There are not many historical monuments tens of thousands of years old on the territory of modern Ukraine. There are not many of them in the world either. Among them, a special place is occupied by the Stone Grave in southern Ukraine. Until now, many rock paintings have been preserved in its caves and grottoes, depicting scenes of the life of primitive people.
In the Zaporozhye region, 2 km from the village of Mirnoye, Melitopol district, in the valley of the Molochnaya River, there is a small isolated massif of sandstone up to 12 meters high. It covers an area of approximately 240 by 160 meters and consists of large boulders.
The pile of stones resembles a mound in shape, and since mounds are often burial structures, i.e. graves, and hence the appropriate name - "Stone grave".
The geological rarity of such formations contributed to the spread of the idea of its artificial origin. One of the Slavic legends tells of a quarrel between two heroes who threw rocks at each other. Another, recorded from the Nogais, speaks of the hero Bogur, punished by Allah for some kind of offense. He ordered the hero to lay down a mountain on the bank of the river, from which the steppe would be visible in all directions. But the hero, taking up the building, began to cunning, loosely folding the stones. As a result, he stumbled, fell into the gap between the boulders, and was covered with sand.
The legends that arise among the people are always interesting, but they have nothing to do with the real history of the stone hill. In fact, millions of years ago there was a shoal of the Sarmatian Sea. After the water left, the former sandbank remained a sandy massif. Later, when the Pontic Sea arose, limestone deposits formed at this place. Later this sea also left. Red-brown clays appeared, containing iron and manganese. Under their influence, the sandstone finally solidified.
During the melting of the glacier in the north (its border reached the area of modern Dnepropetrovsk), "big water", flowing down to the south, formed river valleys and the so-called "amphitheaters" - huge wash-outs in the right bank of the Molochnaya River. Due to the natural deepening of the river channel, a huge island, which later became the Stone Tomb, appeared on the surface of the valley. Over time, the primary sandstone shield shattered, and fragments of it slid across the sand. Under the influence of water and wind, they acquired amazing shapes.
Currently, the Stone Tomb is a sandy hill covered with large boulders. There are about 3 thousand of them on 3 hectares. Among the piles of stones there are many natural voids - caves, grottoes, passages between stones and the like.
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Research history
The oldest mention of the Stone Tomb dates back to 1778. During the Russian-Turkish war, Suvorov set up a post here to guard the postal route. The first researcher who mentioned the Stone Grave was Köppen P. I … In 1837, during a trip across the Azov Sea to compile the "Inventory of Ancient Monuments", he wrote in his travel diary:
“Stone grave. This is how a hillock is called in the Melitopol district, consisting of huge piles of sandstone, and is located on the right bank of the Molochnaya River … The stones perched here by nature either protrude from the ground vertically, then, bending in opposite directions, form sheds, as it were. In one place between the rocks overgrown with moss, there is a gap like a street, 2 or 3 arshins wide, and then there once was an entrance to the cave, in which one of my guides, who was a shepherd in childhood, and often with his friends here chilled out, I saw inscriptions on the walls, one of which was an arshin or more long, making up one line; in other places, individual words were excised. The entrance to this cave was covered with sand around 1822."
In 1889, archaeologist N. I. Veselovsky, excavating a mound near the Kamennaya grave, “to check the rumors” came to the grave and made excavations here. Veselovsky dug up several caves and suggested the artificial origin of the mound.
He wrote: “Initially, the main cave was cleared under a huge stone, which had stops on the sides. The entrance to it was formed by two stones that did not fit tightly to each other. Through this passage and scooped out the sand with buckets. Subsequently, another entrance to the cave was discovered, parallel to the first, somewhat wider … Soon I had to leave work due to the fact that two stones, 10 pounds each, collapsed from the sides of the cave. Is it because the inhabitants of the village (Terpenie) shook the cave with gunpowder explosions (in search of the treasure (Ed.)) Or because the workers, blowing up the sand, densely laid down along the edges of the cave, weakened its foundations, only it became dangerous and threatened to grow thin … The workers did not have time to clear it up enough to make accurate measurements; it was possible to sit freely in the cave, and in some places even to stand.
