Arkaim: Stonehenge of Russia and its Unspeakable Secrets

Who in his life had never heard of Stonehenge? An enigmatic prehistoric monument north of the city of Salisbury, England, for more than 5,000 years, today it is a place that continues to develop speculation and theories beyond rationality.

The terrain was excavated, radiographed, measured and examined. Despite everything that has been learned about its age and construction, its purpose remains one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

It’s no secret, though, that Stonehenge isn’t the only megalithic circle of stones in the world. Some exist as collections of circles, such as the Senegambian circles in the Gambia, Senegal, which are considered a single circle on the world list but are actually made up of more than 1,000 to 15,000 individual monuments spread over a territory of 100 km wide and 350 km in length

There are many of these Neolithic sites in Britain, but they do not have a monopoly on the Henges. Some of the most interesting Neolithic monuments stand out within the borders of the former Soviet Union. Arkaim is one of those forgotten places, but they are an important part of the mysterious constructions.

Arkaim, beyond the history books

Some consider the Archaic to be the most important and enigmatic archaeological site in Northern Europe. This site is embroiled in controversy and is sometimes called Stonehenge, Russia. It is located on the outskirts of the Chelyabinsk region, south of the Urals, slightly north of the border with Kazakhstan.

According to experts, Arkaim is a remnant of an ancient settlement, which is essentially a village fortified by two large round stone walls. The enigmatic site covers an area of ​​about 20,000 square meters and consists of two house wheels separated by a street with a central square. 

Discovered by a team of Russian archaeologists, causing a wave of excitement throughout the archaeological community. The site and its artefacts dating back to the 17th century. Pr. AD, and it is thought to have been built 4,000-5,000 years ago, which is interesting to attribute to the same age group as Stonehenge.

Arkaim has another name, it is called swastika in the city or, alternatively, the city of Mandala. It has this name for several reasons: first, if you use fantasy, the layout of the homes around the central square almost looks like a swastika. As we all know, the swastika is a sign of appropriation of the Nazi and so-called Aryan races and was adopted by modern groups of white chiefs. 

The second reason is that they originated from the Sintashta culture, which is an Indian and Iranian race from the ancient Eurasian steppes or, more generally, an Aryan race. So there are those who argue that Archim is actually the birthplace of the higher white race. While few in basic science see any value in this reasoning, there are changes.

Secrets of arching

There are more interesting secrets on the site, such as linking it to a politically incorrect aspect of our culture. This was of great interest to archaeoastronomical, hence the reason for his connection with Stonehenge. Some experts said Stonehenge was built for astronomical observations. In fact, it is technically known as an observatory. This is because Stonehenge has allowed and may still allow the observation of 10 astronomical phenomena using 22 elements, and some argue that Archim allows the observation of 18 phenomena using 30 elements.

This basically means that certain events in the sky could be observed and followed by the area in certain ways and from different situations and that Arkaim offers more observable events than Stonehenge itself. In other words, it would seem that Arkaim is an even better astronomical observatory than its namesake. According to Russian archaeologist KK Bystrushkin, Stonehenge offers a 10-degree arc observation accuracy of one degree, and Arkaim offers a 1-minute arc accuracy. This precision is unheard of in the time allowed, descending from the ancient Greek Almagest, built 2,000 years later.

So it may seem obvious to some, but the fact that these places were built apparently deliberately to function as astronomical observatories and even as certain calendars until the same experience was achieved in the great founding empires like the Egyptians. and the Greeks are apparently strong evidence for attributing the further development and sophistication of these prehistoric cultures.

But apart from their history, it is interesting that Stonehenge and Archim are in the same latitude. However, “Arkaim” has also become a reference point for the UFO community, it is already customary to observe many UFOs, strange flashes of light in the sky or even some mysterious fog moving like an intellectual object.

But in addition to the well-known area, Archim also has a much more mysterious area where excavations are still taking place and visitors are not allowed. Even conspiracy theorists warn that not even the locals themselves fall into the mysterious area. Experts believe this theory is due to the energy flowing throughout the area, with unimaginable power that can make anyone lose their head.

There was a case where an archaeology student claimed to have heard a voice calling her from the centre of the building. She approached what happened next, only she knows. Over time, he said, he accepted the ghosts of the former inhabitants of Archim. Apparently, she reached another dimension and couldn’t stand it, she had to be admitted to a psychiatric centre. On closer analysis, curiously similar incidents occurred after the discovery of the Egyptian pyramids.

