The prevailing Darwinian theory of human origins in science presupposes some chronology. However, there are a number of artifacts that question its versatility.
One of them is the Chandar plate - a map carved in stone, which is very difficult to make, even with the current level of technology.
In 1993, a postgraduate student from China, Huang Hong, turned to Professor of the Bashkir State University Alexander Chuvyrov, who decided to write a scientific work on the migration of the peoples of Ancient China to the territory of the Urals and Siberia.
The professor accepted a new student, without even guessing what results this union would lead to.
Archive hint
The inscriptions found on the rocks of Bashkiria and the Trans-Urals made Huang Hong talk about the migration of the ancient Chinese. Their age ranged around 3 thousand years and suggested similarities with hieroglyphs.
The decryption showed that this is information about commercial transactions, registration of marriages, etc. While helping her in the search for such inscriptions, Professor Chuvyrov came across in the Ufa archive the notes of the local governor-general, dated to the end of the 18th century.
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They talked about 200 stone slabs of considerable size and weight, scattered near the village of Chandar. And most importantly, they were depicted with incomprehensible lines and icons. Later, the professor found other evidence of the existence of strange plates.
In particular, in the description of geological expeditions to the Urals in the XVII-XVIII centuries. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, Alexei Shmidt, the founder of the Ural archeology, also wrote about these plates in his reports.
And in 1924 they were included in the "List of natural, cultural and historical monuments in the BASSR" by the first chairman of the Presidium of the Bashkir branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the famous geologist Georgy Vakhrushev. But the luminary of Soviet geology, instead of 200 slabs, wrote only about “6 stones with some signs carved on them near the Chindar settlement”.
After reading these interesting documents, Chuvyrov decided to find at least one of the slabs. In 1998, with a group of students, he toured the area near Chandar and the nearby Nurimanov district up and down. And that's not counting the helicopter sorties. The scientist believed that the plates are so huge that they are comparable to the geoglyphs in the Peruvian Nazca desert, because they may not be visible from the ground. But no matter how much he looked, there was no result.
When there was almost no hope left, Chuvyrov accidentally got into a conversation with the chairman of the Chandar village council and mentioned the object of the search. And he pointed out where to look for him.
As old as history
In a conversation with the chairman, it turned out that his house was built back in 1918, and before that there was a smithy where wheels were made. So the slab, which had about a ton of weight, was left to him.
“When I came back from the army,” the pensioner said, “I began to look closely at her. I see some wonderful stripes, notches and signs. Nature cannot do that, but man … Well, I don't know, I tried it somehow with a hammer and a chisel - it doesn't scratch, and that's it. And when the mother pours water on her, she shines as good as new.
The massive slab in front of the house was 1 meter wide, 1.5 meters long and 16 centimeters thick. And most importantly, it had an unusual pattern in the form of many notches. At first glance, the researcher thought that it was some kind of ancient map. Measurement of the graphic elements showed that an angle of 56 degrees is systematically repeated in the drawings.
And here the Bashkir pioneers were struck by an idea - after all, this is the latitude of Ufa, and the notches resemble a map of the south of Bashkiria. The coincidences were not detailed, as the geographical landscape changed over time. But they were. On the slab, scientists also made out the Ufa Upland on the south side and the Ufa Canyon, which runs from Ufa to Sterlitamak.
And today little is left of the canyon. Tectonic plates that came from the east 5 million years ago almost closed it. But who could have watched this depression in order to put it on the stone ?! Also on the plate the approximate location of the Belaya, Ufimka and Sutolka rivers coincided. The scale of the stone map was 1 centimeter by 1.1 kilometers.
After it became clear what was depicted on the slab, the Ufa University began a detailed study of its composition. It turned out that the massive map consists of 3 layers. The first, 14 cm layer was made of pure (no quartz) dolomite. Moreover, it is almost impossible to find quartz-free dolomite in nature. It was a kind of substrate on which the second layer of 2 cm "diopside glass" was located.
How it got - scientists found it difficult to say. It was on it that all these symbols and lines were applied. The X-ray showed that it was mechanical cutting and not the labor of an ancient stonecutter.
The microstructure of this layer turned out to be comparable to a titanium alloy of the highest hardness, for the manufacture of which nanotechnology is used.
Well, the third, 2 mm layer was made of calcium porcelain, which protected the drawing from external influences. Figuratively speaking, an unknown creator first applied a movable mass to dolomite, on which he depicted a relief, and then subjected it to a chemical thermal treatment. Then the whole thing was covered with a thin layer of white porcelain with another firing.
Shocking examination
If amateur archaeologists had announced such a find, they would hardly have been heard in the scientific world. But since Chuvyrov had an academic degree and was related to science, Moscow became interested in his discovery.
To study the Chandar plate, a commission was created under the leadership of the former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, which included the rector of Moscow State University Viktor Sadovnichy, member of the Presidium of the Siberian Branch of the RAS Anatoly Derevyanko, members of the RAS, RANS and two cosmonauts - Vitaly Sevastyanov and Vladimir Aksenov.
The new experts began by questioning the conclusion that multiple dashes on a slab were a map. To test the hypothesis, part of the territory of Bashkiria, which the researchers were interested in, was filmed from the satellite. Then these photos were compared with a photocopy of a slab with reference points applied to it (Chesnokovskaya Gora and the town of Sterli-tamak). The results were stunning.
Excerpt from the letter of the Chief of the Topographic Service of the RF Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Valery Filatov, dated December 1, 2007: “At your request, the submitted materials were considered in order to identify the surface depicted on the stone slab, and work was carried out to study the archaeological find.
On this issue, we report the following. The surface of the slab shows a relief that generally corresponds to the southwestern spurs of the Bashkir upland with some displacement of the waterways of the indicated area. That's it - no more, no less.
Another shock was the age of the slab. Although here the scatter of estimates is gigantic and at the same time does not guarantee reliability. So, radiocarbon analysis and scanning the layers with a uranium chronometer gave different results.
And the potassium-argon analysis carried out by the head of the Department of Geochemistry of the Institute of Experimental Mineralogy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Vilen Zharikov, gave the age of the plate at 420 million years!
On the other hand, when examining the stone, the shells of 2 mollusks were found in it - Navicopsina munitus and Ecculiomphalus princeps, which lived 50 and 120 million years ago, respectively. Therefore Chuvyrov believes that the age of the plate is about 120 million years. But, for the sake of objectivity, it is worth mentioning that mollusks could have gotten into the stone long before it became a slab.
In addition to domestic experts, the Chandar plate was also studied by researchers from the Center for Historical Cartography from the American Wisconsin. In their opinion, the three-dimensional map depicted on the stone had a navigational purpose and could not have been obtained in any other way than aerospace survey.
But such work, even taking into account modern technologies, is extremely difficult and requires not only a satellite, but also a powerful computing complex. But who could have done this, even if not millions, but hundreds of thousands of years ago ?!
Now Chuvyrov and his associates regret only one thing - that they only got one stove. After all, it is a small fragment of a much larger map. According to some estimates, initially there were 348 such slabs, and the size of the complete map should have been 340x340 meters. True, the question of where these plates are and who could have made them remained open.
Alexey ANIKIN