Even ancient Greek philosophers puzzled over the mystery of fossils. They found fossilized sea shells high in the mountains and guessed that they were once living creatures. This means, the philosophers assumed, this territory was once covered by the sea. Absolutely fair statement! But where did all these fossils come from? How did shells end up embedded in rocks?
Fossils are the remains and imprints of plants and animals that lived on Earth in eras long past. It should be noted, however, that only a tiny fraction of extinct plants and animals turn into fossils. As a rule, their remains are either eaten by other animals or decomposed by fungi and bacteria. Very soon there is absolutely nothing left of them. The shells or hard bony skeletons of living organisms last longer, but eventually they too are destroyed. And only when the remains are buried in the ground very quickly, even before they have time to decompose, do they have a chance to survive and turn into a fossil.

Turning to stone

In order for a dead plant or animal to be quickly buried, it is necessary that a sedimentary layer, for example, sand or silt, form above it. Then his remains are soon deprived of air access and, as a result, do not rot. Over many millions of years, the lower sedimentary layers, under the pressure of the newly formed upper layers, turn into solid rock. The water that seeps into the sedimentary layers contains minerals. Sometimes it washes them out of the sedimentary material itself.
Ultimately, under the weight of the upper sedimentary layers, water is forced out from the lower ones. However, the minerals remain inside and help bind the sedimentary layers together and harden them into rock. These minerals are also deposited in the remains of plants and animals, filling the spaces between their cells, and sometimes even “replacing” their bones or shells. Thus, the remains seem to grow into the stone and remain there for millions of years. After a long time, the collision of continents can squeeze this rock from the bottom of the sea to the surface, and land forms in this place. Then rain, wind, or perhaps the sea will gradually erode the rock, revealing the fossils hidden within.

1. The dead animal sinks to the seabed.
2. Corpse eaters and bacteria soon cleanse his skeleton of flesh.
3. A sedimentary layer forms on top.
4. Dissolved in water minerals the remains of the animal also seep into the mountain family.
5. Water is forced out of the rock and it becomes dense and hard. The minerals contained in the water gradually replace bone matter in the bones.
6. Millions of years later, rock rises from the sea floor and becomes land. Rain, wind or perhaps the sea erodes it over time, revealing hidden fossils within.

Perfect fossils

Some of the best-preserved fossils include insects and other small organisms embedded in amber. Amber is obtained from a sticky resin that oozes from the trunks of some tree species when their integument is damaged. This resin emits a fragrant odor that attracts insects. Sticking to the pei, they find themselves trapped. Then the resin hardens and a solid transparent substance is formed, which reliably protects the remains of the animal from decomposition. As a result, the fragile organisms of ancient insects and spiders found in amber are perfectly preserved. It is even possible to extract genetic material (DNA) from them and subject it to analysis.
Some of the most fragile and elegant fossils are found in rocks associated with coal deposits. Coal is a black, hard rock composed primarily of carbon found in the remains of ancient plants. Its deposits were formed millions of years ago in swampy forests. From time to time, such swampy forests were flooded by the sea, and they were buried under a thick layer of silt. Accumulating quickly, the silt soon hardened and compacted, forming mudstones and shales.
Leaves and stems of plants that grew in those forests are sometimes preserved as coal seams or thin black films of carbon separating layers of shale. In other cases, only imprints of tree bark, leaves or stems of ferns are preserved in rocks. Shales easily split in a horizontal plane, and on the newly exposed surface one can easily identify fossilized imprints of entire branches with leaves.
Even more interesting are the fossils found in so-called concretions. They occur when lime-rich water seeps into the remains of a plant. After the water evaporates, the remains are found inside the limestone rock, and the entire fragile structure of the plant is imprinted in the limestone in great detail.

Dinosaur footprint preserved in rocks near Moenow, Arizona, USA

Traces of the past

It happens that the actual remains of a particular animal are not preserved, but some imprints, such as footprints, remain. Sometimes traces of animals, in literally of this word are preserved in sedimentary rocks, for example, if the imprints they left in the sand are filled with silt, and in this form they are “preserved” for millions of years. In addition to footprints, animals can leave other traces, such as furrows in sediment, when they crawl through mud, eat detritus (organic matter suspended in water), or burrow into the bottom of a lake or sea. These “fossilized traces” not only make it possible to establish the very fact of the presence of a given animal in a given place, but also provide scientists with valuable information about its lifestyle and manner of movement.
Hard-shelled animals, such as trilobites and horseshoe crabs, can leave a wide variety of impressions in soft mud depending on whether they are resting, moving, or feeding. Scientists assigned separate names to many of these tracks because they had no idea what kind of animal made them.
Sometimes the droppings of an animal turn into fossils. It can be preserved so well that scientists use it to determine what the animal ate. Moreover, undigested food is occasionally found in the stomachs of well-preserved animal fossils. For example, in the belly of ichthyosaurs, dolphin-like marine reptiles, sometimes whole fish are found - the remains of a meal that the predator’s body did not have time to digest before death.

Casts and molds
Sometimes water, penetrating into the sediments, completely dissolves the remains of the organism buried in them, and a recess remains in this place, exactly reproducing its former outlines. The result is a fossilized form of the animal (left). Subsequently, the excavation is filled with various minerals, and a fossilized cast is formed with the same outlines as the disappeared animal, but not reproducing its internal structure (right).

Footprints on the stone

Fossilized traces of dinosaurs have provided us with a lot of information about how these animals moved and what kind of lifestyle they led. For example, fossilized footprints of dinosaurs reveal how widely they spread their legs when walking. This, in turn, gives an answer to the question of how the legs were located: on the sides of the body, like in modern lizards, or vertically down, providing the body with more solid support. Moreover, from these tracks you can even determine the speed at which the dinosaur moved.
Scientists also determined which dinosaurs dragged their tails along the ground while walking, and which ones held their tails suspended. In some areas of the United States, fossilized chains of traces of various types of carnivorous (carnivorous) and plant-eating dinosaurs have been preserved. The tracks belonged to many animals moving in the same direction. This means that dinosaurs moved in herds or packs. The size of the prints allows us to judge the number of young animals in a given herd and their location among adult animals during the transition.

A fossil hunter's dream - piles of ammonites and bivalve shells in one place. This typical example post-mortem accumulation: fossils do not occur where animals died. They were once carried away by water currents and dumped in a heap in a completely different place, where they ended up buried under a sedimentary layer. These animals lived on Earth approximately 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period.

