Zhiguli mountains - myths and reality. Scenario of the extra-curricular event “Legends were Zhiguli Legends and were Zhiguli

Near Samara, the Volga River loops around the Zhiguli Mountains, forming one of the most interesting, beautiful and at the same time anomalous zones of the planet and our country. Even this bend itself is a riddle of riddles - the Volga, with a huge mass and strength of the water flow, for some reason did not break through the isthmus composed of soft rocks, but goes around it in a huge loop, making its way through strong granite rocks near the cities of Samara and Tolyatti. The view of this river bend from the plane - a stunning sight - was convinced by myself.

Zhiguli, for a person who is poorly versed in geography, is nothing more than a car produced by the AvtoVAZ plant. In fact, the unique Zhiguli Mountains gave their name to these Russian cars.

As you know, mountain building is a long process that takes several hundred million years. But all this multimillion-dollar history of the formation of the Zhiguli Mountains can be read like a book, based on rock outcrops. The most ancient sedimentary rocks of the Zhiguli - limestones and dolomites of the Carboniferous system - come to the surface and it is they that made up a significant part of the mountains.

Previously, the Volga channel passed in places where the mouth of the Sok River is now located. Then the channel with the movement of the flat part shifted to the west, where impregnable Zhiguli already stood at that time. This happened until the Volga “embraced” the Zhiguli Mountains from the south and north, taking the form of a stretched bow, or Bow.

An interesting monument of the Carboniferous period is the Usinsky mound (mountain Lepyoshka) - it rises from the water as a sheer wall with clear layers of rocks, whose age reaches 200 million years. Numerous imprints and fossils of mollusks - "devil's fingers", stalks of sea lilies, nets of bryozoans, pieces of coral colonies - authentic documents of the times of the formation of mountains, because many millions of years ago the Zhiguli were the bottom of the ancient ocean. Limestones, gypsum and other rocks covering the peaks of the Zhiguli Mountains were also formed in the depths of the sea, but in the next period - the Permian. In some places there are traces of the seas of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

But, despite their venerable age, the Zhiguli remain almost unchanged, which allowed the formation of unique flora and fauna. There are many endemics here, that is, species of animals and plants that can only be found in the territory of Luqa. Such a unique formation occurred due to the spatial isolation of the animal and plant world, which is actually limited on all sides by the waters of the Volga channel.

Mysteries of the Zhiguli caves

As a result of natural karst formation, an extensive network of caves has developed in the depths of the Zhiguli Mountains. And although this network cannot be called unique, the Zhiguli caves attract many people, including scientists. The latter conducted a number of scientific studies here in order to discover the sites of Paleolithic man. Unfortunately, no obvious traces of such sites were found in the Zhiguli caves, but the researchers found a simple explanation for this: it is known that limestone is very fragile, so the caves of the Paleolithic era could simply be buried under powerful landslides.

Instead of the sites of the Paleolithic man, the archaeologist K.I. In the middle of the last century, Neustruev found on Luka the remains of an ancient fortified settlement, presumably from the 11th-12th centuries. The local population also heard a lot about this or a similar fortification, they have many legends about this. According to them, it follows that the inhabitants of the settlement had a whole network of underground passages, secret mines and galleries leading, among other things, from the settlement to the piers on the Volga.

There are mysterious legends about the secrets of the caves of the Monastery and Popova mountains.

According to one of them, there are long passages in the Monastery Hill, where many mummies have been preserved: some sit in niches, others lie in stone sarcophagi. In addition, on patronal holidays barge haulers often heard solemn morning and evening ringing from the depths of the Monastery Mountain.

According to another legend, it was here, in the vicinity of the village of Malaya Ryazan, that the lair of Stenka Razin, the “Razin’s cave,” from which passages stretch through all the Zhiguli, would have been located. It was this feature of the cave that allowed the chieftain to suddenly appear almost anywhere.

From the foregoing, two conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, the region of Samarskaya Luka is full of various myths, traditions and legends, some of which are discussed below. Secondly, the caves run under the entire massif of the Zhiguli Mountains, although many of them are now inaccessible due to landslides.

Yes, caves are an attractive place, hiding a lot of amazing things. I will tell you about such amazing finds.

Popova mountain

"Zoo" in the caves

The first story refers to the times of Comrade Stalin. A detachment of the GPU discovered in the Zhiguli mountains a vaulted cave, in which ice cubes with frozen ancient animals were kept. Unfortunately, what happened next - history is silent, it is only known that the cave was walled up, and the detachment was destroyed.

The same amazing finds were discovered by members of one of the many research groups. Once in one of the caves of this "underworld", they also discovered an icy "system of regular cubes." In one of them, the group members found a huge bear, in the other - a huge bird, in general, the farther the group went, the more frozen animals they met: moose, bears, birds and completely incomprehensible animals.

ice cave

But there is nothing supernatural in this story: earlier, bears were indeed found on the territory of the Samarskaya Luka and the Zhiguli Mountains. Evidence of this is the remains of prehistoric "clubfoot", which were found more than once in the Zhiguli caves in the twentieth century, in particular in the -60s in caves near the village of Shiryaevo. There is nothing anomalous in ice cubes either - there have been more than once recorded cases when people or entire groups lost in a cave also froze into ice cubes.

The third story on the topic of "frozen" was told by a well-known person in Samara. Having fallen into one of the caves, he went out into a hall filled with ice cubes. The core of these ice cubes was occupied by a certain creature: “a head hanging over the body, huge bulging faceted eyes, a large suprafrontal bump, small, twisted and pressed to the stomach paws or hands. The torso is something like a soft cocoon, rolled up into a tube and also pressed against the stomach. Fortunately, this underground adventure ended unexpectedly - having lost consciousness from a blow in a cave, the traveler woke up on the top of Popova Gora. How this movement happened is still a mystery to him.

The origin of these strange creatures was able to explain modern science. Not so long ago, Canadian paleontologist Dale Russell, studying the remains of fossil lizards from the genus of stechonychosaurs who lived in the Jurassic, that is, about 150 million years ago, established the approximate appearance of this hypothetical monster. First, he had a large head, which grew due to a greatly enlarged brain. Secondly, he had to move on two legs, and when walking, his body occupied a vertical position. Growth - from 1.3 to 1.5 meters. In a word, almost complete coincidence with the description made by a geologist who got lost in the dungeon.

It is assumed that approximately 70 million years ago, as a result of a cosmic catastrophe, dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the Earth, but it is possible that a few groups of these creatures could survive until later times in separate secluded corners of the planet. One of these shelters could well be a cave system in the depths of the Zhiguli Mountains.

In addition to caves and mysterious finds in them, a number of anomalous events can be identified that occur most often in the Samara Luka region.

UFO or Aves?!

Luminous objects are the most common anomalous phenomena. Luminous greenish balls and light pillars in the area of ​​the Samara bow will not surprise anyone.

The pillars of light are a stream of light that goes up into the sky, reaching several kilometers in length. They are motionless, and in shape they resemble luminous columns or cylinders, hovering at a height of several tens of meters above a forest or a road. Such light pillars appear here all the time.

In the early morning of May 1932, located on the square named after M.V. Frunze in Samara, the observer saw a strange "beam of light" that arose beyond the Volga, over the Zhiguli mountains. The beam had no visible source, however, for some time it hung over the mountains. Then abruptly dropping onto the water, it caused clearly visible waves, but after contact with water, this phenomenon disappeared.

On the evening of August 1978, in one of the pioneer camps at the foot of the Zhiguli, a vertical column of light appeared in the sky, which was seen by about 200 people. This pillar hovered over the mountains for several minutes, then began to descend. Further evidence is contradictory: the vast majority of eyewitnesses simply lost sight of the object, but several people claimed that bright rays hit the object in different directions. After that, he disappeared from sight.

From the point of view of strict science, the notorious "pillars of light" are not mysticism at all, but a very real phenomenon that has a natural basis. Such a vertical glow above the mountains can appear when the air is ionized, which always occurs in the zone of action of powerful electromagnetic or radiation radiation. Such radiations can be caused by underground deposits of uranium and radium. It is known that in the region of Samarskaya Luka these rocks occur at depths of only 400-600 meters from the surface of the earth, and therefore it is quite possible that this natural radiation periodically breaks out through peculiar “windows” in the thickness of the Zhiguli Mountains, but how exactly are these “ windows”, modern science cannot say for sure yet.

The next group of luminous objects are the so-called "cat paws" and "cat ears". Luminous greenish balls appear in groups of three ("cat ears") and five ("cat paws"). Very often the appearance of such balls happens to be observed by rivermen. According to their observations, bright points appear first in the sky. Sometimes groups of "paws" or "ears" appear in pairs. They can hang for several hours in the same place. They appear in any weather and at any time of the day - both against the background of the starry sky and against the background of daytime rain clouds.

Such luminous greenish balls were repeatedly seen separately. They appear at a low altitude and move silently, resembling a large star in their outlines.

According to statistics, almost every second observed such luminous balls that flew low above the ground, and then suddenly disappeared. Even I indirectly became a "semi-eyewitness" of this phenomenon, but then this event did not make such a strong impression on me as the following information did.

Local residents, and my grandmother, in the form of a fireball describe a certain creature Eyvs, in Russian - a flyer. It is believed that Eyvs is a dead man who has just died. And it seems like such balls should be avoided and feared because of the strong harmfulness. The phenomena of this were very feared, since it was believed that the flyer could hurt, and there were such cases, and people could be paralyzed after visiting it.

There is another myth on this topic - the myth of the local deity Keremet. According to him, Keremet appears in the form of a "ball of fire" or "a luminous snake with a tail" after the death of a person. The same myth echoes another myth - about the fiery serpent, which, in principle, is one and the same. Legend has it that when a widow grieves for her departed husband, a fiery serpent flies to visit her. He enters through the chimney and assumes the form of the deceased. After a night spent together, the kite flies away. But it may return.

On the Samarskaya Luka, fiery snakes are a reality to this day. A case is known when in 1974 hunters shot at one of these fire kites near the village of Askula, and near the village of Staraya Racheika, a helicopter died from a collision with it during a flight in 1997. It is believed that adits are the place where fire kites originated.

But the researchers do not believe the legends, believing that the inhabitants of the Samara region take ball lightning for kites, which are formed in some areas due to the friction of the deep layers of the earth.

In addition to these obvious light anomalies, there are also strange “foggy” formations that openly violate the laws of physics. Many times, tourists who have visited the Stone Bowl observed very dense small white "clouds", comparable in size to the size of a human figure. These clouds move along the slopes of the Chalice in any direction. The wind, by the way, does not in any way impede the movement of these clots, which do not change their shape at all and do not disperse under the influence of air currents.

