Yeleneva Cave is one of the most mysterious caves located in the belly of the Guard Bull, a rock protruding into the Yenisei opposite the village of Ovsyanka south of Krasnoyarsk.
This village is better known as the residence of the famous Russian writer Viktor Astafyev, but in 1995 such sensational archaeological finds were made in the cave itself that the cave itself became even more famous among the scientific community.
In particular, a strange object dating from the 3rd millennium BC was found by archaeologists in the cultural layer of the 10th cave. It is made from mammoth ivory. Meanwhile, according to experts, the last mammoth in the vicinity of Krasnoyarsk died no later than 10 thousand years ago.
It is known that even now in Yakutia, local bone carvers use fossil mammoth tusks for their crafts. However, usually the "mammoth meat" is used, which rested in the permafrost, and therefore quite tolerably preserved. In the Krasnoyarsk Okrug, there are no such ideal conditions for “natural” storage of mammoth bones.
The question arises: was there a trade of local tribes and peoples with the inhabitants of the Far North?
But this is not the only mystery presented by the cave. The point is that every thing is done for a purpose. The subject in question does not resemble any man-made product known to modern scientists of that time. They couldn't cut, sew, grind, or kill. You had to look at him!
In the lower part of the item, along its lateral edges, there are notches, there are exactly 29 of them, that is, the same number as there are days in the lunar month. The base is also cut into twelve parts by notches. The ancient inhabitants of these places also had twelve months a year. Unfortunately, no photos of this artifact could be found on the Internet.
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The head of the expedition, head of the department of ancient history of the Krasnoyarsk regional museum, candidate of historical sciences Nikolai Makarov, however, cannot guarantee one hundred percent that the ancient calendar was found in the Yelenev cave, but there are too many coincidences.
If so, then we are dealing with the oldest calendar in Russia, and possibly in the world.
Cannibals lived in the cave?
Having explored the cave, the candidate of archaeological sciences Vladimir Panteleev said that he does not exclude the possibility of living in the Yeleneva cave five thousand years ago … cannibals. The basis for this assumption was the research of the leading researcher of the laboratory of archeology and paleogeography of Central Siberia of the SB RAS, candidate of geological sciences Nikolai Ovodov.
Following his interests as a paleontologist, he analyzed bone remains from the cultural layer of the 10th cave of Yeleneva and found that the bones of 3 people were preserved in this layer. Moreover, all the bones were cleaved by a clearly human hand, scattered chaotically around the cave and had no animal gnaws. The cave version of these people was dismissed as too unlikely.
Meanwhile, the named cultural layer of the Yeleneva cave is not just unusual, but extremely rich in finds, it often contains objects of a ritual nature. Even the stone arrowheads found here are quite unusual - they have special bulges on the side faces near the point itself.
Arrowheads of this shape have only one advantage over ordinary ones - when they hit the target, they let out copious blood. And how can one do without blood in a ritual associated with eating a person …
The scientist's reasoning is, as it were, supported by the fact that in the cave, where there is generally nothing to burn, traces of a very strong, obviously deliberately created fire (in the same cultural layer) were found.
