A couple of years ago, I came across material with photographs of an interesting place: the Batagai thermokarst sinkhole located in Yakutia.
Modern geology considers this object to be a thermokarst failure. Those. the permafrost began to thaw, which here has a thickness of hundreds of meters and the soil began to sprinkle in the place of the original ravine. The beginning of the formation of this failure is the middle of the 20th century. Permafrost began to melt in this place due to the fact that in the 50s. 20c. here a forest was cut down for tin mining and the construction of a mine. But the most paradoxical thing is that the mine was not built in this place, but a little to the south. Information about this will be below.
Map link goo.gl/maps/4RjSCfJp43M2
This is how this dip looks at the present time. According to observations, it grows by about 10 m per year. Now its width is 3 km. And the depth is 100 m. There are places of destruction stabilization. Those. the process, according to geologists, is not endless. Although, permafrost is everywhere.
A short video about this place:
Promotional video:
I propose to look in more detail at photos, relief, terrain and try to make an alternative version. Maybe not everything is as smooth here as scientists are reassuring us?
The first thing that catches your eye when you look at the soil sections is that the permafrost ice itself has a thickness of 30-40 meters above the layered soil. Under it is frozen layered clayey soil. If only the top layer of ice melted, then why would melt water wash out such a huge gully in the frozen soil? Doesn't it all look like a sinkhole, but a sinkhole?
Imagine that there are cavities (artificial or natural) inside the earth, and somehow the soil began to fall into them. And then melt water rushed there in the summer. But the voids were not vertical, but horizontal - like coal faces. Everything began to collapse like a house of cards or a "snake" of dominoes. Then this kind of supposedly thermokarst can be explained. For what reason did it all begin to melt or collapse in our time? Maybe the permafrost is not so ancient? At a minimum: this is not a thermokarst, but a failure.
Are there any prerequisites to assert that there may be an artificial cavity under the failure? Let's see other photos from the site and space images of the surroundings.
It turns out that there is a high mountain nearby, a huge hill or a giant hill. Her name is Mother Mountain. Here is its view from a height, from a hole and from the surface of the earth:
There are no such heights in the vicinity of more or less flat terrain. Could this mountain be a dump from very ancient tin mines? Well, if our civilization was mining something here, then they could have done it before! Tin is needed for the production of bronze.
And in the Minusinsk Basin in Khakassia, in the place of residence of the Scythians and their descendants: the Andronovo, Tashtyp and other cultures (cultures that someone in the west called Tartaria), bronze items are still found. Most of the exposition of the Minusinsk local history museum consists of such finds. In due time I visited it, an interesting museum.
A little to the south of the hole are the developments of our civilization: a mine and dumps. Only it is not clear why the dumps were taken so far from the mining site? And this human activity here is confirmed by a video from a person who lived there:
The most interesting thing is that the Batagai depression is not in the lowland, but higher than the village of Ese-Khaya. And only after that space images become clear. Look at them again. Near the gap there are many ravines, formed once from the streams flowing down the slopes from melting snows. And only this one made thermokarst! No, it looks like it is a sinkhole and the subsequent destruction of slopes as from a water jet in a quarry. And the mountain - dumps from mining for hundreds of years.
Maybe the term "fall into Tartarar" is just about that? That here, in Siberia, there are a lot of ancient mines and often the soil above them collapses …
Author: sibved