"In the halls of the stone kingdom." It is not the first time that the Nizhny Novgorod taiga presents a mysterious discovery to the participants of the UNN Vetluzhsky archaeological expedition. Therefore, we were not at all surprised when the old-timers from the Varnavinsky district called us: “Come to the Khmelevsky cordon, you will not regret it! We will show you the treasured place. The stones are there, exactly, laid out by human hands. This tract is hidden from prying eyes in a dense forest, not far from the banks of the ancient river Lapshanga.
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Who, when and why created this amazing stone complex? Maybe dashing robbers once marked the border of their territory in this way? Or are these the remains of a pagan sanctuary, which was erected by the Mari who inhabited the Povetluga lands in ancient times?
What are the stones silent about?
The study of revered stones has a rather long history in Russia. On the territory of our country, stones are widely known, the occurrence of which is associated with pagan rites of antiquity. Usually they wear traces of processing or have pronounced rare signs: “trackers” (with signs of a human foot, hoof, paw of an animal or bird), “cups” (with hemispherical depressions), boulders with signs of a horseshoe, cross, with grooves.
On the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region there are stones of all these groups. People endow most of these boulders with healing properties. So, on the shore of Lake Svetloyar in the Voskresensky district, near the “chapel by the lake”, there is a tracer stone. In the people it is called "a pebble with a footprint of the Virgin." There is also a Meryansky “stone with a face”, resting in the deaf wilds of the Sokolsky district. There is also a “stone with a cross” in the Kulebaksky district and a “blue stone” near the village of Khmelevoe in the Varnavinsky district - according to legend, the water that accumulates in its hollows heals sore eyes. And the Tatar population of the Krasnooktyabrsky district has a revered boulder Taratash. In the legend about him there are features of “folk” Islam. Simply put, among the Russians, and among the Volga Finns (Mordovians and Mari), and among the Tatars, boulders are the same ancient objects of worship as springs and trees.
Legends about stones often reflect the belief that they have properties that living things have: they supposedly grow or move. Some of the legends are connected with the fact that if the boulder is displaced, then a stream of water will gush that will flood everything around or even the whole earth, which goes back to extremely archaic myths. A vivid example of such a legend is the stone of St. Macarius at the Pochaina ravine in Nizhny Novgorod, covering the source of the Pochaina River.
The worship of stones in the Nizhny Novgorod region, apparently, dates back to the Stone Age. At that time, hunting, fishing and pastoral tribes constantly moved across the territory of the region exclusively along the banks of rivers and watersheds. Often on the way they met large boulders, which were reliable and permanent landmarks for primitive people, because, unlike trees and water sources, they were not exposed to time.
A respectful attitude towards these natural objects was preserved even when people switched to a settled way of life - they began to engage in agriculture. It can be assumed that it was the boulders that once marked the boundaries of certain territories, as if being their guardians and guardians. In later times, until the beginning of the 20th century, it was customary to mark the boundaries of land plots with stones. And to this day, from the inhabitants of many settlements, one can hear legends about what efforts were made to move the stone, and that it was simply impossible to do so. “They dug it up in order to put cables under it, and they pulled it out with tractors, but it stood rooted to the spot (about the “blue stone” in the Varnavinsky district).”
We are not talking about the fact that stones have always and everywhere been used in Nizhny Novgorod villages and villages as a building material. Roads were paved with small cobblestones, and large, especially flat boulders and slabs, were substituted under the corners of the huts or laid with a strip foundation under the lower crown of log cabins of log chapels and churches. In particular, a wooden church in the village of Khmelevoye, Varnavinsky district, stands on sandstone stone slabs. It is interesting that in it and in the neighboring Voskresensky district, elderly people saved up stones in advance in order to enclose the coffin, grave or cross over the grave with them.
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The Secret of the Hop Grove
In the course of archaeological exploration in 2012 in the Varnavinsky district on the banks of the Lapshanga River, we have already discovered a stone sanctuary “Hmelevaya grove”. During its study, a stone altar for sacrifices was discovered, and a probe examination of the platform of the altar complex showed that under a layer of turf in this place there is a stone pavement, characteristic of a number of Mari sanctuaries. In particular, it was discovered on the territory of the Irmar altar of the 18th-19th centuries in the Mari Republic.