Cave elders and other cave dwellers

But suddenly there is a cave in front of the hero;
In the cave is an old man; clear view,
Calm look, gray-haired beard;
The lamp in front of him burns;
He sits behind an ancient book,
Reading it carefully.
A.S. Pushkin. Ruslan and Ludmila

A member of one of the groups, moving along a heavily overgrown path near the Visly Kamen rock, noticed a figure wrapped in fog to the left of the path. An elderly man allegedly crossed the path and merged with the rock.

Any sane person will immediately exclaim: “hallucinations!”, but there are not one or two examples of meetings with such elders.

Such a meeting happened with one of the many tourists. Climbing once in the fall to the Zhiguli mountains, he heard a creak somewhere very close by. As if someone opened the door. Looking around, he saw a nice old man holding a bunch of letters in his hands. Not far from him, in a sheer rock, could be seen an oak door on rusty hinges. The old man allegedly gave a bunch of letters to the speechless tourist and went back into the rock. Again there was the creak of the door being closed, and all was silent. As you understand, no door on the mountain was later found.

In another case, one of the speleologists met with the cave elder. He noticed a gap in the rock wall, went downstairs and ended up in a dark underground hall. Suddenly, under the arches of the cave, a radiance appeared, in which an old man appeared. He told the caver that it was too early for him to get here and disappeared.

These regions are full of stories about such elders. There are also certain tales about them: it seems that “deserts” live in the caves - ancient little old men responsible for the redistribution of springs.

But besides them, in the caves, according to the same myths, there lives a darkness-darkness of various creatures. For example, some translucent whitish people are found in the Shiryaevsky caves. One of the students of the Samara Medical Institute even met with such a cave representative - a translucent man came out of the wall right at her, dousing her with cold.

In addition to them, on the Zhigulevskaya bow, representatives of the Bigfoot tribe - Bigfoot people - comfortably tripled there. According to scientists, the Zhiguli Mountains stopped the giant glacier that froze the northern territories, and, as mentioned above, have preserved pre-glacial plant and animal species to this day. Together with them, the Bigfoot, who has been caught here since 1929, also survived. True, so far they have not been caught, but they have been seen, allegedly, more than once.

Femininity of the Zhiguli Mountains

If you try, you can notice a lot of threads connecting the Urals and Zhiguli. At least the mountains that arose millions of years ago. Or - the keepers of underground storerooms, the Mistress of the mountains in the Zhiguli and the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in the Urals. The mistress of the mountains, like her Ural "sister", owns all the treasures hidden in the caves of the mountains belonging to her. The cult of the Mistress is perhaps an echo of the cult of the Goddess of Fertility, Mother Earth.

By the way, matriarchy has long prevailed in this area. At least in the titles. So, until the second half of the 18th century, the Zhiguli mountains were called Devyi, and on the map of 1459, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe mountains is called Amazonia.

Stories about witches sleeping a long sleep under the Zhiguli are very common here. On a rare night, legends say, witches fly out of the water on their stupas, only to return later and fall asleep again before the appointed hour. You can even find eyewitnesses of their "walks". For example, one of the residents of the city of Tolyatti on the banks of the Volga observed how a “star” appeared in the sky, which grew rapidly and, in the end, turned out to be a “double mortar”, folded with wide ends to each other. The “stupa” was several meters in size and had a clearly metal casing. A cone of light rose from under the water, a “stupa” flew into it, sank under the water and went out of sight.

Pilots in the vicinity of the Samara Kurumoch airport also repeatedly reported encounters with the "stupa" - however, they saw them in the sky, and not only over the Zhiguli.

So there are only two options: either someone else (not witches) flies in these metal mortars, or technical progress has reached even witches who spend most of their time sleeping.

Parallel Worlds

Vladimir K. leads vacationers to anomalous places. Once, while leading a group of 10 tourists to the White Stone, he realized that he did not know the area at all: a plain with rare trees stretched around instead of ordinary hills. Leaving the rest, he went out to an endless field, where the attention was immediately attracted by a large skull, whitened by time - two fangs on the upper jaw bent sharply upwards. But returning to the group, Vladimir again continued his route through the already newly familiar area.

Leshy's ravine is one of those places where it is very easy to move from one world to another, people here are "led" by someone or something, because of which many lose their direction and sense of time. So it turns out that you can go through the ravine in 12 minutes, or you can go in 3 hours.

One guy wandered into the ravine, wandered for three days. On the fourth, he nevertheless went out, but he was completely gray-haired, and to all questions he answered only “I will not go there again!”. Just Gogol's "Viy", only the modern Homa managed to survive all the difficulties and get out alive.

According to one of the numerous legends, the spirits of different gods are on duty in the Leshy Ravine. According to the stories of Vladimir, the ravine was previously guarded by three wise men of the god Veles. And since the god Veles is considered the patron saint of cattle, not one equestrian could pass, the horses simply went crazy.

Scientists studying such anomalies conclude that the human subconscious is blocked in this place. Most often, the culprits of this are electromagnetic radiation that affects the subcortex of the human brain, and people lose their orientation in space and time.

"Belt of biological protection"

Another mystery is the so-called "biological protection belt" that guarded some paths in the Zhiguli Mountains. According to the researchers, today it no longer exists - for some inexplicable reason, it disappeared. After analyzing the totality of the data obtained, it can be assumed that the "Biological Protection Belt" existed as a phenomenon in the period 1989-1992. When a person crossed this "belt", animals, especially small rodents, birds and insects purposefully began to attack people.

Gophers stuck in a stranglehold on the leg, birds swooped down on the head, insects, in unrealistic quantities, literally did not allow passage, despite any means “from blood-sucking insects”.

This also includes the aggressive behavior of dogs. To begin with, they simply refused to cross this border. If they were dragged there by force, they viciously attacked the owners.

Feelings of sudden heaviness in the head, lethargy, apathy, drowsiness, attacks of inexplicable fear can also be attributed to the phenomenon of the “Biological Protection Belt”.

There were also frequent cases of quarrels and fights between bosom friends who crossed this line.

Signs?!

"Circles" appeared on the buckwheat field opposite the 19th quarter of the Avtozavodsky district. Unripe buckwheat lay in even circles and semicircles. The opinion of the public was unequivocal: a UFO landed on a buckwheat field. In addition to "buckwheat circles", "wheat circles" were also found.

The size of the circles reached 15 meters in diameter. In the centers of some fallouts, eddies of wheat with a diameter of 1-1.5 meters were found, laid in the opposite direction than the main fallout.

Along the edge of the field and deep into it, there are traces of a wheeled tractor of the “Belarus” type, or some kind of car, but they were obviously made before the fallouts themselves formed. In addition, some of the fallouts are located away from traces of equipment.

In addition, the protocol indicated that in the summer and early autumn, fires of unknown origin were repeatedly observed in this area. The lights were white, but very strong - like a searchlight. It was also indicated that these lights did not belong to any technique, as they were motionless and silent. No other technical sources of light could be located in this area.

Measurement of the length of the ears in the circles of laid wheat showed that in the bulk, the ears were 110-130 cm high, but in a number of spots the height of the fallen ears was 80-100 centimeters. Although there are areas where wheat 120-130 cm high remained standing in the center of the spot, with wheat lying around this center 80 cm high.

The vast majority of fallouts are located within a strip 30-40 meters wide, i.e. just in the area where the supposedly anomalous glow was noted. The rest of the field has no fallouts, as well as the areas of plantings of other crops located across the road.

In lying wheat plants, the stalk remained even, not broken even at the bend during lodging.

Forest plantation, mainly birch, located higher up the slope, had a lot of broken trees, breaks at a height of 2, 3 and 4 meters. The direction of the break is to the southeast or to the east.

Mirages are our life...

Mirages, or Fata Morgana, are also by no means a rare phenomenon in the Samarskaya Luka region. Fata Morgana is an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere, consisting in the appearance of various images (islands, mountains, cities, castles, etc.) and is a case of a complex and especially spectacular mirage.

Various such pictures have been observed in the sky above the Zhiguli since ancient times. The first known written mention of such an observation refers to the works of the Arab chronicler Ibn Fadlan, who visited these places in 922-923. According to his notes, one can understand that the locals considered these pictures in the sky, firstly, a manifestation of the world of spirits, and secondly, a completely common occurrence.

The most striking observation of this kind is that made by the famous Dutch traveler Cornelius de Bruyn. He arrived in these parts in order to create a topographic map of the area. On May 12, 1703, during a severe flood, he sailed past Samara. The fortress of Samara, which he saw when approaching, turned out to be on a completely different side than it actually was. Firstly, he suddenly saw a shore overgrown with a pine forest, and the only such place was the pine forests near the village of Zadelnoye. Then, near the village of Shiryaevo, he turned southwest, although the Volga here goes southeast - and floats past a high mountain called Tsarev Kurgan.

After 5 hours, he sails past Samara, which turns out to be close to the water, and not 2 versts from the coast, and Samara stretches along the river bank, which also contradicts historical reality. The only explanation is that de Bruin sees the mirage of Samara from the side of Samarka, projected onto the left bank of the Samarka, and he himself floats along the ancient, still pre-glacial channel of the Volga, again pierced by floods.

Of the history of mirages, perhaps this is the most significant.

A message about some mysterious objects - cities, castles, etc., appearing in the fog and rising in the morning over the Volga, can also be found in the first book about the Samara Territory by A.F. Leopoldova. It is called "Historical Notes on the Samara Territory" and was published in 1860.

In terms of mirages, the anomalous behavior of the Tsar's Kurgan, which was mentioned in the story of Cornelius de Bruin, is very attractive. The fact is that sometimes the mound can be seen from Bald Mountain in the region of the Studenoy ravine, and it is simply impossible to physically see it from this point, it is blocked by the higher mountain Tip-Tyav. The mound becomes visible because at some intervals there is an emission of heat, from which the air is heated, and therefore a mirage arises.

Most of the observed mirages are aerial, they are visible high in the sky and are completely unrelated to the surrounding landscape. For example, on June 26, 1989 at 9:15 pm, an almost regular square hole appeared in thunderclouds, a bright red beam ran along its perimeter, then the beam flashed brightly, turned like a fan and went out. After that, a picture appeared in the cloud “window”.

It was a landscape of a sea bay, bounded by a ridge of low hills overgrown with a sparse forest. From them a chain of sand dunes ran down to the water. Above this world there was a sky of its own, lit much brighter than ours. For 15 minutes, the field of view slowly turned in a horizontal plane, hiding the hills and opening the waters of the bay. Above the hills suddenly appeared many black dots, which could not be examined in more detail, as the clouds began to move and quickly closed the hole.

