In September last year, the first tourists saw the restored Khadzhokh 4 dolmen. But in December, the dolmen was destroyed by vandals.
Dolmens of Adygea - one of the most ancient and famous monuments of archeology - need to be saved. Not from the forces of nature, but from vandals.
Excavation of megaliths
In September of this year, an archaeological expedition came to Adygea under the leadership of Viktor Trifonov, candidate of historical sciences, leading specialist of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The main work of archaeologists was associated with the research of places where in 1898, when the present stanitsa Novosvobodnaya was still the village of Tsarskoye, the famous archaeologist, professor of St. Petersburg University Nikolai Veselovsky conducted excavations. Scientists dug near Treasures and Bogatyrskaya glade, where the most ancient dolmens are located.
Viktor Trifonov, who specializes in the study of the Caucasus megaliths, in September 2015, within the framework of a grant from the Russian Geographical Society specifically for the archaeological park of Adygea, while the only one in Russia, conducted the initial excavations of the Khadzhokh 4 dolmen, and then reconstructed two surviving dolmens of the Kozhzhokh group - "Khadzhokh 3" and "Khadzhokh 4".
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Second Life
In September last year, the first tourists saw the restored Khadzhokh 4 dolmen. But in December, the dolmen was destroyed by vandals.
So, among the tasks that V. Trifonov outlined for this year's expedition was the reconstruction of a unique dolmen. The reconstruction lasted several days, the 4-million-year-old Hajkhokh 4 dolmen was rebuilt. However, the famous archaeologist assessed the situation very pessimistically.
“Dolmens of the Kozhzhokh group are simply destroyed. We spend years to win a grant for the reconstruction of one, while developers of unique dolmen lands are letting dozens of dolmens under the bucket of a bulldozer, building mini-cottages and residential buildings in their place. I was the last time in Adygea two years ago - I was restoring the "Khadzhokh 3" dolmen. During this time, the republic and the archaeological culture of Russia as a whole lacked more than ten megaliths,”V. Trifonov said.
In 1996, the Kozhzhokh dolmens were accepted for state protection as an identified archeological monument. However, a prosecutor's check earlier this year showed that for ten years, 28 megaliths of the Kozhzhokh dolmen group were not provided with a state historical and cultural examination of the object and registration in the unified state register of cultural heritage objects.
In fact, today the dolmens of Adygea, remaining unguarded, are subjected to daily desecration and destruction. And if so, does the unique project of Adygea - "Archaeological Park" - have a future?
Karina Kadieva