Near the altar of the Varnavin sacral complex, the remains of ritual fires were visible, and various objects were found that were used during pagan prayers. These are fragments of iron cauldrons and frying pans, knives, a socketed hook from a kitchen hook, forged nails, hooks for hanging cauldrons, a buckle from a horse harness, and other items. By the way, about the long-term use of cauldrons and bowls in sacred groves during the pagan religious prayers of the Mari at the end
The historian, ethnographer and Finno-Ugric expert Stefan Kuznetsov wrote in the 19th - early 20th centuries: “These cups are mostly black, smoky, have been preserved since the times when there was a dense, virgin forest with trees of immense thickness throughout the entire territory of the Cheremis settlements; then these cups were made, and carefully, like a shrine, they are still preserved and used only for prayers…”.
In addition, two boulder mounds were found on the territory of the Hop Grove sanctuary, also containing fragments from boilers and iron-containing slags. What was the purpose of these stone piles? What secrets are kept under these boulders? Unfortunately, without archaeological excavations it is impossible to say. It is only known that in general they can be interpreted as sacrificial, tomb or cult. However, in our opinion, these boulder mounds could have arisen during the ritual offering of stones to the territory of the sanctuary.
Each of those who visited the sacred grove brought geese for sacrifice to their pagan gods, brought the first fruits of the harvest, the first milk of the woman in labor, as well as a small stone that was left in a certain place. So gradually from year to year impressive stone heaps were formed. You will not believe it, but the mountains of these stones on the sanctuaries of the northern Finns sometimes reached the height of a two-story house. And even if the sacred grove was cut down by opponents of paganism, the custom of collecting heaps of sacrificial stones, but in another forest nearby, still persisted.
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Strange find on Robber Hill
On the eve of our trip to the Varnavinian taiga, we abandoned our computers and started rummaging through old ethnographic collections. The result was not long in coming. It turned out that back in the 19th - early 20th century, an unusual legend circulated about this tract. In 1921, the ethnographer, director of the Kostroma Museum V.I. . The legend connects this place with a robber's den.
Today this tract is known among the old-timers under the name “Robber Mountain”. And the Varnavinian researcher Sergei Legchenkov believes that in the 17th century a detachment of Stepan Razin set up his robbery den here. Indeed, it is known that in 1670, the Razin ataman Ilya Ponomarev, having learned about the capture of Kozmodemyansk by the tsarist troops and about the movement of a detachment of punishers to Vetluga, gathered the Vetluga rebels and headed for Unzha along the Lapshang forest road. In his army there were 400 Cossack cavalry and 300 foot soldiers who moved on carts. This detachment inevitably passed through the “Rogue Mountain”, and maybe even stopped here.
So, goodbye, dear Nizhny Novgorod, it's time to go! We shook for a long time in the train, then moved to an old diesel locomotive. Floated past endless forests, villages, strange fences with barbed wire. And the names of settlements are also strange - Chibir, Wait, Kaysk. At the final station, we were immediately picked up by an old Soviet SUV, which slowly but surely crawled along a rollicking forest road.
And here is the treasured place. When we saw him, we could not believe our eyes. The ethnographer Smirnov described the stone structures resting in this remote forest tract painfully accurately. In a half-century pine forest, all the man-made stone objects described more than 90 years ago appeared before our eyes. These are stones laid out like a ladder, and some kind of ritual construction made of large boulders, resembling a “well”, and a large man-made rounded stone heap, consisting of smaller boulders. Right there, next to the masonry of cobblestones, gaped a small but deep hole. Who dared to guard the peace of this stone kingdom?
During the inspection of the sanctuary, we noticed that the passage to it from the used and currently used dirt road is marked by two clusters of boulders, which were placed in rows by the ancient pagans. Remotely, it resembles the stone labyrinths of the Russian North, and if you climb a tree, you can guess the figures of fish. It was these stones, apparently, that in the old days they called the “stone staircase”, known to us from the description of the ethnographer Smirnov.
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Of course, there were some finds. On the territory of the proposed sanctuary, we collected lifting material consisting of iron objects. So, next to a large stone-pointer, standing by the road, lay a fragment of a forged chain with a hook bent from an iron rod. It is interesting that the Mari people still use such devices to hang cauldrons over fires for cooking sacrificial food in sacred groves. And nearby, an iron shoe shoe was found, which by type dates back to the 16th-17th centuries.
We tend to believe that the prayer sites found in the Varnavinsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region are a local version of the archaic sanctuaries of the Lapshang Mari and in their structure resemble the traditional temples of the northern Finns - Karelians and Chuds. For example, the area of distribution of stone "heaps" found in our sanctuaries is limited by the territory of southern Karelia, southern and western Finland, the Ladoga region and the islands of the White Sea. On the territory of Karelia, boulder mounds are a separate element of the burial tradition until the beginning of the 20th century. Often, boulder piles are adjacent to cup stones, which is also recorded in our cases.
