Until 1997, only local residents knew about the Kanozero petroglyphs on the Kola Peninsula. True, they practically did not pay attention to them. Most likely, these primitive images seemed like children's scribbles to fishermen and hunters. But these "scribbles" turned out to be drawings of people who lived several thousand years before our era …
Kanozero is located on the Kola Peninsula, near the Arctic Ocean. In fact, it is not quite a lake, because it is located, as it were, inside the Umba River, "swollen" by as much as 30 kilometers in length and five in width. This is due to the fact that in the place of the "swelling" the rivers Kana and Muna flow into the Umba. And because of the abundance of water, the Umba bed suddenly widens until it finally adapts to the increased water supply. Then the Umba is divided into three rapids - Kitsu, Nizma and Rodvinga, which drive excess water to Panchozero. And then the Umba continues to flow and flows into the Kandalaksha Bay.
Unnoticed masterpieces
Kanozero is located in a swampy lowland, and approaches to it are very limited. The best way to get there is to raft down the Umba River, overcoming a number of rapids. Perhaps the discovery of ancient petroglyphs happened so late precisely because it is not so easy to get to the islands where they are located. In other, more accessible places in the Russian north, petroglyphs were discovered much earlier.
For example, they knew about the Onega petroglyphs back in the 15th century, and began to study them in the 19th century. The White Sea petroglyphs ("Demon Tracks") were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century. And Kanozero was not lucky. To be honest, nobody was interested in his drawings. Swedish ethnographer and archaeologist Gustav Hallstrom, who passed through Kanozero towards the White Sea in 1910 (and there, by the way, he went to get to the Onega petroglyphs!), Did not notice anything. Soviet geologists who surveyed these shores in 1925 also passed by.
The belated discovery of ancient drawings concerns not only Kanozero, but the entire Kola Peninsula. The Chalmny-Varre petroglyphs on the Ponoy River were discovered only in 1973. Petroglyphs of the Rybachiy Peninsula - in 1985. And this despite the fact that the Sami, who lived in these places for thousands of years, knew very well about the existence of ancient drawings. Moreover, they transferred them to their shamanic tambourines!
And the Karelians who settled on the banks of the Kanozero knew. They also copied the drawings they liked on the logs and stones. Only scientists did not know. Geologists were not interested in petroglyphs, but in what kind of rocks the rocks were made of - where are pegmatite veins, where are rare-metal mineralization, where are quartz outcrops, where is porphyry, and where are impregnations of zircon or amazonite …
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As a result, Kanozero's petroglyphs were discovered by accident. In 1997, the local museum organized an expedition to Kanozero. The explorers rafted down the Umba and passed by the islands. It was then that one of them, Yuri Ivanov, saw four strange drawings in the rays of the setting sun. A year later, researchers have already discovered 250 images. And a year later there were 400 of them. Today, more than a thousand are known …
Painted islands
Kanozero's drawings adorn the rocks of all its rocky islands and the rock that received the name Lonely. Ancient artists used the smoothest and most wind-rolled rocks for their work, mostly flat-covering the shore or facing the water. They used completely different techniques. Drawings were made with single blows of a stone tool. The contour was made in the form of solid and separate points (in one row and in several rows). Sometimes they hollowed out the stone deeply, and sometimes ripped off the skin with a light touch. Everything depended on the artist's intention, on his skills and on the era when the petroglyph appeared.
Obviously, a road of hunters and fishermen passed through this lake, wandering from the shores of the ocean inland and back for millennia. So, all periods of ancient history are represented on the Kanozero rocks - the Neolithic, Bronze Age and even early iron. Drawings range from very sketchy to highly detailed. The main themes, as always among primitive peoples, are hunting, numerous portraits of bears (the old name of Kanozero is Tal-lake, tal in translation means bear), deer and elk. People were portrayed full face and very rarely in profile: women, men with an excited phallus. Boats - large and small. Fish are huge and not so big. As well as footprints, skis, bowls, crosses, axes, wheels, harpoons, cranes, beavers, whales and birds of prey.
There are strange scenes from ancient life: a demon or a sorcerer (it's hard to say more precisely) holding a female figurine upside down. A man protects a pregnant woman from some kind of tailed demon or lizard. Again a pregnant woman with a lizard-like creature, over whose head a man raised an ax. Male and female figurines in a strange position: their legs are directed towards each other, and their heads are turned away from each other. It is believed to be a love scene. There is also a huge sorcerer figure.
Experts have calculated that a quarter of all drawings are images of animals. Slightly smaller groups - images of boats and various tracks. People are depicted in only 16 percent of the petroglyphs. The rest of the drawings are incomprehensible. Among the images of animals, more than half are whales, in second place (a quarter of the total) are moose. Deer and fish follow.
Drawings refer mainly to the IV-II millennia BC. There are 14 of them in four groups on Gorely Island. On Spruce Island - 279 in six groups. On Kamenny Island - 669 in seven groups. On the Lonely Rock - 61 images.
Children of Fennoscandia
In general, the drawings on the rocks in Sweden, Finland, Norway and northern Russia are very similar. No wonder in the scientific world it is customary to call this territory Fennoscandia. The Ice Age covered Fennoscandia with a huge ice cap. But about 12 thousand years ago, the glacier began to melt and disappear. The land, which had been under tons of ice for a long time, began to slowly rise.
The Gulf Stream has entered the cold waters. The climate has improved significantly. The fauna has become diverse. Fish splashed in rivers and seas. People came here 9 thousand years ago, following the herds of deer stretching to the north. Soon, ancient hunters and fishermen were already decorating Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Karelian rocks with petroglyphs. The first Norwegian petroglyphs date back to the 5th millennium BC. But most of the drawings were made a little later - at the same time as on Kanozero.
The inhabitants of the north were very reluctant to borrow new technologies from the peoples who settled in the southern part of Fennoscandia. The northerners lived off hunting, fishing and raising reindeer. In the era when the Bronze Age had already begun in the south, they lived for a long time in the Neolithic. However, progress was unstoppable. The era of metal has come to the north.
In the first millennium BC, some catastrophic event took place here - a deterioration of the climate or the departure of a game. One way or another, northern hunters and fishermen, inhabitants of the oceanic coast, moved inland. At the same time, new settlers came from the east - this is how the mythology of the Sami merged with the mythology of the Siberian peoples. Siberian shamans appeared in the petroglyphs of the Sami.
With the advent of the Bronze Age, people's desire to paint on the rocks did not go anywhere. And even in closer historical eras, they continued to do this. True, less and less, until they stopped completely. But what is written on the stone has been preserved for thousands of years. And for a modern person, this is a great opportunity to look into the distant past.
However, the "eternal" petroglyphs also have enemies. Wind and water, which diligently destroy the stone. Lichens and mosses that grow on the rocks literally "eat up" the surface layer. But the main enemy is man. After the press began to write about the amazing drawings, crowds of tourists flocked to the lake, who climb the rocks, trample them with their shoes, touch them with their hands, that is, in every way violate the age-old peace. That is why museum workers took the Kanozero petroglyphs under protection. In 2000, they opened the Kanozero Petroglyphs Museum, and in 2014 they erected a transparent protective dome over the drawings.
Nikolay KOTOMKIN