Because of all these mysterious phenomena over the centuries, the locals have always believed that it is a sacred place. An example can be found in the fact that pilgrims travel all year round to get healing water from the nearby river Bolshaya, and also used clay in the summer to treat various diseases.

Is our true origin hidden from us?

Mysterious structures such as Arkaim offer clues to the existence of an unknown or lost civilization in our distant past. Arkaim is just one example of rich archaeological gifts hidden deep in Russia. The country’s industrial progress has lost similar places, such as Sarkel, a limestone and brick fortress built by the Khazar culture in the 830s or 840s and flooded by the Russian government in 1952 due to the construction of the Tsimlyansk depository.

A similar aspect could be seen all over the world, but due to secrecy and the lack of cooperation between governments, or even to eradicate our origins, they have not yet been researched, analyzed, let alone discovered places that could decipher our true origins.

5,000-Year-Old Rock Art Depicting “Celestial Bodies” Revealed in Siberia

Rock art images painted some 5,000 years ago during the Bronze Age were made with a sophisticated scientific understanding which has stunned experts. Images, discovered near Karakol village in the Altai Republic in Russia, show alien figures with round horns and feathers on their heads.

The depictions in red, black and white were found in 1985 in a gravesite in a remote village in Siberia have uncovered the extraordinary talent of the prehistoric artists.  

They have found that the red hues in the tomb drawings were made of thermally modified ocher, a clay made from Earth.

The white shades were made by scraping which revealed light-reflecting rock crystals, while soot was used for the black in the paintings. 

Scientists from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia’s leading research and development centre for nuclear energy, said that the red colours especially fascinate the experts.

It is apparent that some 5,000 years ago the tomb painters knew how to carry out a chemical reaction in order to create not just a red colour but the precise tones they desired by varying the temperature of heating.

Roman Senin, head of the synchrotron research department at Kurchatov Institute, said: ‘We determined the phased composition of pigments, that is, the structure of the crystal lattice of individual grains of the dye.

‘Some structures are not typical for natural samples but are the product of heat treatment.

‘Simply put, the primitive artist heated the mineral to a certain temperature in order to get the colour he needed.’

Alexander Pakhunov, of Russia’s Institute of Archeology, said: ‘The results of the analysis of the composition of paints used in the funeral rite of Karakol people testify to the ability of the ancient inhabitants of Altai to distinguish pigments by colour and properties.’

Full results of the new study will be presented at the 43rd International Symposium on Archeometry in May 2020 in Lisbon.

It is also clear that ancient people broke off rocks on local mountains already decorated at an earlier time with petroglyphs.

These were then moved into the graves – and superimposed their own fantastical images on stone slabs which were used as the tomb walls.

‘The remains of people buried inside the stone graves were also painted with the same colours, with spots of red ocher found below eye sockets and traces of a black and silvery mineral called Specularite prominent in eyebrows area,’ reported The Siberian Times – 

The earliest images were engravings of elks, mountains goats and running people with round horns on their heads.

On top of the petroglyphs were superimposed pictures of 11 human-like figures. The different colour tones are seen as carrying meanings to the prehistoric people.

While the funeral rites of these ancient mountain-dwellers are not yet understood, the techniques of the painters is now clear, say the scientists. The Karakol artworks date to the early and middle Bronze Age.

Dirty secrets: sediment DNA reveals a 300,000-year timeline of ancient and modern humans living in Siberia

Science Magazine reports that analysis of more than 700 soil samples from Siberia’s Denisova Cave has detected traces of modern human DNA, which suggests that modern humans may have occupied the cave alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.

The group was named “Denisovans” in its honour. Now, an extensive analysis of DNA in the cave’s soils reveals it also hosted modern humans—who arrived early enough that they may have once lived there alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.

The new study “gives [researchers] unprecedented insight into the past,” says Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a molecular paleoecologist at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved with the work. “It literally shows what [before] they have only been able to hypothesize.”

Humans—including Neanderthals and Denisovans—are known to have occupied Denisova Cave for at least 300,000 years.

Among the eight human fossils unearthed there are the pinkie, three bones from Neanderthals, and even one from a child with one Neanderthal and one Denisovan parent.

The cave also contains sophisticated stone tools and jewellery at higher, later levels. But no modern human fossils have been found there.

Those artefacts, extensive studies of DNA from these bones, and even one early study of DNA from soils have cemented the cave’s importance for piecing together human evolution.

