Kostenki. Ancient civilization near Voronezh

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A discovery that shook the scientific world. Our ancestors lived on the Russian Plain 45,000 years ago. Kostenki is an archaeological site located in the village of the same name on the right bank of the Don, in the Voronezh region. First discovered in 1879, but the first excavations began in the 1920s.

On an area of 10 km², more than 60 sites were found, the age of which ranges from 45 to 15 thousand years. Judging by the artifacts found, our ancestors had a developed culture and art. This sensational discovery casts doubt on the theory that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and from there migrated to the north of Eurasia.

Kostenki is an archaeological site located in the village of the same name on the right bank of the Don, Khokholsky District, Voronezh Region. The local sites of the Upper Paleolithic era are known throughout the world. Russian archaeologist Alexander Spitsyn called them "the pearl of the Russian Paleolithic". Kostenki is a place of sensational finds that change our views on primitive history! From time immemorial, large bones of mysterious animals have been found here. It is no coincidence that the name of this area is based on the root "bone". Local residents have long had a legend about a beast living underground, the bones of which people find. No one saw this monster alive, so the people decided that it could only be discovered after his death. Even Peter I was interested in these bones.

Back in 1717, Peter I wrote to Voronezh to the Azov vice-governor Stepan Kolychev: "he orders Kostensk and other cities and districts of the province to look for great bones, both human and elephant and any other extraordinary." Many of the remains found in Kostenki were sent to the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. Then it was believed that the giant bones found were the remains of the war elephants of Alexander the Great, who "went to fight the Scythians." The first serious archaeological research of the sites in Kostenki was carried out by an outstanding scientist, anthrologist - Ivan Polyakov in the second half of the 19th century. So, on June 28, 1879, flint tools, spearheads and other items confirming the existence of people in these places many centuries ago were removed from the very first pit. It was only in the 1920s that the systematic study of Paleolithic sites began. All the most famous representatives of Russian archeology were here: Sergei Zamyatnin, Petr Efimenko, Alexander Rogachev, Pavel Boriskovsky.

Kostenki are of greater interest today. Today, archaeological excavations in the Kostenok area are taking place on an area of about 10 km². During this time, more than 60 sites were discovered, the age of which, according to scientists, ranges from 45 to 15 thousand years!

It is noteworthy that, according to traditional historiography, during this period the Russian Plain was still covered with a glacier. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that in one cultural layer were found: the remains of a modern type of man and a mammoth, numerous works of art, as well as ten world-famous female figurines, nicknamed "Paleolithic Venus". Thus, the finds discovered by domestic archeology cast doubt on the generally accepted hypothesis that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and from there migrated to Western Europe. Kostenki is the most important archaeological site, proving that a highly developed civilization has existed on our land since ancient times.

The "capital" of the world of the Paleolithic times was found near Voronezh

The cradle of European civilization was discovered near Voronezh..

The archaeological world is shaken by sensational news: on the right bank of the Don, in the village of Kostenki near Voronezh, the ancestral home of all European peoples has been discovered. The discovery of American and Russian scientists radically changes the traditional view of ethnogenesis and the subsequent history of the continent. In short, Europe, accustomed to considering itself an advanced region of development, has been pushed back to the margins of the primitive world.

Scientific Trouble

Science was alarmed by an article published earlier this year in Science magazine by John Hoffecker, a professor at the University of Boulder, Colorado. The bottom line is the following: the skeletons of modern humans found in Kostenki and the age of archaeological finds suggest that homo sapiens appeared in the middle reaches of the Don much earlier than in Europe.

According to the generally accepted version, Central and Western Europe was mastered by people from the climate-friendly Balkans, from the territory of present-day Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, but not from the east of the continent. It was believed that the eastern part was inhabited tens of thousands of years later. That is why the remains of the ancient settlements in Kostenki were only 20,000 years old, at most 32,000 years old, which, of course, did not allow the Voronezh village to be considered the “capital of the Paleolithic”, and our great-grandfathers - the legitimate discoverers of Europe.

