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It is very clear that the old buildings have been demolished in whole blocks, many new modern buildings have been built, but the whole structure of the streets has remained unchanged. The streets still converge to the gates of the long-defunct Kremlin.
Now let's see what we see in the South Urals.
Several schemes of the Chebarkul fortress, as well as its descriptions, have survived, from which it can be established that the fortress was located on the promontory of Lake Chebarkul, which is located on the northeastern shore.
If we look at a modern satellite image, then, firstly, we see that the configuration of the lake shore has changed noticeably. There is a similar cape on the northeastern shore of Lake Chebarkul, but its shape is completely different.
It is also interesting that we see a different topological structure of reservoirs, which is absent today, since today we do not observe any small lakes that are depicted below the fortress in the foreground or to the right of it in the second. And if the discrepancy in the shape of objects can somehow be attributed to the skill of the cartographers who made these plans and could not accurately display the shape of the objects, then the image of non-existent objects on such plans cannot be explained by this.
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But the most important thing is that the city of Chebarkul itself completely ignores the fact that there was once a fortress in this place! The city center is located in a completely different place, the main thoroughfares lead to the modern city center, without paying any attention to the old fortress. Moreover, there are no old roads to the place where the fortress was once located!
If you look closely, then on the right, more detailed plan of the fortress, you can clearly see a moat with water around the walls, as well as a channel running from the middle of the upper side to Lake Chebarkul. This plan also shows two streams or small rivers that flow into the junction of the channel with the moat. For water to be there, the depth of the ditch had to be below the level of Lake Chebarkul, and this is already a very tangible depth and a fairly large amount of earthworks.
At the same time, the earth, which was extracted from the ditch, was usually poured in the form of an earthen rampart along the perimeter of the future wall. Traces of such a fortification should have remained on the terrain to this day, especially if you consider that no serious construction work was carried out on the site where the fortress once stood, which means that no one there would have begun to level the relief.
This site is now a private building, which began to build relatively recently. Then the roads were laid there. We also do not observe any traces of earthen ramparts, ditches or a canal from the lake, which were part of the structure of the fortress. But right above the place where the fortress was once located, we see a clearly distinguishable round track with a diameter of about 430 meters!
Only one conclusion follows from all this. If the Chebarkul fortress once existed, then it was destroyed, along with the settlement that existed around it. And the city of Chebarkul, which we see now, was rebuilt in the same place, but from scratch, at the beginning of the 19th century, that is, after the disaster. Therefore, the destroyed buildings, including the fortress, had no effect on its layout, on the location of its center and on the direction of the main thoroughfares that lead to the new center, and not to the destroyed fortress.
Then we go to the Chelyabinsk fortress. On the Internet, I managed to find the following small fragment with a plan of the fortress, which is repeated in almost all publications on this topic, and is also published in several books on the history of the South Urals and Chelyabinsk that I managed to find.
Firstly, it is alarming that this fragment is a cut-out piece from some document of a larger size. Why not publish the entire document in its entirety? Why did you only need to cut this piece?
Secondly, the direction of the flow of the Miass River for some reason is indicated in the other direction, since on the plan it is indicated from right to left, while on modern maps the Miass River in Chelyabinsk flows from left to right. This means that on this plane, South is at the top and North is at the bottom. In principle, many medieval maps actually have exactly this, turned upside down, the location of the cardinal points, which in itself is a very interesting fact. In our case, the question arises, should we in this case turn over the other plans of the fortresses, which, obviously, were drawn up at the same time, or only the plan of the Chelyabinsk fortress was made in an inverted system? But on the below plan of the Miass fortress, the direction of the current is indicated as it is today, and on the Chebarkul lake from the south-west side there are no places similar to thatwhat is shown on the plan (if you try to turn it over).
As a result, either we must turn over only the plan of the Chelyabinsk fortress, as shown below, or the place shown on the plan has nothing to do with the center of Chelyabinsk, where the remains of the old fortress were allegedly found during excavations.