But eight fossils are not much to go on, so Elena Zavala, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and colleagues teamed up with Russian researchers to see what kind of DNA was present in the soils of the three-chamber cave (see the video, below).

Researchers have been studying DNA isolated from soils for more than 40 years, including sequencing DNA from permafrost, but only in the past 4 years has anyone found DNA from extinct humans in ancient soils.

Working with another team of experts who had previously dated the layers of the cave, the researchers dug out 728 soil samples. After 2 years of analysis, in which they isolated and sequenced the samples, the researchers found human DNA in 175 of them. That makes the study “the largest and most systematic of its kind,” says Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the work.

The data reveal a complex history of human and animal habitation, with different groups moving in and out of the cave over time, Zavala and her colleagues report today in Nature. Their work confirms that Denisovans were the cave’s first human inhabitants, about 300,000 years ago.

They disappeared 130,000 years ago, only to be followed by a different group of Denisovans, who likely made many of the stone tools, some 30,000 years later. Neanderthals appeared on the scene about 170,000 years ago, with different groups using the cave at various points in time, some overlapping with the Denisovans.

The last to arrive were modern humans, who showed up about 45,000 years ago. The soil layer that corresponds with that period contained DNA from all three human groups, the researchers report.

“The time periods [of each layer] are quite large, so we can’t concretely say if they overlapped or not,” Zavala says. But, Douka adds, “I cannot think of another site where three human species lived through time.”

Given the jewellery and sophisticated artefacts in later layers, some researchers had suspected moderns had been there. But no one knew they had arrived as early as 45,000 years ago—and overlapped with both of our archaic cousins.

“It suggests a more complicated interplay between archaic and modern humans,” says Ron Pinhasi, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna who was not involved with the work.

The soil samples also yielded DNA from many species of animals. About 170,000 years ago, the climate went from warmer to colder, and Neanderthals moved in, so did different species of hyenas and bears.

It’s the combination of genomic data from both the fossils and the soil samples that really makes the new work stand out, Pinhasi says. “It’s a super promising direction [for future work].” Douka agrees, and says the new study should help ancient soil DNA become “a mainstream archaeological tool.”

She is already amazed at the progress that it, combined with other studies, has made possible. “Let’s not forget that as recently as in 2010 we had absolutely no evidence that Denisovans existed, and that these various hominins ever met, let alone that they interbred repeatedly and co-existed for millennia,” she wrote in an email.

DNA shows Scythian warrior mummy was a 13-year-old girl

The story of a clan of warrior women was formed in Greek mythology during a time when there were ancient gods, warriors, and rulers. These powerful female combatants from Asia Minor said to be daughters of the gods, have captured people’s imaginations for ages and continue to pervade popular culture today as mythical Amazon warriors.

For a long time, these warrior women were assumed to be figments of ancient imaginations, but archaeological evidence has since revealed that the warrior women, who may have inspired these myths, really did exist. Late last year, an archaeological discovery of two women thought to be nomadic Scythians from around 2,500 years ago (4th century BCE) was revealed. They were buried in what’s now the western Russian village of Devitsa, with parts of a horse-riding harness and weapons, including iron knives and 30 arrowheads.

“We can certainly say that these two women were horse warriors,” said archaeologist Valerii Guliaev of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology at the time.

They were found in a burial mound with two other women – one aged between 40-50 years old, who wore a golden headdress with decorative floral ornaments. The other, aged 30-35, was buried alongside two spears and positioned like she was riding a horse.

“During the last decade, our expedition has discovered approximately 11 burials of young armed women. Separate barrows were filled for them and all burial rites which were usually made for men were done for them,” explained Guliaev.

Now, another team from Russia has mapped the genome of 2,600-year-old Scythian remains that had been discovered in a wooden sarcophagus with an array of weapons back in 1988. 

“This child was initially considered to be male because with him were found characteristics [usually attributed to male] archaeological finds: an axe, a bow, arrows,” archaeologist Varvara Busova from the Russian Academy of Sciences told ScienceAlert.

But the child’s DNA revealed the remains were actually female. “That means we can say with some probability that [Scythian] girls have also participated in hunting or military campaigns,” Busova added.

The warrior girl was buried in Siberia’s modern-day Tuva republic, with an axe, a birch bow and a quiver with ten arrows – some wood, bone or bronze tipped. Due to the larch coffin sealing tightly against fresh air, her remains were partially mummified.

“This young ‘Amazon’ had not yet reached the age of 14 years,” said lead author of the new research, archaeologist Marina Kilunovskaya from the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences.

