Kapova Cave

Today, this area of wild dense forest and high white rocks is home to deer, bear, and the Bashkort bee.[2] Around 10-20 thousand years ago the climate and the landscape were different. Summer was short, while winter months were very long and cold, and the landscape was Tundra. Humans sought shelter in clefts and caves among the rocks.

The entrance to the cave is situated on the southern slope of the Sarykuskan (Russian: Сарыкускан) mountain. The entrance forms a huge arch 30 m (98 ft) in height. To the left of the cave entrance is a lake from which the river Shul'gan (Russian: Шульган) originates. The underground Shul'gan (Russian: Подземный Шульган) river, which created the cave, flows through it. This three-story cave system is about 3 km (1.9 mi) long, with a depth of 165 m (541 ft) including siphon underwater cavities, large halls, galleries, underground lakes and the river[3]

The mouth of the Shulgantash cave is called the Portal. Deep in the Portal lies the source of the Shul'gan, emerging from underground and forming a pool named Blue Lake. The lake is bottomless: below 33 Meters in depth it joins a gigantic underground water cavity.[4]

A passageway leads from the Portal to a succession of ground level halls. First comes the Main Gallery, followed by the Stalagmite Hall. Continuing northwards, one enters the Dome Hall and the Hall of the Signs. At the far end lies the Hall of Chaos. The halls differ in size and shape: the Main gallery and the Hall of Chaos are oblong, while the Stalagmite and the Dome Halls are circular, whereas the Hall of the Signs is rectangular. Their length reaches 90, width 20-30 and the height 7–20 metres. The halls are connected by tunnels of various length and shape, somewhere occur clumply blockages. Air from the outside reaches the Main Gallery and, to an extent, the Stalagmitic Hall. However, in the Dome Hall and onwards, the air is stagnant both in the winter and summer. Stalactites and stalagmites become more common as one advances deeper into the cave. The walls are covered with calcareous sinter, which can be as much as half a metre thick. Some of the calcite stones are intricately shaped.

Vestigial traces of prehistoric man's life can be found in the ground level halls. On the walls of the Middle Dome hall one can plainly discern spots of spread red paint as well as some geometrical figures - the signs. In the neighbouring Hall of the Signs the number of such figures considerably increases. On the cave floor in the corner of the Hall of Chaos, the archaeologist Shchelinsky discovered remnants of a fire and vestigial traces of ancient people`s activity.

Scheme of the first floor of the cave

Underground lake in the cave

Due to the density of drawings, the Hall of Chaos may be called the "museum" of the ground level part of the cave. On its walls one can see a two-coloured picture of long- haired horses, along with a trapezoidal geometric figure; and a little further a group of geometrical signs are present.

The picture of an human-like creature, the only one in Shulgantash cave, is also to be found in the Hall of Chaos. For many centuries, all the drawings have been covered with a semi-transparent calcite crust. The expedition headed by the prominent archaeologist O.N.Bader cleaned the pictures of the horses in 1976. In order to ascend to the upper tier of the cave, one has to return to the Stalagmite Hall, where there is a hole in the roof leading upwards. A steel ladder has been installed to reach the hole in the roof; it is followed by a sloped path, leading to another ladder, this one 16 meters long, which takes visitors to the upper level.

Having climbed the ladder, visitors find themselves in a long and high hall, which is called the First Gallery, the first of a succession of upper level halls. Moving further northwards, one then crosses the small Antechamber Hall in order to enter the most famous hall of the Shulgantash- the Hall of the Drawings.

Beyond the Hall of the Drawings, there are 14 more large and small halls accessible to visitors: the Second Gallery, the Acoustic Hall, the Oval Hall, the Hall Temple, the Upper and Diamond Halls, the Hall of Upper Lake (with a large lake in it), the Rainbow and the Crystal halls, the Hall of the Mountain King, the Gallery Hall, the Hall of the Abyss, the Transsyphon Hall and the Far Hall.

The way to the more remote halls is rather complicated, with many dangerous sections and pools blocking the trail. In the Transsyphon Hall one can see an underground section of the River Shulgan. Beyond the Far Hall there is a cavity filled with water: a siphon. The speleologist and scuba diver Vladimir Kiselyov once traveled as far as 317 meters northwards inside the siphon before returning, having found no end to it.