On the ceiling, intersecting straight and curved lines are scrawled quite deeply, in some places half tops. Similar figures were found in another small cave, near the so-called "heroic monument" … The inhabitants took these notches for inscriptions; in another cave, which was also quite long, images of goats and horses were roughly carved into the depths."
Not finding any treasures or burial, Veselovsky was disappointed and stopped working.
Image of a mammoth or a bull in grotto No. 9. Eneolithic epoch, late IV - beginning. Ill millennium BC
Since 1932, employees of the Melitopol Museum of History and Local Lore have become interested in the monument. They paid due attention to the many rock paintings inside the grottoes and caves of the Stone Grave. In 1934, V. N. Danilenko, at that time a young employee of the museum, who led the excavations at the Stone Grave, wrote several letters to the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, seeking to carry out more extensive archaeological work. In 1936, the Stone Grave was finally included in the research area of the Azov-Black Sea Expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1938 it became the main object of this expedition. The expedition was headed by the famous Soviet archaeologist ON Bader. Then more than 30 new sites containing images were discovered.
The work continued only until 1941, as it was interrupted by the Second World War. After the war, research on the Stone Tomb was resumed only in the fifties. Danilenko, BD Mikhailov, and M. Ya. Rudinsky discovered 13 more places containing images.
Image from the "Bull" grotto (No. 9). Late Paleolithic. Late IV - early III millennium BC
In the early fifties, there were plans to create a South Ukrainian reservoir on the territory of the Zaporozhye region, which would flood the Stone Grave, but the researchers managed to achieve the status of a reserve for it. On July 7, 1954, the government of the Ukrainian SSR made an appropriate decision and allocated 30 hectares of land from the collective farm named after I. Stalin.
In 1986, on the initiative of BD Mikhailov, the Council of Ministers of Ukraine and the Zaporozhye Regional Department of Culture decided to create the State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve "Stone Grave".
Petroglyphs
A stone grave is not a disorderly heap of sandstone slabs, but a crumbling stone shell with grottoes and caves, 65 of which have preserved petroglyphs. It was they, thousands of images, carved and carved on the slabs of grottoes and caves, that ensured the glory of the Stone Tomb. Here you can see both fairly specific images and mysterious laces of shamanic signs.
Since in ancient times bison, mammoths and rhinos roamed our steppe, herds of horses, saigas were worn, moose and wild boars were found in the thickets of reeds and thorns, bulls grazed on the plain - they became the main subjects for the ancient creators.
Basically, the drawings were applied to the sandstone not with paints, as, for example, in France or in the South Urals, but were wiped with a piece of hard stone. They formed depressions, which were only occasionally covered with mineral black and red paints.
Who these unknown painters are can only be guessed at, since neither in the Stone Tomb itself, nor in the immediate vicinity of it, no human settlements have been found that can be associated with the monument. Based on this, the researchers conclude that the stone grave was used exclusively for cult purposes, as a sanctuary. In addition, almost all images of the Stone Grave are applied to the inner surfaces of stone blocks, and they can only be observed when penetrating inside grottoes, manholes and caves, which also testifies to their supposed sacredness.
For the inhabitants of the steppe of that time, the Stone Grave was a kind of lighthouse on the plain, to which many roads and paths were pulled together. For many millennia, ancient hunters, cattle breeders, numerous peoples came here: Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Pechenegs, Khazars, Polovtsians, Slavs … Everyone who came here found a place among the stones on a sandy hill and contributed into their design.
The chronology of the petroglyphs covers a huge period from the XXIV-XXII millennium BC. until the X-XII centuries. They were applied with small stones of hard rocks, which easily left traces on soft sandstone. Several of these quartz stones have been discovered during research.
At a short distance from the Stone Tomb, paleotic, Neolithic settlements, as well as a Bronze Age settlement were identified, but no direct connection with the Stone Tomb itself was found. The lack of archaeological material and the uniqueness of many images of the Stone Grave forced researchers to try to date the monument based on various interpretations of the petroglyphs themselves.
