The first two-day field expedition of the 2008 season took place in a 17-degree frost. Overcoming the cold, snowstorm and strong wind, the expeditionary group stormed the forests of the Tukums region in search of the remains of the Latvian Stonehenge - the legendary "Devil's fort"
In 1897, local historian Oskar Emil Schmidt (Oskars Emils Šmits) stumbled upon a mysterious megalithic structure. As the researcher writes in his diary, between the houses of Pakši, Ģēriņi and Gravnieki, on the swampy outskirts of the field, there was a low hillfort (1.30-1.80 m), on which a circle with a diameter of 20 was laid out of 56 granite stones of different sizes. meters, containing also several large stones inside the circle …
Schmidt's research showed that a 40-meter oval, laid out with stones, was attached to it from the south side of the stone circle. A stone embankment was discovered 400 meters from the main structure, leading towards the main building …
From a conversation with the owner of the Gerini farm OE Schmidt found out that part of the stones had been sold for household needs. The owner of the courtyard even tried to conduct independent excavations, but he did not find anything from his words.
A local legend explains the circumstances of the emergence of this building as follows - once the devil was going to build a castle for himself in these places overnight, but he hesitated, dragging huge stones for the construction of the castle, and the rooster crowed in the morning, forced him to abandon the construction unfinished. So the stones of the "devil's castle" remained standing in the field …
As usual, the pagan settlement was destroyed not by religious fanatics or crusaders, but by the usual ignorance of local residents … The last mention of the "damn castle" dates back to 1922. A local peasant, without hesitation, threw all the stones of the structure into the construction of the skeleton of the windmill.
The search for at least some traces of the structures listed by Schmidt was undertaken by us earlier, as a result of which it was established that at least two of the three farms listed by the local historian no longer exist. Nevertheless, in the course of studying the old maps, their location was established, and on the supposed line connecting the farm, an unsuccessful search for at least some traces of a megalithic structure or its remains began. It remained unclear why the locals needed to dismantle the stone structure, if the entire districts and nearby ravines are simply oversaturated with "building material" of any required size. It is assumed that the remains of a windmill should be located exactly somewhere near the once existing ridge of the megalith.
During the new expedition of the 2008 season, a frozen and desperate group, combing the northeastern part of the area, nevertheless managed to find in the forest a pile of granite blocks, some of which, as it was established as a result of a superficial examination, do not have obvious traces of processing, nevertheless, the largest fragments found in the heap are very reminiscent of (broken!) stone slabs, which is not quite typical for agricultural dumps, which, as a rule, do not have any systematic forms of "glacial" boulders collected from arable land.
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Research of the discovered boulders is planned for spring-summer 2008. At the same time, we investigate the remains of outbuildings overgrown with forests, made of … the same granite blocks, discovered during the expedition. The circle of searches is gradually narrowing, and if in the current season of 2008 it is not possible to find clear traces of a megalithic structure, the search for this object may have to be curtailed, considering it irretrievably lost.
Also, apart from the search for the legendary settlement, geophysical work was carried out within the framework of the DROMOS project, as well as instrumental research and experiments in the center of the Tukums cluster - places where UFOs were most often observed in this area, but more on that a little later …
Vlad Gushcha