The highlight of the Crystal Hall is the silvery fringe of calcite icicles hanging from the ceiling. Among the sublime decorations of the cave are "milky rivers" composed of tiny calcite crystals, fragile and crisp, which haven't become solid yet.

Streams in the cave sometimes make small funnels in the halls on the floor revealing grains of cave pearl, whereas on the walls there is a crust of marble onyx, in some places half a metre deep. Marble onyx is a type of marble frequently found in limestone caves.

The most ancient drawings are in the upper tier. They were painted in the Late Paleolithic era.,[5] when Cro-Magnons lived on the planet. The lower tier of the Kapova cave hosts later images from the end of the last ice age. Their size varies between 44 and 112 centimeters. Uranium-thorium dating suggests that the oldest drawings in Kapova Cave were made 36,400 years ago.[6]

In January 1959, Alexander Ryumin,[7][8][9] a senior researcher at the Pribelsky branch of the Bashkiriya Nature Reserve, made a sensational discovery. He discovered drawings made by ancient people on the walls of the Shulgantash (Kapova) cave. Alexander Ryumin, having gone down underground in search of bats, found colorful wall pictures of various animals - horses, rhinos and mammoths . This became a real world sensation. Scientists of that time believed that drawings of fossil animals of the Paleolithic era were characteristic only of Western Europe - such an ancient cave painting is found in the world only in France and Spain. From that moment on, the Kapova cave acquired the status of an important historical and cultural complex, which is unrivaled in Eastern Europe.

The best composition is on the right half of eastern wall. In the centre of the composition, within the reach of the ancient painter`s hand, is a drawing of an animal, "Ryumin`s horse", the first picture discovered in Shulgantash Cave. Next are the pictures of several mammoths and a rhinoceros. All the animals are shown walking from right to left, with one small mammoth standing or going in the opposite direction. On the opposite wall there is a bison or a bull, and mammoths with a calf. In this hall one can also see a trapezoidal shape painted with strange lines and signs inside the figure, and unusual ears at the top. Such geometrical signs repeatedly occur in the drawings of Kapova Cave.

The Ignatievka Cave is located some 120 km (75 mi) from the Kapova cave.

Local people were afraid to visit the cave. The first written information on the Shulgantash cave appeared in January 1760.During a visit to Bashkiria, the first corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, P.I. Rychkov, was told about the cave. He provided a detailed description of the cave, or rather, its ground level part in his article "Description of a cave located in the Orenburg province near the Belaya River, which of all the caves in Bashkiria are the most glorious and revered" (in his book Compositions and translations for the benefit and amusement of employees- «Сочинения и переводы к пользе и увеселению служащих», 1760) .

Ten years later (1770), the cave was explored by Ivan Lepyokhin, who studied the upper level and gave a vivid picture of it in his travel diary.

According to Ivan Lepyokhin, the "Kapova" name comes from the dripping water within the cave ("kapova" translates as "dripping") (Russian: капающая вода).

In the middle and later half of the 19th century the Shulgantash cave was studied by a number of travelers and explorers (including by geologists of the South Urals N.G. Myaglitsky and A.I. Antipov in 1858). The local forester Fyodor Simon organized occasional excursions to the cave.

In 1896, the lower floor of the cave was examined by members of the Orenburg branch of the Russian Geographical Society D. Sokolov, I. Zanevsky and F. Simon, who mapped a plan of the entrance part of the lower level and compiled a protocol for its inspection and measurement. Researchers noted that the description of P.I. Rychkova is in full agreement "with the actual state of the cave: in all the indicated places everything that he noted was found".

In 1923 the geologist and scientist G.V.Vakhrushev explored the cave up to the Upper Lake. He made a roughly sketched map of the interior and issued a small book "The Enigmas of Kapova Cave". In 1931 G.V. Vakhrushev came to the cave again, clarified information about the cave, and described the surroundings of the cave. He also wrote about various legends of the ShulganTash cave.