Other examples of the appearance of mirages are also interesting. For example, on Zelenenkoy Island, people repeatedly saw the ghost of a large brick church for about fifteen minutes. A description of such an observation was recorded: in the early morning of 1955, one of the local residents observed a huge building on the south side of Zelenenky Island (Zelelenky is an alluvial island, and there was no church there at all) a huge building. According to his description, it looked like an Orthodox cathedral, built of red brick and decorated with golden domes. This building optically completely covered the opposite coast and the occupied part of the island. The picture was stable for 5 minutes, the building was seen extremely clearly, although some of its details were hidden by a light haze, as if seeping through the walls of the cathedral. Then the image began to “melt” and the contours of the opposite bank began to be seen through the pale contours.

Another example of mirages contains similarities to stories about ghost castles. Such a castle-city was observed by one of the inhabitants of the city of Tolyatti in April 1974 on the opposite side of the Volga. Everything was so clear that he could even see the cracks in the stone walls. The full moon, illuminating the night landscape, for more than an hour of the existence of the mirage, moving across the sky, illuminated its walls, which indicates that the vision had a clearly material nature, arranged according to incomprehensible laws.

Other especially common mirages:

The so-called "Temple of the Green Moon", or rather a tower, is lost somewhere on the Central Plateau. It is also found in mirages and includes an amazing layer of folklore. There is a theosophical tradition that after the end of the ice age, two intelligent races remained on Earth: humans and serpent people. The latter built tower-tombs with huge dungeons in various zones of the Earth. One of them was in the Volga region. The tower, like its offspring, wanders around the territory of Luka and has repeatedly stunned tourists and local residents with its appearance.

The "Waterfall of Tears", tumbling down somewhere in the depths of the Zhiguli Mountains, in folklore is associated with the Mistress of the Mountains, whom we have already mentioned. He shelters the entrance to her magical underground chambers. Geologists say that waterfalls could indeed exist in the Zhiguli. And the visions of this "waterfall" are tied to such areas of Luka as the Elgushi tract, the Apple ravine, the Stone Bowl region, where to this day there are water sources, which we also mention below.

Scientists have found an explanation for the Zhiguli mirages: the fact is that the Zhiguli is a huge stone mass located in the center of a colossal depression, washed by water from all sides. Due to the different rates of heating of the water masses and the limestone of the mountains, light lenses are formed above this place, making it possible to see parts of the world that are very remote from us.

In addition, there are reports, including modern ones, as well as from police archives, about the disappearance of people who accidentally or intentionally went “into a mirage”.

Holy Spring from the Stone Bowl

What is an anomalous zone without holy springs? Such a holy source in Samarskaya Luka is considered to be the Stone Bowl of Zhiguli. There is nothing particularly outstanding in the Stone Bowl: a wooden gazebo and home-made, from the halves of rusted pipes, a drain.

The spring itself springs from a crevice in an exposed rock: the water from it is cold and tasty. Above the spring is the granite face of Nicholas the Wonderworker.

Despite all the simplicity, it is believed that the spring that gushing in the tract is not even holy, but miraculous, that is, capable of not only healing effects, but also miraculous, instantaneous healings. But in order for the collected water to be beneficial and have a beneficial effect, special preparation is needed. Therefore, before setting out on a long journey, the Orthodox go to church, light candles, pray to their Saints for help, and do many other things that are necessary in each specific case.

In addition, the location of the source is considered anomalous: not far from the source, you can find areas where on a hot day a person is thrown into the cold or strange vibrations shake his body.

The Stone Chalice is rich in several such springs - there are also two other springs here, which are also known - it is generally recognized that the water in them is tastier and "wonderful". However, they are located in places that are not particularly accessible.

But here, too, scientists spoil everything with their scientific conclusions. They say: the water is pure from what was filtered on the way to freedom; slightly alkaline in composition, has a healing effect on the digestive system, like soda, washing out dirt from the intestines; tasty because, like milk, it contains calcium, but without fat, and does not spoil within five days due to the negligible content of silver.

The Abode of the Gods A film by Evgeny Bozhenov, local historian from Samara

Evgeny Aleksandrovich Bazhanov is a well-known Slavic ethnographer, writer, film director, author of ten books and several hundred articles in Russian and foreign publications. The film "Resident of the Gods" consists of eight parts with a total duration of one hour and twenty minutes. The picture tells about the ancient Vedic culture, about the material and spiritual heritage of the Russian-Aryans who lived in the Stone Age and during the Bronze Age, about the mysteries of the ancient seers. Based on toponyms and hydronyms, on ancient written sources and miraculously preserved traditions, the author proves that the foundation of world mythology, the cradle of the Rig Veda and Avesta, was laid on Samarskaya Luka and in the surrounding regions. The author found many traces of an ancient civilization: a plate with solar and hydronic signs, Alatyr on the mound, the Solun temple and other artifacts. The film is based on the book by E.A. Bazhanov "The Sacred Rivers of Russia" and "The Abode of the Gods (Cradle of the Rig Veda and Avesta").

Zhiguli or Zhiguli mountains - part of the Volga Upland on the right bank of the Volga, skirted by the bend of the Samara Bend. The Zhigulevsky nature reserve and the Samarskaya Luka national park are located in the mountains.
The highest point is Mount Observer - 381.2 m above sea level. It is also the highest point in the middle zone of European Russia.

Mount Strelnaya

Etymology
The name of the mountains has repeatedly changed over time. An unknown Persian author of the 10th century in the "Book on the Limits of the World from East to West" calls them the Pecheneg Mountains (assuming that he describes the Zhiguli). The author of the "Kazan Chronicle" of the 1560s - Maiden. Modern researchers raise the name Zhiguli to the Turkic dzhiguli - "harnessed, harnessed, horse-drawn", after the name of barge haulers and the place where they lived.

A more romantic version connects the origin of the name with the Volga freemen - robber gangs that lived in the mountains for many years. The owners of the captured ships had to either pay a bribe or be flogged with burning rods. Such a flogging was called "burn", "burn", and the people who produce it - "Zhiguli". There are other versions of the origin of the name.
The name Zhiguli Mountains is first given in the work of Academician Peter-Simon Pallas (1741-1811) "Travels in different provinces of the Russian Empire" (1768-1773).

Geography and geology
Despite the usual name of the mountain, from the point of view of geographers, the Zhiguli are only hills. However, the relief of the Zhiguli has a pronounced mountainous character: with rocks, cliffs, steep cliffs, deep ravines and gullies. The Zhiguli are the only mountains of tectonic origin on the Russian Plain, they are considered young (about 7 million years old) and growing. According to various estimates, their height increases by about 1 cm in 100 years.
The Zhiguli Mountains are a manifestation of the Zhiguli fault, which is a reverse fault-thrust formed as a result of meridional compression of the earth's crust.
The mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks - limestone and dolomite, whose age is much older - more than 270 million years. Oil is being extracted (the deposits are part of the Volga-Ural oil and gas province), construction limestone, and asphalt.
In the northern part of the Samarskaya Luka, in the Zhiguli region, the Zhigulevskaya hydroelectric power station was built.

Peaks
For a long time, Mount Strelnaya was considered the highest point of the Zhiguli - 351 m. However, now it has been found out that the highest point is Mount Observer (381.2 m above sea level). It is also the highest point of the middle zone of the European part of Russia.
Famous peaks are also Molodetsky Kurgan, Usinsky Kurgan, Popova Gora, Mogutova Gora.

Flora and fauna
The Zhiguli Mountains are covered with forests. On the northern slopes there are mainly linden, maple and aspen forests, on the ridges and steep slopes pine forests grow, on the southern, more gentle slopes - forest-steppe vegetation. Many endemic and relict species of flora and fauna live and grow in the mountains.
The flora of the Zhiguli Upland and the Samara Bend as a whole has been studied in detail for more than 200 years by prominent natural scientists, including P. S. Pallas, I. I. Lepekhin, I. P. Falk, M. N. Bogdanov, O. O Baum, S. I. Korzhinsky, V. I. Smirnov, A. F. Flerov, D. I. Litvinov, R. I. Abolin, V. N. Sukachev, I. I. Sprygin, A. A. Uranov , B. P. Sacerdotov, A. N. Goncharova, M. V. Zolotovsky, A. A. Bulavkina-Onchukova, L. M. Cherepnin, A. F. Terekhov, Ya. I. Prokhanov, A. M. Semenova -Tyan-Shanskaya, I. S. Sidoruk, S. V. Sidoruk, V. I. Matveev, V. I. Ignatenko, T. I. Plaksina, N. N. Tsvelev, S. V. Saxonov and many others.

In the flora of Samarskaya Luka, 1302 species of vascular plants have been identified (Saksonov, 2006), including narrow-local endemics of the Zhiguli Upland - Saxon's bluegrass (Poa saksonovii Tzvelev), Yuzepchuk's kachim (Gypsophila juzepczukii Ikonn.), Zhiguli spurge (Euphorbia zhigulensis Prokh.), sunflower Zhiguli thyme (Helianthemum zhegulensis Juz. ex Tzvelev), Zhigulev thyme (Thymus zhegulensis Klokov et Shost.) and subendemic species (hoar-gray wheatgrass, thin-legged hard-leaved, Zinger's astragalus, etc.).
On the Zhiguli Upland, 237 species of lichens were identified (Korchikov, 2011).

The vegetation cover is dominated by forest-steppe species, elements of dry steppes, deserts and taiga also grow. The most interesting are such plants: wormwood, tuberous valerian, prostrate cochia, alpine double-leaved, two-leaved flax, Ukrainian flax, Siberian source, and others. others

The fauna of the Zhiguli Upland includes more than 5,000 species of animals, of which the main part is invertebrates (representatives of the insect class predominate). About 300 species of vertebrates have been identified, including: about 200 species of birds, about 40 species of mammals (groups of rodents and bats predominate in terms of the number of species, 8 species of predators, 2 - artiodactyls, 1 - lagomorphs), 5 species of amphibians and 6 species of reptiles . The most characteristic hare, squirrel, badger, fox, marten, mink, ermine, elk, roe deer; black grouse, hazel grouse, snipe, swift, rook, golden bee-eater, forest lark, patterned snake, etc. The largest of the animals living in the mountains is the elk.

MUSHROOMS
In addition, the Zhiguli are known for the abundance of mushrooms growing on the wooded slopes: boletus, mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, fly agaric, etc. A characteristic mushroom is russula, which can be found almost everywhere in the Zhiguli. The biodiversity of higher basidiomycetes has been well studied. This group of mushrooms on the Zhiguli is represented by more than 750 species belonging to 9 orders and 56 families. The most common are representatives of the orders of agaric and polyporous and the families of rows, cobwebs, polypores, bolbitiaceae, entolomoves, pluteiaceae, psatirellaceae, russula, champignon and non-blight.