Unlike the sanctuaries of Karelia, on the medieval Mari archaeological sites, as well as on later sanctuaries and in sacred groves, stone structures are practically not found. Nevertheless, in some cases, such a tradition among the Mari still existed. Thus, the veneration of the stone is traced at the Irmar altar, the prayer sites "Tarasova Gora", Ishanyr and Omyk Lida in Mari El, as well as at the Chumbulatsk prayer site in the Kirov region.
Dmitry Karabelnikov
The ravines were indeed the eternal enemy of the peasant farmer, taking away arable land from him, disfiguring the fields and making them unsuitable for any use. But forest ravines served our ancestors to mark the border lines between the principalities and individual estates, and sometimes became a natural refuge during the invasions of real enemies. Probably, few people can imagine that there are ravines, whose age is calculated for many centuries, and they are contemporaries of the events of the distant Middle Ages. There are such natural objects in our Vladimir region.
Debrishin enemy
According to legend, it was the ravines that saved the squad of Prince Ivan Vsevolodovich Starodubsky and the inhabitants of the city of Starodub on the Klyazma in the winter of 1237-1238, when the hordes of Batu Khan attacked Vladimir-Suzdal Rus. When a large detachment of the Mongol army approached the fortress, its defenders, having beaten off the first assault, went through the rear gate at night into the forest through one of the ravines on the slope of the steep Klyazma bank. And in the morning, the enemies again rushed to storm the abandoned walls and were left without prey, since the Starodubs took everything of any value with them.
Another ravine - Debrishin, or Kondrovskiy - is located about a couple of kilometers north of the village of the Krestnikovo station of the Gorky railway. As an "enemy of Debryshyn" he was mentioned in the spiritual charter (testament) of Prince Ivan Vasilyevich Romodanovsky, most likely written at the end of the 15th century.
The name "Debrishin enemy" comes from the toponym "Debri", which denoted the forest region to the north of this ravine. There, even now, at the beginning of the 21st century, impassable and impassable jungles have been preserved in some places, and the forest churchyard located above the ravine with an abandoned stone church is designated as Nikolo-Debri or simply Debri.
Black Dol
Another old ravine, the remains of which can still be seen, was called "Petrushinsky" and began approximately at the western border of the Kovrovsky district, south of the current M7 Volga highway. It goes almost strictly from south to north in the direction of the village of Rusino and eventually reaches the right bank of the Klyazma. According to a legend recorded back in the middle of the 19th century, near this ravine during the events of the Great Troubles of the 1600s. a detachment of interventionist Poles was killed by local peasants, whom the unknown guide, like the famous Ivan Susanin, lured into a pre-arranged ambush. The grave of the conquerors under a low mound could be seen in the forest near the Petrushinsky ravine as early as the reign of Emperor Nicholas I.
Sometimes a large ravine eventually became a valley and was called a valley. Under Kovrov, the Black Valley is well known to the townspeople. In the old days, this place was notorious - there, in the dark dense forests, robbers hid, attacking those passing along the post road. Around the 1960s Black Dol has become a place of mass celebrations of the Kovrovites, skiing and skiing from steep slopes in winter.
bygone river
Sometimes the channels of rivers that disappeared or went underground due to karst phenomena became ravines. An example of this is the multi-kilometer ravine Kolp, leaving the forest southeast of the village of Krasny Mayak, Kovrovsky district, into the Sudogodsky district. According to the testimonies of old-timers recorded earlier, since the end of the 19th century, Kolp has gone underground, eroding the soil, and now the “Kolp ravine” in the place of its former channel is indicated on all topographic maps.
The presence of large ravines was sometimes imprinted even in the names of settlements. For example, in the Vladimir province, two villages are known at once, which were called Krutoy ravine and Krutoy dol. The first of them was hiding in the forests on the border of Sudogodsky and Vyaznikovsky districts between the Ilyinsky churchyard and the large village of Butorlino. Steep Dol belonged to the former Pokrovsky district and was located about a dozen kilometers northeast of the current city of Petushki. Both of these villages turned into tracts in the last quarter of the last century, but they are still marked on the maps.