In 1960 a group of Moscow archaeologists headed by O.N.Bader started working in the cave.[10][11] Over his entire work, he uncovered more than 30 drawings, including mammoths, horses, rhinos, bison and geometric shapes. The drawings were cleaned from the calcite crust and mud, photographed and thoroughly examined. They were judged to date back to late Paleolithic period (25-10 thousand years B.C.). The main result of this long research was his book “Kapova Cave: Paleolithic Painting" published in 1965. Bader believed that all the drawings represent a single complex and are relatively contemporaneous.

During this period, the study of the Shulgantash cave itself was carried out by employees of Bashkir State University, under the direction of E.D. Bogdanovich and I.I. Kudryasheva. They compiled a detailed map of the cave. The first microclimatic observations were carried out, and distant. generally inaccessible areas were examined.

After the death of Otto Bader in 1979, research in the cave stopped. There were problems preservations of the prehistoric paintings, and so it was decided to completely close the cave. Work in the cave was resumed only in 1982 by Leningrad archaeologist V.E. Shchelinsky. At that time, he led a comprehensive Paleolithic expedition that conducted archaeological research in the Southern Urals annually.

When were the drawings applied to the walls of the cave? V.E. Shchelinsky suggested an answer this question. He discovered various artifacts left behind by ancient humans under the ancient drawings. He believed that they belong to the Paleolithic era. V.E. Schelinsky believes that a significant part of the cave's drawings are combined into compositions reflecting the mythological beliefs of the ancient artists. For the first time, a well-defined cultural layer of the Upper Paleolithic era was identified, dated by the time about 14,000 BC. Traced focal spots indicate the use of open fire by the ancient inhabitants. Various artifacts were identified, including a clay fat lamp, stone, mostly flint tools, pieces of ochre, jewelry in the form of beads and pendants made of stone and small shells of fossil mollusks, and bones of animals of the ice age - mammoth, cave bear, fox, hare, marmot, pika, and jerboa were found.

Archaeologist V.N. Shirokov from Yekaterinburg believes that the Shulgantash cave was a sanctuary.

I. V. Kiselev executed a comprehensive study of the Shulgantash cave In 1991. He made dives on the underground river Shulgan. V.G. Kotov explored the cave, and he believes that Kapova Cave was a cult center for the peoples of the Southern Urals, where rites of initiation and rebirth of nature were performed. V.G. Kotov and V.N. Shirokov believe that the activity in the cave at that time were associated with initiation rituals.

Yuri Sergeyevich Lyakhnitsky made a detailed and accurate map of the Shulgantash Cave massif. In 2002, he identified new drawings - the “pale mammoth”, alongside a drawing of a man and the silhouette of another mammoth. In 2023, the Bashkir historian Airat Maratovich Bagautdinov, in his book “Deciphering the signs of the Kapova Cave. Birth. Death. The Cult of Motherhood,” substantiated the concept of pregnancy calendars for women and animals on the walls of the Kapova Cave, and also put forward a hypothesis about the deciphering of the signs of life and death of the Paleolithic era.

Today, the Shulgantash is considered a thoroughly studied and documented cave.

The heart of the South Urals with Lake Shulgan and the sources of legendary rivers Aghidel, Yaiyk, Hakmar and Nogosh is associated with the life and deeds of the immortal heroes of the eposes Ural Batyr and Аkbuthat (Akbuzat) which belong to the world art treasures. For ancient Bashkorts the area was the centre of the earth, where celestial, natural and underwater worlds could interact and interpenetrate.

Very much legends, interesting traditions and fairy tales are related to the cave Shulgan-Tash. The most striking thing is that the main actions in many ancient tales and other folklore works are tied to the Shulgan-Tash cave or the Shulgan lake as soon as possible. And it is no coincidence that both the cave and the lake in them carry the name of the owner of the underworld (underwater king) Shulgen.

Shulgen is one of the major negative characters of many ancient eposes of bashkorts (eposes: "URAL-BATYR", "AKBUZAT", "KARA-YURGA", "AKHAK KOLA" and others); Heroes: Haoban in the epos "Akbuzat"; Kushak-batyr in the epos "KARA-YURGA"; Batyr Miney in the epic "Kungir Buga." characterizedgan (SHULGEN) arose according to legend from the remnants of the Flood Sea, arranged by the Div (Giant) and Shulgen after being hit by the staff of the earth. About lake Shulgen, for example, in the epos "AKBUZAT" was said: "When the water padishah (King) lost the battle, he found a bottomless pool and dived into this lake. The lake became known as SHULGEN."

