Ivan Timofeevich Savenkov was a scientist, State Councillor, and actor. He served as director of the Krasnoyarsk Teachers’ Seminary and the Minusinsk Museum, inspector of public schools in Warsaw. Savenkov also worked at the Kunstkamera. He was known as a talented teacher, geologist, chess player, archer, bibliophile and museologist, but archeology earned him the greatest fame.

In 1884, Ivan Savenkov discovered the first Paleolithic site in Krasnoyarsk — Afontova Gora. It became an archaeological monument of world importance. A multitude of bones of prehistoric animals and tools of ancient people were found on Afontova Gora. The conclusion made by Ivan Timofeevich caused a sensation: people lived on the Yenisey as early as the era of mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses.

Savenkov’s statement regarding the Paleolithic period of the Yenisey attracted great attention from world scientists who gathered in Moscow at the International Anthropological Congress in 1892. Ivan Timofeevich happened to be one of the few participants invited to represent Siberia. His findings laid the foundation for a systematic archaeological study of the Krasnoyarsk area.

Primitive art became the main topic of Savenkov’s research of the Early Stone Age. This work resulted in his main scientific work — a major monograph “On ancient monuments of fine arts on the Yenisey”, published in 1910. This work was the first specialized monograph in Russia devoted to ancient rock art. Savenkov received a diploma of associate fellow of the Imperial Academy of Sciences for that book.

In 1914, Ivan Timofeevich conducted his last excavations on Afontova Gora. Tools made of stone and bone as well as other finds made up a huge archaeological collection packed in 40 crates. In pre-revolutionary Russia, these were the most large-scale and productive studies of the Paleolithic era in Siberia. During this expedition, the 68-year-old archaeologist died of a heart attack after suffering from typhoid fever. It was his son, Timofey Ivanovich Savenkov, who compiled the scientific report on the excavations.