The unsolved mysteries of Siberia, a place full of secrets
Siberia covers an area of almost 13 million km². Ancient legends and strange findings make it one of the most mysterious places on planet Earth. Here is a roundup of the secrets kept in the “sleeping land”.
Siberia is a vast region of Russia that covers nearly all of Northern Asia and includes a large part of the Eurasian steppe.
It stretches eastward from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Arctic Ocean south to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders with Mongolia and China.
Siberia, whose name means "sleeping land," is the subject of numerous legends, born from the discovery of various ancient tombs, enigmatic settlements, and strange artifacts, a series of ancient and unresolved mysteries that surround this region of planet Earth.
In this article I propose some of the most well-known enigmas of Siberia, some of which have already been covered in previous articles published on this journal.
1. The metal domes (Olgius)
The Republic of Yakutia (also known as Yakutia or Sakha), is located in northeastern Russia (Siberia), south of the Arctic tundra in Russia and is known as the coldest inhabited place on planet Earth.
The ancient name of this area is Uliuiu Cherkechekh, which translates as the Valley of Death, because, for the locals, those who venture into this area can hardly come out alive. According to local inhabitants, the entire area is filled with strange and unnatural metal structures shaped like domes, located deep in the permafrost and detectable on the surface due to their color visibly contrasting with the natural vegetation.
Lone nomadic hunters have described the domes as large iron houses (kheldyu) implanted in the permanently frozen ground. They appear to be made of a metal similar to copper in appearance but, unlike copper, cannot be scratched or damaged. No one has ever been able to cut even a fragment.
Some of these boilers – their shape reminiscent of an upside-down pot – have an opening on the top, with a spiral staircase leading to a circular corridor with several inner chambers. Despite the external temperatures of -40 degrees, hunters claim that the interiors are pleasantly warm.
Russian ufologists have proposed two theories about the domes in the Valley of Death. According to the first hypothesis, the domes could be the wreckage of an ancient spaceship destroyed in an accident or an aerial battle.
The second hypothesis, put forward by Russian researcher Valery Uvarov and decidedly more intriguing, suggests that the mysterious domes of Siberia could be an ancient weapon built by extraterrestrials to protect our planet from potential external threats, such as meteorites or other hostile aliens.
2. The mysterious Patomskiy crater
The mysterious Patomskiy crater, also known as the 'eagle's nest,' was discovered 65 years ago by a Russian geologist in the Irkutsk region of Siberia. The cone is 80 meters high from the lowest point of its base and measures about 150 meters in diameter. It is thought that the crater was created about 250 years ago, although the estimates proposed by actual geologists are very divergent.
The origin of the Patomskiy crater has baffled scientists for decades, who have put forward a multitude of theories. Most believe that the eagle's nest is the result of a meteoritic impact, although no trace of material has been found to support this theory.
Other theories have also been proposed, including a secret nuclear explosion, or the leftover material from a gulag mine for forced labor, but no historical source or logic confirms the existence of a forced labor camp in such a remote area of Siberia. It cannot be a volcano either, as the region does not experience similar phenomena.
3. The Dashka Stone
Is it possible that advanced civilizations existed in humanity's past, only to mysteriously disappear into the folds of history?
Scientists from Bashkir State University are convinced that the answer to this question is decidedly affirmative, and the evidence can be found on a large stone slab discovered in 1999, on which a three-dimensional map created with unknown technology is impressed.
The stone slab appears to present three topographical levels, remarkably similar to the unique geography of a specific area of the Ural Mountains. The top layer consists of a layer of vitrified calcium, apparently intended to protect the underlying layers from wear.
Perhaps the most surprising feature of this mysterious relief map is that the tests used to date the rock have returned an age of 120 million years.
4. The Megaliths of Gornaya Shoria
A new remarkable megalithic site has been identified in southern Siberia, on Mount Shoria, near Gornaya Shoria.
The site features a series of enormous blocks apparently made of granite, which seem to have been flattened, shaped, and fitted together in a 'cyclopean' manner.
These are truly huge blocks, perhaps too large to have been positioned by normal human beings. For this reason, some think that it might be a bizarre trick of nature that has shaped the blocks to make them appear artificial.
After the discovery was publicized, some have hypothesized that the Gornaya Shoria site may be evidence of an ancient lost civilization capable of incredible engineering feats that, despite our modern technology, we would not be able to replicate.