A separate question is why the fortress in Chelyabinsk is located on the right southern bank? Indeed, according to the official legend, the fortresses were built to protect against the raids of local Bashkir tribes and Kirghiz-Kaisaks from the territory of modern Kazakhstan, which came from the southern side. At the same time, the development went from north to south. It is believed that Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723, that is, 13 years earlier than our fortresses. But the fortress is positioned in such a way as if the enemy is in the north and not in the south.
There is a description of the Chelyabinsk fortress, which was made by the German traveler I. G. Gmelin in 1742: “This fortress is also located on the Miyass River, on the southern bank, it is similar to the Miyasskaya, but larger and surrounded only by wooden walls made of lying logs. Each wall is approximately 60 fathoms. It was founded shortly after the Miyassk fortress, and it got its name from the forest nearest to it, located higher on the southern side of the river, in Bashkir Chelyabe-Karagai."
First, this description allows you to roughly determine the size of the wall at 120 meters (one fathom is equal to 2.1336 meters).
Secondly, the description made by Gmelin differs from the existing plan of the fortress, on which there is clearly a moat connecting with the Miass River, as well as a powerful internal fortification with forts protruding along the line of the walls. He mentions only the outer wall, the so-called "nadolby", which are marked with the letter H on the plan and cover the fortress from three sides (on the fourth side the fortress is covered by the Miass River). But only 6 years have passed since the foundation of the fortress in 1736! During this time, the fortress has already been dismantled, and the moat and ramparts have been leveled? Or in 6 years only the outer wall was built, but the fortress itself, with ramparts, ditches and walls, has not yet begun?
Now let's look at the plan of the city of Chelyabinsk in 1910.
The river in the center of Chelyabinsk has a completely different configuration than on the plan of the fortress. As in the case of Chebarkul, the layout of Chelyabinsk completely ignores the fact that even 100 years ago, somewhere near the bridge there was a well-fortified fortress. We see a well-planned regular settlement, which is convenient to build out of the blue, from scratch, but not a settlement plan, which is gradually developing starting from a fortified center in the form of a fortress.
I took the dimensions of the outer wall given in the description of Gmelin, equal to 120 meters, and proceeding from the assumption that the existing bridge over Miass on Kirov Street is located in the same place where the fortress bridge once was, I made the following diagram on a modern satellite image with google map.
The orange line is our external wooden wall on three sides, measuring 120x120 meters. The blue line is a moat around the walls. The yellow semi-transparent rectangle is the main fortification. At the same time, the area where archaeological excavations were carried out during the construction of a new museum of local lore and where the remains of an old fortress were allegedly found are shown in red.
The general layout of the old part of the city, the structure of the streets, as well as many buildings have remained unchanged since 1910, which is very clearly visible when comparing the above plan with this image. At the same time, the fortress does not fit into this layout in any way.
The position of the bridge in this place is explained by the fact that here is the narrowest point in the city center on the Miass River. If we try to shift the fortress to the left, so that its part falls into the excavation zone, shown in red, then we must also shift the bridge, since the plan clearly shows that the fortress had two gates with towers in the center of the northern and southern walls, while the bridge was practically on the same line with them. But in this case, either the bridge was not in the narrowest place, which is contrary to common sense, or the bed of the Miass River has seriously changed since the construction of the fortress. Again, when shifting the fortress to the right, we will have to shift the central passage that led to the gates of the fortress, which should change the entire layout of the city center.
We pass to the fortress in the village of Miasskoe. We managed to find two different images of this fortress.
The first plan is interesting to us because it shows the direction to the north, based on which it is necessary to rotate the plan by about 20 degrees clockwise.
Even more interesting is the second shot, which I rotated so that the north direction becomes vertical. It depicts not only the fortress itself, but also the village next to the fortress, as well as a moat, which I filled with blue color along with the river. Moreover, this moat surrounds not only the fortress, but also covers the village on both sides, connecting with the Miass River. From this, again, it follows that the depth of the ditch should have been below the water level in the Miass River. The bridge is also clearly visible, which leads to the gate in the center of the wall.
