The history of Russia is not an unplowed virgin land overgrown with weeds and grasses, but rather a dense, impenetrable, fabulous forest. Most historians are simply afraid of its thicket and do not try to go into it deeper than the marks set by the chronicler Nestor. What grandmothers whispered fears to them about this enchanted forest? And it is strange that their childish fright did not develop with age into adolescent curiosity and, later, into the mature interest of a researcher
For example, the stories of Arina Rodionovna not only did not frighten the evil Koschei, but awakened the Russian soul in young Pushkin, which was reflected in his magnificent poetic tales.
Fairy tales, there were myths, legends - hitherto unused baggage, the historical and cultural source of our ancestors. These ancient layers of folk art made it possible to preserve the amazingly beautiful Russian language and the great culture of our people.
Where and when was Russia born? The opinions of modern scientists are divided. Some believe that Russia (and all of humanity) originated in the north, others - on the Black Sea coast, still others in the western Slavic lands, and still others - in the "Arkaimov" east.
Yes, ancient Russia left indisputable traces in different parts of the world. But it originated at a time when there was still no division into north and south, west and east. Wherever Russians live today, one cannot say about them: northern Russians, southern Russians, etc. (compare East Slavs, North Koreans).
Because historically Russians are centrists. The place where they appeared and realized themselves became the center, the starting point for the development and formation of human civilization. And only then they dispersed to different parts of the world, forming new tribes and peoples.
This work is an attempt to prove just such a historical version. Each of the steps into which this study is divided is a small discovery, a small sensation. Each step is an invitation to move, change angle or point of view. Only by going around the object, you can judge its size and shape.
If you, dear reader, consider the dense forest rather a friend than an enemy, if you are ready for any surprises and iron logic, and not an imposed dogma, is the right argument for you, then I invite you on the road. On a journey through our native land, along our hills, rivers, cities and villages, in order to find the traces and landmarks of our great ancestors left to us, at first glance, seemingly invisible. Be attentive and curious. And then you will discover ancient, amazing, almost forgotten secrets.
Promotional video:
And all the secret someday becomes apparent.
Step 1. Russian sea
In my distant, still school, childhood, I got acquainted with the work of our famous countryman, Alexei Maksimovich Gorky, much of which is devoted to the description of pre-revolutionary Nizhny Novgorod. A true artist helps to imagine, feel and empathize with what he describes. Reading his story "In People", the chapter where he talks about hunting for waders during a spring flood, taking place in the area of modern Meshchersky Lake, a Nizhny Novgorod citizen can easily imagine a picture of this flood of the arrow of two rivers: Oka and Volga. If the flood described by the classic were repeated today, we would see the buildings of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, the planetarium, the circus filled with water up to the second floor, a completely flooded subway, electric trains and trains that sank near the railway station through the windows of the carriages.
The average water level near Nizhny Novgorod today is about 64–65 meters above sea level. Have the water levels of the Oka and Volga always been like this?
Of course not.
And it's not just the spring floods.
First, let's go down the beautiful Volga to the world's largest lake - the Caspian Sea. The absolute level of this inland sea today is -27 m, and this level falls annually. That is, the sea gradually dries up, increasing the difference between the source and the mouth of the rivers flowing into it. Thus, the Caspian Sea, as it were, sucks these rivers into itself, as a result of which they become less deep and shallow.
The picture of rivers shallowing in the Volga water area is observed everywhere. Streams and small rivers dry up almost completely by the end of summer, previously navigable rivers become dangerous for ships and are used by river transport only during spring floods. All this speaks about the current instability of the Aral-Caspian water area as a whole.
But how long have these processes been taking place and what did the waters of these seas look like in ancient times? Interesting is the opinion of the Moscow geologist, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, Professor Andrei Leonidovich Chepalyga, who believes that “in ancient times, the Khvalynian transgression (advance) of the Caspian Sea took place, which 10-17 thousand years ago extended to modern Cheboksary. The water level of the water area reached a height of 50 meters above sea level. At the same time, part of the water was discharged through the Manych-Kerch Strait into the Black Sea and further through the Bosporus and Dardanelles into the Mediterranean Sea.
