Probably, many people know that the lands of Russia in the past were the arena of fierce battles. This is the battle on Lake Peipus or Lake Peipus, where in 1242 the warriors of Prince Alexander defeated the Teutonic knights, and the Kulikovo field, where in 1380 Russian soldiers repelled the invasion of Khan Mamai, and many, many other places. But what is left for us in the places of these battles? Nothing!!! In general, archaeologists did not find anything on the lake. So few were found on the Kulikovo field that many people doubt at all whether this battle was there. But there is one place in Russia that few people know about, even in our country, and even more so abroad. But there are so many archaeological finds here that give an idea of what a tough battle has flared up on this piece of land so much that they literally lie underfoot. A huge moat is still visible there, the ramparts surrounding the ancient settlement have been preserved, and even … charred grain in the cellars of ancient houses! This place is called Zolotarevskoe settlement!
You can't act rashly here …
Past the church and to the right …
Let's say that you come to the provincial city of Penza, about which it is known that it was founded in 1663 by the decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Quiet, and it is connected with the history of the Russian state in the way that a real "God-saved city" can be connected with it, even if by the standards of our history and not very old. There are a lot of interesting things in the city, as, of course, in many cities of our country, however, if you decide to leave its borders and leave the city, then you can see a truly unique place, namely - Zolotarevskoe settlement, that is, not the settlement itself, of course, but what is left of him today.
To get there, you just need to take a shuttle gazelle near the market and not worry about anything, and if you go by car, you will first have to follow the road leading to the village of Akhuny, and after passing by a beautiful wooden church, turn off right. Well, and there everything goes and goes, without turning anywhere, about 30 km. Then the arrow-pointer will inform you that you have reached the desired place, but you do not need to call into Zolotarevka itself. Before reaching 200 meters, you should turn left, onto a forest road and drive along it for three kilometers. There you will also see a sign-board indicating that you have reached the Zolotarevskoye Settlement Reserve, so it is not difficult to find this place. In addition, the inhabitants of this village - if you still pass the required turn and get into Zolotarevka itself - they will always willingly show you the way. A shield with the inscription that Zolotarevskoye settlement is in front of you will show you where to move on, after which the most interesting will begin. First, you will have to go down to the very bottom of a deep ravine overgrown with forest, where, however, there is a kind of staircase with a railing. After descending into a ravine - and in fact it is not a ravine, but a ditch that surrounded the settlement! - there will be an ascent along the path upward, and it is there that you will find yourself already inside the settlement itself, but not from the "front", but from its "back" entrance. It was here, on a sharp cape, which was formed by two ravines, in ancient times, undoubtedly, there was an entrance to it. But they used it, most likely, to fetch water, or wash clothes here, or there was something like a "boat station" or a pier of its inhabitants, since at that time both of these ravines were filled to the brim with water.
Passage tower of the main gate. Reconstruction.
However, these were not ravines, but wide and deep ditches. And the small rampart that goes from the entrance to the right and left along the edge of these ravines is nothing more than a rampart that once stood here, and a wall with towers rose on it, but only this "elevation" remained from time to time, and pits that are visible here and there, these are traces of archaeological excavations! Through the territory of the settlement you will be led by a "road" made of solid wooden blocks and you just need to be glad for those who came up with it and who built it here. In several places one can see "ancient log cabins", which make it possible to imagine the true dimensions of the houses of that time, and to draw a logical conclusion - that they were very small, and that our ancestors, who lived in such settlements, could not help but suffer from overcrowding. After going around the entire territory of the settlement, you will eventually come to its main rampart, which runs across the entire cape from one moat to another. It is impossible not to notice that this shaft really … looks like a shaft! It is known that for centuries any embankment is lowered, that both rain and wind do it constantly, and, all the same, this embankment is much higher than the one with which this settlement was surrounded from the side of the ditch that surrounded it! There is an opening in it for a gate, then again a deep ditch, and behind it a forest begins, and there is nothing interesting, except for … the small holes in front of it in a checkerboard pattern, there is nothing there. These pits are also very small, and these are once dug here "wolf pits", which were much larger, and besides, they also had a sharp stake at the bottom to finish off anyone who got there! It's just that they were much larger before.