Recreating the past

The science that studies fossils is called paleontology, which is Greek for “the study of ancient life.” Unfortunately, recreating pictures of the past with the help of fossils is not nearly as easy as it might seem when looking at the drawings given in this chapter. Indeed, even in those extremely rare cases when the remains of plants and animals are very quickly transported by sedimentary layers and preserved in the form of fossils, they, as a rule, do not remain undisturbed. Rivers and streams can carry them away and dump them in heaps, splitting intact skeletons. In this case, the heavier fragments settle and take a different position than during life, and the lighter ones are washed off with water. Further, floods and landslides often disrupt the protective cover of sedimentary layers that have developed over fossils. Other plants and animals have virtually no chance of being preserved in fossil form, since they live in areas where there is not enough sedimentary material. For example, the likelihood that the remains of forest or savanna inhabitants will be carried into some body of water and buried there under a layer of sand or silt, which will allow them to turn into fossils, is extremely small.
Just as detectives need to know whether a corpse was moved or not, paleontologists need to be sure that the fossilized remains found in a particular place belong to an animal that actually died in that place and in the same position, in how he was found. If this is indeed the case, then such finds in their totality are called a lifetime accumulation. The study of such accumulations makes it possible to determine what animals lived in a given area. Often this makes it possible to judge the nature of their habitat - whether they lived in water or on land, whether the climate here was warm or cold, wet or dry. In addition, much can be learned about the natural environment that existed here in ancient times by studying the rocks characteristic of the area. But again, too often it happens that fossil remains are carried away far from the place where the animal died, and besides, they fall into pieces along the way. Moreover, some terrestrial animals are simply washed out into the sea, which often confuses researchers. Fossil finds that have found their final refuge far from the places where these animals and plants once died are called post-mortem accumulations.

The story of a fossil called Anomalocaris. - a clear illustration of the difficulties that await a scientist trying to restore an extinct animal from the few surviving fragments. Anomalocaris (1) was a large, strange shrimp-like creature that lived in the early Cambrian seas. For many years, scientists came across only isolated fragments of this animal, so different from each other that they were initially mistaken for representatives of completely different biological species. As it turned out later, the original “anomalocaris” (2) was just the head part, “laggania” (3) was the body, and “peitoia” (4) was the mouth of the same animal.

What did they look like when they were alive?

One of the most fascinating activities of paleontologists is assembling a complete fossil from the few surviving fragments. In the case where an extinct animal is unlike any living animal, this is not so simple. In the past, scientists often mistook different parts of the same animal for the remains of different creatures and even gave them different names.
The first paleontologists to study fossils from the 570-million-year-old Burgess Shale rocks of the Canadian Rockies discovered several strange fossil animals. One of the finds looked like a rather unusual tail tip of a small shrimp. It was given the name anomalocaris, which means “strange shrimp.” Another fossil looked like a flattened jellyfish with a hole in the middle and was named pei-tosh. The third fossil, called Laggania, looked like the crushed body of a sea cucumber. Later, paleontologists found the fossilized remains of laggania and peytoia next to each other and came to the conclusion that it was a sponge and a jellyfish sitting on it.
These fossils were then shoved onto the shelves of museum cabinets, forgotten about and only remembered a few years ago. Now a new generation of paleontologists has fished them out of dusty boxes and began to study them again. Scientists noticed that all three types of fossils were often found in rocks nearby. Maybe there is some connection between them? Paleontologists carefully studied many of these finds and came to a startling conclusion: these fossils are nothing more than different body parts of the same animal, truly an extremely “strange shrimp”! Moreover, this animal was perhaps the largest inhabitant of the seas of that era. It looked like a huge legless shrimp up to 66 cm long, with an oval head (tuzoya), two large eyes on stalks and a large round mouth (peytoya) with hard teeth. In front, the “strange shrimp” had a pair of limbs up to 18 cm long for grasping food (anomalocaris). Well, the laggania turned out to be the flattened remains of the body of this animal.

Fossilized remains of a Triassic forest in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, USA. Forests can petrify when they are suddenly covered by the sea. At the same time, the minerals contained in sea ​​water, seep into the wood and crystallize in it, forming hard rock. Sometimes such crystals can be seen in tree trunks with the naked eye: they give the wood a beautiful red or purple hue.

Fossils come to life

If you can read the pages of the stone chronicle, you will discover many interesting facts from the life of the inhabitants of our planet in its distant past. Ammonite shells with characteristic markings (most likely these are the teeth marks of a mosasaurus, a large marine reptile) indicate that they were often attacked by other animals. Traces of rodent teeth on the fossil bones of various mammals indicate that these rodents ate carrion - devouring corpses. The fossilized remains of a sea star were found surrounded by mollusk shells, which it apparently fed on. And lungfish were perfectly preserved in the petrified silt, where they once peacefully dozed in their burrows. They even found baby dinosaurs caught dead just as they were hatching from their eggs. But all these, alas, are very rare finds. Usually, in order to get an idea of ​​the lifestyle of long-extinct animals, scientists have to transfer and extrapolate to them the behavior of related modern animals - their distant descendants.

Fossil hunting equipment. The head of a geological hammer has a special flat edge for breaking off rock samples and a wedge-shaped tip that is pushed into the spaces between the pieces of rock to push them apart. In addition, you can use chisels to work with stone of various sizes. A notepad and compass are useful to record the exact location of the fossil in the rock, as well as the direction of the rocks in the quarry or cliff. A hand-held loupe can help you identify tiny fossils like fish teeth or scales. Some geologists prefer to carry an acid solution with them to extract fragile fossils from rock, but this is still better done in the laboratory, where they usually perform more delicate operations using a variety of needles, tweezers and scrapers. The electrical device presented here is a vibrator, it is used to loosen pieces rock

Fossil Hunt

It's amazing how many different places fossils can be found these days - not just in cliffs and quarries, but also in the stones that make up the walls of city houses, in construction waste and even in your own garden. But all of them are found only in sedimentary rocks - limestone, chalk, sandstone, mudstone, clayey or slate.
To become a good fossil hunter, it is best to seek advice from experienced professionals. Find out if there is a geological society or museum nearby that organizes fossil-hunting expeditions. There they will show you the most promising places to search and explain where fossils are usually found.

An artificially colored x-ray image allows one to see the internal structure of a fossil ammonite. It shows thin walls separating the internal chambers of the shell.