I will cite a paragraph from an article on a similar topic published in the journal “In the world of science” No. 5 in May 2006: “In the study of tectonically stable regions (Republic of Dagestan), it was possible to find about 10 sea terraces, which appeared as a result of significant fluctuations in the water level … studies by G. L. Rychagov (2001) and A. A. Svitoch (2000),… the appearance of such terraces is associated with the recession phase of the Khvalynsky (Caspian) Sea. The maximum level was such that its waves splashed in the area of the Zhiguli and the mouth of the Kama."
Unfortunately, scientists did not continue their studies higher than the discovered sea terraces by another 40–50 m. But even the expected rise of waters to an absolute height of 50 m allowed the waters of the Black, Azov, Caspian and Aral seas to merge.
We will now rise from the Caspian Sea up the Volga to the Nizhny Novgorod region.
Here nature has preserved the ancient traces of a mighty reservoir unknown to us today.
Let's open the book of our fellow countryman, Doctor of Philology, journalist Nikolai Vasilyevich Morokhin "Our rivers, cities and villages" (Nizhny Novgorod, publishing house "Books", 2007). In the chapter "Parts of the Nizhny Novgorod Region" we find: "Ochele is a high left-bank terrace of the Volga, located a few kilometers from the river and bordering the floodplain. The Russian name associated with the word "chelo" - "forehead, high place", indicates the shape of the terrace."
This terrace is observed on a large territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region from the city of Gorodets to the village of Mikhailovskoye and below in the Republic of Mari El (photo 1).
The same terrace exists in the Volga right bank from the dam of the Gorkovskaya HPP to the villages of Rylovo, Zamyatino, Shurlovo and below (photo 2).
The width of the floodplain, limited by these terraces, reaches ten to fifteen kilometers and more.
A similar situation is observed with the channels of the Oka and Klyazma rivers.
One can try to explain the presence of such wide floodplains of Nizhny Novgorod rivers by large spring floods at a time when the water was not regulated by dams. However, to fill this floodplain with water, the level of the rivers had to rise during the spring flood by twenty to thirty meters, which seems unlikely.
And here is what the famous Nizhny Novgorod ethnographer Dmitry Nikolaevich Smirnov writes in his book "Essays on the life and everyday life of Nizhny Novgorod residents of the 17th-18th centuries" (Gorky, Volgo-Vyatka book publishing house, 1971): "The left bank of the Volga within the Nizovsky region contained" palace volosts ": Gorodetskaya, Zauzolskaya and Tolokontsevskaya. "Palace" villages - large and small - stretched in long lines along the upper terrace of the ancient river bank, right up to the "Sopchin Zaton".
Ancient river bank!
The most understandable and logical characteristic of this terrace, or, as it was called by the people, "ochelya".
Measurements of the tyna levels, the base of these terraces, regardless of their location: right bank, left bank, Gorodets or Ostankino area, show stable results - 85–87 m.
Very interesting information on this topic can be found in the book of Nizhny Novgorod geologists G. S. Kulinich and B. I. Fridman under the title "Geological Travels on the Gorky Land" (Gorky, Volgo-Vyatka Book Publishing House, 1990). We read: “High … above the floodplain terraces can be observed on the left bank of the Volga, near Gorodets … In the section of the Gorodetsky coast, two high ground terraces are visible … High above the floodplain terraces … Dokuchaev (A well-known Russian naturalist, soil scientist. - Author's note) called the pine forest or the ancient coast … Its surface (the most pronounced, third, terrace. - Author's note) is located at the level of the 90-meter (!) Mark. It was formed in the second half of the Middle Pleistocene period … (150-100 thousand years ago). This terrace stretches in a wide strip from Gorodets to the south, and many have seen its ledge near the village. Kantaurovo,where the Gorky-Kirov highway climbs sharply."
Further: “River terraces are found everywhere in the Volga valley. In Dzerzhinsky (Lake Pyra), Borsky (northeast of the Pikino village), Lyskovsky districts (Lake Ardino) and in other places on the left bank, both levels of high terraces are clearly visible.