And now let's look at the modern plan of the Miasskoye village. If we plot the direction that the walls of the fortress should have had according to the first plan, which I showed with a red line, then we will see that it is very different from the directions of the streets in today's village. Okay, suppose the first shot was wrong and inaccurately pointing north. I outlined a fragment of the river and canals from the background, marked the position of the bridge on it, and then inserted the dimensions based on the fact that the Miass fortress was slightly smaller than the Chelyabinsk one. The size of Chelyabinskaya I. G. Gmelin determined 60 fathoms, that is, 120 meters, so I took 100 meters for Miasskaya.
For a start, I combined the resulting image with the existing position of the bridge across the Miass River, since it also sets the direction of the central streets of the Miasskoye village, and therefore the entire structure of the village's layout. I have been to the village of Miass many times and I know this territory quite well. The left northern bank of the Miass River in this place is quite steep; the center of the village actually stands on the top of a hill. In the picture, we do not see any buildings in this place, just because of the steep slope. So I have very big doubts that there was once a Miass fortress, and even with a deep moat around it.
While I was doing my research, I noticed the island to the right of the bridge. When I unrolled my canal diagram in the direction from the first plan and combined it with this island, I got a new diagram, which, perhaps, just points to the place where the Miass fortress was once located.
Yes, the shape of the channels does not exactly correspond to the scheme of the channels, but taking into account the constant floods of the river and the direction of the flow, the channels and the channel could slightly change their shape, since the water is looking for a more convenient path than the current with turns at right or acute angles. In this case, the direction of the upper part of the duct exactly coincided with the direction of the canal obtained from the first shot, which I showed in this diagram with a red line. This is hardly an accident.
In general, with the village of Miasskoye, we have exactly the same picture as in the two previous cases. The existing layout of the village completely ignores the fact that this place once was a fortress, which was supposed to become the basis for the entire structure of the future settlement. If we try to combine the scheme of the fortress with the existing structure of the village, then we do not see any hints that there was once a fortress with a moat that surrounded part of the village, since we find ourselves on a steep hillside. If we consider the place, which, perhaps, is the location of the fortress, then it does not correspond in any way with the existing structure of the settlement.
Either there was no fortress at all, or it was destroyed along with its old settlement, and later a new village with the same name was built on this site, but from scratch.
While researching this problem, I unexpectedly discovered that if we are talking about settlements in the Chelyabinsk region, then there is no evidence that these particular settlements have existed here for more than 200 years. Not a single city in the Chelyabinsk region has a single building or structure that could be guaranteed to date older than the early 19th century. The official myth on this topic says that either Peter I, or his daughter Elizabeth, or Catherine II issued a decree prohibiting the construction of stone buildings anywhere other than the capital of St. Petersburg. This was done in order to know more actively built up St. Petersburg. I have heard all three options from different people several times, including during excursions around St. Petersburg. And since there was such a ban, then in the 18th century all buildings in the newly laid cities were built only wooden. Because,they say, the buildings of the 18th century in cities in the South Urals have not survived.
In fact, this argument is completely refuted by the fact that the European part of Russia is full of both wooden and stone buildings of the 18th century, regardless of any prohibitions.
At the same time, when archaeological excavations are carried out, for example, during new construction, there are traces of buildings and structures that once existed, which they are trying to give out as proof that this or that city has existed on this site for a long time. But if some large-scale catastrophe occurred that destroyed the settlement, and then at this place it was rebuilt, you will see exactly the same picture.
I examined several cemeteries that are considered very old, but I have not been able to find any graves before 1834. At the same time, during the construction of new neighborhoods in Chelyabinsk, the builders regularly stumble upon old burials, which, it seems, should not be in this place. At one time, local newspapers actively tried to write about this, but then, when the number of such cases went to dozens, they stopped paying attention to it. In this case, as with the excavation of the remains of buildings, the absence of old, accurately dated burials does not mean that they are not there, but does not refute the fact that a catastrophe that destroyed the settlements could have occurred.
The fact that we have a document that says about the foundation of a settlement in 1736, as well as the fact that now there is a settlement or a city with the same or a similar name on this place does not mean that in the interval between these events, for example, in In 1812 or 1815, there was no catastrophe that destroyed the settlement that existed at that time.
This is only a part of the facts that indicate that a large-scale catastrophe in Siberia could have happened 200 years ago. About the rest in the next part.