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"Ancient fortresses" of the Caucasus
Continuing the conversation about the man-made structures of the North Caucasus, it is impossible to ignore such objects as kilns for burning ceramics and lime, of various designs. In the Dante Gorge, which is located on the territory of the park in Goryachy Klyuch, there is one attraction, which the guides call the "Psyfabe Fortress". According to local historians, the Psyfabe fortress is one of the historical architectural monuments of the resort town of Goryachy Klyuch. Translated from the Adyghe, Psyfabe means "warm water". In the same way, until the end of hostilities in the Caucasus in 1864, the tract was called, in which the central part of the city is today.
However, by their own admission, today no one can imagine exactly how the fortress looked like, because it was dismantled for building materials by local residents in time immemorial. But the popular resort needs its own "zest", so they show the onlookers this structure, passing it off as … "Entrance to the fortress" …
I just want to ask local historians, but have they themselves ever seen the entrances to the fortress? Listen, how, in general, it could have occurred to someone to call this part of a fortification! Why not call it a “temple” of one of the local gods: Thyeshue, Psathye, or Thyegaleja, for example? It would look more believable and raise fewer puzzling questions. No, well, really, if this is the entrance to the fortress, then where could the fortress itself be located? Indeed, in this place it was impossible to build anything larger than this small "shed". But the hotheads agreed that:
It's a pity to disappoint romantics, but you have to. Until the irreparable happened and the "shed" was not protected by UNESCO, it is necessary to tell the truth about it. In fact, what is considered the remains of an ancient - pre-ancient citadel is a completely modern furnace for burning ceramics.
Diagram of a two-chamber hearth with a peripheral chamber. Reconstruction of the historian of ceramics A. A. Bobrinsky.
Note: - not a stove, not a wood-burning tandoor, but the crown of the creation of potters, the times of the decline of their craft, when clay dishes and pots were replaced by factory products made of porcelain, faience and flask. Such forges were built at the end of the nineteenth century. The fuel for them was mainly charcoal, and their most common design was as follows:
Reconstruction of the pottery forge in Arkaim.
But this is a small forge. He met the needs of the inhabitants of a small settlement. And in this case, we are dealing practically with the industrial production of ceramics. Perhaps not even dishes, but bricks. Take a closer look at the arch of the "entrance to the fortress", and there you will see quite modern factory steel channels. And this cannot be attributed to reconstruction. A factory rolled steel frame was used in the initial construction. And today, this structure is in the same form in which its operation ceased. I believe that the forge could have been used for its intended purpose, up until the early sixties of the twentieth century.
That is why it was kept in working order for a long time. They even carefully covered the roof with a layer of cement mortar. The horn was used even when the balneological resort already existed.
That is why the "ruins of an ancient fortress" managed to survive to this day. It is quite possible that the arch with the Masonic symbols of the two pillars Joachim and Boaz, symbolizing the Moon and the Sun, silver and gold, was also built of bricks burned in a furnace on Mount Petushok.
The symbol of the columns is Joachim and Boaz, which were supposedly located at the entrance to Solomon's palace.
By the way, it is possible that the Masons erected here a bust of their fellow academician I. P. Pavlov.
This man was not just a Freemason, but one of those who crushed the true ideas about the structure of the world, along with such pillars of falsification as Newton, Darwin and Einstein. The question arises: By whose will the bust of the "father of physiology" Pavlov appeared in this place, because he had never been here, and most likely, he had never even heard of the existence of pump rooms in Goryachy Klyuch. But this is a separate topic. Let's go back to other man-made structures in the North Caucasus.
A five-minute walk towards the mountains from the village of Kamennomostsky, in Adygea, there is an amazing complex of lime kilns that attracts tourists. The place is delightful, and many, having got here, succumb to the temptation not to believe the words of the guide, and to suspect that these are the walls of a majestic medieval castle, a watch fortress that locks the entrance to the gorge through which the Belaya River flows.
But in fact, everything is quite prosaic. Lime has long been one of the most important building materials. It was used for the preparation of masonry mortars, plaster, as well as in agriculture (to lower the acidity of the soil) and tanning in the manufacture of sheepskin skins. In terms of their type, the furnaces are similar to the most ancient version - the transfer type, when the raw materials (limestone) were laid in layers with fuel - wood or coal.
View from the firebox upwards. The bottom of the loading column is separated by a grid of channels.
