For archaeologists and historians among the regions of Russia, the Kuban occupies a special place. Here, objects of the past, traces of the peoples who lived in this territory from the most ancient times, have been preserved in a unique variety. Local climate, advantageous geographical position, unique fertile soil has always attracted immigrants from all over Europe and Asia. AT different time nomads lived on the territory of the Kuban: Scythians, Huns, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, Alans. Greeks, Vikings, ancient Rus, Armenians, Cossacks, Adygs - this is not a complete list of the peoples who inhabited Kuban land. Each nation left a mark in the history of this beautiful land.
The first inhabitants of the northwest of the Kuban were Neanderthals. The oldest (about five hundred thousand years old) human settlements were found in the caves of the Caucasus Mountains. Modern people (homo sapiens) appeared on the territory of the present Krasnodar Territory about seventy thousand years ago. A well-known archaeological monument of that time is the camp of hunters on the Il River. During the excavations, ancient bone tools were found. This archaeological site is located on the southern outskirts of the village of Ilsky, Seversky district.
One of the most famous archaeological monuments of the Kuban is the Caucasian dolmens. These are stone structures, which are like small houses. Scientists are still arguing about their purpose. There are suggestions that these are tombs ancient leaders, objects of worship and even ancient observatories. They are found not only in the Krasnodar Territory. Similar structures are spread all over the world, mainly in North Africa, Europe, Korea. In the Kuban, they are located on the mountain slopes Caucasian ridge and the surrounding area. There are quite a few dolmens in the Gelendzhik region.
In the era of the Iron Age, many tribes lived on the land of the present Krasnodar Territory and nearby areas. They were mainly engaged in crafts, cultivation of the land, cattle breeding, fishing, trade with the ancient Greeks. The Meotians left a huge number of settlements throughout the Kuban: Elizavetinskoye, Tenginsky settlements on Laba, Starokorsunskoe and many others. In the same period, the western lands of the Kuban were occupied by the people of the Sinds. After them remained Semibratnee, Krasno-Oktyabrskoe and other settlements, mounds.
150 years ago, scientists found the remains of ancient Greek cities on the site of modern Anapa, the village of Taman and the village of Sennoy. Under the resort town of Anapa, the ancient city of Gorgippia has been preserved. In Anapa, there are quarters of this area discovered by archaeological excavations. ancient city available for inspection.
On the site of the village of Taman in the Temryuk region, the buildings of the capital of the Old Russian principality, the city of Tmutarakan, have been preserved. This archaeological site has rich history, existed for many centuries under different names and belonged to several great states: the Bosporan kingdom, the Khazar Khaganate. It was founded in the sixth century BC. e. Greeks. The excavations of the settlement are available for visiting.
Near the city of Goryachiy Klyuch there is a fortress on Mount Petushok. It belongs to the medieval period. The fortress controlled a narrow passage from the mountainous regions to the flat part of the Kuban, where trade caravans often passed.
Archaeological monuments, settlement complexes and settlements, fortresses belonging to the Byzantines, the Abkhazian kingdom are spread throughout the Kuban. There are many of them in Goryacheklyuchevsky, Labinsk districts.
Archaeological monuments of the Kuban can be seen with your own eyes even now. Many of them are museum-fitted and open to everyone who wants to touch the history of this unique region.
Near Krasnodar, in the area of the village of Elizavetinskaya, excavations of an ancient burial from the turn of the era are underway. They were launched at the end of April and attracted the attention of citizens, due to the fact that in this place - at the entrance to the city along the Krasnodar-Temryuk highway - a traffic jam often forms.
The excavations are being carried out by LLC Zapadno-Kavkazskaya Archaeological Expedition". This is a planned event as part of the construction project: the road is being widened on this section.
By law, the customer of construction work is obliged to carry out archaeological excavations in the area of excavation and construction works, if it is known that there are objects cultural heritage.
Archaeologists work on the side of the road, do not impede traffic, but motorists make tourist trips to see the monument of architectural heritage.
