"Kostenki" is a museum-preserve. History of occurrence

"Kostenki" is an archaeological museum-preserve. It is known all over the world for a complex of ancient Stone Age sites. For more than 130 years, scientific research has been conducted here.

"Kostenki" is a museum-preserve. Location

An ancient village, located 40 kilometers south of Voronezh, is called Kostenki. In the territory of this inhabited locality at different times, more than 26 sites of the most ancient primitive people of the Stone Age were discovered and explored.

The museum received its name from the name of the village. It is located in the territories with. Kostenki and with. Borshchevo.

25 guard zones with monuments of the Stone Age, the total area of which is about 9 hectares, unites the Kostenki museum-reserve . The Voronezh region has an amazing and unique historical landmark, which is known all over the world. This place has a beautiful unofficial name - "pearl of the world Paleolithic".

Creating a museum

The idea of creating such a wonderful museum belongs to A.N. Rogachev - a famous Soviet archaeologist. Have built it at the expense of local Voronezh authorities. The excavation and conservation of the monument was carried out by the expedition of the Leningrad Regional Department of the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, headed by A.N. Rogachev.

Then they created this temporary exhibition. In 1983, a museum was opened, then still a branch of the Voronezh Museum of Local History.

And in 1991 this branch was separated from the main museum of local lore and became a museum-preserve. And he included not only the main museum over one of the parking lots ("Kostenki-11"), but all the existing monuments (the Upper Paleolithic) of the Kostenkovsko-Borshchevsky district, as well as the Slavic settlement - Borshchevsky. Thus, the state archaeological museum-reserve "Kostenki" was formed. The main purpose of its creation is the protection, study and popularization of Upper Paleolithic sites.

Finds in ancient sites

All parking lots have their own numbers. In the course of the latest works on the study of ancient sites ("Kostenki-14", 12), sensational findings were discovered that definitely change the views on primitive history.

At the parking lot "Kostenki-14" in 2000, the oldest decorations on the territory of Europe (Eastern) were found - prominki with ornamentation, which are made of tubular bird bones, pendants from shells. They were discovered in a layer of volcanic ash brought to the Russian plain from Italy over 38 thousand years ago.

These ancient finds (jewelry and the remains of settlements), it is in the ashes, suggest that this settlement ceased to exist in the period of the global catastrophe that occurred in the territory of Europe in that era.

In 2001, there was also found a whole skeleton of a still very young mammoth and even the skull of this animal (it is usually badly preserved). For the territories of Siberia this is a normal phenomenon. However, everything happened in Kostenki. Here previously archaeologists usually found only individual bones of mammoths. In ancient times people brought them to their parking lots for household needs.

It turns out that the mammoth found here either fell into a karst funnel, or it was dragged into a swamp. In the same year, the head from a figurine from a human figure, made of mammoth tusk (age - 37 thousand years) was still found. It became a world sensation, as for today this find is the oldest sculptural work (a human statue) in the Paleolithic of Europe.

Age

Prior to this discovery, the age of the sculptural images was determined approximately at the level of 32 thousand years. It turns out that they are more than 10 thousand years old.

Also according to the analysis in 2002 of the American laboratory, the age of "Kostenok-12" (the oldest lower cultural layer) is up to 50 thousand years (instead of 40 thousand) for the Upper Paleolithic.

"Kostenki" (museum-reserve) will be replenished for a long time with the most ancient historical facts of life of people of that curious era. Most of the history of these places is still under water and is waiting for its researchers.

How did it all start?

In 1979, the first parking lot was opened. It represents a man's dwelling from the stone age. It was built about 20,000 years ago from the bones of a mammoth. This ancient house consists of 570 mammoth bones. The size of the dwelling is 9 meters in diameter. It is surrounded by pantry in the form of pits. For the first time it was discovered by the local resident II. Protopov (building a cellar) in 1949.

Now this unique house is right inside the building of the museum itself in the same place and almost in the same condition as it was when it was first seen by that local resident. A lot of amazing can be presented to its visitors "Kostenki", a museum-reserve.

A lot of amazing legends were born because people found huge, unthinkable bones of mammoths (they had never seen such animals).
One of them says that under the earth lives a huge beast that does not appear in public. And from the words "ma" - "earth", "mut" - "mole" people began to call it "mamut".

Today more than 60 settlements are opened on this territory, the age of which is between 45 and 15 thousand years.

"Kostenki" (museum-reserve) has a huge number of different ancient exhibits. It exhibits the oldest tools, statuettes of women ("Paleolithic Venus"), a variety of household items. And the figures for some reason, for the most part, were cut out in the form of pregnant women. They had a symbol - a continuation of life.

All this is priceless and the only evidence of the longest period in the cultural development of mankind on Earth.