This is my entry to the Pinmapple If I had $1000 Contest
Hello, today I would like to continue the story about my trip to the beautiful Boysun. My previous post was about the first day of the trip to Daroi Kalon canyon.
The next day it was planned to visit the Teshik-Tash grotto. In general, it was for this grotto that I started this trip. As I have already said many times, during the quarantine I got hooked on the lectures of the Russian popularizer of science Stanislav Drobyshevsky and decided to not only to walk around beautiful places, but also to learn something new from the history of the peoples inhabiting modern Uzbekistan. Moreover, Uzbekistan is very rich in historical and archaeological places of all eras.
I vaguely remembered Teshik-Tash from school history lessons. True, when I studied, it was believed that the skeleton of a Neanderthal boy was found there, and only much later it turned out that it was a girl. Anyway, it was believed that the Neanderthals were our direct ancestors, and not a parallel branch of humanity. Only relatively recently it turned out that they are our "cousins" and not "grandfathers."
But back to our trip. Despite the early rise and "barracks" accommodation conditions, I slept well and rested. I woke up earlier than everyone else and managed to complete the morning exercise while my other companions were still asleep. While waiting for breakfast, I went outside to breathe the cold air.
After breakfast, we got into two cars and set off towards the Machay village.
Our way lay through the Derbent gorge and Daroi Kalon. And clouds swirled above them. Once again, we were glad that we managed to go out the day before the rain.
You may have seen pictures of this village in one of my previous posts. Choraka jokingly said that the name Machay comes from the Uzbek words: "Ma, choy!" - literally: "Here, have a tea!" But I think that experts in toponymy will not agree with him.
According to the trip plan, in Machay we all had to plunge into one soviet off-road vehicle UAZ and then drive on to the grotto. Together with the guide and Choraka there were 8 people and I strongly doubted that a small UAZ would be able to accommodate such a number of people. But I was mistaken, we fit there. And not only us, but also things and food for a picnic.
We began to climb up the complete off-road. The UAZ was jumping on the stones like a playful goat and in order not to fall out, I grabbed the handrails with all my might. Plus, I was sitting at the very end of the car, far from the windows and had no idea where we were going. Therefore, unfortunately, I could not capture this path in photographs.
And now after about an hour (and for me about an eternity), the UAZ, roaring strained, drove onto the slope of one of the mountains and we unloaded from the car.
We came to the edge of the mountain and saw the purpose of our trip - on the slope of the opposite mountain there was an entrance to the same Teshik-Tash.
I didn't notice him right away, so I will duplicate the photo with a hint. We had to go down into the gorge, pass it and then go up.
Going down we went along the gorge. Jumping from stone to stone, I thought about what a powerful stream rushes here in the spring, easily rolling over such huge boulders ...
And I thought about how stubborn these Neanderthals were, every day climbing these rocks and dragging the carcasses of animals on them. Well, okay, if not every day, but quite often.
This is confirmed by the finds of archaeologists. And in the grotto itself and immediately below it, many bones of wild horses, mountain goats, bears and other smaller animals were found. In addition, numerous stone products were found here (arrowheads, choppers, scrapers and other similar utensils).
After about an hour and a half, we finally reached the Teshik-Tash grotto. In general, "Teshik-Tash" is translated from the Uzbek language as "Leaky stone" or "Hole in the stone". There is an opening in the vault of the grotto that serves as a natural skylight.
By the way, when I was preparing this post, I read on the Internet that there is a belief that if you lead a child through this hole, he will be healed from any ailment. And this attracts the attention of hundreds of pilgrims every day. Well, I don’t know, something hundreds of pilgrims were not observed that day. And if a child is able to climb into Teshik-Tash, and then climb up the grotto and crawl through the hole, then he is not so ill ...
So, we climbed inside the grotto and the guide showed us a stone under which we found the remains of a Neanderthal child of 8-9 years old. His skull is the best preserved. By the way, it is quite large - 1490 cubic meters, which is more than that of modern children. The age of the bones was determined as 38-40 thousand years. Like all Neanderthals, the child was short, but with powerful shoulders and strong arms. In general, that's why they decided that it was a boy (oh, chauvinists!). Only recently have scientists been able to establish that this is a girl.
The skeleton was surrounded by bones and horns of mountain goats dug in around the perimeter. Which, by the way, is very curious - the Neanderthals who lived in Europe usually put the deceased in an embryo position and laid their heads deep into the cave. In general, in the process of preparing this post, I learned a lot about the Neanderthals and I will tell you - they were curious guys. For example, they knew the basics of medicine and used medicinal herbs, removed caries and treated teeth with beeswax, boiled resin in closed containers, so that they could then use it to attach stone points to spears. And the find in Teshik-Tash shows that they already had some rituals, which indicates the presence of a developed intellect and abstract thinking ...
Below is a photo of Soviet archaeologist A.P. Okladnikov with a skull and a reconstruction of that same Neanderthal girl. In fairness, it should be noted that the excavations were carried out not only by A. Okladnikov, but together withother soviet archaeologists N. Sinelkov and M. Gremyatsky. For a long time it was believed that Teshik-Tash is the most eastern site of the Neanderthals in the world.
Photo from the web-site Mytashkent.uz
Climbing the grotto, I found that some of the stones were literally rubbed to a shine. But by whom? Neanderthals? Archaeologists? Or those hundreds of mythical pilgrims who come here every day? Riddle.
After taking pictures and listening to a short lecture about Neanderthals, we set off on the way back.
On the way, I saw on some stones a kind of honeycomb. However, after some thought, I decided that it was just such a dry clay applied by streams of water.
On the way, we met a company of people eating tandoor-gusht. Maybe they are the pilgrims? But something is unlikely - firstly, there were no ill children among them. And, secondly, they just sat, relaxed and enjoyed the views and apparently did not even think about climbing into Teshik-Tash.
Well, since it was already lunchtime, we also decided to have a snack - we settled under one of the few trees and Choraka cooked us delicious fried potatoes with meat.
After dinner, we set off on the way back. Since most of the group members were in Boysun for the first time, we decided to stop and walk the Derbent Gorge. Although I was here for the third time, I also could not refuse.
On the way, we came across a flock of sheep and walked through it. You can see a short video below. By the way, this is not the largest flock.
In the last post, I mentioned that the girl's skeleton is kept in the Hermitage in Saint-Petersburg. So our guide told us, but I could not find confirmation of this on the Internet, so I can only believe the guide :).
Soon, after leaving the gorge, it got dark and we went non-stop to Choraka's house to wash and have dinner before leaving. It was a busy two days and on the train I fell asleep almost instantly.
This week I have planned to climb the mountain with the interesting name Diplomat. Although it is not very high - about 2500m, but the climb is almost one and a half thousand meters and length more than 20 km. So Sunday will be intense. There are plans for the next weekend, but I won't talk about them so as not to jinx them :).
!pinmapple 37.965041 lat 67.159620 long Visit the Neanderthals - Teshik-Tash grotto. Again Boysun ... (part two), Uzbekistan d3scr