“This monument has long been known. It is called a soil burial ground of the second Elizabethan settlement of the early Iron Age, - says the head of the department of archeological monuments of the regional department of state protection of cultural heritage objects to Kublog Georgy Davydenko. By the way, there is an interesting burial there. I was there on May 2, I saw for myself that jewelry, weapons and already more than 10 skeletons were found. When all the finds have been extracted, the work on widening the road can be continued.”
Another thing is if the burial turns out to be especially valuable or unique. Then it can be museumified. But experts believe that this is not the case.
“There are dozens of burials in these places. I don’t think that the results of the work will be so stunning that the road will not be allowed to be laid and something will be museumified, - says a well-known Krasnodar historian Vitaly Bondar. - There must be very serious reasons for this. In general, burial grounds in the world practice are rarely museumified.
The excavations will not last long.
“We must meet within two months,” said the head of archaeological work near the Elizabethan Mikhail Lunev.
What was found in remote areas of the region and what replenished the museum funds of the region
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Kuban researchers had a rich harvest this year. No matter how many scientists dig on the southern land, rich in all sorts of archaeological surprises, but the secrets hidden in it are enough, it seems, for another generation of scientists.
An ancient fortress hid near Novorossiysk for two thousand years
Literally in March, near the village of Verkhnebakansky, antiquity seekers discovered the ruins of a stone wall. It is, apparently, part of a previously unknown ancient fortress. Surprisingly, scientists stumbled upon the structure quite by accident when they determined the boundaries of the settlement they found back in 1990. 26 years ago, they dug up only one tower; they managed to continue excavations only in 2016.
They laid pits in the vicinity of the tower, began to remove a layer of earth. The stone wall was located at a depth of 30 centimeters from the surface. It relates to I-II century ad. Archaeologists do not rule out that several more similar walls, which once made up one large fortress, are “mothballed” nearby. Two thousand years ago, this may have been a powerful defensive point. But next to the wall, they found various household items, a whorl and coins, so it is possible that this could be a temple. But finding answers to all questions can take months, if not years.
In the village of Poltava found a mutilated monument to Lenin
One of the tourists stumbled upon the infamous sculpture of Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin stood quietly in the small garden of the village of Poltava, in the Krasnoarmeisky district, for almost half a century, no one paid attention. And then on you - fell under the sight of cameras. Yes, it turned out to be so “good” that he even landed on the March air to Ivan Urgant. And he already heartily "drove" along the monument of "unsuccessful surgical intervention."
"Komsomolskaya Pravda" found Lenin's concrete grandfather, but recognized it with difficulty. Plump duck lips, a chiseled nose, chic sharp cheekbones and a squinted look. One could recognize the "leader of the world proletariat" only by the outstretched hand, which, according to tradition, pointed the way to a brighter future. But it also looks more like a huge bear paw.
As it turned out, it was spoiled by local builders, who generally had to restore the very pedestal on which Lenin stood. But, seeing that the monument had almost no face (it was recaptured by hooligans), they decided to put their hand to art and recreate its face, and at the same time update the hand.
Fortunately, the fate of the monument was decided in a few months - the sculptor from Slavyansk-on-Kuban Viktor Weiss decided to "operate" on Vladimir Ilyich. Many have already appreciated the renovated monument. True, the locals cannot get used to everything - the old version, according to them, was better.
Ancient Arab coins and marble stele found near Temryuk
The area near the Sea of Azov presented archaeologists with a treasure trove of artifacts in 2016. Regular excavations have lifted the veil of secrecy over how people lived in the distant past in these territories. In hand Kuban archaeologists turned out to be a unique find - a silver Arab dirham of the 8th century. The diameter of the coin is not more than 2.5 centimeters. Surprisingly, the researchers dug it up for the first time since the beginning scientific research in 1936.