Gate layout.
What kind of people lived here?
When you stand here in the middle of the forest, listening to the trees rustling around, then you involuntarily come across some strange feeling. After all, once here everything was completely different: there were fields on which the inhabitants of the settlement grew rye and barley (charred grain was found in pits in the place of burnt huts!) And then there were meadows where rams and cows grazed. People sat on benches near their small and very cramped huts and gossiped, made simple tools, sewed clothes, and then loved them on heated stoves. Men took turns carrying out patrols on the towers and … from all this there were only pits, and earthy ramparts overgrown with grass!
This is how one of the residential buildings of the Zolotarevskoye settlement could look like.
We more or less know who lived in this settlement. Back in the 60s of the twentieth century, archaeologists discovered traces of a fortress burned by the Mongols. But the real scale of the tragedy that unfolded here among the Sura steppes somewhere around 1236 became clear only today, when there were a lot of finds, and they were able to tell historians about a lot. And as always happens, there was such a person who found out about this settlement, if not all, then a lot. This is Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Gennady Nikolaevich Belybkin, who has been digging it for many seasons together with students-historians of Penza State University.
During the excavations, a lot of details of weapons were found: these are arrowheads, and the remains of sabers, and military decorations, and details of horse harness.
They also found many human skeletons: bones with arrowheads sticking out of them, skulls with chopped wounds. They even found the remains of a warrior with a mace in his hand. So everything indicates that the Zolotarevskoye settlement is a place of battle, and not at all a burial place, that it is a huge battlefield, where more than a thousand arrowheads were found alone! “To make you understand the scale of the battle,” says Gennady Belorybkin, “I will give you an example. This territory at the beginning of the XIII century was part of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria. So, all over the Volga Bulgaria, perhaps, there are several hundreds of arrowheads found over many years of archaeological research. And here in one place there are more than a thousand! At the site of the massacre, we also found a huge number of fragments of sabers - the main weapon of that time. Such a number of parts of saber weapons, even in the whole of Ancient Russia, probably will not be typed."
A variety of arrowheads. As you can see, there are both armor-piercing arrows and broad-bladed arrowheads for shooting at horses and unarmored opponents.
It is well known that Batu first defeated the Volga Bulgaria, and only then moved to Russia, and before that he was camped between Ryazan and the Volga. The annals mention that this camp was located on the Nuzla River or near the city of Onuz. But not far from Zolotarevka there is the so-called Neklyudovskoe settlement, and it is located just on the Uza River. Uza and Onuza are very close in sound, and it can be assumed that this was where Batu stood with his army. At the Neklyudovskoye settlement, they also found a lot of things that belonged to the Mongols, who were smashing the surrounding settlements from here. The Persian scientist-encyclopedist Rashid-ad-Din wrote that Batu Khan at that time was waging a war with the Moksha and Burtas tribes. But Moksha, Burtases, and Bulgars lived in this area. That is why, according to Professor Belorybkin, the version that the battle in the area of the Zolotarevsky settlement took place in 1237 is very plausible. It can also be considered that it happened in late autumn, and this is what it proves. After all, metal armor, and iron weapons, and iron arrowheads were very valuable, and after the battle they were always collected by the winners. But in this case, all this remained in the field and among the burnt ruins. What is the reason for such extravagance?
The layout of the settlement. View from the side of the "nose" - where you can climb in the hill fort from the side of the ravine.
Probably, after the battle, a heavy snowfall began, and snow covered the battlefield and what remained of the destroyed settlement. And what if the snow was wet, but then frost hit at night and covered everything with an ice crust. Therefore, the winners left it all here and moved on. Then the next year the land was densely overgrown with weeds, young forest growth appeared, the wind applied dust and fallen leaves, and those who came here years later found nothing but the pitiful remnants of ramparts and deep ditches-ravines. However, local villagers dug here and even found grivnas made of silver and jewelry made of gold, although they were not at all interested in "rusty pieces of iron" and they threw them away!