With the formation of the so-called third terrace, or rather, as Dokuchaev described it, the ancient coast, it is more or less clear. But what kind of reservoir did this ancient coast serve? And when did this body of water leave its ancient shore?
The answer to the first question is unambiguous: this ancient coast was the coast of the mysterious, mentioned in many Russian fairy tales, "sea-okey" or the Russian sea, which consisted of the spilled unified water area of the Black, Azov, Caspian and Aral seas, which, in turn, rose channels of rivers flowing into them, far inland.
It was on the shores of the bays (estuaries) of this ancient, forgotten sea today that mysterious Russia was first born and settled!
The dating of events is one of the most important and most difficult questions in historical science. Today there is not a single precise method for determining them. Therefore, unfortunately, very often its academic, but not always proven, version is called history.
The history of Russia, circulated today to a wide audience - from schoolchildren to academicians, portrays it as the history of a gray, undeveloped, wretched and wild country. However, to a caring and attentive ("one who has eyes, let him see") researcher, our Fatherland is ready to reveal many amazing secrets, the clues of which can stun even the most prepared reader. The traces left to us by our ancestors, the facts about which we stumble, not wanting to notice them through our own laziness or inattention, are waiting for their time. Let's bring this time closer, let's touch it with our hand, let's breathe in its burning, tart smell.
The reservoir, traces of which geologists found near the town of Gorodets, was at a level of about +90 m from the current sea level and, apparently, occupied vast areas. The disappearance of such a huge mass of water could not remain without a trace in the memory of the people who lived on its banks or not far from it. This event was supposed to be a tragedy or a starting point for the civilization that existed at that time.
The traces of this event lead us to the times that are linked by stories described in ancient myths and legends of many peoples, as well as by a few ancient historians, that is, stories about the "global flood" and the "death of Atlantis". Or, in other words, about global and tragic changes in huge water areas in the territory of modern Russia and other countries of the Aral, Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean regions. This time is assessed by different historians and researchers in different ways, within the X-IV century BC.
We will entrust the exact timing of the events of interest to professionals.
The main conclusion that the reader needs to make, and the proof of which, in particular, this work is devoted to is the complete identity and coincidence in time of these two most important events in the history of all human civilization - the disappearance of the Russian Sea and the global flood. And this means that all the myths, legends, and legends about these events that have survived among different peoples are just slightly different stories about the same history, about the same tragedy.
A tragedy that really happened.
The tragedy that divided the entire history of mankind into two seemingly non-contiguous parts today - the ancient, "antediluvian" and "post-Flood", modern.
Tragedies, in the epicenter of which were our ancestors, the inhabitants of that "antediluvian", while still naval Russia.
Let's glance briefly into that "antediluvian" world.
At that time, there were no straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and all four modern seas - the Black, Azov, Caspian and Aral - merged together, formed a huge water area, which can be safely named by its geographical location, as well as in honor of its explorers, pioneers Russian sea.
At the same time, the single Russian Sea, rising along the channels of rivers flowing into it, reached modern cities: Kiev along the Dniester, Voronezh along the Don, Yaroslavl and Kostroma along the Volga, Vladimir along the Klyazma, Vetluga along the Vetluga river, Alatyr along the Sura, Urzhum along the Vyatka, Sarapula along the Kama and Ufa along the Belaya river. On the coast of this sea or in its vicinity there were such modern cities as Chisinau, Krivoy Rog, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkassy, Poltava, Zaporozhye, Lugansk, Elista, Orenburg, Karakalpakia, Grozny and even Ashgabat (today Ashgabat is located at altitudes of more than 200 m, but its territorial proximity to the ancient Russian Sea is obvious). Check, all these cities (their historical centers) occupy territories located at absolute heights of about 90 m. I will repeat that the image of this embracing vast territories of modern Russia (and, of course,not only Russia) of the sea is reflected in many old Russian fairy tales under the name "sea-okiyan", which is overcome or on which fairy-tale characters swim.
At first glance, the sea was Mediterranean, since it did not have access to the ocean. But it is not so.
First, it is possible that on the site of the modern straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles there were small rivers or streams, thanks to which excess water could drain from the vast Russian Sea into the Mediterranean Sea and further through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean. Although the existence of these three modern straits, especially Gibraltar, was more than controversial at the time.