Zhiguli mountains. Place of Stepan Razin's camp. Beginning of XX century. Photo by M.P. Dmitriev.

For the protection of flora and fauna -

the Samarskaya Luka National Park and the Zhigulevsky Reserve were created.

Zhiguli mountains in art

"Volga at the Zhiguli Mountains", I. Aivazovsky

The beauty of local landscapes has been captured on the canvases of artists more than once. Ivan Aivazovsky in the mid-1880s traveled along the Volga on a steamboat, and a few years later created the painting The Volga at the Zhiguli Mountains (1887). Ilya Repin in 1870 rested in the village of Shiryaevo and worked on sketches for the painting "Barge haulers on the Volga" (1870-1873). Now his house-museum is opened in this village. Together with Repin, the Russian landscape painter Fyodor Vasiliev worked in Shiryaev. The result of this summer trip was one of his most famous paintings, View of the Volga. Barks" (1870).

In folk tales and songs, Zhiguli are associated with the name of the leader of the peasant uprising of the 17th century, Stepan Razin.

The Zhiguli Mountains are very attractive for tourists due to their landscapes. However, most of them are closed to the public due to their location on the territory of the Zhiguli State Reserve named after I. I. Sprygin. All the more visited are other places. There are always a lot of people in the Stone Bowl tract. Organized excursions come here, many come in private cars.

Molodetsky barrow

rocky terrain
The origin of the Zhiguli Mountains is associated with a tectonic uplift (Zhigulevskaya dislocation), which began in the Devonian and Carboniferous. The maximum uplifts were manifested at the end of the Paleogene, in the middle Pliocene and the beginning of the Neogene, then the height of the Zhiguli Mountains reached 900 m.
In subsequent geological periods, the territory was subjected to intense erosion processes, as a result of which the upper marine strata of the Paleogene, as well as a significant part of the Mesozoic rocks, were destroyed. As a result, Carboniferous and Permian deposits were exposed over large areas. The surface dropped significantly and turned out to be a highly dissected network of narrow canyon-like valleys. And the intensified karst-forming processes contributed to the reduction of surface erosion.
As a result, Samarskaya Luka was formed - a place unique for the Russian Plain. Nowhere else on the plain are such young and intense uplifts observed as this tectonic anomaly. The surrounding territories are entirely composed of rocks of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic age. Samarskaya Luka is the only area for many hundreds of kilometers composed of Paleozoic rocks.
Samarskaya Luka was not covered by Quaternary glaciations and the territory retained its original mountainous appearance, therefore, despite the small height, the Zhiguli are called mountains even in special literature.
The origin of the Samara bow is due to tectonic movements that formed carbonate rocks of the Carboniferous and Permian periods on the surface in the Middle Pliocene and thereby formed the Zhiguli Mountains. The mountains are located in the northern part of the Samarskaya Luka, gently descending in the south and southeast.

mountainous terrain
The northern part of the Samarskaya Luka - the Zhiguli Mountains proper - has a characteristic mountainous terrain: significant absolute heights (max. height - Mount Strelnaya 375 m), rocky, almost vertical cliffs, mountainous dissection of the slopes. however, most of the Samarskaya Luka is occupied by an undulating plateau-like plain with a general slope to the south.
The territory of the Samarskaya Luka is depleted in reservoirs and streams due to the prevalence of karst phenomena. The main number of lakes is concentrated in the Shelekhmetskaya and Mordovinskaya floodplains. According to the Blue Book of the Samara Region (2007), there are more than 60 different types of water bodies in the central part, of which 35 are ponds and 22 are karst lakes. There are two "small rivers" on the Samarskaya Luka, according to the definition of the local population - this is Morkvashka (a stream that goes around Mogutovaya Mountain, Zhigulevsk) and Brusyanka (Brusyansky ravine). Most of the streams of the Samarskaya Luka are formed due to melted snow water and are temporary streams characteristic of the bottoms of large ravines (Brusyansky, Askulsky, Vinnovsky and some others). But there are also a number of permanent springs that form streams, which are mentioned in the books “Green Book of the Volga Region” (1995) and “The Pearl of Russia - Samarskaya Luka”: Shiryaevsky springs / streams (in the upper reaches of the Shiryaevsky ravine), Morkvashisky stream (Morkvashinsky ravine , Zhigulevsk), Apple springs (upper Yablonevoy ravine), Alexander springs (upper Aleksandrovsky ravine), Anurevsky spring (near the village of Anuryevka), Askulsky springs (upper Askulsky ravine), Vislokamennye springs (near Visly stone mountain) and some others (Chistova and Saxonov, 2004; Fadeeva, 2007).
The southern border of the forest-steppe passes along Samarskaya Luka. Zhiguli mountains, Zhiguli

Climate
The climate of the territory is sharply continental, although it is moderated by the waters of the two reservoirs surrounding Luka. in the northern part of Luka, at the meteorological station in Bakhilova Polyana, the average annual precipitation is 566 mm, the average annual air temperature is 4.8°С, the average temperature in January is -10°С, in July - 20°С. The climate in the northern part is significantly affected by the mountainous relief: different exposures of the slopes create a very diverse picture of microclimatic conditions, especially temperature and humidity.
In the area of ​​the weather station "Sosnovy Solonets" in the southern part of Luka, 610 mm of precipitation per year is observed, the average annual temperature is 4.5 ° C, the average January is -12 ° C, July - 21 ° C. In general, the climate is colder on the territory of the high-wavy plateau than in the northern part.
Throughout the territory, annual temperature fluctuations are about 70-72 ° C and more.

Usinsky mound or Mount Lepeshka is a mountain at the confluence of the Usa and Volga rivers, in the north-west of Samarskaya Luka. From this mountain begins the ridge of the Zhiguli Mountains, going further east, down the Volga.
The Usinsky Kurgan is one of the most beautiful places in the Samarskaya Luka, it offers a view of the Kuibyshev reservoir and the neighboring Molodetsky Kurgan. For a peculiar flattened appearance, it is also called Mount Lepyoshka. Rising smoothly from the south side, the barrow breaks like a stone wall into the Volga and Usa.
After filling the Kuibyshev reservoir, the water level rose by 30 meters and now, from the side of the Usa River, the mound goes under water in terraces.

Mount Lepyoshka, place for flights Zhiguli mountains, Zhiguli

Geology
The Usinsky mound (mountain Lepeshka) is an interesting monument of the Carboniferous period. Flat, overgrown with steppe grasses, it rises from the water for tens of meters as a sheer wall with clear layers of rocks whose age is 200 million years.
From the side of the Usa River, the Usinsky mound is a stone wall made up of many layers. These are the deposits of an ancient sea that raged many years ago. If you look closely, you can find numerous imprints and fossils of mollusks, stems of sea lilies, nets of bryozoans, pieces of coral colonies - authentic documents of distant times. The Zhiguli outcrops are the oldest in the Volga region.

Monastery mountain

Story
The Usinsky mound was a favorite place for robbers (ushkuiniki), because it has a good view of the Volga both upstream and downstream, and this allowed them to be ready for an attack long before the approach of a trade caravan.
In 1614, a state watchtower was founded on the mountain to monitor military and passerby people, as well as rebels. Streltsy head Gordey Palchikov wrote about this to the voivodes Prince Ivan Odoevsky and Semyon Golovin as follows: “In the present, sovereign, in the 122nd of April on the 20th day, by your decree, I arrived at the mouth of the Mustache River, and guarded my order from the archers, and all sorts of guarded made fortresses.
In 1722-1723 there was a monastery on the mountain. The monks lived one at a time, each in his own cell. The chapel and the abbot's house were built of wood on top of the mountain. This is reported by the Scot Peter Henry Bruce (en: Peter Henry Bruce) (1692-1757) - a military engineer who was in the service of Peter I and accompanied him during the Persian campaign along the Volga.
Traces from the construction of past centuries are still preserved on the top of the mountain.

Usinsky barrow

Stone bowl - a landscape complex in the Zhiguli mountains. It is a natural monument and a valuable natural object of the Samara region.

Geography
The stone bowl is the extension of the Shiryaevsky ravine at the confluence of the Stone ravine 10 km from the village of Shiryaevo. In the center of the mountains a large depression is formed, surrounded by mountain ridges.
You can get to the tract by car on the road at the foot of the Zhiguli from the village of Shiryaevo or on foot through the mountains from the village of Solnechnaya Polyana.

Source
There are three springs on the slopes of the mountain. This is the only place where pure spring water breaks through on the tops of the Zhiguli. According to legend, the tears of the Mistress of the Zhiguli Mountains flow here, mourning her loneliness. Previously, water flowed down to the junction of the ravines, where it filled a small stone formation. Perhaps that is why the place is called the Stone Bowl.
One of the springs, gushing from stone at a height of 175 meters, is considered miraculous. It received the name "Source of Nicholas the Wonderworker". It is believed that water from it brings health and longevity.

Chapel at the Nikolsky spring
With the blessing of the Archbishop of Samara and Syzran, the spring of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is included in the pilgrimage route to the holy places of the Samara region. In 1998, a stone was erected next to the source in honor of St. Nicholas the Pleasant, and then a wooden chapel was erected. In 2000, the chapel was burnt down by unknown vandals, but already in 2002, the believers of Togliatti and Zhigulevsk were rebuilt, already made of stone.

Reflection in art
The stone bowl is mentioned in numerous legends of the Zhiguli Mountains. So in the legend "Sheludyak Cliff" it is told about Stepan Razin's associate Fyodor Sheludyak, who, not wanting to surrender to the tsarist troops, rushed from the cliff to the stones. But the stones parted and Fedor got to the Mistress of the mountains. He lived in a dungeon for a long time, but his stone captivity did not please him, and he died in anguish. Since then, the Mistress of the Zhiguli has been crying, and her tears are flowing into the Stone bowl.
There are other legends about a bowl from the temple buried in the ground from enemies, which turned into a source and was not given into hands.
Modern authors also give the Stone Bowl a place in their work.