The good preservation of the coin found on the territory of Phanagoria made it possible to immediately clarify its origin. Just by looking at it, experts determined that a dirham with a thousand-year history was minted during the reign of Caliph al-Mahdi at the North African mint al-Abbasiyayu (approximately 784-785 AD - Auth.). The fineness of silver changed very slowly in coins, because dirhams played the role of an exceptionally reliable currency, and everywhere people trusted their “good quality”.
And the coin, most likely, got to the money market of Phanagoria along the caravan routes from the East that passed through its territory. In the ancient lands of the Bosporus kingdom, dirhems are quite rare. And in Phanagoria, until today, they have never been found. The find will be a good addition to the annually growing collection of coins found during excavations in Phanagoria.
A little later, near Temryuk, archaeologists dug up a marble stele. The layers in which the artifact was found belong, according to preliminary data, to the second quarter of the 5th century BC. The phrase inscribed on the marble stele was made in ancient Persian cuneiform. And it was used only by Tsar Darius I. Currently, the stele is in the restoration laboratory. The scientists will continue the research, and later will transfer it to the State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve "Fanagoria".
Ancient burial places of horses were found on Taman, and a Byzantine anchor was raised from the bottom of the bay
On the peninsula near the Kerch Strait, archaeologists continue to explore the Eastern Phanagoria necropolis. In the summer, scientists found rather strange and rare burials of horses. In three places of burial there were full carcasses of young horses, and in one more lay the head and legs of a foal.
Working version of scientists - ritual sacrifice. Burials, according to scientists, date back to the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th century BC. They made such a conclusion based on the excavations of funeral feasts (part of the funeral rite of the ancient Slavs - Auth.) There, archaeologists found fragments of ceramics - mainly amphorae.
Such burials, researchers say, are rare. There are no similar finds in the Phanagoria necropolis.
But this is not all the finds of the Necropolis team of archaeologists. Not far from the horses, experts discovered the so-called "stone box" - a tomb made of hewn limestone. She is over 2200 years old. But while the artifact has not been opened, they are now clearing the area around it to make it easier to explore the "box".
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the Taman Bay, under a layer of silt, an old anchor was discovered. The find was found in the flooded part of the ancient city when checking magnetic anomalies in the eastern part of the Phanagoria water area. Among the divers who stumbled upon the artifact were several students from a Krasnodar university. The anchor was found at a depth of three meters, weighing about 200 kilograms. It took four to get it out.
The found anchor was covered with bottom sediments, but it was very well preserved. Its dimensions are approximately two by one and a half meters. The Byzantine anchor, according to archaeologists, is a rather rare thing in our area. And even more so in the Taman Bay.
It belongs approximately to the X-XI centuries of our era. The exact date of its production will be able to establish after conservation and restoration.
Plane lifted from the bottom of the Black Sea
In the Kerch Strait from the bottom, search engines raised an attack aircraft shot down during the battle of the Great Patriotic War in the distant 43rd. The enemy defense line in those years could only be bombed from the sky. Therefore, only in this area three IL-2s sank. Completely, the search engines managed to raise only one aircraft. The second "flying tank" is only partially - the side is heavily silted. The third attack aircraft has so far remained at the bottom of the Kerch Strait. The lifting operation will continue in early 2017.
Raised IL-2, as it turned out from archival documents, shot down on December 2, 1943. In the water, he lay at a depth of ten meters cabin down. When the plane was lifted aboard the vessel, the remains of the pilot were found in the cockpit. The pilot's chest was inside the life jacket in the area of the pedals. Among the ribs was found the Order of the Red Banner of War. His condition is very bad. The Order was temporarily mothballed in fresh water. Perhaps the search engines will be able to establish his number. And on it - already the name of the pilot.
The fate of the second crew member, the shooter, remains unknown. The fuselage of the aircraft was broken off just in the area of its cockpit.
Now the attack aircraft has been sent to the base of the Gelendzhik film studio. Here, specialists and experienced pilots will begin restoring the aircraft to the state of the 43rd. In honor of the Gelendzhik aviation group, the raised IL-2 will be installed in the Victory Park.
