Few people know that the "homeland" of man, like all terrestrial life forms, is a swamp. It is believed that the first swamps appeared about 350 million years ago, at the end of the Silurian geological period - the beginning of the Devonian. Before finally getting to the ground, plants and animals lived in swamps.
Swamps are a chronicle of nature. It is in the bogs that the only relic of the Ice Age on earth still grows - the plant Pinguicula vulgaris. And what has been preserved in the peat reaches our days in its original form. Over hundreds of millions of years, layers of peat have turned into horizons of coal. And in them in the form of prints were the skeletons of strange animals and bizarre plant species. If there were no swamps on Earth, it is unlikely that we would have learned that magnolias and palms once grew in Greenland and Svalbard.
Even the most desperate berry farmers and hunters who come to the swamps tell that it is worth being in the middle of the swamp, when suddenly there is a strange ringing in the ears, dizzy, legs become wadded and there is a serious desire to run. Inexplicable fear fetters from head to toe, I want to forget this place forever. The hunters joke gloomily that it is impossible to drown quickly in a swamp, there is still “time to eat toffee”. A person who is not familiar with the "rules of behavior in the swamps" seems to be paralyzed. Shackled with horror and swampy ligature, he can no longer move and, as if from the sidelines, watches his death. This can last from several minutes to several days. Until the swamp water begins to fill the lungs …
It is not for nothing that swamps in Russia are called Adovo, Sukino, Chertovo … These names contain the people's fear of the mystery and enigma of swamps.
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Kikimore is stolen from the womb
Nothing from the natural storehouses is shrouded in so many secrets, legends and mysticism as swamps. Their fame is not good, so people bypass the Kikimora kingdom on the tenth road. And she loves uninvited guests. Drags gape travelers to his bog. True, she rarely shows herself to people - she prefers to be invisible and only screams from the swamp in a loud voice. But if he gets naughty, he can ride on a terrified traveler. According to legend, girls who are cursed by their mother in the womb or in infancy before baptism, as well as girls born to a woman from a fiery serpent, turn into kikimor.
It was believed that such children were kidnapped and carried away by evil spirits. Sometimes - straight from the mother's womb. After seven years, these children turn into kikimor. Children who died unbaptized could also turn into kikimor. In most beliefs, the kikimora is an evil spirit. If she marries a brownie, she settles in the house and makes a riot. Sometimes even forcing the owners to leave the home. If a goblin looked at her husband, then from now on her house is a swamp. Babies are born to the kikimora with the goblin. They play pranks, knock travelers off the road, by all means helping their parents to lure travelers into the swamps
Again the dead man lit a candle
The swamp beckons. The wings of the mills abandoned in the swamps are constantly rotating, smoke comes from the pipes. Everyone living nearby bypasses these mills by the tenth road. The sounds that the swamp makes are like the dialect of a giant living creature. And lonely travelers often mistake the wandering lights in the swamps for the lights of their homes and come straight to the swamps. Due to the characteristic arrangement of the lights - at the height of a human hand - they were called “dead candles”. It was believed that the one who saw them received a warning about imminent death, and they were carried by aliens from the other world. In Germany it was said that the lights in the swamp were the ghosts of those who stole the land from their neighbors. The Finns called them "lecchio" and believed that they were the souls of children buried in the forest. In Northern Europe, they believed that the lights in the swamp were the spirits of ancient warriors guarding treasures.
In fact, the lights in the swamps are not fantasies or inventions of dense grannies. On warm dark nights in swamps or fresh graves, you can actually observe pale bluish, faintly flickering lights. They seem to be dancing in the air, writing out a complex trajectory. This “burns” hydrogen phosphide. Phosphorus compounds, which are part of the corpses of animals and humans, decompose under the action of groundwater to form phosphorous hydrogen. With a loose embankment over a grave or a small layer of water in a swamp, the gas, coming to the surface, ignites from the vapor of liquid phosphorous hydrogen.
A mystery covered in peat
For us, swamps are still an undiscovered treasure, from where we can draw information not only about past landscapes, but also learn our history. This historical book can be read endlessly, page by page, making new discoveries. But peat bogs are not only indicative of changes in marsh vegetation. Often they also keep the tools of labor and wars of the past buried in them. And even the remains of the owners of these weapons. Sphagnum moss and its decomposition products, including humic acid, react with calcium and nitrogen to render human flesh incorruptible.
… In May 1950, two Danish peasants were digging in the swamps of Bjeldskovdal, Jutland, and stumbled upon a corpse. They thought they had found a schoolboy from Copenhagen who had disappeared in the swamps a year earlier. The police were called. Could they have assumed that they had found the corpse of a man who died in the 4th century BC?.. The eyelids of the "man from Tollund" were wearily lowered, as if he were asleep. The marshes even preserved his mustache and beard, and his feet were clearly visible cuts from walking on sharp stones. The cause of death of the "man from Tollund" is covered with darkness (more precisely, peat), but research by forensic doctors has revealed many interesting details. For example, the last thing he ate before he died was a porridge made from barley, wild oats, buckwheat, flaxseed and mari - about thirty different herbs in total. Two English archaeologists tried this recipe and found it disgusting. Botanists have established in what conditions he lived, and archaeologists have specified his age.
In total, about 2,000 mummies have been discovered in the swamps of Europe over the past hundred years. These unfortunates were able to tell us something about the customs of ancient northern Europe, which until today remained a secret for historians and archaeologists.
Where did Susanin take his enemies?
And in Russia, at the beginning of this year, the legend about the brave Russian peasant Ivan Susanin, who led the Polish army into the swamp and thereby saved Russia from ruin, was confirmed. Near the village of Isupovo in the Susaninsky district of the Kostroma region, where a century ago there was a swamp, archaeologists discovered hundreds of human remains and 40 pectoral crosses, presumably belonging to the soldiers of the army of the Commonwealth. One of the crosses is made in the tradition of the Orthodox Church and, most likely, adorned the chest of a heroic villager. These pectoral crosses were made in the 16th - 17th centuries.
In addition, the cross is not whole, but consists of fragments. It was possible to establish that he had been chopped up - probably with the sabers of Polish soldiers. It is known that none of the Polish unit survived. The only documentary evidence of Susanin's feat was the tsar's letter. In it, Mikhail Fedorovich gave Susanin's son-in-law, Bogdan Sabinin, half of the village of Dereveshchy: “Knowing about us, Susanin endured unbearable tortures, he did not speak about us, and for that he was tortured to death by the Polish and Lithuanian people.” So the swamp, after a few centuries, gave people another secret.
Fact
Three quarters of all swamps are concentrated in Russia. In the south of the Tomsk region, on its very border with Novosibirsk, the Vasyugan swamp is located. Stretching 500 kilometers long and 15 to 120 kilometers wide, it is the largest swamp in the world.
Myth
As stated in the myth of the creation of the world, initially the earth was completely covered with water. Once, walking along it, God saw a cloudy bubble, from which the devil jumped out. Then God told the Devil to get the earth from the bottom. The devil obeyed the order, but hid a handful of earth behind his cheek. At this time, God from the brought earth created dry land, on which extraordinary beauty trees, bushes and herbs appeared. However, they began to grow in the mouth of the Devil, who began to furiously spit out the earth. This is how, according to legend, swamps arose on earth.