Who needs an ancient horse, a mammoth with traces of kitchen butchering and an abandoned human grave.
Mammoths, woolly rhinos, bison - the remains of these ancient animals are of great interest not only for science, but also for black paleontologists who make money on the antiquities trade. In the Omsk region, they often do not need to dig, they just have to walk along the river bank and collect what has already been washed with water. But the Siberian land attracts not only lovers of such a quiet hunt. Who and why sells the bones of ancient animals, why black diggers are interested in abandoned villages and how to build a recreation center on the site of an archaeological monument - in the material of Izvestia.
Russia has the largest stocks of mammoth bones in the world and is the only exporter of mammoth ivory. The most valuable and high-quality material is found in the permafrost of the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Magadan Region, Chukotka and Yakutia, where more than 80% of the resources are concentrated. According to some estimates, their volume is up to 450 thousand tons, and the cost is more than $ 1.5 billion. The demand for such raw materials is constantly growing, and prices vary from $ 100 to $ 700 per 1 kg.
For a mammoth with a license
Finds of the bones of mammoths and other ancient animals are not uncommon in the Omsk region. The local population is used to such "treasures" - teeth or part of the skeleton can be found in their garden, digging potatoes. Fishermen come across similar finds. Usually, animal bones are found along the banks of the Irtysh River and numerous small streams. More than 10 thousand years ago, the territory of Western Siberia was very rich in grass, which attracted animals.
Thousands of years later, a real hunt unfolded for their remains. In Yakutia, the search for mammoth bones is called the gold rush. A well-preserved tusk found by diggers goes on the market for hundreds of thousands of rubles. Therefore, the state tried to bring this market out of the shadows by licensing such activities.
“The mining of mammoth bones and tusks can be carried out only on the basis of a license for the collection of mineralogical, paleontological and other geological collection materials. Such licenses are issued, as a rule, for a year. In particular, the purchase (purchase) of mammoth tusks and other remnants of mammoth fauna is carried out from the population and legal entities under a sale and purchase agreement in the manner prescribed by law with the marking of each sample unit, size (length, diameter at two ends in centimeters), weight, quality (grade) and the cost of raw materials”, - comments Oksana Vasilyeva, Associate Professor of the Department of Legal Regulation of Economic Activity of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.
Promotional video:
Lawyer Andrei Bender emphasizes that the extraction and collection of bones should be carried out without mechanical intervention. That is, only if the remains are on the surface.
“If you engage in such activities without the necessary permission, then it can be regarded as illegal business. Even if these persons are not detained red-handed, there is a great likelihood of bringing them to administrative responsibility for using subsoil without a license or in violation of the conditions stipulated by the license,”the lawyer notes.
Tusks by weight
Omsk Oblast is not Yakutia, so black diggers in these areas are not satisfied with expeditions. And the quality of the finds, in contrast to the Yakut, is much lower. According to Omsk paleontologists, the problem of finding and exporting the bones of ancient animals in the Omsk region is not as acute as in the Republic of Sakha or in Kuzbass.
“There is a problem of black paleontology in our region, but not as large-scale as in other Siberian regions,” says paleontologist Aleksey Bondarev. - In general, the scientific and commercial value of the finds does not always coincide. Some finds may have value for science and not be for collectors, and vice versa. For example, what kind of collector would collect the bones of an ancient horse? And for science, this material is often valuable. Another question is mammoth tusks. In general, their scientific value is low. But they are of considerable commercial interest”.
Inhabitants of the north of the Omsk region say that before there were many announcements about the purchase and sale of mammoth bones, but recently there has been a lull. Nevertheless, the price for them is constantly growing. The so-called chips (small bones and fragments of large ones) go to dealers for a penny - 25 rubles per kilogram. For example, you can make different crafts from it. Much more expensive is the more liquid material - well-preserved tusks, separate large bones. Here the price can vary from 2 thousand rubles and up to infinity, it all depends on the quality of the material.
Customs does not give the go-ahead
Over the past two years, two criminal cases have been initiated in the Omsk region under the article “Smuggling of cultural values”. In both cases, Omsk residents became their defendants, who set up a business for sending bones of ancient animals. The remains were bought mainly from the local population, then advertisements of sale were posted on the Internet, and the final buyer received the goods by mail. The finds were sent mainly abroad - to the USA, France, Australia.
