This story happened relatively recently, but for some reason mankind has unjustly forgotten it. It is unfair, because the case is really extremely unusual, even unique, both for Russia and the whole world, and its coverage in world publications is practically zero.
Lake Baikal, on the shores of Proval Bay
Often absolutely insignificant things are presented by the West as a sensation. A lot of documentaries and even feature films are shot about them, articles are written in thousands, and books are written in dozens. Probably, the fact is that in the West the world has been living according to capitalist laws for a long time, and there they can and know how to talk about events in a favorable way.
In general, the problem with Russian miracles is not that there are fewer of them than there, but that we are still poorly able to benefit from any interesting information. If this were not so, then 95% of people in the post-Soviet space would not open their mouths when they heard the phrase "Baikal Atlantis".
But the case was truly unique.
Once on the map, at the confluence of the largest "incoming" river of Lake Baikal, the Selenga, there was a huge Tsagan (Sagan) valley. Its area exceeded 200 sq. km. There were five Buryat uluses with a full-fledged economy on this place. From time immemorial, the Buryats inhabited this bank of the Selenga and led their usual way of life here.
But on January 10-11, 1862, a rather familiar misfortune for these places happened - an earthquake. The tremors were quite strong and caused some destruction in the villages. People were not particularly scared by this situation, because the earth always shook along the shores of Lake Baikal, and they, out of habit, began to restore their economy.
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Earthquakes on Lake Baikal happen quite often - within a year up to 2 thousand, but they are mostly weak and are recorded only by seismographs. Approximately once every 10 - 12 years there are earthquakes of 5 - 6 points (on a 12-point scale), and once every 20 - 23 years - more powerful and destructive earthquakes - from 7 to 9 points and higher. The strongest earthquakes in modern and recent history at Lake Baikal were in 1862 and 1959. In 1959, during an earthquake of 9.5, the bottom of Lake Baikal at the epicenter sank by 15 - 20 m.
But, as it turned out, the earthquake of 1862 was only a prelude to the catastrophe, which, quite possibly, once happened to the world famous Atlantis.
On the night of January 12-13, and for that time, according to the old style, from December 31 to January 1, that is, on New Year's, even more terrible tremors occurred, hereinafter referred to as the Tsagan earthquake (10-point earthquake). It was so strong that it covered an area of over 2 million square meters. km and was felt by the inhabitants of such distant cities as Chita and Ulan Bator.
As a result, the entire Tsagan Valley fell into the ground …
A collapsed village near Lake Baikal. Engraving from the book "A Journey across the Amur and Eastern Siberia" 1868
Oddly enough, none of the local residents died, since the water from Baikal came rather slowly - about a day. But this did not save their house with all the utensils and all the livestock. A total of 310 houses and 357 yurts were flooded. Killed 17 thousand head of livestock. The huge area turned out to be part of the lake, now called Proval Bay.
Separately, it is worth noting the consequences of this earthquake for Irkutsk, in which people could not stand on their feet and in which a lot of even one-story knowledge was destroyed, and the bells of churches rang by themselves, all stone and brick buildings cracked. The fact is that now Irkutsk is a much larger city than in those days, and if the tragedy of a century and a half was repeated, it would become one of the bloodiest in the history of Russia.
The story of the Tsagan Valley is all the more remarkable because it can be correlated with Atlantis. The second is believed to have been an island in Oceania. However, it is quite possible to assume that this was a state located on the shores of some lake or river. Moreover, such cases may not necessarily occur only near water.
The soil itself very often collapses in the most unpredictable places, and the resulting huge voids are filled with water. That is, it is quite possible to look for Atlantis not at all in the oceans, as it is done so far, but even somewhere in the most remote territories from any water in the depths of the continents.
Gulf Proval
Proval Bay in winter
Proval Bay on Google Map
By the way, do you know that there is such a thing as the Great Siberian Ocean? The thing is that Baikal is not just a seismically dangerous zone, but also a place where two tectonic plates of the Eurasian and Indian ones meet. And these plates diverge …
In the so-called Baikal rift zone, the features of the gravitational and magnetic fields and anomalously high heating of the bowels of the Baikal were found. The Baikal rift zone is the largest in Russia and the second largest on the planet. Rift structures stretch for 2500 km from northwestern Mongolia to southern Yakutia.
According to researchers, the width of the fault in the Baikal depression expands by several millimeters every year. On average, this number does not exceed 5 mm, but this is quite enough for sooner or later the tectonic plates to spread so far that Eurasia will split into two parts and the Great Siberian Ocean will be formed. And in the scientific world, this has long been treated calmly as a long-known fact.
The shores of Lake Baikal move apart at a rate of 4–5 mm per year. There is a theory that in hundreds of millions of years the Baikal rift will completely split Eurasia. In the figure below, the Baikal rift zone is a deep fault in the earth's crust in the continental part of Eurasia with a length of about 1,500 km.
Let's deal with the depth of this future ocean. Even the current depth of Lake Baikal is about 1640 meters in doubt. According to scientists, in any case, there is still a couple of hundred meters of silt at the bottom, which has accumulated due to the flowing rivers.
It is believed that they bring up to 1 mm of silt to the bottom of the lake per year. If so, then over the millions of years of existence, the lake would have long been covered with this silt for the most part. But that did not happen.
The absurdity with the accumulating silt led scientists to assume that the bottom may be several kilometers deeper, and it is covered with silt. As the lake expands, it can easily and deepen with the same intensity, very significant in the future for millions of years.
It is likely that the real bottom of Lake Baikal may be 5-7 kilometers long - like the oceans.
Based on materials from the book by Mikhail Raduga (published with minor edits)