Homework

Like any detective, you will need to find out as much as possible about the “clues” you are hunting for. Visit your local library and find out what types of rocks are found in your area. The library should have maps showing these breeds. What is their age? What fossils do you expect to find in them? Go to the local history museum, see what fossils were found in this area before you. In most cases, you will only come across isolated fossil fragments, and these are much easier to spot if you know what you are looking for in advance.

A geologist extracts fossilized dinosaur bones from a rock using a very fine chisel in Dinosaur National Park, USA.

What the Fossils Say

Environment. Fossils allow us to determine the type environment in which the rock was formed. Climate. From fossils one can judge the nature of the climate of a given area in ancient times. Evolution. Fossils allow us to trace how biological forms have changed over millions of years.
Dating of rocks. Fossils help determine the age of the rocks that contain them, as well as trace the movements of continents.

Safety first

It is extremely important to prepare properly for your fossil hunting trip. Wandering at the foot of a cliff or climbing the walls of a quarry is not a safe activity. First of all, you should obtain the consent of the owners of the area to conduct such research there. They, in turn, will be able to warn you of possible dangers. Quarries and cliffs are generally deserted and unsafe places, and you should never go there alone. When leaving, be sure to leave a note or tell your family where they can find you.
Professional fossil hunters, paleontologists, usually take pieces of rock containing fossils to their laboratory. If the fossils are very fragile or very crumbly, they are covered with a protective layer of plaster or foam before being freed from the rock. In the laboratory, scientists extract their findings from the accompanying rock using dental drills, high-pressure water jets and even acid solutions. Often, before working with a fossil, paleontologists impregnate it with a special chemical to make it stronger. At each stage of the work, they carefully sketch out all the details and take many photographs of both the fossil itself and everything that surrounded it.
Put some kind of solid headgear on your head - say, a motorcycle helmet is quite suitable. Do not start hammering on rock without wearing safety glasses or at least simple glasses: tiny particles flying off the rock at high speed can seriously damage your eyes. Don't try to knock a fossil out of a cliff wall with a hammer. The resulting vibrations can quickly loosen the rock above your head and cause a rockfall. Typically, you will be able to find a lot of fossils in the rocks lying around on the ground.

Your geological reports

A good amateur geologist always keeps detailed records of the work done. It is very important to know exactly when and where you discovered a given fossil. This means that you should not only write down the name of the cliff, quarry, or construction site itself, but also describe the specific location where you found the fossil. Was it in a large piece of rock or in a small one? Did you find it near a cliff or directly in the ground? Were there any other fossils nearby? If yes, which ones? Where were the fossils located in the rock? All this data will help you learn more about the animal's lifestyle and how it died. Try to sketch the place where you found your trophy. This will be easier to do with checkered paper. Of course, you can take a photo of the location, but drawing often allows you to better capture the details of the landscape.
Photographs and drawings will be very helpful if you are unable to take the fossils you find home. In some cases, you can make a plaster cast of the fossil or sculpt a mold from plasticine. Even if a fossil is firmly embedded in rock, it can tell you a lot about the history of the area.
Be sure to bring packing materials to transport your fossils. Large and durable specimens can be wrapped in newsprint and placed in a plastic bag. Small fossils are best placed in a plastic jar, first filled with cotton wool. Make labels for the boxes and for the fossils themselves. Before you know it, you will forget where and when you discovered various exhibits in your collection.

Paleontologists typically coat fossil bones with a layer of plaster to protect them from breaking and cracking during transport to a museum. To do this, bandages are soaked in a plaster solution and wrapped around the fossils or pieces of rock within which they are located.

History of "Claws"

In 1983, English amateur paleontologist William Walker was looking for fossils in one of the clay quarries in Surrey. Suddenly he noticed a large round block of stone, from which a small piece of bone was sticking out. Walker split this block with a hammer, and pieces of a huge claw almost 35 cm long fell out of it. He sent his find to London, to the British Museum of Natural History, where experts very soon realized that they were dealing with an extremely curious specimen - the claw of a carnivorous dinosaur. The museum sent a scientific expedition to this clay quarry, and its members managed to unearth many other bones of the same animal - weighing over two tons in total. The unknown dinosaur was nicknamed "Claws".

How "Claws" were preserved
To protect the bones from drying out and cracking, scientists applied plaster casts to some of them. The rock containing the fossils was carefully removed using special equipment. The bones were then strengthened by soaking them in resin. Finally, replicas of the bones were made from fiberglass and plastic to be sent to other museums.

How to assemble Humpty Dumpty
When scientists assembled a whole skeleton from scattered bones, they realized that they had discovered a completely new species of dinosaur. She was named bari-onyx walkeri. Baryonyx means "heavy claw" in Greek, and the word walkeri was added in honor of the discoverer of Baryonyx, William Walker. Baryonyx reached 9-10 m in length. Apparently, it moved on its hind legs, and its height was approximately 4 m. “Claws” weighed about two tons. Its elongated narrow snout and mouth with many teeth resembled the snout of a modern crocodile; this suggested that Baryonyx ate fish. Fish teeth and scales were found in the dinosaur's stomach. The long claw found, apparently, was on his thumb front paw. It is difficult to say why this claw served Baryonyx - for catching fish? Or maybe he caught her in his mouth, like crocodiles?
The clay pit where "Claws" met its death 124 million years ago was at that time a lake formed in a large river valley; There were many swamps around, overgrown with horsetails and ferns. After the death of Baryonyx, his corpse was washed into the lake, where he was quickly buried under a layer of mud and silt. In the same layers, it was possible to discover the remains of some varieties of herbivorous dinosaurs, including the late Iguanodon. However, Baryonyx is the only species of carnivorous dinosaur known from rocks of this age throughout the globe. 30 years ago, similar bones were found in the Sahara Desert, and dinosaurs related to Baryonyx were probably distributed over a wide area - from modern England to North Africa.

Craft tools

To crack rock and extract fossils from it, you will need a geological hammer (the kind with a large flat end). A set of chisels specifically designed for working with stone will help you remove excess rock from your find. But be extremely careful: you can easily break the fossil itself. Soft rock can be scraped off with an old kitchen knife, but a toothbrush will work well to remove dust and small particles from the fossil.

A paleontologist removes rock debris from a dinosaur vertebra with a diamond-edged dental saw. He will then scrape the remaining rock particles from the fossil with a finer engraving tool.

