In ancient times, when heroes and sorcerers lived on earth, people understood the language of animals, and animals understood the language of people; and it was not so established that a person could offend even the smallest bird, and the beast could harm an unintelligent child - and so, in those ancient, ancient times, stones were soft, like raw clay.
How did people and animals quarrel? Nobody knows this. But they divided the lands among themselves, placing boundary stones on the borders.
Wolves and bears, hares and foxes put their paws on the boulders, leaving impressions of clawed limbs on the soft surface. The time of wizards and heroes is over, and they left for unknown distances. But a chain of footprints followed them. Here the hero kicked off with her foot from a large gray boulder, jumping over the lake, and the imprint of her bare foot remained on the stone. And here the sorcerer walked over the stones, not wanting to get his pointed shoes dirty. Immediately after that, soft boulders turned to stone, forever preserving the traces of those who touched them.
Stones with depressions resembling human footprints (anthropomorphic footprints) or animal footprints (zoomorphic) are known from almost all continents - Europe and Asia, Africa and America. Usually, the footprints go into the stone for several centimeters. Sometimes their contours seem blurred, and sometimes they are so clear that the slightest bulges and depressions of the foot are visible. Most often there is one footprint on the stone, but boulders are known on which there are two or even three footprints or paws. If we talk about anthropomorphic prints, then, as a rule, these are traces of bare feet, but sometimes it seems as if a man in a shoe “stepped” on a stone. Most of the tracks are of natural size (the foot of an adult male, a narrow female foot or the foot of a child), but there are also very large ones.
And everywhere the stones with footprints are shrouded in legends and traditions. The story with which we began our article can be considered a generalizing and universal legend. In each specific area, it is specified and broken down into details. So Herodotus, who undertook a trip to the lands of the Scythians, wrote in the fourth volume of his "Histories" that on a rock in the Dniester valley (for Herodotus - the Tiras river), local residents showed him "one curiosity" - an almost meter footprint of Hercules.
And a modern colleague of Herodotus, a history teacher at one of the village schools in Belarus, told the author of this article about his search for a stone with prints of two feet (the stone disappeared during collectivization) - an adult and a child, which, as they said in the village, belong to “a witch and her daughter. That is, in both cases, we are talking about the characters already specified by us: heroes and sorcerers, from which it is clear that we have before us legends with echoes of pagan religion.
"Buddha Footprints" at Tokyo Kiyomizu Temple
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At the same time, later, already Buddhist and Christian times, legends have been written about the investigator stones (as they are called in the scientific world). The essence of such legends boils down to the following: traces on the stone were left by Buddha, Christ, Virgin Mary, angels or saints, for example, Elijah the Prophet, who either descended from heaven or ascended, and the stones melted under their feet. At the same time, there are trackers, footprints on which, according to local legends, were left by the devil or the devil.
There are no contradictions here - the new religion somewhere picked up pagan cults and "sanctified" stones, and somewhere it managed to overcome the pagan heritage, labeling the investigators as devilish and unclean. The same division into divine and devilish, holy and damned, extended to water, which accumulated during the rain in trace-like depressions on the stone. The first, according to legend, was considered alive, healing, it was washed out the eyes, sprinkled on the bodies of patients, sprinkled on children. The second was called dead, and to use it meant to harm oneself.
These are the legends. What do the scientists say? Who really left footprints in the stone? Are they man-made or maybe natural?
In order to answer these questions, let's go deep … into the stone. Its composition is not always uniform. Boulders often contain inclusions that differ in color and structure. These foreign inclusions are differently susceptible to weathering, forming natural grooves in the stone. It is worth correcting them a little, giving the grooves the shape of the foot, and before us is the tracker stone. But who needed to "fix" the indentations? In addition, stones are known, traces on which are recognized as entirely man-made. For what purpose was this done? Let us ask ourselves the question in parallel - were only the foot prints left to us by unknown masons?
Obviously, in order to understand the purpose of the trace stones, one must consider all the rock signs known today. These are handprints on stones (they are much less common than trace stones), the already mentioned paw prints of animals and birds, images of crosses, circles, horseshoes, arrows and, finally, recesses in the form of trapezoidal, triangular or irregular funnels engraved on boulders. or cups (calyx stones). It is interesting that the same legends about medicinal (living) water are associated with the cup-stones as with the trace-stones. This suggests that both types of stones were part of the same cult. At the same time, all stones with signs should be considered not separate monuments of magical rituals of pagan times, but elements of a single cult - especially when you consider that many of them were found in the composition of ancient sanctuaries.
