The experiment showed that vinegar can affect limestone for construction purposes
Could the builders of the Crimean cave cities use technologies of rock softening, what solutions were used for this and what references are there in the literature?
From dolmens to caves
If the version of the "plasticine technology" for creating Caucasian dolmens is more or less justified, then with cave cities everything is much more complicated.
Let us remind you that in October last year, during the expedition "Archeology of Knowledge" to the Caucasus, little-known dolmens were discovered near the village of Volkonka, Lazarevsky district of Sochi. On the edges of the smooth and perfectly flat, as if polished, walls, you can see sagging, which is usually formed when installing the formwork.
Lovpache Nurbiy, Head of the Department of Archeology of the Adyghe Republican Institute for Humanitarian Research, Candidate of Historical Sciences:
“Yuri Sharikov and Oleg Komissar published a book about how dolmens were molded. They were based on geological data that at that time a clay-sandy plastic mass of approximately 200-degree temperature was squeezed out from a great depth from underground to the surface. In this muddy state, after about two weeks, she froze. This, however, applies only to sandstone dolmens”.
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However, most dolmens in the Caucasus, which raise many questions in terms of the technology of creation, are made of sandstone. But the Crimean cave cities are carved into the limestone sedimentary rock. More and more professional researchers, and most importantly, technologists, are inclined to believe that it was impossible to make them with the help of primitive medieval tools (a pick, chisel, etc.). About when and by whom they were most likely created is a separate topic for conversation, to which we have devoted more than one material. But what technologies were used in this case is a separate issue that requires detailed study.
Considering that the use of brute force, in particular, striking limestone by any means available to us today only destroys the rock (this is how building blocks can be mined), but does not allow digging deep enough caves, and in the Crimean cave cities you can see whole many-meter passages and tunnels. According to one of the versions, before the extraction of the rock, it was first softened. If we assume that there was a secret of some plasticine technologies, then the questions of the complexity of creating numerous cameras and colossal labor costs disappear …
Vinegar or juice from a special plant?
The fact that the most ancient inhabitants of these places could treat stones as with soft wax (using for this either a special plant solution, or some ritual practices), told the locals to visiting travelers of the century before last. In the chronicles of the Spanish conquest and in the memoirs of Nicholas Roerich, there are references to vinegar or the juice of a certain plant, which has properties to soften the stone. At the same time, the name of the plant is interpreted in different sources in completely different ways and does not correspond to any of the currently known ones. However, this is not surprising at all, given that at the moment up to several hundred different species of flora disappear on the planet every year.
However, it is not known what kind of vinegar the ancient builders of the Crimean cave cities could use. After all, they could get vinegar from a large list of components at their disposal. Raw materials for the production of natural vinegar can be, for example, apple and other fruit juices, grape juices, fermented wine materials.
We decided to experiment with vinegar, taking different solutions for this, but at the same time the same stones - pieces of limestone from one place, from one cave city.
We filled the first piece of limestone, placed in a glass jar, with ordinary tap water, the second with 9% table vinegar, and the third with 6% wine vinegar.
In the second and third jars, a chemical reaction immediately began - the limestone hissed and began to decompose literally before our eyes! Moreover, more concentrated vinegar had a stronger effect. Exactly a week later, we removed the stones from the solutions and tried to cut them with a knife. Although small, but still visible to the naked eye, an effect occurred. The limestone that had lain in the vinegar did not become viscous, but its structure was clearly broken - it began to yield better to processing. Perhaps our ancestors used a more concentrated vinegar, or maybe some other acid that reacted with lime …
Yaroslav PYTLIVY. Photo by D. Smirnov. The material was published in the newspaper "Crimean Telegraph" No. 444 of August 25, 2017