Ancient Russia (Megaliths, Caves, Sacred Sites etc)

[uzn]

Let´s take a look at the ancient so called earthwork "Labyrinths" that can be found encarved in rock or bigger on the ground. These "Labyrinths" can be found all over the earth.
Just some examples:
Knossos 200 BC


Cornwall, England


Madhya Pradesh, 250 a. C


The "Man In The Maze" is a visual representation of the Tohono O'odham Indians belief in life, death and the life after death. The man at the top of the maze depicts birth. By following the pattern, beginning at the top, the figure goes through the maze encountering many turns and changes, as in life. As the journey continues, one aquires knowledge, strength and understanding. Nearing the end of the maze, one retreats to a small corner of the pattern before reaching the dark center of death and eternal life. Here one repents, cleanses and reflects back on all the wisdom gained. Finally, pure and in harmony with the world, death and eternal life are accepted


Isle of Gotland in Sweden - Visby Trojaborg


Labyrinth rock carving found at Meis, Galicia, Spain, possibly from the Atlantic Bronze Age (c. 1300–700 BC)


Now let´s look at russias.


Bolshoi Zayatsky Island


These are all the different Labyrinths that have been found so far.

[uzn]

Skywizard made a Thread about the Labyrinths of Bolshoi Zayatsky Island not long ago:
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...lshoi-Zayatsky

[uzn]

Labyrinths are rare through out the world and are valuable archaeological monuments. In the world approximately 300 have been preserved . The 13 – 14 stone labyrinths found on Bolshoi Zayatsky Island belong to the best preserved ones found anywhere on the planet.
These labyrinths are made of stones which have been laid on the surface of soil. Although just 1.35 kilometres square Bolshoi Zayatsky Island is actually one of the 6 large Solovetsky Islands. The island covered with boulders, moss and large bushes is renowned for its unique collection of Neolithic structures – stone labyrinths, barrows and ancient sanctuaries all dating back to 3,000 BC. The labyrinths are concentrated in a small area on the western part of the island. The diameter of the labyrinths is between six and twenty-four metres and they are for the most part formed of boulders set in a row. The rows are twisted in the form of a spiral. Often there are two spirals set one into another resembling two serpents with their heads in the middle looking at each other. Along the spiral there are intermittent wider heaps of stones and the ends of the spirals are widened as well. Although the labyrinths have five types of setting, each one of them has got one entrance, which also serves as an exit. Their purpose is a mystery, though it has been suggested that they can symbolise a border between our world and the underworld and that the labyrinth was used for specific rituals to help the souls of the deceased travel to another world. In the eastern part of the island there is another enormous complex of stone settings, which does not include any labyrinths.

Source:
https://hague6185.wordpress.com/2013...yatsky-island/

But there are more in russia. Not so long ago, in 1987, was found a rather unusual place, which is called the Arch. The settlement was discovered in the Chelyabinsk region archaeological Expedition. Close to it:


And a Spiral or circular structure

[uzn]

If you dont want to use some old who knows who already used it Labyrinth, make your own:









voila

[uzn]

Spirals at Arkaim (have posted about the site Arkaim before(aka Swastika City aka Mandala City))



yet another




That´s Arkaim now (2015), the russian have just excavated a tiny bit of it.






Arkaim is a very spiritual site for the more holistic russians.

[uzn]

near Sochi Russia is the Kudepsta megalith. I would call it a bench of sorts.









And a symbol on it.

[Morbid]

there are brief site descriptions on this page. you can use google translate on it.
http://www.chronoton.ru/pra/10-sledov-v-rossii

[Whiskey_Mystic]

I thought you might like this link provided by Grace Cathedral of San Francisco.

Worldwide Labyrinth Locator



(There are two labyrinths at Grace, which I highly recommend to anyone visiting.)

Labyrinths at Grace

[uzn]

Some News on the 11.000 years old Shigir Idol that is wooden and about 5 meters high. Many Pictures of it I already posted earlier in this thread.Here the news:


Early art in the Urals: new research on the wooden sculpture from Shigir




The carved wooden object uncovered from the Shigir peat bog in the Sverdlovsk region towards the end of the nineteenth century remains one of the oldest, known examples of monumental anthropomorphic sculpture from anywhere in the world. Recent application of new analytical techniques has led to the discovery of new imagery on its surface, and has pushed the date of the piece back to the earliest Holocene. The results of these recent analyses are placed here in the context of local and extra-local traditions of comparable prehistoric art. This discussion highlights the unique nature of the find and its significance for appreciating the complex symbolic world of Early Holocene hunter-gatherers.

source:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...0267E48B78362A


This 11,000-year-old statue unearthed in Siberia may reveal ancient views of taboos and demons



Carved markings cover both front and back of the Shigir Idol, which was originally 5 meters tall. (Top to bottom) TOLMACHEV V. Y./WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; SVERDLOVSK REGIONAL MUSEUM
This 11,000-year-old statue unearthed in Siberia may reveal ancient views of taboos and demons
By Andrew CurryApr. 25, 2018 , 7:00 AM
In 1894, gold prospectors digging up a peat bog near the Russian city of Yekaterinburg unearthed something bizarre: a carved wooden idol 5 meters long. Carefully smoothed into a plank, the piece was covered front and back with recognizable human faces and hands, along with zigzag lines and other mysterious details. It also had a recognizably human head, with its mouth open in an “o.” For more than a century, the statue was displayed as a curiosity in a Yekaterinburg museum, assumed to be at most a few thousand years old.
This week, a paper published in the journal Antiquity argues that the statue was crafted from a single larchwood log 11,600 years ago, making it one of the world’s oldest examples of monumental art. In age and appearance although not material, the authors write, the so-called Shigir Idol resembles the stone sculptures of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, which are often cited as the first monumental ritual structures. Both monuments represent a leap beyond the naturalistic images of the ice age.
The idol also shows that large-scale, complex art emerged in more than one place—and that it was the handiwork of hunter-gatherers and not, as was once assumed, of later farming societies. “We have to conclude hunter-gatherers had complex ritual and expression of ideas. Ritual doesn’t start with farming, but with hunter-gatherers,” says Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany and a co-author of the paper.
The first radiocarbon dating of the idol, in the 1990s, yielded a startlingly early date: 9800 years old. But many scholars rejected the result as implausibly old. They argued that hunter-gatherers couldn’t have produced such a large sculpture, nor have had the complex symbolic imagination to decorate it.
New samples were taken in 2014. At a 2015 press conference in Yekaterinburg, team members announced (before the results were peer reviewed), that these samples revealed even older dates, moving the age of the sculpture back 1500 years, to a time when the world was still transitioning out of the last ice age.
The new dates come from samples taken from the core of the log, uncontaminated by earlier efforts to conserve the wood. “The further you go inside, the older [the date] becomes—it’s very indicative some sort of preservative or glue was used” after discovery, says Olaf Jöris, an archaeologist at the Monrepos Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution in Neuwied, Germany, who wasn’t involved with the study. An antler carving discovered near the original find spot in the 19th century yielded similar dates, adding credibility to the result.
The date places the statue at a time when forests were spreading across a warmer, postglacial Eurasia. As the landscape changed, art did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the unfamiliar forest environments they were navigating, says Peter Vang Petersen, an archaeologist at The National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen who was not involved with the study. “Figurative art in the Paleolithic and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock all stop at the end of the ice age. From then on, you have very stylized patterns that are hard to interpret,” Petersen says. “They’re still hunters, but they had another view of the world.”
At a conference in Yekaterinburg last year, experts debated the meaning of the Shigir symbols, comparing them to other art from the period and more recent ethnographic examples. The most similar finds from that time are those at Göbekli, more than 2500 kilometers away, where hunter-gatherers gathered for rituals and carved similar stylized animals on stone pillars more than 5 meters high.
Terberger sees a more recent parallel: the totem poles of the Pacific Northwest, meant to honor gods or venerate ancestors. Co-author and archaeologist Mikhail Zhilin of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow says the idol might depict local forest spirits or demons. Petersen suggests that the zigzag carvings could be a kind of “Keep out!” sign intended to mark a dangerous or taboo space.
The society that carved the idol is starting to come out of the shadows. Equipped with pumps and special equipment, Zhilin has returned to Shigir and another bog site about 50 kilometers away to excavate finds buried several meters deep in the waterlogged soil. He and his team have found hundreds of small bone points and daggers from the same time period, along with elk antlers carved with animal faces.
They’ve also found ample evidence of prehistoric carpentry: stone adzes, other woodworking tools, and even part of a pine log smoothed with an adze. “They knew how to work wood perfectly,” Zhilin says. The idol is a reminder that stone wasn’t the only material people in the past used to make art and monuments—just the one most likely to survive, possibly skewing our understanding of prehistory. “Wood normally doesn’t last,” Terberger says. “I expect there were many more of these and they’re not preserved.”

source:
Science
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/...oos-and-demons