A human handprint in southwestern Minnesota. According to archaeologists, these footprints are about 5 thousand years old. Photo (Creative Commons license): Ben Schaffhausen
The number of cult stones known on the territory of Russia is estimated at several hundred (the numbers are constantly being refined), in neighboring Belarus there are at least two hundred (this figure is given by specialists from the Institute of Geology of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the creators of the Experimental Base for the Study of Glacial Boulders), and the discoveries continue. Sacred stones are well known in the Baltics, Poland and Germany.
It is possible to outline the geography of the distribution of cult stones in a different way, without specifying specific countries: the veneration of stones was widespread where the Great Glacier dominated thousands of years ago. It was he who roamed the mountains, ripping off rocks, he picked them up and carried them to the lands, where large and small stones found a new homeland, where special signs were applied to them, and where "aliens" became part of history - sacred symbols of religion.
The final reconstruction of the cult of sacred stones is a matter of the future. Today we can talk about versions, of which there are several, because over the course of a long "stone life" some details of the cult were modified, and the boulders themselves had to perform different functions. So, stones with signs engraved on them could be boundary lines, denoting the boundaries of the possessions of tribes or principalities. They could be used as direction indicators: for example, the footprint is oriented to the north and sets the direction. At the same time, zoomorphic prints could indicate a revered animal - a tribal totem. However, the totem print is not only a functional, but also a ritual detail.
When did the cult of stones take shape? According to the prevailing point of view in science, the deification of stones originates in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Then the boulders served as altars in pagan temples. Most likely, the role of the altar was played by stones resembling cups, but with a larger funnel, where the blood of animals (honey, milk, beer) fell, when sacrifices were made to the pagan gods, prayers were made for a successful hunt (and later - about the harvest, preventing the loss of livestock). At the same time, it should be said that stones with zoomorphic footprints could have been the object of worship of hunters, and later cattle breeders.
Tracer stones are usually associated with the ancient cult of sun worship. The luminary gives life to all living things, traveling the world and leaving "traces" on the stones. At the same time, there is a theory linking the investigators with the cult of ancestors, deceased people. Ethnographers and ethnographers (the works of K. Tishkevich and P. Tarasenko are referred to by a geologist, field researcher, author of a wonderful book about the past, present and probable future of glacial boulders "Silent Witnesses of the Past" Eduard Levkov) more than once recorded the following custom widespread in Belarus and Lithuania in past centuries: after the death of one of the family members, the trace of his foot was knocked out on the stone. After that, the boulder was thrown into the water.
Locals explained this custom by the belief that the deceased should not return home again - the place of the dead is in heaven, and therefore let the deceased go to heaven without delay. Most likely, the cult of the Sun existed at the time of the flourishing of the pagan religion, and the cult of ancestors developed later, became widespread in the Middle Ages and in the form of echoes has survived to our days.
Their names also help to shed light on the secrets of the revered stones. Boulders with signs carved on gray sides or absolutely smooth, but striking in their size, are often well known to modern residents of villages and villages, even if they are under the cover of a forest a few kilometers from the settlement. Old-timers, telling researchers the beliefs associated with the local stone, usually call it by name - Holy stone, Prince-stone, Marya (Makosh) or Perun, Dazhdbog, Velesov stone. The last names are already a direct indication of the former belonging of stones to pagan temples.
Echoes of early and late paganism, mystical beliefs, as well as poetic fiction, envelop boulders denser than moss, which overgrow their stone sides adjacent to the ground. And researchers still have more questions than answers. One thing is certain: the cult of sacred stones permeated the entire pre-Christian culture of the Slavs and influenced the new religion that replaced paganism.
The defeated and forgotten gods, who once made up the densely populated Slavic pantheon, did not disappear without a trace. Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice. "If you are looking for his monument, look around." Who knows, maybe in this dusty boulder that lies now by the road, a millennium ago they saw the "cattle god" Veles, and Perun was once thrown into the neighboring swamp.