ice age on the steppes?

This passage about a language in the eurasian 'steppes' in a book I'm 
reading caught my eye:

"by the Early Neolithic” (c.10,000 BC),
  spreads east  (as the ice retreats)."

My problem with this is that AFAIK there was never any ice in these 
areas. While the 'polar' ice cap descended far souhth in America there 
was never any ice 'sheet' in these regions except in Siberia to the 
north. The Zagros mountains had their own ice-caps several hundred 
meters thick in places and making passage impossible but life went on 
almost normal in the lands surrounding. We canot today see such mountain 
ice-caps unless we look elsewhere to get an idea

https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/esd/eo/images/imagerecords/9000/9103/penny_etm_2000226_lrg.jpg


This water-level and ice cover dataprint shows other mountains to the 
east which, like the Zagros, WOULD have cleared so maybe 'spreads east' 
meant to the far east through Mongolia to northern China?


https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1jhw80t/map_of_earth_during_the_last_glacial_maximum/#lightbox 


Any opinions?