Bones of peoples living in the 20th century BC found in the catacombs near Armavir
Amazing finds were dug up in July in Armavir in the tract Kizilovaya Balka, which is located north of the village of Forshtadt in the Novokubansky district. And who would have thought that in this place they would be able to find the oldest monument. The researchers found three burial mounds, in which there are about 30 burials. Many things of that time were found in the catacombs. Among them are decorations made of shells and fish vertebrae, ceramic vessels with funeral food. As it turned out, one of the mounds found was built by the Scythians. Under the embankment, archaeologists found burials of an infant and an adult.
But the other two mounds belong to a completely different culture, much earlier. While little is known about these people, their origin is not completely clear, it can only be argued that they were Caucasoids representing two cultures bronze age: catacomb - the Middle Bronze Age (approximately XXV-XX centuries BC -Aut.) and Srubnaya (XVIII-XII centuries BC). They were mainly engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding. Several millennia separate them from the era of the Scythians (VII-IV centuries BC).
After the study, all finds will be transferred to the Krasnodar Museum of Local Lore.
The tip of an ancient spear was unearthed on the shore near Sochi
In early September, on the banks of the Khadzhipse River in the village of Yakornaya Shchel, in the Sochi region, a very ancient and rather rare spearhead was randomly found.
Researchers are confident that the 19-centimeter bronze tip is about five thousand years old. The proof of his version is the characteristic stalked shape of the tool. Only five of them were found on the territory of the entire North Caucasus. This tip is the sixth. The tip has yet to be studied, to conduct various examinations to establish, at a minimum, its exact age. Immediately after, the artifact will replenish the collection of the Sochi Museum of History.
The missing four-month-old tiger cub of famous animal trainers was caught at the resort
In November, when the Bagdasarovs arrived on tour in Sochi, one of the youngest pets of the artists, a four-month-old tiger cub named Shiva, disappeared. He was born from the stars Betty and Cupid, however, due to his age, he has not yet entered the arena.
As a result, for four days the artists, together with the circus staff, combed every corner of the city. And late in the evening, employees of the Sochi circus finally found the missing fluffy. As it turned out, the little predator decided to travel in the local jungle. One of the circus employees found him in the thickets near the circus arena on Deputatskaya Street (between private houses - Auth.). He did not receive any injuries, but he worked up an appetite perfectly. Having had a good dinner, the baby fell asleep. And the Bagdasarovs, while walking, now keep an eye on the tiger cub - after all, sometimes you can’t keep track of the children.
All listed monuments are located close to each other in the vicinity of Shapsugskaya station and can be visited during one daylight hours. In the same one-day itinerary, you can include a mud volcano on the spur of Mount Kredyanaya, the rocky outlier of the Devil's Finger, the remains of the Nikolaevsky fort from the times Caucasian War in the center of the Shapsugskaya station and key springs at the foot of Mount Kredyanaya, a few tens of meters to the right of the Shapsugskaya-Erivanskaya road. In the city of Abinsk there is a folk museum with interesting historical and artistic expositions worthy of attention.
Anapa district
There are few other impressive archaeological sites in the Anapa region, but you should definitely visit the main museum of Anapa, where there are expositions on all periods of the history of the region.
Apsheron region
In the Apsheron region in the Pshekha river basin, according to unverified information, there are stone fortresses and rock burial grounds, but archaeologists have not found or described them. There are many mound groups, including those in the mountainous zone. Most of these burial grounds were left by the medieval Circassians. A smaller part was built in the Bronze Age. In the village of Tverskaya there is a small municipal museum, the exposition of which presents archaeological objects.
Armavir region
In the city of Armavir there is a local history museum with interesting archaeological, historical and artistic expositions.
Gelendzhik and its environs
Krasnodar and its environs
Most of the materials from the mentioned settlements and burial grounds are stored and exhibited in the Krasnodar State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve. Other archeological monuments are also known on the territory of the region of Krasnodar, but they are much worse preserved.
Krymsky district
In the city of Krymsk there is a local history museum with an interesting exposition on the ancient past of the region.