In the epos «Akbuzat» and the epos «Ural-batyr» are described sacrifice of a human to lake Shulgan. A beautiful girl was presented to the padishah of the underwater (underground) world (Rychkov found a «dry human head» while visiting the cave in 1760).

In many legends and traditions of bashkorts takes lake Shulgan a central place. So all events in the epos «Arbuzat» are developed exactly around this lake. On the surface of the lake at full moon appears the girl Narcas in the image of the gold duck. A young hunter (Haoban) reseives a gift from her – the horse Akbuzat (Toolpar with wings) and countless herds of livestock. The only condition for Haoban is at this the prohibition of turning around towards the lake after receipt of gifts. But afraid of the storm caused by the emergence from the lake Toolpar, Haoban looked around and all animals disappeared into the lake again.

The action of the other legend «Kungyr buga» occurs by the lake Shulgan. In this lake Batyr (hero) Minei finds the missing daughter of the old man and old women. She was stolen by a water thief in this town (the owner of the lake). Batyr descends into the underwater kingdom, cuts down all seven heads of the monster and takes the girls, people, and cattle to the ground.

The motives for horses and cattle living on the lake and their partial disappearance in this same lake are distributed in numerous legends and eposes of bashkorts.

A legend about Yelkysykkan-kul lake, from which horses have come out, is wide in the Burzyan district. This legend (by M.V. Lossievsky) tells about the batyr Bishlak which met during the hunting in the surroundings of the lake Shulgan an amazing wanderer. The wanderer asked Bishlak to give him his dog. The wanderer offered a herd of horses for the dog. Byshlak was supposed to drive forward without looking back. But out of curiosity, he looked around and the halfway the herd returned to the lake.

The hunter became a rich man and his descendants (tribe) from his time is called Bayulins (rich). From this herd came the breed of gray horses.

And the lake got the name Yelkysykkan - lake where the horses went out. By the text of description this lake complies with the lake of karst origin near the Shulgan-Tash cave (named the lake Shulgan).

In folk traditions very often is the lake Shulgan the place of birth of miracle horse. So, in the version of the legend “Akhak Kola”, the appearance of the leader of the herd Akhak Kola is described as follows: "Shulgan came to the lake. But he managed to catch only the foal - the mare dived back into the lake, but this foal became lame (from here and her name: «Akhak Kola» – the lame light yellow horse with a black tail).

Legends related to the cave personalize an external force. The cave environment is more severe and incomprehensible than the nature usually environing us. Vladimir Dal who visited the Orenburg province as an official, collected works of oral culture, in particular and Bashkir folklor. He charakterzed Kapova cave according to bashkir's tails and legends. There are genies, dives (дивы, fantastic creatures), and a stone dog. It is wonderful that the dog is afraid of whips. If you hit it a hundred times with a whip, it will rain.

According to P.I. Rychkov, Bashkirs (Bashkorts) usually hid here their families and horses during wars and their uprisings. The cattle naturally stayed in the lower floor of the cave, and women, children and old men went upstairs. Food was always stored here.

• Lawson, Andrew J. (2012). Painted Caves. Palaeolithic Rock Art in Western Europe. Oxford University Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-19-969822-6.
• Silberman, Neil Asher, ed. (2012). The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford University Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-19-973578-5.
• Ю.С.Ляхницкий.Шульганташ..-Уфа:Китап.2002.с.192-194. ФП- 2001 ISBN 5-295-03088-1 (in Russian)
• Bagautdinov Airat Maratovich, Bagautdinov Aidar Maratovich. Decoding the signs of the Kapova Cave. Birth. Death. The cult of motherhood: monograph. Ufa. 2023. - 53 p. ISBN 978-5-00177-640-6

• The real story of Russia Kapova Cave
• Official website of the Shulgan-Tash Natural Reserve
• Kapova Cave section of the official website of the Shulgan-Tash Natural Reserve