The layout of the settlement. View from the floor side. Three rings of walls and trapping pits in front of the fortification are clearly visible.
So for today's archaeologists this settlement near Penza is a "real paradise", while all other places of the great battles of our Middle Ages are just … "waterless desert"!
Russian Pompeii …
And there are really many finds here, and they lay very close to the surface of the earth. Professor Belorybkin did not exaggerate anything here. As soon as they started to dig regularly, “black archeologists” began to visit it, and somehow I even ran into a friend on the hillfort myself. There are two people walking around in masks with a metal detector … Then we asked them to show what we had found. In two hours - several arrowheads, two crosshairs from sabers, a hryvnia cut obliquely … And these are the finds of only one such "group" in two hours! But the students also dug! For example, they found a golden mask (albeit a very small one!), Which has long become a symbol of the Zolotarevskoye settlement both among our Russian and foreign historians. This overlay depicts a human beast with a “tree” or horns on his head. Most likely, it was a symbol of power or an amulet, because the lion is the "king of beasts", and for a long time.
The famous Zolotarevskaya mask of the "horned man".
For me, though, the most surprising are the three arrowheads that HAVE NOT SEEN ANYWHERE ELSE! The first tip is rather large and rough in appearance. For some reason, its surface is covered with an oblique notch, similar to that of old files, but not typical for arrows, and there are still clear traces of gilding on it. Why is this? That it was some significant, perhaps ritual arrowhead? Or a badge of distinction? But there are no analogues, therefore nothing can be said!
Mongol-Tatar arrowheads of various types.
The second tip, on the other hand, is small, forged of iron with a petiole, but on it is made a tiny whistle the size of a pea and with two holes. And now it is forged with a tip at the same time! And how did they do it? Common whistles were made of bone or burnt clay. They were put on the shaft of an arrow, and in flight they whistled disgustingly. But how to forge a hollow ball at the same time with a petiole is still not clear. Casting it from bronze would not have been difficult, but how to forge it? Place a "pea" of clay inside? So after all, when forging it, you will certainly break it! Copper and bronze - metals are too soft to be bound with hot iron, well, it was impossible to cast such a tip, since then they did not know how to get the temperature necessary to obtain cast iron, and if someone knew how, did it have What is the point of starting a complex technological process to mold a tiny arrowhead? Such tips are also not found anywhere else, which means that the technology of their manufacture was completely unique.
The plan of the fortress on the territory of the reserve.
For some reason, the third tip is cut to half, and the resulting tips are for some reason divorced in both directions at right angles. It is impossible to kill with such a tip! And hunting with him is stupid, but for some reason they did it? And at the Zolotarevskoye settlement, Professor Belorybkin and his students found a lot of strange iron clamps. It looks like a plate with curved and twisted ends, in which rings are inserted. One would think that this is such a decoration. But then they found a clamp made of … a knife. So this is clearly a household item. And then, probably, every child knew what he was needed for. But neither our specialists nor the border officials can understand what it is and why, although the subject looks very simple!
The Russian warrior is the defender of Zolotarevka.
All this can be seen in the exposition of the museum in the very village of Zolotarevka. Well, and then, a little further away from the settlement itself, which will be left intact, there is an idea to build exactly the same copy of this entire ancient settlement and turn it into a popular tourist complex. Its project is already ready and, albeit slowly, but little by little, is being implemented. Well, what significance is the place of the Zolotarevskaya battle for history, "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" wrote in 2004, when it reported that "the Penza archaeologist Professor Gennady Belorybkin found their Pompeii in Russia" and this, for all the arrogance of this phrase, is true!
This arrowhead was allegedly used during the storming of the city. It looks impressive, but here's how it comes down to it … Exposition of the Penza Museum of Local Lore.