5. The Enigma of Arkaim
Arkaim (in Russian) is considered by some to be the most important and enigmatic archaeological site in northern Europe. The site is controversial and is sometimes referred to as Russia's Stonehenge. It is located on the outskirts of the Chelyabinsk region in the southern Urals, just north of the border with Kazakhstan.
The site is generally dated to the 17th century BC, although earlier dates up to 2000 BC have been proposed. The settlement belonged to the Sintashta-Petrovka culture, an ancient Bronze Age culture that lived in the northern part of the Eurasian steppe, on the border between Eastern Europe and Central Asia, between 2100 and 1800 BC.
The Arkaim settlement covers an area of 20,000 square meters. Around the walls of Arkaim, there were arable fields irrigated through a system of canals. It consists of two circles of dwellings separated by a street, with a central square.
Arkaim is just one example of the rich archaeological collection hidden within Russian territory. Unfortunately, much of it has been lost due to industrial progress, such as the site of Sarkel, a stone fortress from 830 BC, which was destroyed by the Soviet government in 1952 to make way for the construction of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir.
6. The Horrific Tale of Dyatlov Pass
In mid-January 1959, a group of young skiers embarked on an expedition on Kholat Syakhl, one of the northern Ural mountains, commonly known as the "Dead Mountain."
Their goal was to reach the slopes of Otorten on foot. All members of the expedition had experience in both long ski treks and mountain expeditions.
The group had agreed that as soon as they returned to Vizhay, Dyatlov would communicate via telegraph with their sports association. The hikers had estimated that this would happen no later than February 12. When that day passed, no one reacted to the lack of communication, as a delay of a few days in such expeditions was quite normal.
When the young hikers' camp was found on February 26, the rescuers were confronted with a disturbing scene: the tent seemed structurally intact, but the fabric appeared to have been torn from the inside, as if it had been damaged by the occupants fleeing.
Investigators wondered what "beast" could have frightened them to the point of abandoning their clothes despite the freezing cold and tearing the skin from their hands in a desperate attempt to escape. The fact that there were no obvious traces of animals, coupled with the fact that the bodies were virtually intact, only increased the investigators' dismay.
7. The Tunguska Event
The origin of the famous meteorite that exploded over Tunguska is still a source of heated debate today. Setting aside the ufological hypothesis and accepting that the event was caused by a meteorite impact, the legitimate question is: where did it come from?
The sound of the explosion was heard a thousand kilometers away. At 500 kilometers, some witnesses claimed to have heard a dull explosion and seen a cloud of smoke rising on the horizon.
At 65 kilometers, the witness Semen Semenov recounted initially seeing the sky split in two, a great fire covering the forest, and then noticed that the sky had closed up, heard a loud boom, and felt lifted and moved several meters away.
The shockwave nearly derailed some trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway 600 km from the impact point. Based on the data collected, it is believed that the power of the explosion was between 10 and 15 megatons (40-60 petajoules). Other effects were even felt in London, where, at that moment, although it was midnight, the sky was so bright and illuminated that one could read a newspaper without artificial light.
8. Ice Circles on Lake Baikal
In April 2009, astronauts aboard the International Space Station, using the onboard MODIS instrument, photographed two circles that appeared on Lake Baikal in Siberia, leaving experts around the world astonished.
According to scientific hypotheses, the ice circles were caused by the release of methane gas from the bottom of the Siberian lake. Yet, it cannot be overlooked that Lake Baikal has always been the setting for stories related to UFOs and strange accounts reported in the military dossiers of the Soviet army that emerged after the opening of sealed archives.
There are accounts from some fishermen who claim to have seen very intense lights rising from the bottom of the lake and then gliding low over the surface. In a 1982 report, a strange event involving a group of military divers on a training mission at the bottom of the Siberian lake is described.
During the mission, the divers encountered a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silver suits. The military tried to capture the aliens but three of the seven men died while the other four were seriously injured. Some researchers and ufologists are convinced that there is a secret alien base at the bottom of Lake Baikal, from which extraterrestrials would monitor human activity. "I believe that the hypothesis of alien underwater bases should not be dismissed," states Vladmir Azhazha.
We all remember Vladmir Putin's 2009 "excursion" to the bottom of Lake Baikal aboard his mini-submarine. According to newspapers at the time, the official reason for the expedition was to observe particular gas hydrate crystals, strategically essential for Russia's energy policy. Hmm…
