Scientists are exploring Lake Svetloyar, which, according to legend, was formed on the site of an ancient city
Nizhny Novgorod Shambala
When the troops of Khan Batu reached the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, the Russians met them near Small Kitezh (now it is Gorodets). In the battle, most of the squad was killed, and Prince Georgy Vsevolodovich with the surviving soldiers took refuge in the forests and built the city of Kitezh Bolshoi on the shore of Lake Svetloyar. Batu found out where the prince hid and killed him. And the inhabitants gathered in the temple and turned to God with a prayer to prevent the invaders from reaching them. God heeded the prayer, streams of water gushed out from under the ground, which, without harming the inhabitants, flooded the city along the domes of churches. But they too soon disappeared. And on the site of the city a lake spilled. Since then this place has been revered as a saint …
This is the legend that many believe in. And there is no doubt that the small forest lake Svetloyar in the Nizhny Novgorod region is the very one in which Kitezh drowned. Orthodox come here to pray. It is said that a handful of local soil heals ailments. The water drawn from the lake has been in bottles for several years without spoiling, as if it had been sanctified. And if you go around the lake three times clockwise, then all your cherished desires will come true.
And the version that Lake Svetloyar is related to the mysterious Shambhala attracts thousands of pilgrims from all over the world. However, the only real hints of the existence of a legendary city can be found in the book "The Kitezh Chronicler" (late 17th century).
Where do people disappear to?
“You can learn a lot of interesting things from the locals,” says Sergey VOLKOV, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Penza State Technological Academy, who organized an expedition to find the mythical city. - As if people are disappearing here. Some - forever, others return, but do not remember anything.
Promotional video:
- Maybe they stayed with the citizens of Kitezhgrad? - I jokingly assume.
- According to rumors, it turns out, - the professor answers quite seriously. - Somewhere in the ravines there is supposedly an entrance to the city. But only true believers can get there.
Near-scientific mystics believe that on Svetloyar there is also a passage to another time dimension. And the stories told by the residents of the nearby village of Vladimirskoye are cited as proof. They allegedly often meet strange peddlers in clothes worn by their great-grandfathers, and for the purchased goods - mainly bread, bagels, gingerbread - they receive change from them in copper and silver coins.
“For us,” Volkov continues, “the main discovery was the confirmation of the hypothesis of the existence of plasma substances invisible to the eye near Svetloyar, which have the logic of behavior, that is, they manifest themselves as living beings. Especially a lot of them appear around a group of people praying - as if they are studying. We captured them on video and photographic equipment. These plasma formations were once recorded in laboratory conditions by scientists from the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation (IZMIRAN). Their experiments indicated that millions of plasma bunches are floating in the air in the electromagnetic range. Then this led atheists to the idea that the other world still exists. The current study of Svetloyar has shown that this hypothesis is not devoid of common sense.
To Batu's amazement
But where has the city gone? Is there some real natural event at the heart of the myth?
“ In fact, as soon as we begin to study any legend, myth or similar work of oral folklore, we find traces of events that actually took place, ” said the outstanding Russian archaeologist and historian, academician Boris Rybakov (died in 2001) at one of his speeches. - Ed.). - Geologists are well aware that the central regions of the European part of Russia lie on a foundation of very strong rocks. But it is cut by deep faults that go in different directions, often intersecting with each other. And geologist Vladimir Nikitin found out that Lake Svetloyar lies exactly at the intersection of two deep faults. In such a place, even a large body of water could form to amazement quickly - even in front of Khan Batu.
The scuba divers examined Svetloyar and found underwater terraces in it - the coastal slope goes under the water in ledges. Steep precipices are interspersed with horizontal sections. From this we can conclude that Svetloyar was formed, as it were, in parts: first, one sinking, then - after hundreds, thousands of years - the second and, finally, the third. On one of the underwater terraces of this lake, there could be a town or a monastery, which then disappeared in the waters of Svetloyar.
When this place was "enlightened" with an echo sounder, and later with a geolocator, an oval anomaly clearly appeared on the echogram - a bottom layer of silt of a special composition: it differed from the many-meter layer of sediments with which it was pressed. Moreover, not far from the "oval" one more site was found. There, under the silt and a thin layer of bottom rock, there was something that did not let sound through. As if some large heavy object is hidden in the depths. When they made a map of these zones, we got a drawing that resembles a city surrounded by a rampart.
Bells ringing from the bottom
So, according to scientists, Kitezh could well exist. But it disappeared by no means mysteriously, but simply fell into the ground as a result of tectonic activity. Only traces of almost fifty years of searching with whole teams of scuba divers have not been found. Not a spoon, not a bowl, not any hewn log. Schliemann, for example, found both Troy and gold, guided only by the fabulous Iliad. And here the address is accurate, and the lake is like a puddle - you can get around in 20 minutes. It is just right to assume the fantastic: the city exists, but it is invisible. Only heard from time to time. Bells are ringing there … And this, perhaps, is not an invention of pilgrims.
- Engineer Igor Fomin worked at a defense enterprise in St. Petersburg, which supplied instruments to the Navy, - says researcher Mikhail Burleshin. “He developed a device, a hydrophone, that uses physical principles to convert sound into an electrical signal.
During the tests taking place on Ladoga, the hydrophone suddenly began to emit rolling sounds, similar to the echoes of the thunder of a passing thunderstorm. Geophysicists, having listened to the tape, said that such peals of "thunder" are waves of disturbances in the earth's crust that pass through the water and create such an effect. After that, Igor Fomin began purposefully listening to the lakes. In some waters they were silent, in others they "shouted". But the most unexpected surprise awaited the explorer at Lake Svetloyar. The hydrophone, lowered into the water, recorded a low rumbling sound, reminiscent of the hum of a huge bell. Most often, the lake rumbled before sunrise and at full moon. It was at the time when, according to legend, the righteous people saw in the lake "exactly like in a mirror the walls of the inner city and heard the hum of its bells."