Continuing the topic:

Imprint in South Africa. It is located near the town of Mpaluzi, close to the Swaziland border. Size: 120 cm long. Video

Many people think that rocks and granites were fossilized or solidified millions of years ago. But there is evidence to the contrary. During the era of human existence, many rocks were in a soft plastic state. Most likely, they were semi-clayey masses. Whether they are of natural origin, whether they are construction compositions of geopolymers or liquid waste from ore mining and processing, is difficult to say without detailed and in-depth analyses. But at present, in appearance, they cannot be distinguished from the truly ancient rocks of the Earth. This evidence is plastic prints of feet and shoes in rocks, on stones. In other words, trail stones:

The clergy or just ordinary people attribute these prints to something divine, calling them: “footprint of Hercules”, “footprint of Christ”, “foot of the Virgin Mary”, “footprint of Buddha”:

Footprint stones with footprints were called differently in different parts of Belarus: Footprint of the Mother of God, Footprint of God Matsi, Footprint of the Mother of God, Foot of the Mother of God. One of the most famous cult boulders is located in Zhirovichi.

Here is a map of where trace stones are located in Belarus:

A trace stone like this was discovered in the Dunadd fortification in Argyll, Scotland.

"Footprints of Buddha" at Tokyo's Kiyomizu Temple

Village of DORBYSHI (Maksyutinskaya volost). The village is located 0.5 km north of the village of Kitskovo, located on the Maksyutino-Rodionovo highway. The trace stone is located in the Andreevs’ garden in the center of the village, 15 meters from a small river flowing from Lake Kitskovskoe.

Trace - depth from 4 to 6 cm.

The oldest monument to the monarchy in Java - dating from around 450 AD. stone in the village of Ciampea. On it are footprints and the inscription: “This is the footprint of King Purnavarman, ruler of the kingdom of Tharumanegara, the great conqueror of the world.”

Here is one of many examples when the church presents “this miracle” as the traces of saints and canonized people in Christianity:

The traces of human feet pressed into the stone, discovered on the territory of the Chersonesus Museum-Reserve (Sevastopol), were attributed by representatives of the Crimean Diocese of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Sevastopol Deanery to the traces of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called himself. The results of forensic and medical examinations say that this is a footprint of a left foot, most likely human, barefoot with five toes, size 38, the estimated height of the person is 162 centimeters. The footprint is pressed into the stone and is not a natural creation.

According to legend, this is the footprint of the Komi-Permyak hero Polyud. Polyudov stone or Polyud - a mountain in the Krasnovishersky district Perm region. Mount Polyud is located 7 km from the city of Krasnovishersk. The height of the mountain is 527 meters above sea level. The mountain is part of the Polyudov Ridge upland.

Not far from the monastery of the Nikolo-Terebenskaya Hermitage in the Tver region

Footprint stone with the footprint of the Virgin Mary

City (park) of Draconov near the village of Chistovodnoye, Lazovsky district, Primorsky Territory

Its dimensions are almost the height of a person - more than 1.5 meters. The stone is located on the path to the radon source.

The trace was found quite recently on Mount Pidan (Livadia Hill)

In 1976, Thomas Andrews' book We Are Not the First was published in London. In it, the author reports that in 1968, a certain William Meister saw in Utah, USA, at the site of a rock fracture, two clear prints... of shoe soles. Wherein rear end the impression with the heel mark is deeper, as it should be in accordance with the distribution of weight when walking

In the small Indian village of Piska Nagri, which is located near the city of Ranchi (Jharkhand state), a team of geologists led by Nitish Priyadarshi is studying fairly large imprints on the stone, which locals consider to be traces of gods descending from the sky.

A hole in a stone, considered to be the footprint of the Apostle Andrew. Discovered in 2012. Coordinates: 44°36"40"N 33°29"7"E (near Sevastopol)

The stone near the village of Lesniki is not the only unique find made in Lidchin. Another trace stone, but smaller in size (about 0.5 meters), with a life-size embossing of a woman’s leg, is located today in the village of Bobry near the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross.

Impossible fossilized footprints - the same age as dinosaurs

Near Bobruisk

Stone "devil's footprint" on Mount Chernobog in Lusatia

Stone in Transcarpathia too! In the picturesque village of Turya-Bystraya (clickable)

“Trace Stone” - the throne of an underground temple built in an Early Iron Age drainage cistern near Jerusalem (Palestine)

Foreigners also attribute traces in stone to divine personalities: traces of Shiva in stone. India, Ashram

The discovery was made in 1987 in New Mexico by paleontologist Jerry MacDonald.

In the Tsum Valley, Himalayas

Track stone. Susaninsky district

Vyshnevolotsk district. Derevyazhikha (clickable)

Footprints are found all over the world. Here are some more examples:

A boot tread imprint in sandstone was found in the Gobi Desert, estimated to be 10 million years old. The Soviet writer A. Kazantsev wrote about this. A similar imprint was found in blocks of limestone in Nevada (USA). In 1930, near Basarst in Australia, prospectors mining jasper often found fossilized imprints of huge human feet.
Many traces of giants were found there in Australia.
In 1979, in Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains, local residents found a huge stone sticking out above the surface of a stream, on which could be seen the imprint of part of a huge foot with five toes. The transverse size of the fingers was 17 centimeters! Such prints could have been left by a person six meters tall.
Three huge footprints, 60 centimeters long, were found near Malgoa. The giant's stride length was 130 centimeters. The footprints were preserved in fossilized lava for millions of years, long before Homo sapiens appeared on the Australian continent. Huge footprints are also found in the limestone bed of the Upper Macleay River. The fingerprints of these footprints are 10 centimeters long and the width of the foot is 25 centimeters.
In 1932, fossilized human footprints were discovered by a local game warden in White Sands, New Mexico. Their length was 55 centimeters. Thirty footprints stretched out in an even chain of a man calmly going about his business. The same discovery was made in 1982 near Carson (Nevada).
In the early 30s of the 20th century, 20 kilometers southeast of the city of Berea, Kentucky, USA, professor of geology, Dr. Wilbur Burrow and his colleague William Finnel, discovered human prints on fossilized sandstone in layers of Carboniferous rocks ( or very similar to human) feet. Twelve footprints 23 centimeters long and 15 centimeters wide - in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe “spread” fingers - looked as if someone had walked barefoot on wet sand, which subsequently froze and petrified. And it petrified, by all geological standards, no later than 250 million years ago.
In 1988, the Soviet magazine “Around the World” published a report that similar prints were discovered in the Kurgatan Nature Reserve, located in the Chardzhou region of Turkmenistan, most reminiscent of the footprints of a bare foot of a person or some kind of anthropoid creature. The length of the print is 26 centimeters. The age of the traces, according to scientists, is at least 150 million years. Similar discoveries have occurred in other regions, in particular in Slovakia. It should be emphasized that in no case were traces of “hands” found next to the traces of “legs”.
In 1979, archaeologist Fili discovered many human footprints on volcanic lava that solidified about 4 million years ago in Tanzania. A study by the most highly qualified specialists showed that these prints are indistinguishable from the footprints of modern humans.
In 1983, in Turkmenistan, scientists discovered human footprints on a stone next to a three-toed dinosaur footprint. The volcanic lava that contains these traces is about 15 million years old. It’s a pity that we couldn’t find photos of these footprints, but three-toed dinosaur paws - please
***
In my opinion, the result is a voluminous and interesting collection of photographic material on the topics “plastic stone” and “size of feet and shoes among the ancients.”