The girl was clothed in a long fur coat, a shirt, and trousers or a skirt. Using a scanning electron microscope, the researchers found her coat was composed of a patchwork of skins from a rodent related to Jerboa. And carbon dating of other grave items placed the burial complex from 7th-5th centuries BCE, which is early Scythian times.

Busova said the research team would now like to get more accurate dating of the young warrior girl’s remains, investigate the composition of the metal grave objects, and work to restore and conserve what they have found. They’re also hoping CT scans of the remains may give them clues on how the young female warrior died.

The finding “unwittingly brings us back to the myth about the Amazons that have survived to this day thanks to Herodotus (Herod. IV: 110-118),” the team wrote in their paper.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus claimed Amazons fought the Scythians, but it seems they could actually be the Scythian women who trained, hunted and fought alongside their male counterparts.

“About one-third of all Scythian women are buried with weapons and have war injuries just like the men,” historian Adrienne Mayor told National Geographic in 2014.

“They lived in small tribes, so it makes sense that everyone in the tribe is a stakeholder. They all have to contribute to the defence and to war efforts and hunting.”

Through the centuries, myths of the Amazons have been embellished with outrageous claims, from cutting off their own breasts to improve their archery, to murdering their male children.

But we now have the opportunity to learn more about the true female warriors behind the myths thanks to modern archaeological studies and DNA techniques.

Till death do us part! 3500-year-old tombs with hand-holding couples found

Russian scientists are trying to uncover the secrets of 3,500-year-old Bronze Age graves, where couples are buried together in a seemingly loving embrace – under suspicions of macabre explanation.

These pictures show ancient burials in the village of Staryi Tartas in Siberia where some 600 tombs were examined by experts.

Dozens contain the bones of couples, some with male and female skeletons, facing each other and their hands appear to be held together forever.

The Siberian Times said: ‘Archeologists are struggling for explanation and hope that DNA testing can provide answers for these remarkable burials.’ One writer, Vasiliy Labetskiy, described the scenes in the graves poignantly as skeletons in ‘post-mortal hugs with bony hands clasped together.

One theory is that these Andronovo burials show the start of the nuclear family, but another version that after the man died, his wife was killed and buried with him.

Still, another suggests that some of the couples were deliberately buried as if in a sexual act, possibly with a young woman sacrificed to play this role in the grave. Other graves at the site in the Novosibirsk region in western Siberia show adults buried with children.

Professor Vyacheslav Molodin, director of research of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: ‘We can fantasise a lot about all this.

‘We can allege that husband died and the wife was killed to be interred with him as we see in some Scythian burials, or maybe the grave stood open for some time and they buried the other person or persons later, or maybe it was really simultaneous death.

‘When we speak about a child and an adult, it looks more natural and understandable.

‘When we speak about two adults – it is not so obvious. So we can raise quite a variety of hypotheses, but how it was in fact, we do not know yet.’

Work is underway to establish the ‘kinship’ of these ancient couple burials using DNA research.

‘For example, we found the burial of a man and a child. What is the degree of their kinship? Are they father and son or…? The same question arises when we found a woman and a child. It should seem obvious – she is the mother. But it may not be so. She could be an aunt or not a relative at all. To speak about this scientifically we need the tools of paleogenetics.

‘We have a joint laboratory with the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science,  and we actively work in this direction. We do such analysis but it is quite expensive still and there are few specialists. We are also solving other questions with help of paleogenetics.’

With such couple burials, Professor Lev Klein, of St Petersburg State University, has proposed they are linked to reincarnation beliefs possibly influenced by Deeksha rituals in the ancient Indian sub-continent at the time when the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were composed.

‘The man during his lifetime donated his body as a sacrifice to all the gods,’ he wrote. ‘The ‘Deeksha was considered as a “second birth” and to complete this ritual the sacrificing one made a ritual sexual act of conceiving.’ In other words, in death, a man should perform a sexual act to impregnate a woman.

‘Perhaps in the pre-Vedic period relatives of the deceased often sought to reproduce the “Deeksha” posthumously, and sacrificed a woman or a girl (or a few), and simulated sexual intercourse in the grave,’ he said.

Professor Molodin doesn’t rule out this version, yet makes clear it is only a hypothesis that needs more study.

‘It is again a suggestion. As a suggestion, it could be. This idea of Klein can be extended to Siberia too because a significant part of the researchers think that Andronovo people were Iranians.

‘So this hypothesis can be extended to them. But, I will repeat, it is only a hypothesis.’