Stepan Razin Hill, Volga

ZHIGULEVSKY RESERVE
Zhigulevsky Nature Reserve is a state nature reserve located on Samarskaya Luka, in the Samara Region.
The total area of ​​the reserve is 23,157 hectares (of which 542 hectares are located on the Volga islands). A protective zone of 1132 hectares has been established around the reserve.
In 2007, the Zhigulevsky Reserve received a UNESCO certificate on the organization in Russia of the integrated Middle Volga Biosphere Reserve, which includes the Zhigulevsky Reserve and the Samarskaya Luka National Park.
The reserve is located in the continental climate zone of temperate latitudes. The frost-free period in the area of ​​the reserve lasts 159 days on average.
The reserve was first organized on August 19, 1927. Then it was just the Zhiguli section of the Middle Volga Reserve with an area of ​​​​2.5 thousand hectares. In 1932, the Volga islands Shalyga and Seredysh were included in the territory of the site.
In 1935, the Srednevolzhsky Reserve was renamed Kuibyshevsky, Buzuluksky Bor was also added to it as a protected area, and the management of the reserve was transferred from Penza to the village of Bakhilova Polyana. The total area of ​​the reserve was about 10 thousand hectares. Less than a year later, the Buzuluk pine forest was singled out as a separate reserve. In 1937, the area of ​​the main section of the reserve - Zhigulevsky - increased to 22.5 thousand hectares.
In 1938, the first forest inventory was carried out on the territory of the reserve, as a result of which a forest plantation plan and a taxation description were drawn up, and the first inventories of the flora of vascular plants, spring waters, reptiles, birds and mammals were also carried out. Work was carried out to determine the species composition of insects, to study soils and vegetation.

mountain Shishka, Zhiguli

Due to the point of view prevailing in the 1930s that reserves should not be samples of pristine nature, but examples of areas with the richest nature, work was carried out on the territory of the reserve to introduce exotic plants and animals. So spotted deer were brought in, a nursery of Amur velvet, Manchurian walnut and some other shrubs was founded.
In the spring of 1941, the accumulated research material of the reserve was prepared for publication and transferred to Moscow. The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War had a significant impact on the history of the Zhiguli Reserve. Many employees of the reserve went to the front, they were replaced by scientists evacuated from Moscow and Leningrad. The procurement of medicinal plants for the needs of the front was organized. In 1943, the results of the inventory of the reserve's forests, carried out in 1938, were finalized, and forest inventory documents were drawn up. The state of the sika deer population and its influence on the vegetation of the reserve were studied. The result of the research was the conclusion about the negative impact of deer on the unique vegetation of the reserve, as well as the impossibility of the existence of deer without human support: feeding in the winter in deep snow and protection from wolves.

Meanwhile, coastal lands were withdrawn from the territory of the reserve. At first, prospecting work was carried out there, and since 1942, industrial oil production. Wells were drilled, the village of Zolnoye was built, asphalt roads, power lines, pipelines, flares and associated gas flaring appeared on the territory of the reserve. Protected forests were cut down for the needs of oil workers and for firefighting purposes, low technological culture led to soil pollution with oil products.

In 1959, the Zhigulevsky Reserve with an area of ​​17,588 hectares was organized in Samarskaya Luka, stretching for 50 km from Usinsky Bay to Shiryaevo, but already in 1961 it was closed. The last revival of the reserve took place in 1966. Then 19.4 thousand hectares were assigned to the territory of the reserve.
However, this was not the last territorial change. In 1967, after the rise of water during the filling of the Saratov reservoir, the area of ​​the reserve decreased by 300 hectares. In 1977, an additional 3,910 hectares were added to the reserve, while 35 hectares were confiscated in favor of the quarry of the Zhiguli Lime Plant and 98 hectares of the plant's territory, untouched by developments, were added.

On May 31, 1977, the reserve was named after its founder and first director, Ivan Sprygin.

Shiryaevo village, Popova Gora

Flora of the reserve
93.7% of the territory of the reserve is covered with forests; on the mainland, small-leaved linden (10,851 ha) and aspen forests (5,368 ha) predominate in the forests. There are pine forests (1811 ha), oak forests (1664 ha), birch forests (1071 ha) and forests dominated by Norway maple (481 ha). In the floodplain part, the forests mainly consist of black sap (113 ha), with a predominance of smooth elm (36 ha), black alder (13 ha) and white willow (12 ha). In general, the vegetation of the reserve is very diverse. The most studied is the flora of vascular plants. By 1984, 832 species from 90 families and 370 genera of plants were reliably recorded on the territory of the reserve. So far, 58 of them have disappeared.
The largest of those presented are the families of Compositae (42 genera, 105 species) and cereals (31 genera, 67 species), legumes, rosaceae, cruciferous are widely represented, and half of the families are represented by 1-2 species.

The most valuable and interesting for science are endemic plants, relic specimens, as well as those that were first described from collections made on the territory of the reserve. Also valuable species are generally rare for the flora of the region and the country. In total, about a hundred species of plants are of particular interest to science on the territory of the Zhiguli Reserve.
Narrow endemic species of the Zhiguli and the Zhiguli Nature Reserve are the Zhiguli Euphorbia, Zhigulevsky Kachim, Yuzepchuk's Kachim and the Zhiguli Sunflower. Another 22 species of plants are recognized as endemic to larger regions: Zinger's astragalus, Volga bellflower, Ukrainian flax, hard-leaved tansy, thin-legged hard-leaved, Volga hawthorn.
30 plant species are recognized as relics of various geological eras. These are Pliocene steppe (acupuncture carnation, Siberian origin, sun-loving clausia, Cossack juniper, desert sheep, Zhiguli and coin-leaved sunflowers, speckled charweed) and forest relics (Altai anemone, golden volodushka, Tatar corostavnik, three-lobed azure, soft lungwort), representatives of the Ice Age : double-leaved manik and bearberry, and other eras: Robertov's goloknik, Siberian diplasia, hair-like kostenets, Alpine mountaineer, Austrian goat, Razumovsky's kopeck, gray teresken, two-eared ephedra.

For the first time, in addition to endemic species, Lessing's feather grass, Zhigulevsky bird's foot, Volga fescue are described in the Zhiguli Reserve.

exhibits of the Zhiguli Museum

The fauna of the reserve
As of 1984, 213 species of terrestrial vertebrates were noted, permanently living in the territory of the reserve and its environs or regularly visiting it. Of these, 101 species are numerous, permanently living, 112 are rare. These are 40 species of mammals (25 numerous), 158 species of birds (70), 7 species of reptiles (3), 8 species of amphibians (3).
Mammals are represented by 6 orders: 5 species of insectivores, 6 species of bats, 15 species of rodents, 2 representatives of lagomorphs, 3 species of artiodactyls and 9 species of predators. Among the birds there are 14 orders, among which the most common are passerines - 79 species, diurnal predators - 15 species, anseriformes - 14 species, woodpeckers - 7 species. The rest of the orders are represented by 1-6 species. According to the persistence of stay, 29 species of birds are sedentary, 77 are nesting, 41 are migratory, 4 are wintering and 8 are vagrant. The rarest protected birds are the white-tailed eagle, osprey and golden eagle.
The reptile fauna is represented by 3 species of lizards and 4 species of snakes. Amphibians are mainly representatives of anurans - 7 species.
Also, about 40 species of fish are found in the water area of ​​the reserve, but the protected area of ​​the Saratov reservoir is very small, and it is impossible to talk about the ichthyofauna of the reserve itself.
Several thousand insects also live in the reserve, but they are much less studied than vertebrates.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

SOURCE OF PHOTO AND MATERIAL:
Team Nomads
Obedientova GV The origin of the nature of the Zhiguli // Proceedings of the All-Union Geographical Society, 1986. V.118. Issue. 1.
http://www.lukasamara.ru/
http://samara.name/
Pavlovich I., Ratnik O. Secrets and legends of the Volga dungeons. — Samara, 2003.
Makarova T. V. Tolyatti: chronicles of anomalous phenomena, facts and reflections (1990-2005). - Tolyatti: Standard, 2006. - 222 p. — (Ufology for dummies).
Bochkarev A. Zhiguli commandment // Green noise / Comp. V. K. Tumanov. - Kuibyshev: Prince. Publishing house, 1984. - S. 20-36.
Vekhnik V.P. Analysis of the state of the theriofauna of the Zhiguli Reserve // ​​Samarskaya Luka on the threshold of the third millennium: (Materials for the report "The state of the natural and cultural heritage of the Samarskaya Luka"). - Tolyatti, 1999. - S. 219-221.
Vekhnik V.P., Panteleev I.V. On the unusual wintering of the dormice regiment in the Zhiguli // Samarskaya Luka: Bulletin. - 1996. - No. 7. - S. 245.
Gegechkori A. M. To the fauna of psyllids of the Zhiguli Reserve // ​​Samarskaya Luka: Bulletin. - 1991. - No. 2. - S. 227-232.
http://www.samara-photo.ru/

As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the then unknown Samara engineer Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovsky (Fig. 1)

put forward a project for the construction of a hydroelectric power station in the narrowest place of the Middle Volga - in the Zhiguli gates (Fig. 2).

The project caused a real stir in Samara. At least this fact speaks of the intensity of passions: on June 9, 1913, in the city of Sorrento, in Italy, where at that time the owner of all the Zhiguli lands, Count Vladimir Petrovich Orlov-Davydov, lived (Fig. 3),

a telegram arrived from Bishop Simeon of Samara and Stavropol. In the dispatch, he tearfully begged the count: “... I call upon you for God's grace, I ask you to accept the archpastoral notice: on your hereditary ancestral possessions, the projectors of the Samara Technical Society, together with the apostate engineer Krzhizhanovsky, are designing the construction of a dam and a large electric station. Show mercy with your arrival to preserve God's peace in the Zhiguli possessions and destroy sedition in conception.

Samara engineer's project

The count considered Krzhizhanovsky's idea extravagant and did not even think of returning to Russia on such an insignificant occasion. He only instructed his manager in Samara to categorically refuse such construction. However, at that time, Orlov could not even dream in a nightmare that just seven years after the promulgation of the project, in February 1920, the State Commission for Electrification of Russia (GOELRO) was formed by the decision of the Soviet government, and G.M. Krzhizhanovsky was appointed its chairman. And on December 23, 1920, he delivered his famous report on the GOELRO plan at the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets, where the project received the unconditional approval of the delegates (Fig. 4).

But only in 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution in which the State Planning Committee of the USSR was instructed to "turn to face Volgostroy, draw up a project, and identify all the possibilities for its construction." It was assumed that already on April 1, 1932, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR would approve a project for such construction, so that in 1937-1938 the most important national economic facility would be put into operation.

In connection with the above, already at the beginning of 1931, special survey parties of the Institute “Water and Engineering Geological Research for Volgostroy” arrived in the Zhiguli Mountains, which worked here under the general supervision of engineer Alexander Sergeevich Barkov (Fig. 5).

Detachments of geologists studied the flows of underground Zhiguli waters, refined the internal structure of mountain ranges, mapped various karst structures, primarily poorly studied cave systems, some of which, as it turned out then, penetrated the entire Zhiguli mountain range almost through and through. The conclusion of the geologists was unequivocal: due to the huge number of such cracks, voids and cavities, almost immediately after the construction of the dam, water will begin to leak from the reservoir, bypassing the hydroelectric complex (Fig. 6, 7, 8).