Individual bones, fragments of the skull of mammoths, bison, rhinoceroses - all this could disappear without a trace, getting lost in museums or private collections of antiquities lovers from America or Europe. However, employees of the Omsk customs seized 137 fragments from the smugglers, which were later transferred to the Omsk State Museum of History and Local Lore.
Naturally, the sellers did not receive any permits for export from the country, as required by law. Probably, they could not have received it, because, as the experts later determined, the transferred remains are cultural values, the total value of which exceeded 600 thousand rubles.
The Omsk customs office explained that the decision on the possibility of exporting cultural property is issued by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. For this, senders must provide the relevant documents. If, for some reason, this is not done, the violators face administrative and even criminal liability. In the first case, a fine may be issued if, for example, the transportation is regarded as non-declaration or inaccurate declaration of goods. Illegal export can be qualified as smuggling, and this is already a criminal article.
“This is the first time such a large arrest has occurred in the Omsk region, but this is not the only case in the Siberian region,” says Sergei Zinchenko, head of the Omsk customs. - The question about the content in the mailings arose from the employees of the Sheremetyevo customs. Parcels were sent to the addresses of citizens of the United States, France and Australia, had a non-standard shape, large sizes. When scanning on the monitor screen, unusually large forms of horns and bones were distinguished. International mail was sent back to Omsk. Then the Omsk customs carried out investigative measures."
The expert examination was carried out by Veronika Nikonova, head of the nature department of the Omsk State Museum of Local Lore and History. According to her, she was amazed at what she saw, because she did not expect that trade of such a scale was flourishing in the region. Some of the remains are of particular scientific importance.
“For example, on the bones of a mammoth you can see traces of kitchen cutting. In the Omsk region, no objects of the Pleistocene period with traces of hunting for these animals or similar cutting injuries have yet been found, - continues Veronika Nikonova. - It is not yet reliably known whether people met with mammoths in the region. Therefore, we have yet to determine the exact etiology of the defects and the location of these bones - most likely they were not found in the Omsk region."
For antiquities in the cemetery
The situation is more complicated in the Omsk region with the diggers who encroach on archaeological monuments or what has not yet become such. This is despite the fact that the legislation regarding archaeological finds is much better regulated. Omsk archaeologists admit that most often they come across the activities of such people after the fact. Returning to the excavation site in the morning, they understand that at night someone has already "worked" for them.
Scientists try to find intruders themselves by tracking them down on social networks, because black diggers are not always modest. However, on the Internet, they prefer to use nicknames and fake names.
“We came across those in social networks who were engaged in such activities. These people, for example, fly to their friends in Novosibirsk, and they arrange trips around the territory of the region, and then post their finds on the Web, among which, in addition to coins, there are also archaeological items,”says the chief specialist of the Department for Conservation and state protection of cultural heritage sites of the Ministry of Culture of the Omsk Region Albert Polevodov.
It is extremely difficult to catch such miners by the hand, more precisely, with a shovel or metal detector. They know when and where to work, and they can come up with a variety of excuses.
In the Tara region, local residents still remember a completely wild case. Several years ago, in the former Tatar village of Malye Murly, in which no one has lived since the 1970s, a cemetery was completely dug up. People saw how someone came here in "big and beautiful" cars, and then it turned out that nothing remained of the churchyard. The burials here cannot be called old, they date back to the 20th century. But scholars do not exclude that the looters could look for any kind of religious literature.
The abandoned villages are indeed of interest to black diggers. First of all, they are trying to find old coins by asking the local population for information. And not everyone will deny them this. Of course, people do this not because of a good life - it is not easy to find a decent job in the countryside and have a steady income.
Tara is the first settlement on the territory of the modern Omsk region, a former border town, which was raided by nomadic tribes. And to this day, the Tara land keeps a lot of the unknown. By the way, this is used by those who, it would seem, should protect their small homeland from uninvited guests.
Thus, the state fishery inspector of the Tara region, Alexander Morozov, built a recreation center for himself on the site of an archeological monument - the second Murlinsky settlement. It was discovered in the middle of the last century and has not yet been fully investigated. Once upon a time, the ancestors of the Ugrians and Turks lived here, and nowadays vacationers have settled - friends and acquaintances of the official. Locals say they saw some of the guests with metal detectors. Lovers of antiquity probably tried to find coins in the earth. If there hadn't been a fuss around this story, archaeologists would not have learned that part of the region's cultural heritage has been irretrievably lost. And the inspectors of the fishery control were only ordered to demolish the recreation center and promised to be fined.
Victoria Strelnikova