We hardly know when the first treasure was buried on Earth. But, apparently, this happened already in those days when a person had just begun to use gold and precious stones as a measure of value. And they hid them in secluded places most often in two cases: either wishing to hide the surplus of their wealth from friends and relatives, or putting them off for a rainy day. But if someone buried valuables in the ground, then there were certainly those who wanted to find them. This is how treasure hunters appeared.
Finds of ancient miners
If you have ever read Goethe's Faust, then you will surely remember how Mephistopheles gives the scientist precise instructions about the methods … of searching for the treasure. Literally, it says the following:
And if the lower back aches.
And bones ache and brains, Hurry to break the floorboards
And dig here - there is a treasure under you.
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It turns out that in a number of places in the Volga region this recommendation of Mephistopheles can be used on quite scientific grounds to search for rare and precious metals, such as silver. Sergei Markelov, a member of the Samara non-governmental research organization "Avesta", Ph. D.
“Small deposits of silver of non-industrial value in the Zhiguli Hills have been known for hundreds of years,” says the scientist. - Some folk craftsmen, even under Count Orlov, dug silver veins in the thickness of the mountains.
It should be said right away that such precious metal deposits are very rare for the Middle Volga region. Against this background, it is extremely surprising that the amateur miners of the past were generally able to recognize the right place in the earth's crust, so that later they could dig here a small, but still a mine, and then extract silver ore from it.
However, if we recall the above lines from "Faust", then such insight of ancient geologists can be easily explained. Indeed, it has been scientifically proven that large accumulations of metals underground significantly affect the Earth's electromagnetic field.
In turn, such a changed field affects any living organism. This influence can be very diverse, including the one described by Goethe. By the way, it is on this effect that the well-known dowsing method is based.
Chests of the Zhiguli freemen
But native silver is far from everything. Since the end of the 15th century, fugitive Russian peasants began to settle in the valleys of the Zhiguli mountains, hiding here from the unbearable boyar oppression. This is how the detachments and mobs, known as the Zhiguli freemen, appeared. They robbed both merchant ships passing along the Volga and the Trans-Volga Nogai uluses. It was from this freeman that the famous Cossack atamans-pathfinders later emerged - Ermak Timofeevich and his associate Ivan Koltso. As a memory of those times, the villages of Ermakovo and Koltsovo, founded by the atamans, still stand on Samarskaya Luka.
The Cossacks walked freely along the Volga and robbed the rich until the Catherine's times, when the notorious Grigory Orlov became the owner of the Samara Luka. He quickly pushed all lovers of free life to the Yaik River and the Kyrgyz steppes, and converted the rest into his serfs. But nevertheless, gangs of robbers continued to roam the Zhiguli forests and along the Volga throughout the next century. Their most famous leaders were Barbosha and Vavila, as well as the legendary ataman Katka Manchikha.
According to local epics. Manchikha was a friend of Stenka Razin himself. However, this is most likely just a legend, since her gang roamed the Samarskaya Luka at least a hundred years after the famous peasant uprising. Nevertheless, with the names of Razin and Manchikha, human rumor stubbornly connects legends about countless treasures, as if they were hidden somewhere in the depths of the Zhiguli caves.
Experts now know quite real facts confirming that the silver and gold hidden in the depths of Samareka Luka are far from fiction. Two kilometers from the village of Podgora there is a deep well called Silver.
The local population from time immemorial took water from it, not without reason considering it very tasty and healing. And scientists not so long ago subjected water samples from this well to chemical analysis. The result looks truly sensational: the silver content in this water exceeds the norm by more than 100 times!
However, experts comment on this fact very cautiously: perhaps, somewhere in the depths of the Zhiguli, underground water washes a natural silver vein, and therefore is saturated with this noble metal. But maybe the well water does not flow through the silver deposit, but through the treasure chests of the atamansha Manchikha?
Do pillars of light point to treasures?
For the scientists of the Avesta group, the local methods of searching for legendary treasures look very interesting. According to legend, the adventurers of the past dug not anywhere, but only where peculiar columns of light rose above the ground at least occasionally. As studies of recent years show, the “pillars” do exist.
Outwardly, they look like luminous vertical columns up to several meters long and up to a meter in diameter, suddenly appearing in the air. The last message about such a "pillar" came about four years ago from the area of the village of Podgora. By the way, from time to time in such places observers see not glowing, but … black columns, also hanging in the air.
From the point of view of physics, both these rare phenomena can be explained quite easily. Columns of light (as well as black columns) are all of the same electromagnetic nature. They arise over those parts of the earth's crust where a polymetallic vein or underground water flow passing at a certain depth makes a sharp bend. It is at such break points that the structure of the earth's electromagnetic field changes sharply, leading to ionization of the air above this area and to its subsequent glow.
And in some, very rare cases, all the same ionization can lead to the fact that at a given point in space the rays of light will not be scattered, but absorbed. This is where the black columns appear. Remember: a fluorescent lamp also has completely black areas inside which light quanta are absorbed.
Source: Secrets of the XX century, No. 37, September 2009, Valery EROFEEV