Labinsky district
In Labinsk there is a local history museum with a small but interesting collection of antiquities. On the territory of the region there are many other archaeological monuments-fortifications of the Meotian-Sarmatian period and several settlements of the Koban culture, for example, the Kaladzhinsky settlement.
Mostovsky district
Main Feature monuments of the Mostovsky district is that they are located in a beautiful and clean corner of the nature of the Krasnodar Territory.
Novorossiysk and its environs
In the city of Novorossiysk there is a local history museum with the richest collections of antiquities from the outskirts of the city. It has expositions not only in the main building, but also in the Exhibition Hall.
Otradnensky district
There are many other archeological monuments on the territory of the Otradnensky district, but they are located in hard-to-reach places of the mountain strip. In Art. Otradnaya has a local history museum with a rich collection of antiquities, which must be included in the excursion routes.
Primorsko-Akhtarsky district
The settlements described above are selected as an example. Around the Kirpilsky estuary there are up to 20 settlements left by the Meotian tribes. Some of them are located on the territory of the adjacent Primorsko-Akhtarsky districts. You can make a special route through the Meotian settlements of the Kirpil group, selecting the most suitable ones for this.
Seversky district
In the Krasnodar Territory, they also came across amazing finds more than once. Here is what we managed to find out about historical finds in the region: in Ust-Labinsk, for example, they found an ancient burial ground, on the mounds near Dinskaya - the remains of a man who lived about five thousand years ago. In the village of Novomalorossiyskaya, schoolchildren found a bone of unknown origin at a depth of thirty meters, looking like a joint of an ancient animal. And a couple of years ago, fragments of a mammoth skeleton were unearthed in Adygea. The fossils are over 40,000 years old. Ten years ago, a whole skeleton of a mammoth was found in the Teuchezhsky district of the republic. But there is not a single mention of the finds of the remains of dinosaurs, but dinosaurs existed much earlier. primitive people or mammoths.
However, there are references to such a find. An ancient pink coral about 13 million years old was found by museum workers in Armavir during excavations in the vicinity of the city, the Historical and Archaeological Museum of Armavir reported. The find confirms the theory that there was water on the site of Armavir millions of years ago. It is believed that there was an ocean here. From time to time, fossils are found here that testify to this. Local paleontologists called the six-centimeter coral "a ready-made museum piece that can be put on display even now.
Museum specialists are convinced that this coral is of the same period as those found earlier in the vicinity of Armavir. Fossils are heritage ancient ocean. The hypothesis that dinosaurs existed on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory millions of years ago, we will have to prove or disprove in our research work.
The Kuban land passed in its geological development big way. To recreate overall picture Let us turn to the wonderful book by V.I. Borisov " Entertaining local history". By the nature of the rock layers and the fossils imprinted in them, one can judge the paleogeography of the past. Clays were deposited at the bottom of the deep seas, and sandy-pebble material was deposited on the shallows. It is clear that imprints are visible in the layers of these rocks. marine organisms. Rocks formed on land will contain the remains of terrestrial organisms. In the area we are describing, 3 billion years ago, the sea splashed, in which life arose. Bacteria and protozoan algae appeared, then the first invertebrate animals appeared - worms.
The land is conquered by the first complex shrub plants. A little later, they are replaced by giant tree ferns. Giant dragonflies flew in the thickets of this vegetation, and the first amphibians, stegocephals, lived near the reservoirs. The body length of the stegocephalus reached 2 m. They were predators with a huge toothy mouth that hunted fish for hours. Mountains began to form, the sea receded. The desert landscape dominated. 18-65 million years ago, the greatest advance of the ocean on land took place in the history of the Earth. In the Kuban and in the ocean, only the tops of the ridges were raised. The Tethys Ocean dominated, at the bottom of which strata of limestone, gypsum and marl accumulated. In the vicinity of the village Kamennomostsky, powerful layers of gypsum come to the surface, formed at the bottom of the warm sea as a result of water evaporation. The depths of the sea teemed with ammonites and belemnites, so often found in the form of fossils in the limestones and dolomites of the Lagonaki highlands, as well as in the valley of the Psekups river. Dinosaurs have flourished. Their typical marine representative - the ichthyosaur - was a thunderstorm of the fauna of the water depths. In length, they reached 10-12 m and combined the signs of a fish, a dolphin, a whale and a crocodile. Plesiosaurs competed with ichthyosaurs, with a walrus body, with flipper-like limbs and a long serpentine neck. The air was dominated by pteranodons, flying lizards with a wingspan of up to 8 m. In the Jurassic period, the first birds appeared - Archeopteryx.