Typically, you will only find one side of the print (positive or negative) with no traces of carbonation. Although, sometimes even leaf prints are quite three-dimensional.
Neuropteris leaves
[non-existent photo]
On the other hand, I have found quite a few lycopod imprints with a fairly thick layer of carbonized mass covering the ornamental bark of, say, lepidodendron.

Lepidodendron veltheimi (negative) with remains of carbonized mass
[non-existent photo]
Several successive layers in a sample with a lepidodendron branch

Another example of charcoal on lepidodendron bark (positive)

Thin branch carbonation
[non-existent photo]
An example of a barrel fragment with traces of carbonation

Example for Sigillaria bark. In the red rectangle you can see the outer and inner layers, between which there is a thin layer (0.5 mm) of carbonized mass.

If we talk about three-dimensional prints, then in 99% of cases from my practice they are flattened to an almost flat state (especially calamite stems, see photo) and only sometimes you can find a three-dimensional print of an almost circular cross-section of a branch or stem.
Stem of calamite on a split

Calamite stem in rock.

The same after separating the excess rock.

Stigmaria 3D imprint (positive)

Fragment of a trunk (presumably lycopodoid)

Carbonated organic residues are still not always present in samples; in the vast majority of cases, you find only negative or positive without traces of a carbon layer. For cases where organic matter has been completely destroyed, three-dimensional prints are usually divided into negative - mold - (essentially, these are voids formed in the layer of sediment after the disappearance of organic matter) and positive - cast - (i.e., voids of negatives filled with sediment). Sometimes you can find both at the same time in the same sample.

The simultaneous presence of both the positive and negative imprint of the lepidodendron cortex on this sample can only be explained by assuming that the initially cylindrical fragment of the branch was compressed to an almost flat state. As a result, you can see both the outer cortex (cast) and its imprint (mold) in two parallel planes.
Another example of a split where there are well-defined negative + positive

Splitting of a young lepidodendron branch

As for the “petrified wood” variety, in this case the internal anatomical structure of the plant is preserved (at the cellular level). I know of two varieties - complete petrification and partial (permineralization). Samples of petrified wood can be viewed in the galleries of many forum participants (Andreas, Ceratodus). In my galleries there are only examples of petrified wood from the Devonian (Upper Devonian - Lower Carboniferous boundary) and Permian periods.
These arguments may be incorrect in some ways. If someone corrects me, I will be very grateful.

26.08.2014

All over Rus' you can find a huge number of stone boulders, the so-called “traces”, on which animals are depicted, drawings sometimes of not very clear content, and in most cases - prints of human hands and feet. Usually the tracks go several centimeters into the stone. Sometimes their contours seem blurry, and sometimes they are so clear that the slightest bulges and depressions of the foot are visible. Most often there is one footprint on a stone, but boulders are known that have two or even three footprints or paw prints. If we talk about anthropomorphic (resembling human) prints, then, as a rule, these are traces of bare feet, but sometimes it seems as if a person in shoes “stepped” on the stone. Most footprints are of natural size (an adult man’s foot, a narrow woman’s foot or a child’s foot), but there are also very large ones.

Until now, scientists cannot answer a question that seems elementary at first glance: why did our ancestors “inherit” so much throughout the Earth?

The legend of the origin of the trace stones

In ancient times, when heroes and sorcerers lived on earth, people understood the language of animals, and animals understood the language of people; and it was not so customary that a person could offend even the smallest bird, or a beast could harm an unintelligent child - so, in those ancient, ancient times, the stones were soft, like damp clay. How did people and animals quarrel? Nobody knows this. But they divided the lands among themselves, placing boundary stones on the borders. Wolves and bears, hares and foxes placed their paws on the boulders, leaving impressions of clawed limbs on the soft surface.

The time of wizards and heroes has ended, and they have gone into unknown distances. But a chain of traces followed them. Here the hero pushed off a large gray boulder with her foot, jumping over the lake, and the imprint of her bare foot remained on the stone. And here the sorcerer walked on the stones, not wanting to get his pointed shoes dirty. Immediately after this, the soft boulders petrified, forever preserving the traces of those who touched them.

Devil's footprints or God's feet?

Boulders with signs engraved on their gray sides or completely smooth, but striking in their size, are often well known to modern residents of villages and hamlets, even if they are located under the cover of a forest several kilometers from a populated area. Local residents call the footprints on the stones either “devil’s footprints”, or “God’s feet”, “footsteps of Christ”, “feet of the Virgin Mary”. If the former are notorious, the latter are always held in high esteem. It is believed that the water from “God’s Footprints” is healing and helps cure diseases.

Sometimes, when telling researchers the beliefs associated with the local stone, old-timers call it by name - Holy Stone, Prince Stone, Marya (Makosh) or Perun, Dazhdbog, Velesov Stone.

Stories of the “followers” ​​of the Pskov land

Gdovsky district. village of Terebeni The Pskov region is an ancient region, and there are (according to the most conservative estimates) at least several hundred similar boulders here. Unfortunately, the widely known “Holga Stone” in Vybuty, on which the trace of an elegant female foot was visible, has not been preserved. It was blown up in the 30s of the last century.

They say that on this stone Olga arranged meetings with ordinary people. Now a kind of pyramid of boulders, topped with a forged cross, has been built on his remains.

In the Pechora region, on the edge of a collective farm field, quite recently there lay a huge stone. It showed the footprint of a child's foot framed by three suns. In the old days, sick children were brought to this stone: it was believed that if a child washed himself with the morning dew from this stone three times, then all diseases would disappear from him.

