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One of the arguments against the fact that a large-scale catastrophe could have happened 200 years ago is the myth about "relict" forests, which supposedly grow in the Urals and Western Siberia.
For the first time, I came across the thought that something was wrong with our "relic" forests ten years ago, when I accidentally discovered that in the "relic" city forest, firstly, there were no old trees older than 200 years old, and secondly, there is a very thin fertile layer, about 20-30 cm. It was strange, because reading various articles on ecology and forestry, I repeatedly came across information that for a thousand years a fertile layer of about one meter is formed in the forest, that is, millimeter per year. A little later it turned out that a similar picture is observed not only in the central city forest, but also in other pine forests located in Chelyabinsk and the surrounding area. Old trees are absent, the fertile layer is thin.
Local experts explain something about the fact that before the revolution, pine forests were cut down and planted again, and the rate of accumulation of the fertile layer in pine forests should be considered differently, that I do not understand anything about this and it is better not to go there. At that moment, this explanation, in general, suited me.
In addition, it turned out that one should distinguish between the concept of "relict forest" when it comes to forests that have been growing on a given territory for a very long time, and the concept of "relict plants", that is, those that have been preserved since ancient times only in this place. The last term does not mean at all that the plants themselves and the forests in which they grow are old, respectively, the presence of a large number of relict plants in the forests of the Urals and Siberia does not prove that the forests themselves have been growing in this place invariably for thousands of years.
When I began to deal with the "Ribbon bora" and collect information about them, I came across the following message on one of the regional Altai forums:
This message is dated November 15, 2010, that is, then there were no videos by Alexei Kungurov, or any other materials on this topic. It turns out that, independently of me, another person had exactly the same questions that I once had.
Upon further study of this topic, it turned out that a similar picture, that is, the absence of old trees and a very thin fertile layer, is observed in almost all forests of the Urals and Siberia. Once I accidentally got into a conversation about this with a representative of one of the companies that were processing data for our forestry department throughout the country. He began to argue with me and prove that I was wrong, that this could not be, and immediately in front of me called the person who was responsible for statistical processing. And the person confirmed this that the maximum age of the trees that they had been counted in this work was 150 years. True, the version issued by them stated that in the Urals and Siberia, conifers generally do not live more than 150 years, therefore they are not taken into account.
Promotional video:
We open the tree age guide and see that Scots pine lives 300-400 years, in especially favorable conditions up to 600 years, Siberian cedar pine 400-500 years, European spruce 300-400 (500) years, prickly spruce 400-600 years, and Siberian larch is 500 years old under normal conditions, and up to 900 years old under especially favorable conditions!
It turns out that everywhere these trees live for at least 300 years, and in Siberia and the Urals no more than 150?
You can see how relict forests really should look here. These are photographs from the cutting of sequoias in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the thickness of the trunks of which reaches up to 6 meters, and the age is up to 1500 years. Well then, Canada, but we, they say, do not grow sequoias. Why they do not grow, if the climate is practically the same, none of the "specialists" could really explain.
Now yes, now they are not growing. But it turns out that similar trees grew here. The guys from our Chelyabinsk State University, who participated in the excavations in the area of Arkaim and the "country of cities" in the south of the Chelyabinsk region, said that where the steppe is now, during the time of Arkaim, there were coniferous forests, and in some places there were giant trees, the diameter of the trunks was which was up to 4 - 6 meters! That is, they were comparable to those that we see in the photo from Canada. The version about where these forests have gone says that the forests were barbarously cut down by the inhabitants of Arkaim and other settlements created by them, and even an assumption is made that it was the depletion of the forests that caused the migration of the Arkaim people. Like, here the whole forest was cut down, let's go cut it down in another place. That forests can be planted and re-grown,as they did everywhere starting at least from the 18th century, the people of Arkaim apparently did not know yet. Why for 5500 years (this age is now dated to Arkaim) the forest in this place has not recovered itself, there is no intelligible answer. Not grown, well, not grown. It happened so.
Here is a series of photographs from the local history museum in Yaroslavl.
In the first two photos, pine trees were cut at the age of 250 years. The trunk diameter is more than a meter. Directly above it are two pyramids, which are made up of cuts from pine trunks at the age of 100 years, the right one grew free, the left one in a mixed forest. In the forests, in which I happened to be, there are mainly just such 100 year old trees or a little thicker.
They are shown larger in these photos. At the same time, the difference between a pine that grew free and in an ordinary forest is not very significant, and the difference between a pine of 250 years and 100 years is just somewhere 2.5-3 times. This means that the diameter of a pine trunk at the age of 500 years will be about 3 meters, and at the age of 600 years about 4 meters. That is, the giant stumps found during excavations could even remain from an ordinary pine about 600 years old.
The last photo shows cuts of pine trees that grew in a deep spruce forest and in a swamp. But I was especially struck in this showcase by a saw cut pine at the age of 19, which is on the upper right. Apparently this tree grew free, but still the thickness of the trunk is just gigantic! Now trees do not grow at such a speed, even if they are free, even with artificial cultivation with care and feeding, which once again suggests that very strange things are happening to the climate on our planet.
From the above photographs it follows that at least pines at the age of 250 years, and taking into account the manufacture of saw cut in the 50s of the 20th century, born 300 years from today, in the European part of Russia there are, or, at least, met there 50 years ago. During my life, I have walked through the forests for more than one hundred kilometers, both in the Urals and in Siberia. But I have never seen such large pines as in the first picture, with a trunk more than a meter thick! Neither in forests, nor in open spaces, nor in habitable places, nor in remote areas. Naturally, my personal observations are not yet an indicator, but this is confirmed by the observation of many other people. If someone reading can give examples of long-lived trees in the Urals or Siberia, then you are welcome to submit photographs indicating the place and time when they were taken.
If we look at the available photographs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we will see very young forests in Siberia. Here are the photographs known to many from the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which have been repeatedly published in various publications and articles on the Internet.
All photographs clearly show that the forest is quite young, no more than 100 years old. Let me remind you that the Tunguska meteorite fell on June 30, 1908. That is, if the previous large-scale catastrophe that destroyed forests in Siberia occurred in 1815, then by 1908 the forest should look exactly as in the photographs. Let me remind skeptics that this territory is still practically not inhabited, and at the beginning of the 20th century there were practically no people there. This means that there was simply no one to cut down the forest for economic or other needs.
Another interesting link to the article, where the author gives interesting historical photographs from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On them, we also see only a young forest everywhere. No thick old trees are observed. An even larger selection of old photos from the construction of the Transib is here.
Thus, there are many facts and observations that indicate that in a large territory of the Urals and Siberia there are virtually no forests older than 200 years. At the same time, I want to immediately make a reservation that I am not saying that there are no old forests in the Urals and Siberia at all. But precisely in those places where the disaster occurred, they are not.
Continued: Part 5