Serpievskie caves. Ignatievskaya and Bell Caves Caves of the Southern Urals Bell Caves

Bell Caves located in the very center of Israel. These caves are man-made miracle Sveta. There are about 80 in total large caves similar to a bell. These caves are located in national park Beit Guvrin. Bell caves appeared as a result of limestone mining in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC. This extensive network of caves is similar to miracle city underground with amazingly clean air and amazing acoustics.

This amazing shape was formed thanks to the mining method, in which they first drilled a hole with a diameter of about a meter from above, and then widened the channel, approaching soft rocks. Such forms have survived to this day. This method of extraction was well thought out. This technology maintained the necessary moisture to facilitate extraction.

Now the sunlight penetrates through the upper holes and illuminates everything inside with amazing light. There is information that these caves were previously used for meetings of the early Christians. In some caves, images of crosses were found on the rocks, reminiscent of Templar symbols. Currently, chamber orchestras hold concerts in the caves. Most often, such performances are organized during Easter week. The halls of these caves not only look like bells. They also took from them the properties of storing energy and preserving acoustics.

Caves are located near Jerusalem. If you go by car, the journey will take 20-30 minutes. These caves are concentrated in small areas in huge quantities. The number of holes in the ground is sometimes up to one hundred. When expanding, such channels merge into one large cave.

The caves are remarkable because they contain traces of several eras of human development. After quarries, caves began to be used as columbariums. This is the room where pigeons were bred, both homing pigeons and for food and sacrifices. Inscriptions from different times have been preserved on the walls. Currently, the caves are popular with rock climbing enthusiasts.

The Kolokolnaya Cave is located within the boundaries of a specially protected natural area Chelyabinsk region— Serpievsky State Natural Complex Reserve.

Entrance to the Cave

The entrance to the cave is oriented to the south and has the shape of an arch. The cavity is of a corridor-grotto type, the main development of the passages is northwestern. The cave has several distinct grottoes with vault heights of six to eight meters and a width of five to 10 meters. At a distance of 30 meters from the entrance and further to the 70th meter, parallel to the main gallery, there is a narrow passage connected to it by several passages.

Grottoes of the Bell Cave

There are four grottoes in total: the first from the entrance is Narrow (4.5x10 m), six meters high, followed by the Round Grotto. Adjacent to it is Stalactite, which is connected to the next, last grotto of the cave - Dalniy, a 20-hectare gallery. The Far Grotto ends with a narrow opening (0.7x1 m), behind which the floor of the cave has a steep drop down. At the right wall there is a ledge with two holes up to three meters deep.

The cave ends with two dead ends, at the intersection of which a small rounded hall has formed. Calcite formations are observed only in the far part of the cave in the form of sinter crust on the walls and floor. There are also stalactites and stalagmites, as well as gourds with calcite crystals and filled with water. The total length of the cave passages is 190 meters.

Metro progress

Kolokolnaya is a corridor-grotto type cave, developing in the northwest direction, and is a gallery with a width of 2 to 5 m and a height of 1 to 6-8 m (in the grottoes). At a distance of 30 m from the entrance and further up to 70 m, parallel to the main corridor there is a Metro passage connected to the main passages. The Metro passage is quite narrow (1.2 m wide and 1 m high) and has very smooth walls and a semicircular ceiling. The floor of the passage is clay and dry. From the Metro, which is about 40 m long, three passages go to the left (to the main corridor), which are located at a distance of 2 m, 13 m, 10 m from each other. There are several clearly defined grottoes in the cave with vault heights of 6-8 m and a width of 5 to 10 m. All of them were formed at the intersection of cracks with the main gallery.

Throughout the cave, the floor is made of clay, crushed stone, and fragments of bedrock. In the Far Grotto, the floor is covered with sintered calcite bark. In the Stalactite and Far Halls there is a drop of water in the summer, and there are puddles on the floor. In winter, ice sinter formations.

In 1982-1984, the Kolokolnaya cave, along with other karst cavities in the area, was explored by an expedition of archaeologists from the Novosibirsk Institute of History, Philosophy and Philology of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Candidate of Historical Sciences V. T. Petrin. In it, as well as in the Ignatievskaya Cave, they discovered several groups of drawings by ancient people of the Paleolithic era. One of the drawings is an image of a harpoon, while others require further clearing and decoding. In the summer of 1984, two more new images were discovered, made in ocher on the walls of the Krugloy and Dalny grottoes.

The cave is mostly horizontal along its entire length. The total length of the passages is 268 m; total depth of the cave is 7 m; the average width of passages is 3.2 m.

Immediately after the Small Serpievsky Grotto, the Kolokolnaya cave begins. Their entrances are separated by a small wall; perhaps they will someday be connected or, conversely, were once connected.