It was discovered somewhere in the 70s right in the middle of a field in blooming rye. All the residents were firmly convinced that in the spring, when the field was sown, there was no stone there. After the harvest season, he was dragged by a tractor closer to the forest. But the next spring he again found himself in his old place in the middle of the field. It was then that the local grandmothers decided that this stone was not simple. And we learned about its healing properties by accident. One of the boys on the field seriously injured his leg. The friends sat the boy on a rock, bandaged his leg with a shirt and ran to the village for a paramedic. By the time he arrived, about half an hour had passed. What was everyone’s surprise when, instead of a wound, they found only a well-healed scar on the boy’s leg. Since then, sick people from all over the area began to be brought to the stone. But a few years later the boulder disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Another case, almost fantastic, in the Ostrovsky district. They said that in one of the villages in the 50s there lived a mentally ill guy - a holy fool, in the old way. He was a believer, he worked in the church all the time doing housework, and almost lived there. And he was often seen near a large boulder that lay on the shore of the Velikaya River. Some strange signs and the imprint of a man’s right hand were engraved on that stone. And then one day the local boys secretly followed the guy and began to follow him. This village fool again led them to the river, where he sat for a long time near a stone and talked to him about something. And then suddenly he stood up, put both hands on the stone and... easily, like a feather, he lifted this heavy boulder into the air, which probably weighed more than one hundred kilograms. After hanging in the air for several seconds, the stone also very smoothly sank to its original place.

Such are the legends. What do scientists say?

History of the study of "sledoviki"

"Monument to the stonemason
the arts of the ancient Slavs remained
large smooth slabs,
on which images are hollowed out
hands, heels, hooves, etc...."

N.M. Karamzin

Serious study of these monuments began relatively recently, although individual reports about them in archaeological and ethnographic literature appeared quite a long time ago. Already in the 19th - early 20th centuries. extensive material was accumulated, including information about a fairly large number of monuments located in various provinces of Rus': Pskov, Tver, Vitebsk, Volyn, etc. There are references in the literature to such stones in the territory of Karelia, near the villages of Pogrankondushi, Vidany and Tarzhepol. In 20-40 In our century, interest in the study of such monuments has decreased. The only work devoted to trace stones in the north-west of Russia is an article by N.G. Porfiridov, which substantiates the need for a thorough study of the “traces,” draws attention to the fact that signs on stones in most cases are not a play of nature. Research in this area intensified in the second half of the 40s. and was connected with the activities of local historians and enthusiasts S.N. Ilyina, A.S. Popova and others, who studied similar monuments in the central and northwestern regions of Rus'. Their work attracted the attention of A.A. Formozov, who published a general article on this topic, where, using the example of an interesting monument - the stone - "Shcheglets", the traces are interpreted as cult monuments of the Bronze Age. IN Lately The research moved to the stage of generalization and analysis of materials for individual regions: a number of articles were published on stones with images in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Pskov and Novgorod regions. Some of these works express a fair judgment about the need to involve new factual material in scientific circulation, especially in regions that have not previously been subjected to such research.

Who really left the marks on the stone? Are they man-made or natural?

In order to answer these questions, let's go deeper... into the stone. Its composition is not always homogeneous. Often boulders contain inclusions that differ in color and structure. These foreign inclusions are susceptible to weathering in a different way, forming natural indentations in the stone. It’s worth adjusting them a little, giving the indentations the shape of a foot, and we have a trail stone in front of us. But who needed to “fix” the notches? In addition, there are known stones whose traces are considered entirely man-made. For what purpose was this done? Let us ask ourselves a parallel question: were it only the unknown stonemasons who left us foot prints?

Obviously, in order to understand the purpose of the trace stones, it is necessary to consider all the rock signs known today. These are handprints on stones (they are much less common than trace stones), the already mentioned paw prints of animals and birds, images of crosses, circles, horseshoes, arrows carved on boulders and, finally, depressions in the form of trapezoidal, triangular or irregularly shaped funnels or cups (cup stones). It is interesting that the same legends about healing (living) water are associated with cup stones as with trail stones. This suggests that both types of stones were part of the same cult. At the same time, all stones with signs must be counted separate monuments magical rites of pagan times, but elements of a single cult - especially considering that many of them were found as part of ancient sanctuaries.

The number of cult stones known on the territory of Rus' amounts to several hundred (the numbers are constantly being updated), in neighboring Belarus there are at least two hundred of them (this figure is given by specialists from the Institute of Geology of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the creators of the Experimental Base for the Study of Glacial Boulders), and discoveries continue. Sacred stones are well known in the Baltic states, Poland and Germany.

It is possible to outline the geography of the distribution of cult stones in a different way, without indicating specific countries: the veneration of stones was widespread where the Great Glacier dominated thousands of years ago. It was he who roamed the mountains, tearing down rocks, he picked them up and carried them with him to the lands where large and small stones found a new home, where special signs were applied to them and where the “aliens” became part of history - sacred symbols of religion.

When did the cult of stones develop?

According to the prevailing point of view in science, the deification of stones originates in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Then boulders served as altars in pagan temples. Most likely, the role of the altar was played by stones resembling cups, but with a funnel bigger size, where animal blood (honey, milk) fell, when sacrifices were made to the pagan gods, prayers were made for a successful hunt (and later for the harvest, preventing the death of livestock). At the same time, it is worth saying that stones with animal traces could have been the object of worship of hunters, and later cattle breeders.

Track stones are usually associated with the ancient cult of Sun worship. The luminary gives life to all living things, traveling around the world and leaving “traces” on the stones. At the same time, there is a theory linking the slediki with the cult of ancestors and dead people. Ethnographers and local historians (the works of K. Tishkevich and P. Tarasenko are referred to by geologist, field researcher, author of a wonderful book about the past, present and probable future of glacial boulders “Silent Witnesses of the Past” Eduard Levkov) have repeatedly recorded the following custom, widespread in Belarus and Lithuania in past centuries: after the death of one of the family members, his footprint was stamped on the stone. After this, the boulder was thrown into the water. Local residents explained this custom with the belief that the deceased should not return home again - the place of the dead is in heaven, and therefore let the deceased go to heaven without delay. Most likely, the cult of the Sun existed during the heyday of pagan religion, and the cult of ancestors developed later, became widespread in the Middle Ages and has survived in the form of echoes to this day.

Echoes of early and late paganism, mystical beliefs, as well as poetic fiction, envelop the boulders denser than the moss that overgrows their stone sides adjacent to the ground. And researchers still have more questions than answers. One thing is certain: the cult of sacred stones permeated the entire pre-Christian culture of the Slavs and influenced the new religion that replaced paganism. The defeated and forgotten gods that once made up the densely populated Slavic pantheon did not disappear without a trace.

