Mystery of Solovki labyrinths. Gloomy secrets and forgotten legends are associated with the Solovetsky archipelago in Russia. One of the unsolved mysteries is the origin of stone labyrinths – strange, mystical patterns laid out on the ground. How and when 35 mazes, scattered around the Big Zayatsky island appeared on the islands, who created them and for what purpose – these questions remain unanswered by researchers.
Lined with small and large boulders designs vary in size and pattern. Most often they are constructed as a helix or helices of the two inscribed one into another. The maze has only one entrance, which is at the same time exit. The person who decides to go through the maze (observing its rules), after a while discovers that he comes out in the same place as he entered.
The age of mazes – some three thousand years, archaeologists say. According to one version, it was the ancient Pomeranian tribes, on the other – the northern mariners discovering the cold waters of the sea, nowadays referred to as White. Proponents of this hypothesis are supported by the argument that almost all the mazes are located on the coast.
Purpose of the strange stone ornaments
Another unsolved mystery is the purpose of the strange stone ornaments. Many versions are from a purely scientific to the absolutely fantastic. At different times, prone to mystification “theorists” thought mazes were traces of aliens, means of communication by which the ancient people communicated with the cosmos, and even portals to another world. Ironically, with the latest version agree most serious researchers.
They believe that the labyrinths had sacred purposes and were actually used to go to another world – beyond the grave. In these places, people carried out primitive rituals of burial of the dead. Even the drawing of mazes speaks in favor of this theory. Its shape resembles a spiral ring of snake curled into a ball. It was the serpent in the Karelian-Finnish epic as a symbol of death and was associated with the other world: snake’s bite sent human straight to the realm of the dead. The complex structure of patterns, many scientists, including lexicographer N. N. Vinogradov, explained by the fact that the ancient peoples believed: entangled in a maze, the soul of the deceased would not be able to come back and harm the living.
However, even in this seemingly plausible theory is not so simple. If we assume that the labyrinths were indeed ancient pagan temple, then how to explain the fact that not under all mounds are found the remains of burials? One time, a prominent Soviet archaeologist A.J. Bryusov, brother of the poet-symbolist V.J. Bryusov, tried to find the remains under a maze on Big Zayatsky Island. The results of his unsuccessful excavations can be seen today – having failed to find any trace of burial, archaeologist, apparently, was so angry that left stones right at the entrance to the labyrinth.
Research and hypotheses. Solovki labyrinths
There are far more prosaic assumptions about the purpose of construction of the mazes. For example, a researcher Leonid Ershov spoke of the value of calendar meaning of stone figures. But the Karelian regional specialist I. M. Mullo states that they were not more than schemes, guided by primitive fishermen who built traps for fishing.
However the hypothesis remain only hypothesis: none of them have received sufficient evidence. To this day, the far northern islands continue to beckon curious travelers and scholars, eager to solve the mystery and the true meaning of the labyrinth. The decision may give an answer to a much more global question: how could it happen that the symbol of the labyrinth appeared in everyday life of quite different ancient peoples around the same time on all five inhabited continents?