In order to confirm what was stated in the book by V.I. Borisov "Entertaining local history" information that the ocean dominated the territory millions of years ago, we decided to visit the local history museums of the Krasnodar Territory and organize an excursion to the valley of the Psekups and Kaverze rivers, Goryacheklyuchevsky district. Psekups is a mountain river that practically dries up in summer, but when it rains in the mountains, this small river can overflow its banks and flood vast areas of land. The Kaverze River is a tributary of the Psekups. In the channels of these rivers, we began to look for ammonites, which would confirm the existence of the sea in ancient times on the territory of the Kuban.
Ammonites are extinct relatives of living cephalopods such as squid and octopus.
Their soft body was encased in a spirally coiled shell. Modern cephalopods have a very large head and tentacles-legs on the head, which is why they are called so. This is the most highly organized group among modern invertebrates, known as the primates of the sea. The name of these amazing creatures comes from the name of the ancient Egyptian god Amun: their spiral shells resembled the horns of a solar deity, which was depicted with a ram's head.
Ammonites, predatory cephalopods, had a calcareous spiral shell up to one meter in diameter. Like the tentacles of an octopus, 10 legs departed from the head. They coiled and sucked their prey. Throughout their existence, the ammonites have experienced several moments of crisis. At the end of the Devonian period, their fate literally hung in the balance, almost all of them died out. Only one genus managed to survive; it was he who gave rise to a new outbreak of the evolution of ammonites. Approximately 225 million years ago, the entire biosphere of the Earth experienced a great shock, and almost 75% of all animal species that inhabited the water and land became extinct. This general crisis affected the ammonites. But they managed to overcome all these crises. Ammonites ended their existence approximately 65-70 million years ago. They disappeared along with the dinosaurs, although they appeared much earlier than them. We now read their chronicle only in the earthly layers. Once upon a time, ammonites lived in almost all seas, and today you can find them in almost any area. the globe even in Antarctica. Typically, the shell diameter is 5-10 cm, but there are also much larger ones.
The largest ammonite was found in Bavaria, its diameter is 2.5 m. On the territory of Russia, in the North, in the Cretaceous deposits on the Belaya River, ammonites up to 1 m in diameter can be found.
On the territory of the Temryuk district, a large cemetery of prehistoric elephants, the so-called Bogatyri parking lot, was found. Human tools were also found nearby. According to Lyudmila Eduardovna, visiting this place is currently closed, as excavations are being carried out there. According to preliminary forecasts, the finds are over 800,000 years old.
The Goryachiy Klyuch Museum exhibits such exhibits as ammonites, shells of ancient mollusks found on the territory of the Goryacheklyuchevsky district, in the channels of the Psekupk and Kaverze rivers. The Azov Museum houses the skeleton of a trogontherian elephant, found near Azov in 1964. According to the chief curator Pestrikova Elena Mikhailovna, no dinosaur footprints were found in the Rostov region either. From which we can conclude that the ocean was located not only on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory, but also captured the Rostov Region.
The hypothesis put forward that dinosaurs existed on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory was not confirmed. Through excavations, visits local history museums, studying literary sources, it was proved that during the existence of dinosaurs there was an ocean on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory. Although the remains of dinosaurs were not found on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory, the possibility of the existence of aquatic dinosaurs that lived in the depths of the Tethys Ocean and pangolins that flew in the air is not excluded.