Top view of the loading column Thanks to the schematic diagram, you can easily understand how it all worked:
Source: "Roman concrete", V. A. Kochetov, 1991.
A detailed examination showed that the structure has nothing to do with Caucasian antiquities. Despite the fact that during the construction of the retaining wall, which is designed to prevent soil crumbling when loading limestone into the mines from the top of the hill, mainly natural stones were used.
The columns and furnaces themselves are made of refractory red fireclay bricks and plastered. The design uses many metal parts. But the question is, who and when, and most importantly, why, set up “protective walls for the shooters” on the towers and along the entire wall? They were made quite recently from sandstone blocks, fastened with cement mortar:
It seems to me that the answer lies on the surface. Every travel agency dreams of having its own antiquities to attract tourists. And just as half a century ago, the kiln for burning ceramics in Goryachy Klyuch magically turned into an "ancient fortress", so in the near future the stone-bridge kilns for burning lime will imperceptibly become "the medieval castle of the Adyghe knights."
Even in spite of the fact that no Adyghe people had ever met before Soviet power in the Caucasus. Eighteen tribes, of which the most numerous were the Kabardians, Abadzekhs, Bzhedugs, and Shapsugs, the Russians had one common name - the Circassians. But Soviet scientists … Well, then you know.
The quarry in which the raw materials were mined is located right there, behind the wall. We examined it already at dusk, nevertheless the photo is able to convey the true state of affairs.
Lime is mined here to this day, and there is a small factory on the edge of the quarry where limestone is crushed into crushed stone. As a matter of fact, it is no longer quite limestone, but marbleized. Geologists call it "Jurassic", but let them amuse themselves, no one is forbidden to have their own opinion, or faith.
A sample of limestone taken in a quarry near the furnaces in the village of Kamennomostsky, the Republic of Adygea.
In fact, this is one of the life stages of quartz. As a person is born an infant, then becomes a youth, a youth, a man and, finally, an old man, so quartz is capable of mutation throughout life. Official geology does not correlate this mineral with the carbon form of life, and in all encyclopedias and reference books it is ranked among the silicon minerals, because has the chemical formula SiO2.
But I am much closer to the opinion of some geologists in an alternative direction, who are convinced that carbon chalk (the basis of the skeletons and shells of most living organisms), which is calcium carbonate (CaCO3), turns into lime under certain conditions. For example, from ammonites, which are literally everywhere underfoot in the North Caucasus, and in such a state, as if the mollusk left its "house" just yesterday:
Ammonite found near a highway in the Belaya River valley.
And then into milky quartz, which has matured, becomes marble. In some formations, such as nodules, for example, quartz crystallizes in one of its next incarnations. Here's a prime example:
Exposition of the private museum of local lore in the village of Kamennomostsky. The founder and curator of the museum is Volodya Belovodye.
As if on purpose, Volodya Belovodye (as the owner of the museum introduced himself to us) placed marbled limestone and a petrified clay ball (nodule) side by side. Inside the fractured nodule, we see the "embryos" of crystals, which could later become one of the following incarnations:
Rock crystal is colorless, transparent.
Citrine - lemon yellow, transparent.
Amethyst - violet, lilac, lilac, raspberry, transparent.
Rauchtopaz - smoky, transparent.
Morion is black, opaque.
Rose quartz is solid granular.
Green quartz (prase).
Milky white quartz is opaque.
Aventurine (sparkling) is a fine-grained, yellow, brown color with a shimmering golden tint.
Such beauty managed to appear in the old mountains, and in the north of the Caucasus they did not have time to grow and mature. This state of affairs is another argument in favor of the fact that life in this region was interrupted quite recently, and most likely its remnants rest under one hundred meter strata of clay rubble, which are now called "rocks of the Jurassic period".
That is why, if we want to find something truly ancient, we will have to bury ourselves several hundred meters deep into the Caucasus mountains. Isn't that what the mountain rangers from the SS Edelweiss division were doing? After all, the employees of "Ahnenerbe" were looking for something in the caves, but what?
However, not all is lost. Traces of an ancient civilization could have survived in deep gorges, near riverbeds, which are closest to the level of the mainland, which now rests under a giant petrified mudflow. And it may very well be that we managed to find one of the signs confirming this version.
Continued: Part 30
Author: kadykchanskiy