The territory of the current Melenkovsky district near the banks of the Oka is replete with deep ravines. So, near the villages of Voyutino and Okshovo there are not even ravines, but entire canyons, overgrown with forests, with streams flowing along the bottom. Near Okshovo, along one of these formations, there is a road to the banks of the Oka, since a huge ravine cut through an almost 20-meter steep bank and became a natural “highway” convenient for people. But another deep and narrow ravine near the same village divides the vast field in two with an almost insurmountable barrier, which even pedestrians cross with difficulty only along a narrow bridge and ladders, and any equipment is forced to follow a detour for several kilometers.
To the point:
Mysterious ravines of Russia
Located near Kolomna. They say that it is under it that one of the faults of the East European Plate passes. They say that in the mid-1990s, scientists from the Institute of General Physics worked in this place. According to their data, electromagnetic radiation in the ravine exceeded the background radiation by 12 times. There are also two large boulders on the territory of the ravine, near which the excess was 27 times.
Chertov (Pskov region)
Enjoys a bad reputation. Allegedly, in 1928, seven people disappeared there at once - a brigade of lumberjacks. In 1931, there was another case when nine people disappeared in a ravine. In 1974, a group of mushroom pickers from Leningrad allegedly disappeared in the Devil's Ravine. Two of them were found a week later. Exhausted, they could not tell anything about the fate of their comrades.
Sivinsky (Mordovia)
Since the beginning of the 18th century, the Sivin ravines have become famous as a real robber nest. Bandits robbed and killed passers-by and hid treasures here. In the 1870s, according to local historians from Krasnoslobodsk, the Sivinsky robbers robbed a convoy carrying a soldier's salary for several years to Siberia - 20 barrels of gold coins! The robbers did not divide the booty, they killed each other, and the gold disappeared somewhere in a ravine.
Sosnov (Ulyanovsk region)
There is a spring there. According to legend, the remnants of the Razin army defeated on the Kandaratka River stopped at this spring. Razintsy lived here for a short time. Fleeing from persecution, they went further north and took refuge in the tract known as Melovatka, and further - in the Pomaevsky forests. Even now, you can see the remains of a fortified Tatar settlement, which was used by the Razintsy, and one of the hollows in the Pomaevsky forest is called Stepan Razin's ravine.
Ovda-korem (Mari El)
Translated as "river witches". It was here that, according to legend, ovds lived - forest creatures covered with wool and with their feet turned back. They say that relatively recently - in the 50s of the last century - at the bottom of the ravine they found round, about half a meter in diameter, entrances to the underground dwellings of the police department, and at the very beginning of the 60s, the ovds moved from here, went away from civilization, into the forest jungle Kirov region.
Good evening, dear readers of the Sprint-Answer website. On Channel One there is a TV game "Field of Miracles", because today is Friday. On the site you can find all the answers in the game "Field of Wonders" for October 27, 2017. And in this article you can learn more about the task for the final round, as well as find out the correct answer to the question of the final round. Ahead of the Supergame!
There are answers to this question on the Internet, because such a question is often found in crossword puzzles and various quizzes. Russia has always been famous for its forests and thickets. And the forests were impenetrable and dense. If a person fell into the forest, then not everyone came out of it. In the old days they spoke of the impenetrable forest "infection" . Here's what you can learn about the word "Contagion" on Wikipedia.
And here are the variants of the origin of the name of the city of Zaraysk.
The correct answer to the question of the final round: Infection(6 letters).
3. Tactical terrain classification
Tactically, the area is divided into:
According to the conditions of patency;
Under the conditions of observation and camouflage;
By degree of intersection.
According to the conditions of patency the area can be:
Walkable terrain almost does not limit the speed and direction of movement of tracked vehicles, allows repeated movement along one track. The movement of wheeled vehicles of ordinary cross-country ability is somewhat difficult.
Difficult terrain accessible for the movement of tracked vehicles, but at a lower speed than on passable terrain. The movement of wheeled vehicles of ordinary cross-country ability is almost impossible. Difficult terrain has a negative impact on the speed and ability of the movement of police officers in the performance of their service and combat missions.
impassable terrain inaccessible for the movement of caterpillar and wheeled vehicles without work on laying column tracks.
According to the conditions of observation and camouflage, the terrain is divided into:
open area is a flat or slightly hilly treeless area, up to 75 % the area of which is clearly visible from the commanding heights in all directions.
semi-closed area is transitional from open to closed. The area occupied by natural shelters is about 20% , from commanding heights it is visible up to 50% area. Provides good disguise for police officers and criminals.
closed area is a territory covered with forests, shrubs, gardens, with frequently located settlements, with mountainous, hilly or flat terrain. The area occupied by natural masks is 30% and more, and the area viewed from command heights is less 25%.