Footprints are found all over the world...

A boot tread imprint in sandstone was found in the Gobi Desert, estimated to be 10 million years old. The Soviet writer A. Kazantsev wrote about this. A similar imprint was found in blocks of limestone in Nevada (USA). In 1930, near Basarst in Australia, prospectors mining jasper often found fossilized imprints of huge human feet. Many traces of giants were found there in Australia.

In 1979, in Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains, local residents found a huge stone sticking out above the surface of a stream, on which could be seen the imprint of part of a huge foot with five toes. The transverse size of the fingers was 17 centimeters! Such prints could have been left by a person six meters tall.

Three huge footprints, 60 centimeters long, were found near Malgoa. The giant's stride length was 130 centimeters. The footprints were preserved in fossilized lava for millions of years, long before Homo sapiens appeared on the Australian continent. Huge footprints are also found in the limestone bed of the Upper Macleay River. The fingerprints of these footprints are 10 centimeters long and the width of the foot is 25 centimeters.

In 1932, fossilized human footprints were discovered by a local game warden in White Sands, New Mexico. Their length was 55 centimeters. Thirty footprints stretched out in an even chain of a man calmly going about his business. The same discovery was made in 1982 near Carson (Nevada).

In the early 30s of the 20th century, 20 kilometers southeast of the city of Berea, Kentucky, USA, professor of geology, Dr. Wilbur Burrow and his colleague William Finnel, discovered human prints on fossilized sandstone in layers of Carboniferous rocks ( or very similar to human) feet. Twelve footprints, 23 centimeters long and 15 centimeters wide in the area of ​​the “spread” fingers, looked as if someone had walked barefoot on wet sand, which subsequently froze and petrified. And it petrified, by all geological standards, no later than 250 million years ago.

In 1988, the Soviet magazine “Around the World” published a report that similar prints were discovered in the Kurgatan Nature Reserve, located in the Chardzhou region of Turkmenistan, most reminiscent of the footprints of a bare foot of a person or some kind of anthropoid creature. The length of the print is 26 centimeters. The age of the traces, according to scientists, is at least 150 million years. Similar discoveries have occurred in other regions, in particular in Slovakia. It should be emphasized that in no case were traces of “hands” found next to the traces of “legs”.

In 1979, archaeologist Fili discovered many human footprints on volcanic lava that solidified about 4 million years ago in Tanzania. A study by the most highly qualified specialists showed that these prints are indistinguishable from the footprints of modern humans.

In 1983, in Turkmenistan, scientists discovered human footprints on a stone next to a three-toed dinosaur footprint. The volcanic lava that contains these traces is about 15 million years old.

City (park) of Draconov near the village of Chistovodnoye, Lazovsky district, Primorsky Territory.

Its dimensions are almost the height of a person - more than 1.5 meters. The stone is located on the path to the radon source.

The trace was found quite recently on Mount Pidan (Livadia Hill).

In 1976, Thomas Andrews' book We Are Not the First was published in London. In it, the author reports that in 1968, a certain William Meister saw in Utah, USA, at the site of a rock fracture, two clear prints... of shoe soles. At the same time, the back part of the print with the heel mark is deeper, as it should be in accordance with the distribution of weight when walking.

In the small Indian village of Piska Nagri, which is located near the city of Ranchi (Jharkhand state), a team of geologists led by Nitish Priyadarshi is studying fairly large imprints on the stone, which locals consider to be traces of gods descending from the sky.

Impossible fossilized footprints are the same age as dinosaurs.

“Trace Stone” is the throne of an underground temple built in an Early Iron Age drainage cistern near Jerusalem (Palestine).

The discovery was made in 1987 in New Mexico by paleontologist Jerry McDonald.

In the Tsum Valley, Himalayas.

Track stone. Susaninsky district.

One of the most famous cult boulders is located in Zhirovichi (Belarus).

The pebble was found in the village of Motyli, right in the middle of the village.

The oldest monument to the monarchy in Java - dating from around 450 AD. stone in the village of Ciampea. On it are footprints and the inscription: “This is the footprint of King Purnavarman, ruler of the kingdom of Tharumanegara, the great conqueror of the world.”

Imprint in South Africa. It is located near the town of Mpaluzi, close to the Swaziland border. Size: 120 cm long.

A trace stone like this was discovered in the Dunadd fortification in Argyll, Scotland.

"Footprints of Buddha" at Tokyo's Kiyomizu Temple.

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In ancient times, when heroes and sorcerers lived on earth, people understood the language of animals, and animals understood the language of people; and it was not so customary that a person could offend even the smallest bird, or a beast could harm an unintelligent child - so, in those ancient, ancient times, the stones were soft, like damp clay.

How did people and animals quarrel? Nobody knows this. But they divided the lands among themselves, placing boundary stones on the borders.

Wolves and bears, hares and foxes placed their paws on the boulders, leaving impressions of clawed limbs on the soft surface. The time of wizards and heroes has ended, and they have gone into unknown distances. But a chain of traces followed them. Here the hero pushed off a large gray boulder with her foot, jumping over the lake, and the imprint of her bare foot remained on the stone. And here the sorcerer walked on the stones, not wanting to get his pointed shoes dirty. Immediately after this, the soft boulders petrified, forever preserving the traces of those who touched them.

A trace stone like this was discovered in the Dunadd fortification in Argyll, Scotland. This mark seems to have been left by a shod human foot.

Stones with depressions resembling human (anthropomorphic) or animal (zoomorphic) footprints are known on almost all continents - Europe and Asia, Africa and America. Usually the tracks go several centimeters into the stone. Sometimes their contours seem blurry, and sometimes they are so clear that the slightest bulges and depressions of the foot are visible. Most often there is one footprint on a stone, but boulders are known that have two or even three footprints or paw prints. If we talk about anthropomorphic prints, then, as a rule, these are traces of bare feet, but sometimes it seems as if a person in shoes “stepped” on the stone. Most footprints are of natural size (an adult man's foot, a narrow woman's foot or a child's foot), but there are also very large ones.

And everywhere stones with traces are shrouded in legends and traditions. The story with which we began our article can be considered a generalizing and universal legend. In each specific area it is refined and broken down into details. So Herodotus, who undertook a trip to the lands of the Scythians, wrote in the fourth volume of his “Histories” that on a rock in the Dniester valley (for Herodotus - the Tyras River), local residents showed him “one wonder” - an almost meter-long imprint of Hercules’ foot.

