“These traces should be clearly visible in the fields planted with cereals, and in other places of cultural land use. Therefore, cases of finding concentric circles or other strange figures on the soil surface with or without grass lodging must be recorded in the most rigorous way, in all details, including photographing from an airplane, and the reports must be sent to me for further analysis.
This excerpt from a letter dated August 1927 is cited in his essay by the resident of St. Petersburg Solomon Naffert. The author of the letter is a well-known geologist, a corresponding member of a number of foreign academies of sciences, professor Mikhail Buranchuk since pre-revolutionary times. The person who was supposed to be entrusted with the management of scientific support for one of the largest projects of that time - the creation of the Moscow Metro.
But the professor not only was not imbued with the great idea, did not feel gratitude for the trust, but, on the contrary, in every possible way tried to stop this business, and it would be better to cancel it altogether.
“The depths of the Earth are full of mysteries and secrets, and these are precisely those mysteries and secrets about which humanity is better off remaining in the dark,” he continued in a letter. Titled "The True Inhabitants of the Earth", it was sent by the professor to various authorities - to party bodies, to the editorial offices of academic journals, to central newspapers, to the directorates of zoos, to the observatory, to the leading agricultural communes. Individuals also received the letter - writers, physicists, zoologists, composers, socialist labor drummers, policemen, shepherds..
On twenty pages of typewritten text, Professor Buranchuk's own theory about the origin of life on Earth and, most importantly, about its present state was set out. “Life,” he wrote, “did not arise in the oceans of the Archean era, no, its homeland is the hot bowels of the Earth. The energy that rages there unties the hands of Nature for the most incredible experiments. Life was born in the depths of the planet, and in its depths it remains. Here, on the surface, there is only an entrance hall, or, better to say, settlements, a desperate backwater, a kingdom of shadows, and real life boils down there, boiling both literally and figuratively.
The crown of evolution - if evolution at all takes place in reality, and not in the imagination of Mr. Darwin - is not man, not mammals, not even protein creatures in general. There, in the depths of the Earth, in the oceans of magma, surpassing the surface oceans in volumes thousands of times, and in energy - in billions, long before the appearance of miserable amoebas, other creatures appeared. The role of carbon in the structure of molecules of creatures of the interior is played by silicon and germanium. The temperatures at which the "king of nature" would instantly be incinerated, evaporated, for the creatures of the magmatic oceans are both a comfortable environment and a source of energy necessary for their existence. The inhabitants of the surface, directly or indirectly, owe their existence to the Sun, the crumbs of energy of which go to our planet. Just think about it,the temperature in the hottest places on the Earth's surface does not even reach a hundred degrees. Even fifty is a rarity, an event, a deviation from the norm. In the same place, in magmatic seas and oceans, hundreds, thousands of degrees are at the service of life. Underground beings have a power that is difficult to imagine. Dozens, maybe hundreds of wagons of explosives - this is the power that the magmatic creature of the Depth can spend if necessary"
At first, academic journals respectfully objected to the professor, firstly, there are no traces of magmatic life, and therefore there is no materialistic basis for the hypothesis, and secondly, at high temperatures, colossal pressure and density of the surrounding matter, nothing can either originate or survive.
Professor Buranchuk attacked his opponents: “This is the reasoning of water striders who slide along the surface of the pond and believe that the surface is one and suitable for life. Indeed, how can you live under water if its density is thousands of times greater than the density of air? How can you move in it if the viscosity of water is incomparably higher than the viscosity of air? And the pressure? At a depth of a mile away, it flattens the pitiful submarines, which a man in ignorance and pride sends down. The water strider cannot even imagine a mile away. Runs on the surface in happy ignorance, until the gudgeon or crucian carp interrupt her life with a water stripper.
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Open your eyes and look more attentively at the rocks that, in the process of the Earth's breathing, for billions of years rose from unattainable depths to the surface and froze. You will see the traces of creatures, you just have to remove the blinders from the eyes - and from the mind. They, these creatures, can be found in an active state. Sometimes they rise to the surface of the Earth and even fly through the air. Perhaps this phenomenon is somehow related to their life cycle. The ant crawls or sits under the ground all its life, and the mating ritual takes place in flight. The turtle swims on the ocean for years, but lays eggs on land. So magmatic monsters periodically emerge and float in the atmosphere. Of course, they do not leave any passages in the ground behind them, just as fish floating in the water do not leave passages. Only slight excitement, circles on the water, ripples, that's what we are able to see. And if the Magmatic Creature (hereinafter the professor began to use capital letters. - Author's note) floats up in the middle of a wheat field, it is very likely that the stalks of wheat will change their appearance from the shaking and the action of temperature, circles will blur across the field. Although the Magmatic Beings take precautions, of course, not out of pity for the inhabitants of the surface, but simply so as not to waste precious energy in a poor atmosphere. They use special cocoons, as we put on fur coats, hats and felt boots in the cold. And if anyone saw flying luminous objects, and found circles of fallen wheat in the fields, he thereby confirms the provisions of my theory.that the stalks of wheat from shaking and the action of temperature will change their appearance, circles will spread across the field. Although the Magmatic Beings take precautions, of course, not out of pity for the inhabitants of the surface, but simply so as not to waste precious energy in its poor atmosphere. They use special cocoons, as we put on fur coats, hats and felt boots in the cold. And if anyone saw flying luminous objects, and found circles of fallen wheat in the fields, he thereby confirms the provisions of my theory.that the stalks of wheat from shaking and the action of temperature will change their appearance, circles will spread across the field. Although the Magmatic Beings take precautions, of course, not out of pity for the inhabitants of the surface, but simply so as not to waste precious energy in its poor atmosphere. They use special cocoons, as we put on fur coats, hats and felt boots in the cold. And if anyone saw flying luminous objects, and found circles of fallen wheat in the fields, he thereby confirms the provisions of my theory.and in the fields I found circles of fallen wheat, which thereby confirms the provisions of my theory.and in the fields I found circles of fallen wheat, which thereby confirms the provisions of my theory.