In a closed area, observation, orientation and target designation, control of forces and means of ATS, organization of interaction is difficult. The closed area is an ideal hiding place for criminals.
According to the degree of intersection with ravines, gullies, rivers, lakes, ditches and other natural obstacles, the terrain is:
Slightly rugged terrain has a small number of natural and artificial obstacles, easily overcome by military and special equipment in any direction. Natural obstacles take less than 10 % area. The relief is usually flat, rarely hilly. The terrain provides a good overview and the use of equipment in all directions.
medium rough terrain has about 20 % area occupied by natural obstacles. On such terrain, the massive use of equipment is difficult. The relief is usually hilly, rarely flat. Such terrain contributes to protection against the damaging factors of nuclear and conventional weapons.
rugged terrain It is distinguished by a large number of difficult obstacles - mountains, ravines, gullies, rivers, canals, ditches and swamps. The area under natural obstacles is more than 30 %. It is characterized by mountainous regions, territories with ravine-gully and valley-gully relief. The use of technology is possible only in certain areas. Such terrain complicates the conduct of special operations and the search for criminals.
Caused by the runoff of scattered streams of water, ravine erosion occurs when these streams are concentrated into relatively powerful water flows. Such a concentration occurs when water flows from the slopes of the catchment into a natural hydrographic network or into an artificial hollow. Such hollows are formed as a result of plowing along the borders of fields, as well as along arable furrows and road ditches. The water flow, if it is with the existing slopes of the earth's surface, has a sufficiently large destructive force, washes the channel along the bottom of the hollow or beam, and carries the soil and soil into the rivers and seas. Since the surface runoff of melt or storm water periodically repeats, the ravines continue to grow in depth, length and width every year. Consequently, a ravine is a negative landform formed relatively recently by a periodically flowing water stream. In the ravine it is necessary to distinguish peak, mouth, cone removal, bottom, curb and slopes.
On the left - a diagram of the ravine. Designations: a - peak; b - screwdrivers; c - brow; g - thalweg; d - slopes; g - alluvial cone; g - the edge of the beam.
On the right - types of ravines. Designations: b - primary coastal and secondary; in - top; d - bottom; g - beam; a - watershed line; g - hollow; g - field boundary; arrows - water flow.
The ravines are confined to the hydrographic network. Each link of this network has a bottom, banks and slopes of the catchment area. Ravines by origin are divided into primary and secondary. The primary ones are ravines, which for the first time cut through new surfaces of the earth, the secondary ones are ravines that deepen the existing hydrographic network.
Primary ravines, as a rule, are formed as a result of the concentration of water runoff along artificial hollows on the slopes of a catchment area of some element (beams, etc.). A concentrated stream of water, rushing along such a hollow down the slope, eventually breaks through to the bank of a beam or river valley and erodes it. Here begins its development of the primary ravine. Therefore, primary ravines are also called coastal. Since these ravines in the future, as they develop, are introduced into the adjacent slope of the catchment area, they are also called slope. More precisely, they should be called primary slope ravines.
Secondary ravines are formed as a result of erosion and deepening of the bottom of the hydrographic network, therefore they are also called bottom ravines.
The ravines growing along the bottom of the hollows located at the tops of the beams and hollows are called summit ravines. In addition, ravines growing along the bottom of the side hollows should be distinguished. They begin their development on the banks of the gully and then move up the water-carrying hollow, dissecting the slope of the gully catchment area. These ravines can be called secondary slope.
The rate of growth of the ravine in depth is determined by the kinetic energy of the water flow and the resistance of the soil to erosion by water. When these forces are balanced, the growth of the ravine in depth stops. Other things being equal, this can occur either with a decrease in the mass of flowing water, or with a decrease in the flow velocity due to a decrease in the longitudinal slope of the channel bottom.
Let us consider the reasons for the formation and features of the growth of primary ravines. The most typical case is the formation of a primary ravine along the boundary of a field or road that is incorrectly laid relative to the slope. Along such a boundary, due to plowing, an artificial hollow is formed, which intercepts small streams of scattered runoff from the overlying slope and concentrates them into a more powerful water stream. This water flow reaches the banks of the gully (hollow), where the slope of the surface increases sharply. At the same time, the flow rate and its destructive power increase, resulting in soil erosion. A ravine is formed on the bank of the beam, which grows annually down its bank and up the slope.
