Mysteries of stone circles in Russia's Bashkiria
For nine years Bashkir scientists have been engaged in the excavation of a monument found in Uchalinsky district, two kilometers from the village of Novo-Bayramgulova. Studying aerial photographs, scientists saw round construction about fifty meters in diameter. These stone circles are comparable to the famous Stonehenge.
According to experts, this may be the ruins of an ancient temple, the remainder of the people of the Neolithic.
Bashkiria has a large number of various archaeological sites. Favorable climatic conditions attracted people to the area since ancient times. However, a construction of this magnitude has not yet been found.
According to Vitaly Fedorov, head of the archaeological expedition of the Academy VEGU (Eastern Economics and Law University for the Humanities), associate professor of Russian History, Candidate of Sciences, the construction can rather be called a rectangular, not a circle. Most likely, this unique structure was built about five thousand years ago - in the Neolithic period, i.e., in late Stone Age, when the first weapons of bronze began to appear. The website CatalogOfMinerals.Ru reported that "construction of facilities of this scale required use of a certain technology that only a fairly advanced civilization could have. Tribes that inhabited this area five thousand years ago at the time did not even know agriculture."
The mysterious construction is likely a prehistoric temple where pagan rituals were performed. This can be concluded from the fact that the corners of the temple are oriented toward the rising sun and the moon. Unfortunately, the walls of the buildings have not been preserved, online resource The Eye of the Planet reported. According to local residents, there used to be many boulders at the archaeological site, but in the 1980s all of them were removed by tractors.
Earlier Bashkir archeologists found similar stone circles, but they were at least five times smaller. Another puzzle is a 37-meter inner ditch with the width of up to one meter and depth of seventy centimeters.
For a long time experts believed that there were no developed civilizations in the South Urals. However, since the middle last century, archaeologists began finding fortified settlements in the steppes of Southern Ural. They all had a circular structure. The scientists found dishes brought from different parts of Eurasia, coins, jewelry, and, of course, weapons. The prevalent opinion among scientists is that this was an Indo-European tribe, most likely Abashevtsy. Historian Salavat Gallyamov believes that they were ancestors of bashkords of Iranian origin. Renowned Bashkir scientist Niaz Mazhitov said that they stayed in the South Urals and played an important role in the formation of the local peoples.
A historic building known as "Arkaim" was considered the capital of the "country of the cities." In the Bronze Age there lived representatives of Abashevskaya archaeological culture. This is evidenced by a vessel with complex characteristic ornamentation. The city also had a workshop for production of metal products. Yet, one hundred years later, the residents of Arkaim suddenly left the city.
"Bashkir Stonehenge" is approximately a thousand years older than Arkaim. It was discovered in 1988 by Valery Gorozhanin with the Institute of Geological Science Centre through declassified aerial photographs of 1954. In 1995, the monument was studied by Niaz Mazhitov who classified it as an ordinary Bronze Age settlement. The monument became to develop as a religious complex in 2006.
In addition to the English Stonehenge, similar structures were found in Austria and the Czech Republic. At the moment, the experts cannot answer whether these advanced religious and astronomical systems moved from the West to the East, or in the opposite direction.
In 2007, 68 sq. m were excavated at this remarkable archaeological site. Bashkir portal Vatandash reported: "Among the findings there were bone and stone arrowheads, bone awls, pendants and amulets made of animal bones, pottery, bronze plates, numerous stone tools, including a knife for cutting meat, and ceramic fragments. The exploration of the antiquities sites is in its early stages. Time will tell what secrets and discoveries await the scientists. "