And such a cataclysm will cause almost instantaneous flooding not only of the entire territory of Samara, but also of many other cities located downstream of it along the Volga.

It is thanks to these detailed surveys of geologists from the group of A.S. Barkov, the government of the USSR, after the Great Patriotic War, was forced to abandon the project for the construction of a hydroelectric power station in the Zhiguli Gates, and transfer its construction 80 kilometers upstream of the Volga - to the area of ​​​​the city of Stavropol. Here, as is known, the construction of a hydroelectric complex, at that time the largest in the world, subsequently began.

During 1931-1933, the geological party explored the mountain valleys of the Zhiguli in the area of ​​the villages of Gavrilova and Lipovaya Polyany, as well as the foot of the southern spurs of the Zhiguli - the Shelekhmetsky Mountains, which go to the Volga between the villages of Vinnovka and Shelekhmet. Mining engineers through the caves were able to penetrate into the underground system of the Samarskaya Luka, where the prospector's foot had never set foot before.

Exploration work in the underground labyrinths, which were conducted by Barkov's geologists, were supposed to debunk many myths and legends of the Samara Luka. However, in reality, everything turned out exactly the opposite. During their travels through the Zhiguli subsoil, the prospectors almost immediately encountered mysterious and inexplicable phenomena, about which they once signed a non-disclosure agreement with the competent authorities. Only after many decades, geologists ventured to tell something about what they saw. For example, shortly before his death in 1989, one of the former employees of the Moscow Institute "Water and Engineering Geological Research for Volgostroy" (which has long been defunct) Nikolai Sokolov handed over to the representative of "Avesta" some of his manuscripts, which spoke about those unforgettable underground travels in the 1930s. Readers are offered fragments of this entry in the author's processing.

“The cave was filled with a bluish glow…”

“In 1931, the summer was exceptionally hot and dry. The Volga has become very shallow. Here and there sandy islands rose from the water. In order to approach the cave we were about to explore, we had to tack between shallows for a long time before we managed to bring the boat up to the rock close to the cleft.

We were lucky - thanks to the extremely low water level in the river, we managed to get into the cave, almost without soaking the bags and without even turning off the lanterns. Immediately behind the ledge, the floor of the cave abruptly dropped down, and the ceiling went up somewhere, forming a large hall filled with water dust. Our guiding stream, having overcome the bottleneck, rapidly expanded, and, falling off the stone ledge of the rock, fell into the underground lake, swirling its waters with a small whirlpool.

The weak light of our lanterns did not allow us to see the entire hall, but it was still noticeable that the ceiling of the cave here was very uneven and unstable. Directly above our heads, every minute threatening to fall, huge boulders hung. Moving along the stones, we easily climbed to one of the widest openings. Behind him began a dry gallery, which was four meters high and six meters wide. It ended in a narrow, irregularly shaped opening that led us into a large hall. On this section of the road we stopped to rest and had lunch.

During lunch, a very noticeable draft was discovered in the landslide hall. Consequently, the air in this hall not only entered, but also exited through some hole still unknown to us. The search for a new passage also took a lot of time, but in the end we still managed to find a rather narrow gap that goes somewhere down and into the depths of the mountain.

When moving along a narrow winding manhole, each of us somewhere ahead all the time heard some kind of even, incomprehensible noise. And when we all got out of the hole, we clearly distinguished a quiet ringing, similar to a bell. At the same time, the source of the sound was not visible - after all, the light of our lanterns did not penetrate into every corner of the hall. It seemed that this ringing was born somewhere in the depths of the mountain and filled the entire cave.

Strangely, as we moved through the cave, the bell ringing gradually disappeared. It was damp in the hall - large drops of water fell from the high ceiling, which invariably fell into cracks that had been hollowed out a long time ago, forcing the air out of them. Perhaps it was precisely this fall of drops that gave rise to the magical ringing of bells that we heard in the front of this hall.

It turned out to be noticeably colder here than in the dungeons we had previously traversed. In some places along the walls of the cave there was even ice. The headwind increased noticeably, and in our light clothing it could hardly be endured. And then the gallery turned to the side almost at a right angle. We stopped, fascinated by the picture that opened up to us. Ahead lay a huge hall filled with a strange bluish glimmer. It was so bright that it was easy to see the whole surrounding space. It turned out that we were standing in front of a vast ice field of a faint purple color.

Closer to the walls of the cave, the ice rose up, forming a system of regular cubes. Soon we approached one of the huge ice blocks, illuminated by the same bluish glow. And here everyone was dumbfounded: from the depths of the ice shell, a huge bear was looking at us. Standing on its hind legs, it seemed to stretch forward, as if trying to reach uninvited aliens.

When the first shock from the meeting with the frozen bear passed, we all, as if enchanted by an incredible sight, went further down the hall - from block to block. Surprisingly, none of us had fear - perhaps from excessive fatigue. The further we went, the more frozen exhibits of this strange underground museum we met. Here in front of us in a block of ice appeared another bear, here is some huge bird, here is an elk, a deer, another bear, and some other completely incomprehensible animals ... A real underground pantheon!

How did all these animals get here? How did they get frozen into these almost regular ice cubes? How long did they stay in this mysterious dungeon? We did not find answers to all these questions.

It is difficult to say how long we walked through the cave after that. Maybe an hour, maybe a few hours: the sense of time somehow disappeared. But suddenly, unfrozen water appeared on the floor of the cave. Here we saw a small stream, from which we greedily drank.

After resting for a few minutes, we walked along the stream to one of the side galleries. The passage gradually narrowed, and small pebbles, clay deposits, and, finally, dry leaves of trees appeared on the floor. So, the surface of the earth is somewhere very close! And indeed - after passing only a few turns, we saw the exit from a small cave. It turned out that this cave went to the bottom of some inconspicuous forest ravine at the foot of a large mountain. Judging by the long shadows cast by the trees, the long summer day was drawing to a close. So, our underground journey is over” (Fig. 9, 10).

Ice cabinet of curiosities in the depths of the Zhiguli

But even more surprising is the story of another employee of the special party of Volgostroy, Viktor Ageev, who during his lifetime, for obvious reasons, also could not be published. And this man got into the mysterious caves of the Zhiguli in the following way.

As already mentioned, in the early 1930s, geologists from a special party of A.S. Barkova were engaged in the study of the Shiryaev adits in the Zhiguli mountains (Fig. 11, 12, 13).

But in a distant little-known drift, the group suddenly unexpectedly fell under a collapse. In the end, everyone got out except Ageev. A two-day search for his body under the rubble yielded nothing, and the geologist was about to be put on the list of the dead, when suddenly, a few days later, Ageev appeared himself, descending to Shiryaevo from the opposite slope of the Zhiguli Mountains. But when the head of the special party A.S. Barkov heard his story about the underground journey, he advised not to tell anyone else about it. Only shortly before his death, which happened in the mid-80s, Ageev allowed one of the Kuibyshev local historians to write down his memoirs, however, setting the condition that the notes would be published only after his death. Therefore, only now separate fragments of his story are offered to the attention of the reader.

“When a collapse suddenly occurred, the familiar exit from the adit was blocked. I began to make my way forward through a narrow hole, where neither I myself nor any of the explorers known to me had ever walked before. Sooner or later, I still hoped to get to the surface, because I had with me a supply of canned food and crackers, as well as matches and a lantern with a set of backup batteries.

After long wanderings underground, I finally came out into a vast hall, some corners of which were filled with ice. In the darkness, this ice glowed with a faint bluish glow. And then something strange happened - my consciousness seemed to turn off, the feelings of fear and hunger disappeared. I entered a narrow corridor, along the walls of which there were huge blocks of ice, tightly pressed against each other. These were precisely individual blocks, and not a solid wall of ice.

The most amazing thing is that the core of each of these huge columns was occupied by a certain creature, as if frozen in ice. There must have been many thousands of such ice crystals here, and inside each of them, unseen, fantastic monsters hung motionless.

Describing these creatures is extremely difficult. I remember a large head hanging over the body, huge bulging faceted eyes, a large suprafrontal bump, small hands with three fingers pressed to the stomach. The body is something like a soft cocoon, rolled up into a tube and also pressed against the stomach (Fig. 14).

The further I walked down the corridor, the larger the blocks of ice became. The monsters they contained were also getting bigger and bigger. Here I met several crystals, the inside of which was covered with a web of thin cracks. Near such crystals, I felt an incomprehensible sadness.

So I walked through this gloomy freak show for an hour, then another, then a third. And then suddenly I saw that the icy corridor was split in two. In the left, as far as the eye could see, stretched all the same monotonous cubes with big-eyed freaks. But in the right there were ice crystals with almost the same monsters, but for some reason there was no suprafrontal bump on their heads.

Then my body, after some hesitation, chose the right corridor. Further, a large temporary piece simply fell out of my memory, but a vague feeling remained that I was still going somewhere forward along the same branch. The next surviving memory was a picture of a small extension of the corridor, in the center of which two sunbeams seemed to lie on the floor, superimposed one on top of the other. Since there was no way around them, I stepped into the center of the luminous spot. At the same moment, something monstrous hit me on the head with all its might, and after that there was again a blackout in my memory.

I woke up already on the top of Popova Mountain, which is about ten kilometers from Shiryaev. A fresh breeze blew across my face, and sunlight hit my eyes. Even at the moment of turning on consciousness, it seemed to me that a big dog was sitting next to me, but I cannot vouch for this. Later I found out that my journey underground took five days” (Fig. 15).

What was it?

Here is his opinion on the matter:

When analyzing the above texts, the question immediately arises: how reliable are they? Despite the improbability of the described phenomena and events, let's nevertheless try to reason strictly scientifically.

The very existence of significant underground voids in the karst rocks of the Samarskaya Luka is an indisputable fact. But did the caves described by the participants of the Zhiguli dungeon hikes exist, and do they still exist to this day - that's the question! After all, it is known that the construction of a cascade of Volga hydroelectric power stations in the second half of the 20th century radically changed the entire hydrological regime of the river in the territory of the Samara region. In particular, the water level at the dam of the Volga HPP named after V.I. Lenin (now the Zhigulevskaya HPP) rose by 29 meters, in the Saratov reservoir near Samara - by 5 meters, and at Syzran - by 11 meters. Without a doubt, the rising water filled all the underground voids, and the increased water pressure certainly destroyed the entire cave system described above, along with its contents.

As for the purple glow in the dungeon, the very fact of its discovery deep underground can cause quite understandable doubts in an uninitiated person. Meanwhile, it is the purple color of the ice that indicates the presence of significant inclusions of radium in it. It is the decay of this radioactive chemical element that should cause a stable ionization of the air, and, consequently, the glow of it and the surrounding rocks.

