But the popular resort of the South Urals is known not only for its natural beauty. It contains many artifacts from ancient history. According to archaeologists, Banny is one of the centers of the Stone Age civilization.
The eminent archaeologist Gerald Matyushin began his first studies of protocivilizations in the Southern Urals back in the 60s of the last century. During the South Ural archaeological expedition, led by Gerald Matyushin in 1968-1989, Paleolithic sites were discovered in the Urals - Mysovaya near Tashbulatov, Mesolithic - Yangelka on the shores of Lake Chebarkul, Neolithic - Tashbulatovo I and Eneolithic - Surtchandy VIII in the area of Lake …
According to the agency Bashinform, on August 17, Ufa hosted a round table "Cultural heritage of Yakty-Kul: from the Stone Age to ethnography", which discussed the preservation of the region's archaeological monuments. The roundtable summed up the results of the joint archaeological expedition of the Heritage Research Center led by Nikita Savelyev and the Archeology Department of the Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences led by Vyacheslav Kotov. More than 80 artifacts have been discovered, the oldest being 300 thousand years old.
- We made one section of the general plan of the resort area of Yakty-Kul, related to the preservation of cultural heritage. When we went there, there were 19 identified archaeological sites throughout the territory. After a month of work, there were 83 of them, that is, four times more! - Bashinform quotes archaeologist Nikita Savelyev. - There is a Stone Age parking lot right in the center of Kusimov. There is a small lake adjacent to the one from which the sanatorium collects therapeutic mud - there are three monuments at once: one Paleolithic, one Eneolithic and an early Iron mound.
Among the artifacts found, a petroglyph, well known to the South Ural tourists, was named. On the Elephant cliff of the Krykty-Tau ridge, there is a rock painting related to the Itkul culture of the Early Iron Age. This petroglyph depicts a bird and is very similar to the bird geoglyph on the Nazca plateau in Peru.
The Elephant Rock is very popular among rock climbers and climbers, and it got its name due to the fact that the shape of the rocky exit resembles the head of an elephant. You can get to it if you go to the ridge from the camp of the children's camp "Mountain Gorge" or climb the ski center lift to the upper station and from there along the trail through the pass to the rock. Nobody knows how old this image is, but it was already known about it in the 70s of the last century. Archaeologists are only now paying attention to it.
- Found a monument - a bird in the gorge. When you go up the lift and go down into the gorge, there is a gorgeous petroglyph in the form of a spread bird. There is an analogy to the outline in the Nazca desert. Bronze bird-like idols date back to the 5th century BC, - said Nikita Savelyev at the round table.
During the research, archaeologists also found numerous jasper flakes, fragments of arrowheads, scrapers, pieces of copper ore, fragments of Itkul and Itkul-Gamayun ceramics of the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. It is possible that some of the finds date from an earlier time.
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Unfortunately, many unique archaeological sites have been lost due to active development of the territories around the lake. So, during the construction of the village of Zelenaya Polyana, back in the 90s of the last century, a stone mound with a height of more than four meters was destroyed.
The result of the forum was the decision to resume work on the study and preservation of archaeological monuments in the area of Lake Yakty-Kul, and the question of creating a museum-reserve on Lake Bannoe was also raised.