And a modern colleague of Herodotus, a history teacher at one of the village schools in Belarus, told the author of this article about his search for a stone with prints of two feet (the stone disappeared during collectivization) - an adult and a child, which, as they said in the village, belonged to “the witch and her daughter." That is, in both cases we are talking about the characters we have already mentioned: heroes and sorcerers, from which it is clear that we are dealing with legends with echoes of pagan religion.

"Footprints of Buddha" at Tokyo's Kiyomizu Temple

At the same time, there are also later legends about trace stones (as they are usually called in the scientific world), dating back to Buddhist and Christian times. The essence of such legends boils down to the following: traces on the stone were left by Buddha, Christ, the Virgin Mary, angels or saints, for example, Elijah the Prophet, who either descended from heaven or ascended, and the stones melted under their feet. At the same time, there are footprints on which, according to local legends, the footprints were left by the devil or the devil.

There are no contradictions here - the new religion somewhere took up pagan cults and “sanctified” stones, and somewhere it managed to overcome the pagan heritage, branding the traces as devilish and unclean. The same division into divine and devilish, holy and damned also applied to water, which accumulated during rain in trace-shaped depressions on the stone. The first, according to legend, was considered alive and healing; it was used to wash eyes, sprinkle the bodies of the sick, and sprinkle it on children. The second was called dead, and to use it meant harming oneself.

Such are the legends. What do scientists say? Who really left the marks on the stone? Are they man-made or perhaps natural?

In order to answer these questions, let's go deeper... into the stone. Its composition is not always homogeneous. Often boulders contain inclusions that differ in color and structure. These foreign inclusions are susceptible to weathering in a different way, forming natural indentations in the stone. It’s worth adjusting them a little, giving the indentations the shape of a foot, and we have a trail stone in front of us. But who needed to “fix” the notches? In addition, there are known stones whose traces are considered entirely man-made. For what purpose was this done? Let us ask ourselves a parallel question: were it only the unknown stonemasons who left us foot prints?

Obviously, in order to understand the purpose of the trace stones, it is necessary to consider all the rock signs known today. These are handprints on stones (they are much less common than trace stones), the already mentioned paw prints of animals and birds, images of crosses, circles, horseshoes, arrows carved on boulders and, finally, depressions in the form of trapezoidal, triangular or irregularly shaped funnels or cups (cup stones). It is interesting that the same legends about healing (living) water are associated with cup stones as with trail stones. This suggests that both types of stones were part of the same cult. At the same time, all stones with signs should be considered not as separate monuments of magical rites of pagan times, but as elements of a single cult - especially considering that many of them were found as part of ancient sanctuaries.

A human handprint in southwestern Minnesota. According to archaeologists, these traces are approximately 5 thousand years old. Photo (Creative Commons license): Ben Schaffhausen

The number of cult stones known in Russia amounts to several hundred (the numbers are constantly being updated), in neighboring Belarus there are at least two hundred (this figure is given by specialists from the Institute of Geology of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the creators of the Experimental Base for the Study of Glacial Boulders), and discoveries continue. Sacred stones are well known in the Baltic states, Poland and Germany.

It is possible to outline the geography of the distribution of cult stones in a different way, without indicating specific countries: the veneration of stones was widespread where the Great Glacier dominated thousands of years ago. It was he who roamed the mountains, tearing down rocks, he picked them up and carried them with him to the lands where large and small stones found a new home, where special signs were applied to them and where the “aliens” became part of history - sacred symbols of religion.

The final reconstruction of the cult of sacred stones is a matter for the future. Today we can talk about several versions, because during the long “stone life” some details of the cult were modified, and the boulders themselves had to perform different functions. Thus, stones with signs engraved on them could be boundary stones, marking the boundaries of the possessions of tribes or principalities. They could have been placed as path markers: for example, a foot print is oriented to the north and sets the direction. At the same time, zoomorphic prints could indicate a revered animal - the totem of the tribe. However, the imprint of a totem is not only a functional, but also a ritual detail.

When did the cult of stones develop? According to the prevailing scientific point of view, the deification of stones originates in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Then boulders served as altars in pagan temples. Most likely, the role of the altar was played by stones reminiscent of cups, but with a larger funnel, into which the blood of animals (honey, milk, beer) fell, when sacrifices were made to the pagan gods, prayers were made for a successful hunt (and later - for the harvest, preventing the loss of livestock ). At the same time, it is worth saying that stones with zoomorphic traces could be the object of worship of hunters, and later cattle breeders.

Track stones are usually associated with the ancient cult of Sun worship. The luminary gives life to all living things, traveling around the world and leaving “traces” on the stones. At the same time, there is a theory linking the slediki with the cult of ancestors and dead people. Ethnographers and local historians (the works of K. Tishkevich and P. Tarasenko are referred to by geologist, field researcher, author of a wonderful book about the past, present and probable future of glacial boulders “Silent Witnesses of the Past” Eduard Levkov) have more than once recorded the following custom, widespread in Belarus and Lithuania in past centuries: after the death of one of the family members, his footprint was stamped on the stone. After this, the boulder was thrown into the water.

Local residents explained this custom with the belief that the deceased should not return home again - the place of the dead is in heaven, and therefore let the deceased go to heaven without delay. Most likely, the cult of the Sun existed during the heyday of pagan religion, and the cult of ancestors developed later, became widespread in the Middle Ages and has survived in the form of echoes to this day.

Their names also help shed light on the secrets of revered stones. Boulders with signs engraved on gray sides or completely smooth, but striking in their size, are often well known to modern residents of villages and hamlets, even if they are under the cover of a forest several kilometers from a populated area. Old-timers, telling researchers the beliefs associated with the local stone, usually call it by name - Holy Stone, Prince Stone, Marya (Makosh) or Perun, Dazhdbog, Velesov Stone. The last names are a direct indication of the former belonging of the stones to pagan temples.

Echoes of early and late paganism, mystical beliefs, as well as poetic fiction, envelop the boulders denser than the moss that overgrows their stone sides adjacent to the ground. And researchers still have more questions than answers. One thing is certain: the cult of sacred stones permeated the entire pre-Christian culture of the Slavs and influenced the new religion that replaced paganism.

The defeated and forgotten gods that once made up the densely populated Slavic pantheon did not disappear without a trace. Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice. “If you are looking for his monument, look around.” Who knows, maybe in this dust-covered boulder that is now lying near the road, the “cattle god” Veles was seen a thousand years ago, and Perun was once thrown into the neighboring swamp.