The entrance to Kolokolnaya is high, and then there is a high corridor. You can walk through almost the entire cave without bending down even once. Friends walked along the main gallery, and my son and I walked through a narrow round hole; we had to crawl almost the entire time. As a result, we met with them in a large hall.

There are many small stalactites and stalagmites in this room; apparently, the large ones have already been broken off, and traces are visible. From this hall there are a couple of narrow passages ending in dead ends.

The Bell Cave, like Mayskaya, has one main corridor; it is simply impossible to get lost in it. Just like in this cave, almost all the walls of the corridors and manholes are smooth, as if polished by regular visitors.

It also contains rock paintings, which we, unfortunately, did not find. Apparently, due to the fact that almost everything in it is smoked from torches. But there are many modern inscriptions, starting from the 50s of the last century, ending with this year. And so throughout the Serpievsky cave city, and not just in Kolokolnaya.

Kolokolnaya, Serpievskaya 2, Simskaya 1, cave. Complex natural-historical and geological-geomorphological monument of regional significance (1985). A horizontal karst cavity of the corridor-grotto type with a system of ring passages.

The cave is embedded in a massif of light gray Upper Devonian limestone. Located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district, on the right bank of the Sim River, 1.5 km southeast of the village of Serpievka, 50 m south of the Skala Ring karst arch.

The main entrance to the cave is oriented to the south, has the shape of a regular arch 3 m high and 4 m wide. A few meters east of it, at the base of the rock outcrop, there is another entrance hole with a diameter of up to 0.5 m. 30 m from the entrance from the main corridor begins a narrow passage that runs parallel; over a length of 40 m, it is connected to the main gallery by 3 short through passages (a system of 4 circular passages is formed; a similar system of 2 circular passages is found in another grotto).

There are 4 grottoes in total: the first (Narrow) is the largest: length. 10 m, 4.5 m wide and 6 m high. It is followed by the Round Grotto. Adjacent to it is the Stalactite Grotto, connected to the last grotto (Dalniy) by the 20th gallery. The far one ends in a narrow hole (0.7x1 m), behind which the floor of the cave goes down steeply. The right wall has a ledge with 2 holes 3 m deep. The cave ends with 2 dead-end passages, at the intersection of which a small rounded hall has formed. In the floor of one of these passages there is a siphon that blocks further movement deeper into the massif.

Calcite formations (sinter bark, corallites and ridges on the walls, cover bark on the floor) are present in small quantities in the 2nd and 3rd grottoes; there are significantly more of them in the far part of the cave. In hard-to-reach places, individual specimens of stalactites and stalagmites have been preserved. In the entrance part of the cave, within the limits of illumination, mosses, lichens, and ferns grow. Bats live in the depths of the cavity.

In the main corridor and the Round Grotto, large quantities of ice stalactites and stalagmites form in large quantities in the winter-spring period. During periods of high spring-summer floods, water from the Sim River enters the cave through cracks and karst channels and floods its distant part; then a vast underground lake up to 1.5 m deep is formed on the floor of the Far and Stalactite grottoes.

The total length of the cave passages is 213 m, the average height is 2.2 m, the floor area is 939 m2, the cavity volume is 2066 m3.

According to evidence local residents, religious ceremonies were performed in the cave in the 2nd half of the 19th century (hence the name).

In the 1950-1960s. the cave was explored by karst scientists from the ChSPI (A.D. Sysoev, V.N. Dubovik, etc.); in 1975, a group of speleologists from the Chelyabinsk club “Pluto” (headed by E. A. Saburenkov) compiled a topographic plan and description. In 1982-1984. The cave was explored by members of an archaeological expedition led by V. T. Petrin. In the loose sediments on the floor, traces of ancient animals and people were recorded. The main discovery is 8 groups of Paleolithic paintings on the walls of the main corridor of the cave (for more details, see Serpievskaya 2). The cave has great scientific-practical, historical-memorial, cultural-educational and tourist-excursion significance.

Ignatievskaya Cave

Ignatevskaya cave is the oldest Art Gallery primitive man. The cave is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district, near the village of Serpievka.

Ignatievskaya Cave is dry and easy to visit. A wide but low entrance leads inside from the arched entrance grotto. From it you enter the main gallery of the Pillar, more than 130 meters long, which leads to the grotto of the Pillar, from which you can get to the far grotto on the “second floor”, called the “Cell of Elder Ignatius”.

Ignatievskaya cave (Yamazy-Tash in Bashkir) is small in size ( total length passages 540 m), two-story, known since the middle of the last century and has been examined several times. But only in 1980, in its distant grottoes, under a layer of soot and inscriptions of modern “savages”, drawings were discovered ancient man, applied with red ocher. Unlike the painting of the Kapova Cave, in Ignatievskaya it is not clear silhouettes that predominate, but conventional figures in the form of lines and spots of paint, which were made approximately 15-16 thousand years ago.