Secondly, on the territory of modern Kazakhstan, north of the Aral Sea, there is the so-called Turgai plateau, divided into two parts by the deep Turgai hollow, at the bottom of which there are numerous salt marshes, salt and fresh lakes, in one of which it begins its way north to To the Arctic Ocean, a tributary of the Tobol River is the Ubagan River. It will take a little more time before the Aral Sea turns into a network of the same lakes, by the location of which it will be very difficult to guess the territory of the flooding of the once powerful Russian Sea and the way of water outlet from it to the north. It is here, along the bed of the Turgai Hollow, in the old ancient times, a river, unknown to us today, flowed, connecting the great Russian Sea with the great Arctic Ocean. Thanks to this particular river (strait?), The Russian Sea remained more or less stable and was, in practice, surprising and strange as it may sound, the sea of the Arctic Ocean basin.
This means that the modern Black, Azov, Caspian and Aral seas are, by their origin, seas of the Arctic Ocean!
It was this circumstance that allowed our ancestors to develop and inhabit the vast northeastern territories for their future generations. Due to the stable flow of warm southern waters from the Russian Sea along the channels of the modern rivers Tobol, Irtysh and Ob, the summer sea route along the northern coast of the mainland may have been ice-free for much longer, which could also have played a role in the development of these lands even in ancient times.
Traces of the ancient Russian Sea, which once washed the steep banks of the modern city of Nizhny Novgorod, can be seen with the naked eye along the right bank of the Oka (from the city of Gorbatov) and the Volga. At a height of more than 85 m, numerous terraces and landslides are visible, which are the traces of the action of the waves and currents of the gone sea.
There is another way to see a small part of the Russian Sea with your own eyes and almost in its original form. To do this, you need to go on an excursion to the mysterious city on the Volga - Gorodets, in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The fact is that the Soviet hydroelectric builders chose the most suitable place from the point of view of geology for the construction of the grandiose Gorky hydroelectric power station. Here, a little higher than Gorodets, they connected with a dam two "ochelya", the left-bank and the right-bank, or, as we have already found out, two ancient banks of the same reservoir that was once the Russian Sea. After filling the Gorky reservoir with water, the level of which today occupies 84 m of absolute height, a small "fragment" of the same "sea-okiyana" appeared on the map of our country. And let, according to the calculations below, the level of that ancient sea was more than 87 m,that is, three to five meters above the level of the modern Gorky reservoir, but you can see with your own eyes its scale and imagine its significance for our ancestors even today, swimming in its renewed waters (see photo).
And in order to understand the tragedy of the destruction of such a universal reservoir, to feel the animal fear of its unbridled energy, it would seem necessary to do the impossible - to get to the border between the past and the present.
And this journey is possible!
If you go along the dam of the Gorkovskaya hydroelectric power station from the side of the city of Gorodets towards the Volga region, then a fascinating picture of the meeting of the deep past and the present will open before the observer. On the right, an accidentally revived "fragment" of the Russian "sea-okiyan" will open its majestic expanses for it, on the left you can see the remnants of the former ancient greatness, but at the same time no less stately modern beauty of the Volga.
Two different worlds, separated by a thin partition. Gray-haired fairy-tale Russia and modern twitched Russia.
Let's ponder whether such a huge abyss separates us today from our yesterday's ancestors, so as not to try to revive their history, their tragedy, their valor.
More precisely our history!
He who does not know the past has no future.
The reason for the rise in the water level of a single ancient sea was its filling with the waters of deep rivers flowing into it, and the lack of a reliable flow into the world ocean threatened its future fate. The fact is that the northern rivers, including the Ob of interest to us, are freed from ice in spring much later than the rivers of the modern basins of the Black and Caspian Seas. Ice jams interfere with the spring flow of northern rivers, provoking a significant rise in their water level. The same thing happened with the flow of an ancient river passing through the Turgai hollow. The clogged, ice-blocked channel of this river created a natural dam, due to which the water level in the Russian Sea could rise menacingly, and its waters were looking for new ways of flowing, which, perhaps, once happened.
Dmitry Kvashnin