What is Arkaim, about which adherents of "alternative history" and neo-pagans love to tell? An ancient city that disappeared like Atlantis? The trail of an unknown civilization? Or a demonic, "damned" place? Or maybe just a subject of everyday work of archaeologists, clarifying the history of our land? Anti-scientific and neo-pagan myths about Arkaim are debunked by the famous archaeologist Fedor Nikolaevich Petrov.
Is it true that Arkaim died in a disaster?
- There is no archaeological evidence of the catastrophic death of ancient Arkaim. The settlement was abandoned by its population in a rather calm atmosphere - people took valuable objects with them. Archaeologists have found only ancient rubbish and lost things. If the settlement died in the fire of a sudden fire or storm, the remains of the dead would be discovered. In Arkaim, peacetime burials were found and, possibly, traces of human sacrifice in a very deep pit. Perhaps Arkaim was deserted due to the depletion of pastures.
Scattered across the Ural-Kazakh steppe is the so-called "country of cities" - a chain of fortified settlements of the Bronze Age. In total, archaeologists have discovered twenty-seven such settlements. In addition to Arkaim, other similar ones can be named: Sarym-Sakly and Andreevskoe in the Chelyabinsk region, Alandskoe in the Orenburg region, Ulak in the Trans-Ural Bashkiria. All of them belong to the Sintashta culture, named by scientists in honor of the first excavated settlement in Sintashta. Arkaim is relatively well preserved. Now archaeologists have studied 40% of the city's territory, which occupied an area of 8.5 thousand square kilometers. The object is interesting, important for science, but not unique. This is not the most ancient settlement in those parts: presumably Arkaim existed 4000 years ago, and in the Urals, monuments of the Stone Age, which are more than 7000-8000 years old, have been discovered.
Near the Arkaim complex there is the so-called Shamanikha Mountain, or Bald Mountain, on top of which stones are laid out in a spiral manner. Why is this done?
- The mountain is not included in the Arkaim museum complex, it is just one of the steppe hills from which a good view of the Arkaim valley opens. The so-called psychics and esoterics, who began to come to Arkaim after the visit of the “astrologer” Tamara Globa, in 1991, fell in love with the name of this hill "Shamanka". They have associated with this elevation a number of ideas that are very far from science, some kind of rituals and myth-like fantasies. They also laid out a spiral on the top of this hill many years ago, which somehow participates in their pseudo-ritual activities.
All this has nothing to do with either the museum complex of the "Arkaim" reserve, or the scientific study of antiquity, or the most ancient Arkaim.
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Who named the nearby hills: Mount of Repentance, Mount of Health, Mount of Happiness?
- Only large hills have official names recorded on geographical maps. New "teachers" of modern "esotericists" arbitrarily come up with some new names for individual heights. Mount Voronya was renamed the Mountain of Love (and the word "Arkaim" itself is not too old either, it goes back to the Turkic "ridge", "base" - approx.).
Is there any reason to call the Arkaim settlement "a place of power" or "a source of extraterrestrial civilizations"?
- From the point of view of the scientific approach, not a single place on Earth today is what the so-called "esotericists" call "a place of power." Naturally, Arkaim, like any other place on our planet, has nothing to do with the so-called extrasensory force and is not associated with any extraterrestrial civilizations. It is a pity that some people believe in this, and experience shows that it is very difficult to convince them, and often even impossible.
Arkaim is not the only ancient settlement of the Bronze Age in these places, why, in your opinion, is this complex covered with many myths and legends?
- Most likely, it happened as a result of the coincidence of several factors. The discovery of Arkaim and the first research on its territory took place in those years when an ideological and ideological vacuum entered our country; in the late 1980s, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the official Soviet ideology had already disintegrated, and the resulting void began to fill with very different things. In particular, various neo- and pseudo-religious movements began to spread widely. Russia very quickly found itself drawn into the circle of modern occult-esoteric and neo-pagan movements, which became widespread in Western Europe and North America since the second half of the twentieth century.
The movements of this circle are characterized by an appeal to the "media", well-known archaeological sites. This happens with Stonehenge, and with the Egyptian pyramids, and with the pyramids of Mesoamerica, and with the dolmens of the Black Sea region - in fact, with all fairly noticeable archaeological sites that can be directly or indirectly associated with pagan or neo-pagan themes. On the territory of the Southern Trans-Urals, not only Arkaim enjoys such attention, but also the so-called "dolmens" on the Vera island of Lake Turgoyak, ancient menhirs near the village of Akhunovo in Trans-Ural Bashkiria, etc.
All these are components of the same cultural and social process. If we talk specifically about Arkaim, then the formation of "occult esoteric" attention to this archaeological monument and to the surrounding natural landscape occurred, firstly, because this monument has been used since the late 1980s. great media fame, was, as they say, heard. Secondly, it was the result of a certain position of the former head of the reserve "Arkaim" Gennady Borisovich Zdanovich. He was ready to support any form of attention to the Arkaim theme, and when this attention began to be shown by "psychics" and "neo-pagans", G. B. Zdanovich began to support their attention: he began to fantasize more and more, make irresponsible statements, promote the fantastic, very far from science,but the image of the ancient Arkaim, pleasant to the ears of "esotericists". At the same time, he used his authority as a scientist, archaeologist - an authority undoubtedly well-deserved in his time, but his new fantasies about Arkaim had less and less relation to science.
To date, Gennady Borisovich has not been in charge of the state reserve for many years, but what he is doing within the framework of his private projects is, unfortunately, a continuation of the same trends. Now he, with his private charitable foundation, returned to the archaeological complex of Sintashta, in the study of which he participated in the 1970s - 1980s, and is trying to promote the remains of the Great Sintashta burial mound as supposedly the oldest pagan temple of steppe Eurasia. From the point of view of most experts, these are unconfirmed fantasies, and this mound itself is a combination of burial structures of different times.
Is something being done to debunk such myths?
- First of all, our task in this area as scientists and as employees of a state institution is to popularize scientific data; this is what the museum complex of the "Arkaim" reserve is doing. The permanent exhibition of the museum, exhibitions, excursions, public lectures, popular science publications - all this is done today based on the results of scientific research and is aimed at disseminating objective, confirmed information about the past.
The main thing is precisely the spread of an adequate attitude to antiquity; first of all - a calm, interested and balanced attitude, based on scientific data …
Unfortunately, any efforts that are being made today to popularize scientific data look very modest against the background of the avalanche of insane nonsense pouring from some central TV channels - first of all, of course, we are talking about Ren TV. The absolutely irresponsible behavior of many journalists and media leaders who, in pursuit of pseudo-sensations, are ready to spread any nonsense, and often follow the path of deliberate lies and forgery in order to create more "sensational" materials - this is the breeding ground on which any myths can grow much faster than they can be exposed.
Interviewed by Tatiana SAVINOVSKIKH