Visiting mammoths

Excursion to the origins of modern man. The building of the museum is erected above one of the parking lots, which is a dwelling built from mammoth bones more than 20,000 years ago. The Kostenki complex is recognized worldwide as the most ancient human habitat of the Caucasoid race, dating from the 50-40th millennium BC. Cultural layers brought to us numerous stone and bone tools, works of art, as priceless evidence of the most ancient period in the development of man and human culture on earth. There is also a thick layer of volcanic ash - a trace of a Mediterranean eruption that covered the Russian plain 40,000 years ago. Under a layer of ash found several sites Cro-Magnon.

The beginning of the study of ancient finds was put by Peter I. Here, on the Voronezh land, the Russian Navy was born, the founder of which was Peter I. In the early stages of construction, from 1696 to 1709, he came to Voronezh almost every year, supervised the work (as well as designed ships and even worked as a carpenter) and lived here for a long time. On one of the first trips, learning about the numerous finds of bones of enormous size, he visited Kostenki (then it was the guard town of Kostensk, but later, with the expansion of the borders, it lost this value and by decree of Catherine II was renamed the village of Kostenki). He sent several specimens of bones to the Kunstkamera, and ordered the study of these remains to begin. Peter I identified them as elephant bones. And he suggested that these were the bones of the dead from hypothermia combat elephants of the army of Alexander the Great, who allegedly reached these places, pursuing the Persian king Darius. But, as it turned out, this assumption was wrong – only because at that time science was not aware of the existence of these animals. It was only in 1799 that the German scientist Johann Blumenbach isolated and described a new species of animal, which we now call a mammoth.

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