The territory of Russia keeps many secrets. But Siberia is especially rich in riddles - a place where peoples mixed, where huge ancient civilizations arose and disappeared.
Where did the sargats disappear to?
Siberian archaeologists are looking for an answer to the question: where did the ancient Sargats disappear, whose kingdom stretched from the Urals to the Barabinsk steppes and from Tyumen to the steppes of Kazakhstan?
There is an assumption that Sargatia was part of ancient Sarmatia and existed for more than 1000 years, and then disappeared, leaving behind only mounds.
Scientists believe that on the territory of the Omsk region there is a special region of Sargatia - "Graves of the ancestors". At the beginning of the 20th century, a whole complex was opened, which was named Novooblonsky.
Sargat mounds were up to 100 meters in diameter and reached a height of 8 meters. In the graves of the nobility, clothes made of Chinese silk with gold ornaments were found, and golden hryvnias were worn around the neck of the sargats. DNA studies have revealed their similarities with Hungarians and Ugrians. Where the sargats disappeared - no one knows.
Unfortunately, many graves were plundered by "prospectors" in the 18th century. The famous Siberian collection of Peter I was made up of sargat gold.
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Denisovsky man - the ancestor of the Australian aborigines?
In 2010, during excavations in the Denisovskaya Cave in Altai, archaeologists found a phalanx of a finger of a seven-year-old girl who lived 40,000 years ago. Half of the bone was sent to the Institute of Anthropology in Leipzig. In addition to the bone, tools and decorations were found in the cave.
The results of the genome study shocked scientists. It turned out that the bone belongs to an unknown human species, which was named Homo altaiensis - "Altai man".
DNA analyzes showed that the genome of the Altaian deviates from the genome of modern humans by 11.7%, while for the Neanderthal the deviation is 12.2%.
In the genomes of modern Eurasians, Altai inclusions were not found, but the genes of the “Altaian” were found in the genomes of Melanesians living on the islands of the Pacific Ocean; 4 to 6% of the genome is present in the genome of Australian Aborigines.
Salbyk pyramid
The Salbyk mound is located in the famous Valley of the Kings in Khakassia and dates back to the XIV century BC. The base of the mound is a square with a side of 70 meters. In the 1950s, an expedition of scientists found an entire complex resembling Stonehenge inside the mound.
Huge megaliths weighing from 50 to 70 tons were brought to the valley from the banks of the Yenisei. Then the ancient people overlaid them with clay and built a pyramid, not inferior to the Egyptian ones.
The remains of three warriors were found inside. Archaeologists attribute the mound to the Tagar culture and still cannot answer how the stones were delivered to the valley.
Mammoth Kurya and Yanskaya site
Many questions are raised by the sites of ancient people discovered in Arctic Russia. This is the Mamontova Kurya site in Komi, which is 40,000 years old.
Here archaeologists found the bones of animals killed by ancient hunters: deer, wolves and mammoths, scrapers and other tools. No human remains were found.
In 300 kilometers from Kurya, sites with an age of 26,000-29,000 years were found. The northernmost site was the Yanskaya site, found on the terraces of the Yana River. It dates back to 32.5 thousand years.
The most important question that arises after the opening of the sites is who could live here if there was an era of glaciation at that time? Previously it was believed that humans reached these lands 13,000 to 14,000 years ago.
The mystery of the Omsk "aliens"
10 years ago, in the Omsk region on the banks of the Tara River in the Murly tract, archaeologists found 8 graves of the Huns who lived 1.5 thousand years ago.
The skulls were elongated, reminiscent of alien humanoids.
It is known that the ancient people wore bandages to give the skull a certain shape. Scientists are wondering what prompted the Huns to change the shape of the skull like this?
There is an assumption that the skulls belong to shamanic women. Since the find raises many questions, the skulls are not on display, but stored in storerooms. It remains to add that the same skulls were found in Peru and Mexico.
The riddle of Pyzyryk medicine
Burials of the Pyzyryk culture in Gorny Altai were discovered in 1865 by archaeologist Vasily Radlov. The culture was named after the Pyzyryk tract of the Ulagan region, where the tombs of the nobility were found in 1929.
One of the representatives of the culture is considered the "Princess of Ukok" - a Caucasian woman, whose mummy was found on the Ukok plateau.
Recently it was found out that already 2300-2500 years ago the people of Pyzyryk had the skills to perform craniotomy. Now the skulls with traces of operations are being studied by neurosurgeons. Trepanations were carried out in full accordance with the recommendations of the "Corpus of Hippocrates" - a medical treatise that was written at the same time in Ancient Greece.
In one of the cases, a young woman apparently died during an operation, in another, a man with a head injury after trepanning lived for several more years. Scientists say that the ancients used the safest bone scraping technique and used bronze knives.
Is Arkaim the heart of Sintashta?
The ancient city of Arkaim has long become a cult place for all sorts of originals, Arkaim is considered the city of the ancient Aryans and a "place of power". It is located in the Urals, opened in 1987 and dates back to the turn of the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. Refers to the Sintash culture. The city is notable for the preservation of buildings and burial grounds. It was named after the mountain, the name of which comes from the Turkic "arch", which means "ridge", "base".
The Arkaim fortress was built according to a radial scheme of logs and bricks, people of the Caucasian type lived here, there were houses, workshops and even storm sewers.
Also here were found products made of bone and stone, metal tools, casting molds. It is believed that up to 25,000 people could live in the city.
Settlements of a similar type were found in the Chelyabinsk and Orenburg regions, in Bashkortostan, and therefore archaeologists called the area "Country of cities". The Sintash culture lasted only 150 years. Where this people then went is unknown.
Scientists are still debating the origin of the city.