But what if the Magma Creature crosses the subway line? The catastrophe of 1903 in London was precisely the consequence of a similar event. The houses for no reason are another manifestation of the activity of Magmatic Beings. Fortunately, nevertheless, obeying instinct or reason, they prefer open spaces of fields to cities."
The professor's fate was sealed. The letters to the milkmaids and policemen reached their goal. Overwork, which led to insanity, decided the competent authorities. The professors were suspended from work and retired, ceasing to be taken seriously.
It is possible that Buranchuk just wanted this. There are times when it is much more profitable to be a fool than to be a clever - the Shakhty affair, the trial of the Industrial Party, the mass exposure of mass pests to illustrate this. And the construction of the metro was very, very difficult, the deadlines were constantly broken, the estimated cost of the work was growing, the strangest accidents occurred …
But the professor lived calmly on retirement, slept at night, and wandered around Moscow for days, talking to strangers on the most harmless topics. However, soon, in order to save money, and maybe for other reasons, he moved from the capital to the provincial town of Livny to his sister, where he immediately became a local attraction: a crazy academician (the province tends to exaggerate). The tactic of being visible, but not being taken seriously, was carried out brilliantly. Then there was a move to an even more remote place - the small village of Kostenki, Voronezh province.
The professor's new letters (it is true, he wrote them from now on with a pen and sent to a much smaller number of addressees) now concerned humanity. And it, according to Buranchuk, came out from under the Earth, like its other inhabitants. The cradle of humanity (as well as bears, lions, bats and our other brothers and sisters, both smaller and larger) were caves, for which irrefutable evidence was found in Kostenki.
Life in caves was far from primitive. The presence of rock paintings speaks of high creative potential. And bones, fragments of dishes … These caves, Buranchuk believed, were intended for picnics and outings of tourists. Or, perhaps, they were a place of exile, where the guilty were sent from the wonderful underground cities. This is where the legend of the expulsion from paradise began. It is not known what were (and most likely still are) the underground cities of the ancients. The caves that surface humans can explore are only a tiny fraction of both natural and artificial underground spaces. Obviously, most of them are closed to humans. Perhaps underground people own the art of movement in the bowels of the planet. It seems incredible, but for some wild tribes the ability to swim in water seems incredible, so incredible that they immediately kill the swimmer,considering him possessed by evil spirits. They say that in the remote monasteries of China, in Tibet, there are monks who have reached the highest degrees of enlightenment and are able not only to walk - to run underground at a speed not accessible to every land runner.
The professor sometimes stayed overnight in the caves, cooking simple food on the fire, slept wrapped in a bearskin, bought for the occasion from a local hunter, school teacher Naffert, also a great lover of archeology. It was Naffert who told the professor about Bazhov's tales, in which the underground inhabitants of the Urals are certainly accompanied by lizards and other reptiles. Reptiles living with people underground are described in the Scandinavian epics, and in Korean, and even among many tribes of the New World - Naffert turned out to be a walking encyclopedia of various myths and legends.
Since then, during the summer holidays, they were often seen together. And now they wrote letters together: one crazy academician, the other a teacher who earned more by hunting, but did not leave school with its penny earnings. Two pair of boots - according to the concepts of local inhabitants.
In their letters, they called for the most thorough excavations in Kostenki, claiming that the traces of human activity there are at least fifty thousand years old.
The professor did not give up hope of finding traces of the Magmatic Creatures. He collected in the quarries fragments of a strange form, saying that, perhaps, they harbored the simplest Magmatic Creatures. He brought these fragments to his cheaply bought hut, intending to create a museum over time. Examining the idols of the Stone Steppe, he claimed that some, if not all, were definitely frozen Magma Beings.
The professor built a hot air balloon - a hot air balloon of an original design - "for observing the fields in order to reveal traces of Magmatic Creatures." A portable apparatus was installed in the basket for constant heating of the air, and therefore the flight could last much longer than conventional hot air balloons. On a test flight, the professor took a camera and a telescope. In front of the peasants' eyes, the hot air balloon rose into the air and soared high for several hours. But upon landing, the professor was very strictly told that even a madman could not fly without permission, and the ball, along with a camera and a telescope, were confiscated. True, the professor, who dropped the filmed plates in advance on a special parachute in an impact-resistant container, was later able to find them, develop and, in his words, "absolutely definitely detect traces of the ascent of Magmatic Creatures."
The last time Professor Buranchuk was seen together with teacher Naffert - they both went down into a cave called "White Shining", one of the recently discovered in Divnogorie. When they did not return two days later, a detachment of rescuers who arrived by special train from Moscow was sent in search. The professors were looked for with special zeal, because with his seditious flight on the balloon, he attracted close attention of the authorities responsible for the security of the state.
The search continued for several days. Both the professor and the teacher “fell through the earth as if”, which was recorded in the report addressed to Comrade Vareikis, a high-ranking person in Voronezh. It was decided that the unfortunate visionaries got lost in the numerous branches of the cave and died of hunger.
A very strange story never found its continuation …
Nikolai Nikolaevich Nepomnyashchy, 100 Great Mysteries of Nature.