As for the quality of lake water, chemists studied it and came to the conclusion: it really can be stored for many days and not deteriorate thanks to springs gushing from the bottom of the lake with a high content of hydrocarbonate and calcium.
OPINION OF THE SKEPTIC
Chairman of the Club of Skeptics Mikhail LEITUS: "Empty bottles are rattling at the bottom"
- A funny letter came to my website https://www.skeptik.net/, which to some extent may explain the reason for the strange sounds coming from the bottom of the lake. “Once we went with a scuba diving club of the Nizhny Novgorod University for training dives near Vorsma, a district town in the Nizhny Novgorod region,” writes Nikolai Ivanov. “We were interested in the lake, with which a romantic legend was associated: something like the local city of Kitezh, from where bells ring on a quiet moonless night. We sank to three meters and saw a powerful jet of icy water gushing from the steep coast at the very bottom. The pressure is so strong that a gully half a meter deep was formed at the bottom. And in this ravine, two bottles circulate - one 0.5 from vodka, the other wine - 0.75. When touching, this container produced the "bell ringing". Can,and on Svetloyar empty bottles rattle?"
REFERENCE "KP"
Lake Svetloyar is located in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Located near the village of Vladimirskoye, Voskresensky district, in the Lyunda basin, a tributary of the Vetluga river. Looks perfectly round from a bird's eye view. This gives rise to some geophysicists to assume that the lake arose from the fall of a meteorite. In fact, it is a flat oval of about 450 by 350 meters. The depth reaches 39 meters. But perhaps there is no bottom at all. After all, water comes to the lake from a karst fault, the depth of which is unknown.
By the way, at that time the city, which would fit on the area of the lake, was considered relatively large.
MINER'S OPINION
Candidate of Technical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of the Mining Institute Andrei PARFENOV: "You can easily fall into the ground"
- In Russia, many cities can go underground. This is primarily due to the fact that on its territory there are hundreds of quarries up to hundreds of kilometers long, which were dug from the 15th to the beginning of the 20th century. Under Stalin, the entrances to them were blown up so that the bandits would not hide there. Therefore, it is very difficult to find these "holes" now. And unknowingly, houses and whole cottage villages are being built over them. So, under Podolsk there are giant voids. And already now there are failures. In Moscow, huge quarries begin under the "Ukraine" hotel and go under the Badaevsky brewery. There are also many underground passages under the Kremlin, lined with white stone, and now the environment has become acidic due to large emissions of exhaust gases - limestone is not resistant to acid. Therefore, it is possible that the Kremlin may one day disappear, like the city of Kitezh.
By the way, the radars of the European Space Agency satellite recently recorded that the two largest cities in China - Shanghai and Tianjin - under the weight of giant skyscrapers are gradually sinking several centimeters a year.
ARTISTIC HYPOTHESIS
The city sank in Issyk-Kul?
Ilya Glazunov placed Kitezh on the bottom of Lake Issyk-Kul (picture of 1989 "The Legend of the City of Kitezh").
- The reason was the book of the district governor of the city of Przhevalsk, which is on the lake, - said the artist. - It proves that at one time this was the center of Eurasia. And as a result of an unprecedented disaster, the blooming hail was flooded. And in calm weather, in the waters of Issyk-Kul, you can see traces of the sunken city with the outlines of buildings and walls. Maybe the scientists are looking for Kitezh in the wrong place?
ANOTHER RIDDLE
Graves of giants
Kibilek is the name of a place about five kilometers from Lake Svetloyar. Here is a spring supposedly with "living" water (analyzes show that it has zero acidity). And nearby - in the dense Kerzhinsky forest - there are three unmarked graves. They are ancient and unusual.
Firstly, who had the idea to bury someone far from settlements? Secondly, the graves are several times larger than the size of traditional Christian burials. They say that giants are buried there. Namely, the skeletons of the ancient Lemurians - inhabitants of the mysterious country of Lemuria, which, according to legend, existed somewhere in this area hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Modern science does not confirm, but also does not try to refute this version of the origin of strange burials. Nobody tried to dig them up. Yes, and it is a sin.
Nizhny Novgorod esotericists come to the graves at night to bow to the "unknown". And many Orthodox Christians, on the contrary, believe that the place here is unclean. Despite the spring. They will take some water and leave quickly.
FROM ARCHIVES
And it will be invisible …
“… And he came to Lake Svetloyar, and saw that the place was exceptionally beautiful, and ordered to build the town of Big Kitezh on the shore of the lake, and on the other side of the lake there was an oak grove. And they began to dig ditches and lay the church … And the city of Great Kitezh was 200 fathoms long, and 150 fathoms wide, and that city began to be built of stone in the summer of 6673 (1165) of the month of May on 1 day in memory of the holy prophet Jeremiah and they built that city 3 summers (30 September 6676/1168)”.
("Chronicler about the murder of the noble Prince Georgy Vsevolodovich.")
Strange, but the document does not contain a word that Kitezh disappeared under water. It is said, however, that he disappeared from the eyes: "And Big Kitezh will be invisible until the coming of Christ, as in former times it happened."
Fathoms in Russia were different, but on average one fathom was about 2 meters. In total, the city was 400 by 300 meters - in size it could fit in the present lake.