The presence of radium, uranium and other radioactive chemical elements in the bowels of our region, including in the vicinity of Samarskaya Luka, has already been confirmed by the latest geological research. It is even assumed that some uranium and radium layers, which occur relatively close to the earth's surface, can be the basis for the development of this new mineral for the Samara region.

Even more incredulous are the descriptions of underground journeys through the mysterious ice "kunstkammers". Meanwhile, the caves of the Kugitang mountain system in Turkmenistan, discovered by speleologists in 1984, have already shown us something similar (Fig. 17, 18, 19).

Then many central newspapers wrote about this discovery in detail. In the caves of Kugitang, the animals that got into them were mummified - so why in the Zhiguli caves the local unwitting prisoners could not be frozen in ice blocks? After all, scientists and local historians have reported more than once about the presence of ice in the Zhiguli dungeons. For the first time, by the way, the mention of the ice caves of the Zhiguli is found in the monastic geographical guide of the edition of 1689. And at the beginning of the 20th century, the compilers of a detailed hypsometric map of the Zhiguli Mountains described many caves in these places, inside which, even at the height of summer, whole ice deposits were found. In particular, the topographer M. Noinsky in 1902 noted the emergence of "an underground passage to a very deep ice cave near the village of Podgora."

As for the bears, they used to be really found on the territory of the Samarskaya Luka and the Zhiguli mountains. However, the last mention of a meeting with them in these places dates back to the nineties of the XIX century. Nevertheless, already in the 20th century, the remains of prehistoric bears were found in the Zhiguli caves more than once - in particular, in the 60s in the dungeons near the village of Shiryaevo (Fig. 20).

Excavations here were carried out by an expedition led by the famous Soviet archaeologist Otto Nikolaevich Bader (Fig. 21).

The situation is more complicated with descriptions of lizard-like monsters frozen into blocks of ice. However, this fact can be found a modern explanation. In the 70s of the last century, the Canadian paleontologist Dale Russell, studying the remains of fossil lizards from the genus of stechonychosaurs who lived in the Jurassic time (that is, about 150 million years ago), came to the conclusion that representatives of this group have brain size in a very short period increased more than ten times. It has now been established what approximately the appearance of this hypothetical monster should be. He had a large head, which grew due to the greatly enlarged brain. He had to move on two legs, and when walking, his body occupied a vertical position - just like that of a modern person. At the same time, his upper limbs were transformed into hands with three fingers, one of which was strongly opposed to the other two. Growth - from 1.3 to 1.5 meters. In a word, almost complete coincidence with the description made by a geologist who got lost in the dungeon. Such hypothetical intelligent dinosaurs are called serpentoids (Fig. 22).

It is assumed that approximately 70 million years ago, as a result of a cosmic catastrophe (most likely, the fall of a large asteroid on our planet), dinosaurs very quickly disappeared from the face of the Earth, giving way to mammals and birds. However, it is quite possible that a few groups of these creatures were still able to survive until later times in separate secluded corners of the planet - the so-called refugia. One of these shelters could well be a cave system that developed about 15 million years ago in the depths of the Zhiguli Mountains and their spurs.

How to relate to the stories of geologists of the 30s is a personal matter for each researcher. However, it is worth noting that it is unlikely that it will be possible to repeat all the trips through the Zhiguli dungeons described above. Surely most of them have already been destroyed after the water level in the Kuibyshev and Saratov reservoirs rose. Therefore, it would be very interesting for researchers to receive new confirmations regarding the information published above about the caves of Samarskaya Luka.

Fireballs over the river Usoy

The mysterious inhabitants of the Zhiguli dungeons and the visions associated with them are spoken of in almost all local legends and traditions. In particular, ghostly phenomena should be put on a par with the “pillars of light”, which not only run like a “red thread” through all the Zhiguli legends, but are still observed in a number of points of the Samarskaya Luka. The most famous of them is the so-called “Peaceful City” mirage, which is mentioned in his book by the Holstein traveler Adam Olearius, who visited the Volga region in the seventeenth century. Another name for the same phenomenon is "Fortress of Five Moons", "White Church", "Fata Morgana" and so on.

To this day, there are villages on the Samarskaya Luka and in the Zhiguli Mountains, the history of which goes back several hundred years. These are, for example, the villages of Shelekhmet, Shiryaevo, Podgory, Shafts, Tornovoe, Askuly and many others (Fig. 23, 24, 25).

Information about their very first inhabitants is lost somewhere in the mists of time, and therefore even the famous traveler Peter Pallas, who visited these parts in 1768, even then called these villages “old”. It is not surprising that for hundreds of years of communication with the wild Zhiguli nature, the local peasants quite often encountered something mysterious and incomprehensible, and this then remained in the memory of the people in the form of legends and tales.

For example, local legends say that not only in the present, but also in former times, people have repeatedly seen some flying fireballs and other incomprehensible objects over the Samarskaya Luka, the nature of which is still unclear to scientists. In this regard, the Gremyachee tract, a mountain range in the Syzran region, which is located near the village of the same name, remains a very attractive point for anomalous people in the Samara region to this day.

Here, in the Rachey mountains, on the very edge of the Zhiguli dislocation, there is the source of the Usa River, which completes the Samarskaya Luka to an almost complete water ring. The local mountains are inferior in height only to the highest peaks of the Zhiguli, and on their slopes between the bizarre remnant rocks, many caves, karst funnels and failures formed in ancient times (Fig. 26-30),

from which springs spring. It is with these places that many legends and myths are connected, leading researchers to another mysterious underground race.

According to local legends, a dwarf people has been living in the local caves for many thousands of years, which the local Chuvashs call “Uybede-Tyuale”. This phrase can be translated as "man - furry monkey", as well as "man-owl" (Fig. 31, 32, 33).

They say that even in our time, these strange creatures, although rare, are still found by people in the local mountains. Imagine a dwarf no taller than the navel of an average man, but with huge eyes and a face covered with either wool or feathers. It is clear that some of those who met such a "horror" called him a monkey, others - an owl. That's how the Chuvash got the name of this mysterious underground people.

Another no less mysterious phenomenon of the Zhiguli Mountains looks like this. According to local residents, to this day, strange fireballs of about two meters in diameter and with a tail can sometimes be seen above the Gremyacheye tract. They say that those of the villagers who have lived here for two or three decades have seen this mysterious phenomenon at least once in their lives. In Chuvash they are called "patavka-bus", which just means "fireball".

As one of the eyewitnesses of this phenomenon told the collectors of folklore, the "bush-bus" usually flies slowly and not far from the surface of the earth. But the most incredible part of this legend is that these fireballs can… turn into a human! Allegedly, the villagers know specific cases when such aliens embodied in male people came to the village, where they ... cohabited with local women! And the children born from this strange marriage either died or quickly turned into the legendary underground men “Uybede-Tyuale”.

Another group of Zhiguli myths and legends concerns the underworld of these Volga mountains, which for scientists to this day remains a real "terra incognita". In particular, epics about some ghostly little men who suddenly appear from under the ground and also suddenly disappear are very interesting. It is said of them that these white dwarfs are "so transparent that trees can be seen through them." In local bylichki, they are described as follows: “A small man, with a bony body, with skin covered with scales, with huge eyes, a deadly look and a mysterious ability to move consciousness from body to body.” The last words, apparently, meant that the underground inhabitants had telepathic abilities.

The fate of the "stone horse"

Some of the conclusions that follow from a careful study of the above myths of the Samarskaya Luka are again told by the president of the non-governmental research organization Avesta, I.L. Pavlovich (Fig. 34).

A huge number of legends, tales, legends, tales and so on are connected with our region. Serious researchers practically do not study them, although legends are a whole layer of our past, which has deep historical roots. That is why for more than 15 years we have been studying this unofficial, as if hidden in legends and myths, history of our region. Traditions and epics are also good because they are the work of only an exceptionally simple people, being preserved in their memory for centuries.

We believe, not without reason, that such a “hidden story” concerns, first of all, the little-studied Samara dungeons. After all, the underground world of the Zhiguli, the Samara Luka and the entire Samara region as a whole is still extremely poorly studied. Meanwhile, the most interesting information about the numerous caves of the Volga banks, where not only robbers and vagabonds lived, but also sorcerers and even entire underground peoples, is preserved in the legends and traditions of past times to this day.

So far, there is no information that any serious researchers have studied the possibility of the existence of a special human race in the dungeons of the Samara Luka. But can't the above legends, as well as archaeological finds, be a reason for the interest of scientists?

Our group has repeatedly organized expeditions both to the Zhiguli Mountains and to the Syzran region - in the Gremyacheye tract, which is located near the village of Smolkino. It is in its vicinity that the source of the Usa River is located. Here, on the slopes of the Rachaya Mountains, there are many caves, bizarre stone blocks, springs, and failures. All of them in combination form an unusually beautiful area, with which many legends and myths are associated, leading researchers to the same mysterious underground race.

From the locals, we once again heard the legends about “uybed-tuala” and “patavka-bus”. We also saw several depressions in the rocks left after the visit of the fireballs. They look exactly like a pit, and not like a karst failure - as if it was carefully dug with an excavator, and then the edges were smoothly leveled. It seems that only experts can explain the origin of such pits exactly.

And not far from the village of Gremyacheye, local residents showed us a huge stone, where at night cavemen allegedly come to worship. This rock even outwardly resembles the head of either an owl or a monkey - in general, “uybede-tuale”. True, we did not manage to find traces of any rituals near this stone.

On the other hand, we independently performed a ceremony with another stone, which the locals call “stone horse” (Fig. 35).

Indeed, it was very similar to a huge horse's head lying on the ground. Having heard from a villager who went with us that if this stone is generously poured with water, then soon it will rain over it even in a drought, we did just that: we poured our entire supply from a twenty-liter bottle onto the “stone horse”.

At that moment, the heat was thirty-five degrees, and there was not a cloud in the sky. You can imagine our astonishment when, twenty minutes after this procedure, a cloud suddenly appeared over the forest, which began to grow before our eyes, and a few minutes later large raindrops really poured on us!

The cameraman was most frightened: he began to shout at the participants in the experiment that he would not be able to work under such a downpour. Thank God that the rain ended quickly and as suddenly as it began. In a moment, the cloud disappeared somewhere, and the sun shone brightly over the forest again.

The trip to the Rachaya Mountains described above took place in 2004 (Fig. 36, 37, 38).

And soon after the first reports about this expedition, sad news came to us. It turns out that one day some enterprising businessmen came to the mountains with a truck and a crane, after which the mentioned stone in the shape of a horse's head simply ... disappeared. Apparently, now he lies at the dacha of some local merchant, who proudly shows him to his friends. However, the kidnapper will no longer be able to make rain with his help: after all, he did not take into account that the “stone horse” shows its miracles only in the mountains, in its native element.