VERBATIM. John Hoffecker, professor, Colorado, USA: “The Kostenko sites are interesting not only for their unique antiquity. We do not yet know in what ways primitive people migrated here - from Africa or from Asia? But it was in these places that they acquired new abilities and formed the beginnings of human civilization. This is evidenced by the finds in the lower layer of the excavation - silicon tools, bone, stone figurines of women and animals, which can be attributed to the most ancient works of primitive art. So the local homo sapiens lived not only by hunting, they knew many crafts and were not alien to artistic creativity."

But science went ahead, paleontological methods were improved, along with them archaeological finds were "aging". In the end, after analyzing the ashes, spores and pollen found in the excavations, as well as subjecting the bones to paleomagnetic and radiocarbon studies, Russian scientists established that the Kostenko rarities are in no way less than forty or forty-two thousand years old. American laboratories by the thermoluminescent method "added" them another three millennia. This is how Kostenki got ahead and became the most ancient site of primitive man in Europe. And the American Hoffecker, who announced this, is pushing science towards a fundamental revision of generally accepted views on the early period of human history.

Everyday life of the ancestral home

The village of Kostenki, which has found itself in the epicenter of glory, does not leave the pages of scientific publications. And the inhabitants are somehow boring.

- They deceived us, - Uncle Lesha Proshlyakov explained to the correspondents of "MN". - Since we are now the navel of Europe, then the pension should be given in euros, but they will bring us rubles. Yes, even if they paid for science! In my yard there are only mammoth bones in a half-museum. Another would become a millionaire, but I, by conscience, guard it disinterestedly.

In Kostenki, every second hut is over the camp of an ancient man. Dig with a shovel - then the bone will come out, then something else useful for science. These finds are unnecessary on the farm, so archaeologists have no problems with the population. Yes, and lately, from the point of view of the villagers, they have found all sorts of nonsense - fangs and pebbles. There have been no weighty finds for a long time. Ever since the skeleton of a mammoth was found in Proshlyakov's yard. It’s even strange how a six-meter hulk weighing five and a half tons fit in his beds.

- Yes, he lay with the head of my neighbor, Nikolai Ivanovich, - says Uncle Lesha. - One tusk right under the kitchen, like a foundation. When they pulled it out, the corner almost fell over. And before that, he stood firmly. We were still amazed: everyone had long ago been distorted, and at least something to Ivanitch's house. This is the strength of this mammoth, - concludes Proshlyakov. - Thousands of years ago he died, and kept the hut on himself.

If the narrator is lying, then quite a bit. In 2001, at the Kostenki XIV site, the skeleton of a young mammoth was indeed found, which had once gotten stuck in the swampy soil at the bottom of a ravine.

Ancient abode

For Kostenki, such a find is very rare. Here they excavate ancient settlements with a mass of mammoth bones, but they are "brought". That is, our ancestors specially collected large bones of killed or perished animals and laid them in the foundation of their dwellings. For example, in the ancient site preserved under the roof of the museum-reserve, there are 573 bones that could belong to 40 individuals, and 16 pairs of mammoth skulls. Some of them served as a kind of foundation in which poles with skins stretched for warmth were strengthened, the other part, stored in five pits, was reserved for reserve.

It seems that we are terribly lucky that the ancient inhabitants of Kostenki did not exhaust all mammoths for their needs, and at least one of them has survived to this day in the form of a skeleton. And then for several centuries there was a theory that the accumulations of bones on the chalk slopes of the Don were of elephant origin. Under suspicion was the famous conqueror Alexander the Great, who was armed with war elephants. On the way to Kostenki, the unfortunate animals allegedly suffered a massive pestilence, as a result of which they covered the entire territory with their bones.