Earlier paleotic dating was defended mainly by V. N. Danilenko and O. N. Bader, M. Ya. Rudinsky and other researchers adhered to the Neolithic dating. The discussion essentially boiled down to whether one of the largest petroglyphs is an image of a mammoth or a bull (a mammoth would testify in favor of the Paleolithic, and a bull in favor of the Neolithic). The participants in the discussion could not come to a consensus and until the end of their lives each continued in his own way, calling the grotto with the controversial image "Bull grotto" and "Mammoth grotto".
At the same time, some researchers noted the possibility of using the sanctuary, both during the Paleolithic and then during the Neolithic, and some rejected this possibility. In particular, M. Ya. Rudinsky drew attention to the fact that no traces of the superposition of new images on old ones were found in the Stone Grave, which, in his opinion, rather indicates the application of petroglyphs of one culture during one historical epoch.
Among the caves found, the Bizona Cave and the Mystery Cave with Late Paleolithic images stand out. In cave no. 36-6, Mesolithic paintings of a deer, a deer, an archer and a woman were found. I was also pleased with the Horseshoe Cave with numerous images of the Early-Middle Bronze Age, among which there are human feet, a horseshoe, an animal (horse?) In a deer mask. Cave No. 54 contained drawings of waterfowl and animals (musk ox?).
The Dragon's grotto was unique, in the depths of which the sculpture of the head of the Vedic dragon Vritru is preserved. A notable fact was the discovery of sandstone slabs depicting ancient "writing" dating back to the 6th - early 4th millennium BC.
Researchers consider many images to be drawings of animals (bulls, deer), as well as their combinations ("team of bulls", "animals in the thickets", "bulls in a self-defense position", "human and animal sacrifice"), etc. The rest of the petroglyphs are traditionally interpreted as magical drawings used in rituals that stimulate successful hunting, fishing, etc. For example, the frequent use of intersecting lines characteristic of the Stone Tomb is sometimes interpreted as a symbol of fishing nets, the image of which was intended for a cult ritual that can bring good luck during fishing catching.
Inside grotto No. 9 (Grotto of the Bull or Mammoth), a horizontal stone was discovered that could be used as an altar, which partly confirms such interpretations. (However, no archaeological evidence for the use of the stone as an altar has been found.)
The originality of the main body of the Kamennaya Grave petroglyphs has brought many difficulties to attempts at interpretation. Among the images there are those that have something in common with the petroglyphs of Sweden and Karelia. Such images include a series of circular holes and human footprints. However, the bulk of the Kamennaya Tomb petroglyphs is unique in its kind.
From 1983 to 2004, the study of the monument was carried out by B. D. Mikhailov. The result of the field work was the discovery of 15 new grottoes and caves, in which many of the rarest rock carvings were discovered. These deeply realistic drawings give an idea of the economic activities of the primitive people who inhabited southern Ukraine.
Writing?
A non-standard approach to the interpretation of petroglyphs was proposed by the orientalist A. G. Kifishin. He investigated the Stone Tomb in 1994-1996 and concluded that the images were proto-Sumerian inscriptions. A. G. Kifishin believes that he deciphered most of the known images of the Stone Grave and gives the results of his work in a large monograph.
Drawing from grotto No. 9, panel No. 5. According to the traditional interpretation - "Animals in the thickets", according to A. G. Kifishin - a proto-Sumerian text
For example, according to the conclusions of A. G. Kifishin, the image "Animals in the thickets" should be transliterated as follows: "Bear (she-bear) (on) the Court of Water the seed of the Anunnaki, 140 seed of the Anunnaki (in) the womb (mother) 10 Birds Water condemned (a), // Meslamtaea, Ashnan, // Ninazu // (and) Nannarushga (for) the heads (that is, victims) of the Queen // (these) Anunnaki were killed (and left the underworld?) ".
Various statements of public figures of Ukraine that followed A. G. Kifishin's suggestion caused a wide response in the media. But these studies have never been published in the scientific literature. And the well-known orientalist IM Dyakonov, a longtime opponent and opponent of Kifishin's methods in Sumerology, even called them "nonsense."