Scientists from the Samara non-governmental research organization "Avesta" have been studying anomalous phenomena that are often observed in the districts of the Zhiguli Mountains for about 3 10 years. Surprisingly, researchers often find an explanation for such phenomena in ... local folklore.

How Samarskaya Luka appeared

The scientists of "Avesta" by the present time have already collected a lot of evidence for a unique conjecture, the essence of which lies in the following. The steep bend, located in the middle reaches of the Volga and called the Samarskaya Luka, owes its appearance to ... the engineering activity of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Here is what the president of Avesta, engineer Igor Pavlovich, says about this:
- Have you ever thought about such a geographical riddle: why did the Volga River in its own middle course suddenly come in handy to go around the ring of a small (only any 100 km long) Zhiguli mountain range? It would seem that the river waters, in accordance with the laws of physics, instead of creating such a kind of “loops”, should reduce their own path and head east of the Zhiguli, in those places where the Usa riverbed currently passes. But no - this mountain range, tiny by geographical standards, made of soft limestones and dolomites, has been showing unheard-of resistance to the Volga waters running on it once a second for millions of years ...

"Avestovtsy" mean that in the depths of the Zhiguli Mountains at great depths for many millions of years, some technical device has been operating, at one time made by an old super-civilization. This device creates a certain force field around itself, which just prevents the flow of water flows through the mountain range. That is why the Volga, during all these millions of years, is obliged to go around the Zhiguli Mountains, making a strange twist in the form of a semicircle in its own middle course, which is now called the Samara Bend.

Most likely, this hypothetical geomachine is a bunch of force fields - electric, gravitational, bio, or others that are not yet recognizable to us. Specifically, these fields have been helping the Zhiguli limestones (which, as you know, are very susceptible to water erosion) for more than 10 million years, to keep the ancient riverbed in a measured position, preventing even its insignificant displacement.

The question is, why is all this necessary for a hypothetical alien civilization? Apparently, in order for the underground energy complex to work uninterruptedly for millions of years, feeding the extra-spatial channel connecting their world with the earth's surface. Such a channel can play the role of a specific television camera through which a distant civilization sees everything that happens on our planet. This is confirmed by strange mirages, which are often observed in the sky over the Samarskaya Luka, as, in general, over some other points on our planet.

geological proof

The words of Igor Pavlovich are commented on by associate professor of the Samara Aerospace Institute, candidate of technical sciences, analyst of the Avesta group Sergey Markelov.

Reading in one of the scientific collections published by Moscow State University in 1962, an article on the geological structure of the Volga-Ural region, I found an unusual scheme in it. It showed a section of the earth's layers in the area of ​​Samarskaya Luka, which turned out to be very similar to the contours of ... a huge capacitor! Everyone will simply remember from a school physics course how this electrical device works: an electronic charge accumulates between parallel metal plates, and its value is limited only by the breakdown strength of the gasket between the plates.

In the earth's crust under Samarskaya Luka, the role of such plates is played by parallel electrically conductive layers, between which there are limestones and dolomites. The dimensions of this capacitor are amazing - its length is about 70 km! In fact, here we see the material embodiment of that energy geomachine, which Igor Pavlovich spoke about above.

As calculations show, between the plates of the "Zhiguli capacitor" can
for a long time to exist an electronic field with cyclopean intensity parameters. As needed, the electronic charge can simply be used for a variety of purposes. By the way, as can be seen from the structure of this huge "device", not a single sensor located outside the "storage *" will be able to show the presence of electricity in the depths of the earth's crust in this area.

Geological data say that the very existence of such a colossal underground capacitor is a unique phenomenon in the crust of our planet. None of the venerable geologists to this day has ever met with a similar structure of the earth's layers. You can, of course, talk about the natural origin of this unique geological object, but with equal probability you can talk about the role of the unknown mind in its appearance.

According to the conjecture put forward, the activity of a hypothetical underground geomachine in the area of ​​the Zhiguli Mountains, apparently, causes mysterious phenomena in these places - chrono-miracles. Local farmers watched ghostly towns, castles in the air and flying islands in the skies hundreds of years ago, and during this period of time countless epics and legends were formed on their basis. Here is one of these descriptions, from the Avesta collection:

“A certain luminous square suddenly appeared on the clouds, and an image of a stepped pyramid appeared inside it. She stood on some kind of plateau, steeply plunging down. Under the mountain there was a plain crossed by a river. With all this, the line of sight was inclined to the plane of the plain by approximately 15 degrees. The memory was such that the plain, the river and the pyramid are observed from the board of an aircraft hovering at an altitude of 8-10 kilometers.

The most famous of these phenomena is the Mirny Gorodok mirage, which in most cases is talked about by tourists vacationing near the Molodetsky and Usinsky mounds. Other ghosts from the same series are the Fortress of 5 Moons, the White Church, Fata Morgana and others. These anomalies are observed from time to time in the middle of the wide lake labyrinths that stretch between the villages of Mordovo and Brusyany, in the very south of Samarskaya Luka. According to observers, here at dawn a ghostly city may appear in front of an astonished traveler at one moment, only to fall again in a minute or two.

Traces of the disappeared people

By all indications, the hypothetical extraterrestrial intelligence in its activities on our planet relied on some terrestrial civilization, which, in exchange for cooperation, received from intruders indescribable technical knowledge and unheard-of materials, traces of which archaeologists often find in the most unexpected places. What exactly this cooperation was and why it was useful to alien intelligence, researchers have yet to unravel.

But aliens, as it turns out, could not always help their earthly partners. So, from old legends it follows that the peninsula of Samarskaya Luka, actually surrounded by water from all sides, several thousand years ago became the last stronghold of some majestic race of fire worshipers. Pressed by aggressive tribes, these people eventually reached the Zhiguli mountain range, where they were able to hide from persecution in inaccessible caves and mountain gorges. The strange underground people, references to which can be found in Zhiguli legends and traditions, apparently, were just the remnants of that majestic old race, which for thousands of years faithfully served extraterrestrial intelligence.

Information about a mysterious civilization, very developed for its own time and quite suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, is fully consistent with the time of existence in the Southern Urals, on the territory of the modern Chelyabinsk region, the hypothetical town of Arkaim, which, apparently, was the largest cultural and economic center of this old people. For example, thousands of years ago Arkaimians were well aware of metallurgical creation, which indicates the highest level of their knowledge.

According to archaeological data, in the 2nd millennium BC, Arkaim, for some unknown reason, ended its existence almost overnight. Right behind this, the mysterious civilization that gave birth to it very rapidly disappeared from the expanses of the East European Plain. Specifically, the remnants of these fire-worshipping tribes, as is implied, took refuge in the caves of the Samarskaya Luka, in order to later establish that underground race here. Anyway, again, this is just a guess.

edited news Elfin - 2-08-2013, 21:06

Treasures are satellites of troubled times. Hidden treasures, on the one hand, are quite material, on the other, even less perceptible than a ghost. Each of the treasures is surrounded by history, real and fictional. And of course superstitions. The young writer Andrey Oleh outlined on the map the points where you urgently need to go with a pick and a shovel.

Treasure of Stepan Razin

Stepan Razin was in our area several times, but not for long. On May 31, 1670, he stormed the fortress of Samara, but could not take it. He returned here with reinforcements on August 26, and two days later took possession of the city with a population of about 700 people. Already in early September, he moved to Simbirsk. On October 4, the Cossacks were defeated by government troops, Stepan Razin was wounded and fled down the Volga. He sailed past Samara on October 22.

When, how, and most importantly, where Stepan Razin hid the treasure, no one knows. But this, of course, does not prevent us from making numerous assumptions. There is a separate story about how Razin's brother, Frol, in order to delay the execution, led an expedition to the Zhiguli Mountains in order to find the treasure. And at the beginning of the 20th century, documents on this case came to the engineer Petr Myatlev. He allegedly discovered a whole network of underground galleries under the Molodetsky Kurgan, but he never found the treasure, and then the revolution and death prevented him from continuing his search. There are also versions that the treasure is now flooded by the Zhiguli Sea, and it is impossible to get it. Another alleged location of the ataman's treasure is the "Ara Caves" near the village of Shelekhmet, which, according to stories, were blown up by the military in the late 1950s. These places are related by the inability to get to the treasure of Stepan Razin.

In fact, any of the numerous caves in the Zhiguli mountains can be a place where treasures are buried. If not Stepan Razin, then any other of the robber chieftains. Ermak and Ivan Koltso, Barbosha and Vavila, Katya Manchikha and countless nameless Volga pirates could theoretically hide treasures here.

Bulgar mounds

In the autumn of 1236, the army of Batu Khan invaded Volga Bulgaria and destroyed this ancient state. Archaeologists highly appreciate the culture of this people, whose cities were located on the territory of the Middle Volga from Kazan to Saratov. Burials of the Bulgars are rich, but often already ruined in the old days. One of these was found in the village of Brusyany in the Samara region. Surely, on the territory of Samarskaya Luka, there are still many treasures of the disappeared people.

Treasury of Tokhtamysh

Another large treasure, although not related to the Zhiguli, is not inferior in size and legend to the treasures of Razin. On June 18, 1391, one of the largest battles of the Middle Ages took place between the troops of Timur Tamerlane and the Golden Horde army of Khan Tokhtamysh on the banks of the Kondurcha River. According to various estimates, from 200 to 400 thousand people participated in it.

And despite the fact that the very fact of the battle is undeniable, its exact location is not completely known and not confirmed by archaeological finds. And with such a large-scale battle, they should be. According to legend, Tokhtamysh, who was defeated, hid his treasury in the floodplain of the Sok River. This assumption is based on the numerous coins of the Golden Horde period discovered in the area, but the buried treasury of the khan has not yet been found.

The closest in time "legendary" treasure is the royal gold reserve brought to Samara in 1918.
They would continue to appear, but paper money is poorly stored, and at present, if anyone hides treasures, it is in foreign accounts, and there is nothing mysterious about this.

Treasures are companions of troubled times, and this can be understood not only literally. Interest in them increases in bad times and fades in well-fed years. The idea of ​​quick and, as a rule, random enrichment is always attractive, and Russian folklore about treasures is unusually rich. In today's treasure-hunting forums, along with discussions about historical sources and comparisons of metal detectors, there are serious talks about luck and bad luck. Treasures often speak, the souls of the former owners live next to them, they lure them into traps, slip away, and if they get it, it is always the wrong ones. And this, perhaps, is even good, because it is known that many treasures are cursed and do not bring happiness to those who discover them. But if the seeker is constantly pursued by failures, then, perhaps, sooner or later, fate will restore justice and he will find his treasure.