The inquisitive Peter the Great, having arrived in Voronezh in 1696 on ship business, ordered the soldiers of the Preobrazhensky regiment to excavate "big bones". This is how the study of the historical monument in Kostenki began. But then the villagers were not yet as conscious as they are now. The soldier broke the dam, they complained to the king, and the excavation was stopped.

Nevertheless, science was still dozing. By the eighteenth century, Alexander the Great was rehabilitated, about whom archeology was mistaken; it was revealed even earlier that elephants are just cousins of mammoths, and their bones are just toys compared to those found in Kostenki. And only in 1879, the famous Russian naturalist Ivan Polyakov figured out that in a place where there are many finds of mammoth bones, there may be remains of the vital activity of a primitive man. His hypothesis came true: in a pit laid on the territory of one of the estates, pieces of ash, coals, ocher, stone tools were found - evidence of ancient life.

The road of life

“That was a real archaeological discovery,” says Viktor Popov, director of the Kostenki Museum-Reserve, clearly contrasting it with the sensation that shocked Europe at the beginning of the year. - Further research simply confirmed that the village of Kostenki is the richest place in Russia for the concentration of Upper Paleolithic sites. Isn't that enough?

Of course not. But it seems that the noble European origin will not hurt the Russians either. That is why the American Hoffecker's version of the Kostenkovian proto-nucleus of Europe is so close to heart. For the sake of fairness, it must be said that scientists from the St. Petersburg Institute of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences were the first to announce this. But, as usual, there is no prophet in his own country:

Although it cannot be said that our scientists were not heard at all. The Voronezh Department of Culture, for example, responded to scientific research with a cultural initiative. The expected flow of tourists from Europe, who would certainly want to look at their ancestral home in Kostenki, was supposed to be greeted with a "barbecue on the bones of a mammoth." Archaeologists were horrified. Culture has become embarrassed, but now, according to Viktor Popov, it is not greedy for museum expositions and gives money to renovate the building.

In principle, the Voronezh authorities already have a reason for cultural pride. The Museum of Archeology - essentially a sarcophagus that completely covers the ancient site - built during the Soviet era, was and remains the only one in the world. It's just that in no other place the dwelling of homo sapiens has not been preserved in such a primeval state. And in Kostenki - please. In 1953, the peasant Protopopov was digging a cellar and came across an ancient apartment.

The name of this digger is not very interesting for fundamental science, but it will forever remain in the historical memory of fellow villagers. Because the Soviet government bought Protopopov's cellar for big money, he was provided with a two-room apartment in Voronezh, and the village got an asphalt road, which, thanks to the museum, still exists. And if it were not for this road of life, connecting Kostenki with the hospital, post office and social security in the regional center, then over the past ten years, when the local collective farm finally collapsed, a new cultural layer would have already formed over the primitive parking lots. Viktor Popov jokes so sadly, in whose eyes the ancient inhabitants of Kostenki evolved to the Europeans, and his contemporaries lingered in some incomprehensible Paleolithic. Because of unemployment, most of the villagers, as in the old days, live by subsistence farming, and some even have huts under straw and with an earthen floor. Only mammoths are missing for complete identification with the progenitors.

But this is another story that has nothing to do with archeology.

MN: The Kostenki archaeological reserve is located on the territory of the Khokholsky district of the Voronezh region. Total area 36 sq. km. There are 26 Stone Age sites ranging in age from 20 to 40 thousand years. Most of them are multi-layered, containing from two to seven cultural layers dating back to different times.

The habitation of primitive man in Kostenki coincides with the period of the so-called Valdai glaciation, when the southern border of the glacial shell was halfway between present-day St. Petersburg and Moscow. The presence of a large number of mammoths on the flat terrain is explained by the persistently cold climate. In recent years, a number of new sensational discoveries have been made in Kostenki. In 2000, the earliest ornaments in Eastern Europe were found - ornamented beads made from the tubular bones of birds. In 2001 - the head of a human figurine made of mammoth ivory, created about 35,000 years ago. Today it is the oldest sculptural image of a person in the Paleolithic of Europe.