One of the most famous caves Russia, Ignatievskaya Cave has a rich and mysterious history. It is located on the right bank of the Sim River, 7 km downstream from the village of Serpievka, Katav-Ivanovsky district. The cave was declared a cultural monument, first of regional and then of federal significance, and this is not surprising. It is here that the “picture gallery” of ancient people of the Paleolithic era is located - about 40 groups of drawings in total.

This rock painting, according to experts, is already 14 thousand years old. On the walls there are quite realistic depictions of bulls, mammoths, scenes of their hunting, as well as geometric symbols that have not yet been deciphered. At one time the cave was sacred place for ancient people, a kind of temple. There are only three similar caves with Paleolithic drawings of ancient people in Russia: Kapova in Bashkiria, Ignatievskaya and Kolokolnaya near the village. Serpievka in the Chelyabinsk region.

Another feature of the Ignatievskaya Cave is the many traditions and legends associated with it. It is believed that for a long time an old hermit named Ignatius lived here in solitude - the cave was named after him. What kind of person this was is a mystery, however, there are rumors that it was Emperor Alexander I, who exchanged the throne for the peace and quiet of a hermit. According to another legend, the elder was not the emperor himself, but his brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.

Bell Cave

The cave is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district of the Chelyabinsk region near the village of Serpievka (1.5 km southeast of the village) 300 m downstream of the river. Sim (on the right bank) from the bridge on the Katav-Ivanovsk highway - the village of Serpievka and 50 m from the Mayskaya cave. The cave is built in dense light gray limestone of Devonian age. The entrance to the cave is oriented to the South-East, has the shape of an arch 3 m high and 4 m wide. It is located at an altitude of 11 m above the river level. 5.5 m after the entrance, the roof of the cave decreases. The corridor-grotto type cave, developing in the North-West direction, is a gallery with a width of 2 to 5 m and a height of 1 to 6-8 m (in grottoes). At a distance of 30 m from the entrance and further up to 70 m, parallel to the main corridor there is a passage - “Metro”, connected to the main passages. The "Metro" passage is quite narrow - 1.2 m wide and 1 m high and has very smooth walls and a semicircular ceiling. The floor of the passage is clay and dry. From the “Metro”, which is about 40 m long, there are three passages to the left into the main corridor, which are located at a distance of 2 m, 13 m, 10 m from each other. In the cave there are several clearly defined grottoes with vault heights of 6 - 8 m and widths from 5 to 10 m. All of them were formed at the intersection of cracks with the main gallery. In total, there are four halls in the cave:

1st from the entrance - “Narrow” - 4.5 X 10 m and up to 6 m high.

2nd from the entrance - "Round"

3rd from the entrance - "Stalactite" - 20 X 8 X 4 m.

4th from the entrance - "Far" - 9 X 8 X 5 m.

Connecting with the main passage, the "Metro" forms the "Stalactite" hall, which is connected to the "Dalny" hall by a 20-meter gallery. At the entrance to "Dalny" there is an organ pipe up to 10 m high. On the right, to the side of the hall there are small gours, cave pearls, small pebbles. Two narrow walkways, up to 0.8 m wide, lead out of the hall to the left. In front of the walkways there are active gours. Both walkways are connected through 15 m into one corridor 5 wide m., 10 m long and 1.2 m high. There are three lakes in the left walkway. There are sinter formations on the walls, many of which have been broken off. In the same passage, 7 m from the hall, there is an organ pipe 2.5 m high, which also has many chips. The corridor rises by 30? and ends with two dead ends that form a rounded grotto. One of the dead ends is directed to the west, and the other is directed to the east. In the western dead end, the dimensions of which are 3 X 1.2 X 1.4 m, the walls and ceiling are covered with mondmilch (moon milk). On the left is a stalagmite - there are inscriptions on the walls. In the eastern dead end, whose dimensions are 5 X 2 X 1.3 m, there are sinter formations and many chips. On the right is a stalagnate. Throughout the cave, the floor is made of clay, crushed stone, and fragments of bedrock. In the “Far” grotto, the floor is covered with sintered calcite bark. The walls of the cave are smooth, in places corroded by the water flows that once existed here. In the “Stalactite” and “Dalniy” grottoes, there is a drop of water in the summer, and there are puddles on the floor. In winter there are icy sinter formations. The cave once had calcite decorations - sinter crusts, stalactites, stalagmites. Currently, they are preserved in the Stalactite grotto, but are significantly smoked by torches and chipped. According to the stories of local residents, religious ceremonies were performed in this cave, which is why it was called “Bell”. The cave is mostly horizontal along its entire length.

 

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