roughly 90 kilometers northwest of Irkutsk, on the banks of the upper Angara River in Siberia. It is named after the villages of Mal'ta in Usolsky District and Buret' in Bokhansky District, both in Irkutsk Oblast.
Russian archaeologist Mikhail Gerasimov excavated Mal'ta in 1927, revealing the first significant evidence of Upper Paleolithic society in Northern Asia. He found semi-subterranean dwellings built from mammoth bones, carved ivory figurines, bird sculptures, and engraved mammoth tusk slabs. Gerasimov returned to the site twice more over the course of his career.
Around thirty female statuettes carved from mammoth ivory have been found at Mal'ta. They are significant because, before their discovery at this Siberian site, Venus figurines had been found only in Europe. The Mal'ta figurines divide into full-figured and thin-figured types; some have faces, which European examples typically lack, and most are tapered at the bottom to be placed upright.
MA-1 is the abbreviated name for a boy whose remains were discovered near Mal'ta and dated to 24,000 BP. Research published from 2013 onward identified him as belonging to the Ancient North Eurasian population, genetically intermediate between modern western Eurasians and Native Americans. He is the only known example of basal Y-DNA R (R-M207), and modern Native Americans, Kets, Mansi, and Selkup all carry significant ancestry related to MA-1.
The remains of the Mal'ta boy (MA-1) are currently housed at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
A 2016 genomic study showed that the Mal'ta people had no genetic connections to the Dolni Vestonice people of the Gravettian culture in Europe. Researchers concluded the similarity between the figurines was likely due to cultural diffusion or coincidence, not common ancestry between the populations.