Scientists from the Samara nongovernmental research organization "Avesta" have been studying anomalous objects and phenomena for more than three decades, which have recently been especially numerous on the territory of Samarskaya Luka. This is the name of the loop-shaped bend of the Volga River in its middle reaches, and the people most of all know about the northern mountainous part of this Volga peninsula, which has long been called the Zhigulevsky mountains. And it has long been established: Samarskaya Luka is one of 10-12 anomalous points in Russia, where mysterious paradoxes of space and time are most often observed.
Mysterious Kekura
Over the past decade, Avesta has been constantly monitoring a group of unusual objects lost on the Samara Duka plateau - the so-called kekuras. This word in the scientific community is called rather high pillars, built of natural stones, and they stand quite firmly in place without lime or cement mortar holding them together.
A mention of these objects can be found in the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" by Vladimir Dahl, published in 1881, where the following is stated: "A dark lighthouse is a pillar made of stones. It is sometimes called mar, as well as guriy (gurei), sometimes kekur (ki-kur). " According to Dahl, such "dark beacons", built by someone with an unknown purpose in time immemorial, could be found throughout the Russian North.
Modern ethnographers and local historians write that nowadays ancient kekuras in the polar regions of Russia are almost everywhere destroyed. All the more interesting was the report of the scientists of the "Avesta" group that at the beginning of the III millennium on Samarskaya Luka, when filming from the air, an entire field was unexpectedly discovered, covered with stone pillars. During a ground study, experts confirmed that these pillars are nothing more than real kekuras, and many of them were in good condition at the time of discovery.
Here is what the president of "Avesta", the leading engineer of the Samara State University Igor Lvovich Pavlovich said about it.
- We visited this point for the first time in 2007 and saw here a group of tall stone pillars, standing at some distance from each other. By their relative position, they set a weakly pronounced arc. True, from some of them now there are only heaps of natural stones.
Promotional video:
With further study of the mysterious formations, the Avestans were able to estimate the laboriousness of the construction of even one kekur. Igor Pavlovich and three more of his volunteers tried to restore at least one partially destroyed pillar for two hours, for which they used stones already in place, which were also carefully selected in shape. Despite this selection, the researchers managed to build only three stone levels. After that, the whole structure began to "play", and the lower and middle stones slid from their places. Then the already folded levels began to fall apart, and smaller stones fell in different directions.
“After our experiment,” Igor Pavlovich said further, “it became obvious that only people (or some other creatures) with fantastic sensitivity to the shape and location of the stone could erect such structures without a bonding solution. It takes many hours (and possibly several days) to firmly place at least one kekur in the right place. It should be borne in mind that there are dozens of similar stone pillars on the plateau (if we count them together with partially or completely destroyed), and it remains only to be amazed how much time and effort unknown builders spent on their construction.
A quite natural question arises: by whom, when and why this field was once "sown" with stone pillars? Do they have a cultic, astronomical or any other purpose? Researchers do not yet have an unequivocal answer to these mysteries.
Stonehenge from Raceisky Bor
During our conversation, Igor Pavlovich asked that the publication should not contain any indication of the exact coordinates of the above-mentioned "kekurov field". The scientist fears an invasion of vandals on this place, and, I must say, there are good reasons for that.
We have already written that in the west of the Samara region there is a unique mountain-forest landscape, known as the Racheysky Bor, which continues the Samarskaya Luka. Even at the end of the 20th century, this place was still in transport isolation from the rest of the world. There were always few visiting townspeople here. And they arrived here for a short time, and the local rural population in Soviet times left for large cities. All this contributed to the preservation of unique original pagan beliefs in the local villages.
The sacred center of the ancient cults was a secret clearing with ritual stones, located among the mountain labyrinths a few kilometers from the village of Smolkino. The most important was the stone, which in the Chuvash language was called Samele, or Smele, which means “Stone horse” or “Stone horse”. He really looked like a horse lying on the ground with his legs tucked under him. This natural statue has been used by many generations of Smolkians for an ancient pagan ritual of making rain.
It was believed that the washing of the Stone Horse with spring water, accompanied by spells, is capable of causing life-giving heavenly moisture to the surrounding fields even in the most severe drought and, as a result, helps to get a good harvest. From time immemorial, the ritual visit to the meadow was assigned only to the most respected people of the village. At the same time, they had to get here on foot, carrying food and spring water with them for bathing stone talismans.
Igor Pavlovich tells about this secret place of Racheysky pine forest in this way.
- For the first time, the members of the Avesta group examined the ritual meadow near the village of Smolkino back in 1989. After that we came here more than once, taking with us precise physical instruments. Already at the first examination, it turned out that the Stone Horse was surrounded by other figured nodule stones. Five of them, with clearly pronounced traces of processing, bore their own names - Lamb, Deer, Foal, Horseman and Baba. The rest of the stones in this glade were called simply "frogs" by the locals. These nodules have practically not been artificially processed.
By means of measurements, the Avestists were able to establish that the Stone Horse turned out to be turned relative to the north by 150 °, which corresponds to the projection of the Milky Way onto the Earth's surface in this area. The orientation of the shaped group stones, set by the boundary stones Foal (22 °) and Rider (25 °), coincided with the projections of the beta and scale of the Ursa Minor to this point of the Earth in mid-April, which could mark the time of the beginning of the spring harvest.
The second group of stones, defined by three large "frogs", had the following divergence angles, measured from the Stone Horse: 60 ° - projection of alpha Lyra (Vega) at the end of May, 65 ° - projection of alpha Taurus (Aldebaran) - in early December and alpha Leo (Regulus) - at the end of February, 80 ° - projection of the alpha Eagle (Altair) in mid-July. We can say that in this case, the researchers encountered an ancient astronomical observatory - the real Stonehenge of Racheysky Bor.
Stolen relics
During the trip in 2000, the glade and all the nodules on it were photographed in detail and captured on a professional video camera. But we have to state with regret that now the photography and video filming of "Avesta" is all that remains of the unique glade to the scientific world. Not so long ago a film about a pagan temple was shown on one of the Samara TV channels. Almost immediately after that, the ritual stones were loaded onto cars by a truck crane and taken out in an unknown direction. And since these relics did not officially belong to anyone and were not registered as monuments of history or nature, law enforcement agencies refused to search for them. Now the Stone Horse, most likely, is at the dacha of some tough businessman who, with its help, makes it rain in his garden.
And this is far from an isolated case. The residents of Avesta say that recently a rumor has spread everywhere about the "miraculous" stones from the Racheysky pine forest, after which a real hunt for local nodules began. The millstones from the local sandstone, and even the millstones themselves, fell under the hot hand. It is also reported that the above-described belief has already been used by enterprising businessmen who organized the collection and removal of stones in whole trucks. As noted, figured and cut stones in local forests, which were quite numerous in former times, have now become a great rarity. This is what modern urban culture has brought to the ancient temple.
Valery EROFEEV