Named after the mountain tribe that left the sea, the village of Shapsugskaya preserves the monuments of peoples so ancient that even their names have not been preserved in history.
Now Shapsugskaya has almost merged with the regional center - Abinsk. You are driving along the bypass road: on the right is a cottage - this is Abinsk, and there - on a hillock - small huts - this is the village of Shapsugskaya. Initially, there were almost twenty miles between them.
The Abinsk fortification and the Nikolaev fortification (named in 1863 as the village of Shapsugskaya) were founded in 1834 by General Ermolov's associate in the Caucasian War, Lieutenant General Alexei Aleksandrovich Vilyaminov. Both fortifications were designed to protect against the mountaineers. The strongest of the non-peaceful Circassian tribes at that time were the Shapsugs, who lived from these places to the Black Sea coast. The Caucasian War, which stretched out for almost a century, ended with the emigration to Turkey of those Circassians who did not want to accept citizenship of the Russian Empire. Among them were almost all Shapsugs, whose name was preserved in the name of the village that grew up on the site of the Nikolaev fortification.
Now the locals know little about this part of the history of their village. Ask a passer-by - it is unlikely that he will answer who is Alexei Viljaminov? It is unlikely that he will remember that Lermontov and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky visited the Nikolaev fortification. But he will surely tell about dolmens, of which there are many in the district, and to which a variety of tourists regularly travel - from simple curious people to supporters of various, sometimes intricate, spiritual practices. It is with dolmens that the word “history” is associated today in the village of Shapsugskaya. About dolmens themselves, although they have been studied in detail for a long time, in fact, very little is known.
Buildings - tombs of several megaliths (large stones) exist all over the world. There are especially many of them in the Mediterranean region - from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to the Balkans, the Middle East and our Western Caucasus. But in general, dolmens (in translation - a stone table) are found in Scandinavia, and in the British Isles, and in the Urals, and even in Korea. For the first time, the dolmens were noticed in 1660 by the clergyman Johan Picard from the small town of Couvorden in the province of Drenthe (Netherlands). He came to the conclusion: dolmens were built … by giants. It was also in Drenthe on July 21, 1734 that the law on the protection of dolmens was introduced. At that time, the lids of these historic structures were used to strengthen dams, build churches and houses.
The study of dolmens began much later - already in the twentieth century. Archaeologists who have examined many dolmens around the world have come to the conclusion that they were all used as crypts, and not for one person, but for many. According to scientists, the number of burials in one dolmen could reach several dozen. Most likely, each dolmen served several generations of a family or clan.
Most of the dolmens were plundered in antiquity, nevertheless, archaeologists managed to find many artifacts in them, allowing them to systematize the peoples who built these structures. So no one doubts the fact that in Western Europe the dolmens built the tribes of the so-called "culture of funnel-shaped cups", and in the Western Caucasus - the "dolmen culture". And these were different peoples. But what kind of peoples they were, what languages they spoke, whether their descendants survived today - no one knows. And no wonder. The same dolmens of the village of Shapsugskaya were built 3-5 thousand years ago. There is no written evidence of this period. Only hypotheses.
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According to one hypothesis, the builders of the Caucasian dolmens were the ancestors of the autochthonous (indigenous) peoples of the region, including the modern Adygs. If the hypothesis is correct, then the dolmens in the vicinity of Shapsugskaya were built by the nameless distant ancestors of the Shapsugs, whose name we hear in the name of the village.
However, the Circassian legends offer a different version of the appearance of megaliths. They tell of evil dwarfs and good giants whom dwarfs tricked into building houses for themselves. The legend is silent about the participation of the ancestors in this action.
The Russians called the dolmens "Heroic Huts", but the sonorous name did not protect the millennial megaliths from destruction. Those dolmens that time did not destroy were destroyed by people. They seem to have forgotten that the memory of the past must be preserved and passed on, like a baton, from one generation to another. And so - every century and every millennium.
So that our descendants, like us, can touch history.
Vyacheslav Smeyukha