One February morning in 2023, retired couple Tatyana and Gennady Sergeyev were guarding an old, wooden bridge across the Kulenga River. They had been keeping a regular watch for a week by that point, in order to stop 13-ton tank-like vehicles from crossing the bridge. No, war hadn’t come to their village. The heavy machinery was carrying geologists on a mission to search for oil and gas.
Tatyana had seen the first “tank” through her window a week earlier. Geologists had entered the forest eight kilometers from the village of Belousovo and started working next to a local historical site, the Talma pisanitsy – images chiseled into or painted on rock faces by ancient humans. Village residents heard explosions – the geologists were destroying an ancient human settlement directly opposite the artwork, where one-of-a-kind iron-age treasures were preserved underground.
Two months later, a criminal case was initiated against Seismopoisk, the Krasnoyarsk company that had been doing the work. The court fined Seismopoisk R100,000. And it was local residents who made this happen. They are single-handedly protecting the rock drawings: writing to the government, standing watch on the bridge and, with their own funds, putting up warning signs near the artworks.
We traveled to Belousovo to see the Talma pisanitsy to find out why these rock paintings are more important to village residents than extracting oil and gas.
It’s about a 10-minute trip through the forest from Belousovo to the Talma pisanitsy. The road has been washed out by rain – in this kind of weather, only vehicles with high clearance can get through. And to reach the paintings you have to leave your vehicle in the forest and walk through the mud for another five minutes, then climb up boulders to a stone platform. Here, on reddish slabs of rock, ancient humans drew figures of people, animals, shamans, and scenes from life. Researchers believe that the images are between 8,000 and 12,000 years old.
Pisanitsy is a Siberian word. Generally, such prehistoric stone art is referred to as petroglyphs (if carved) or pictographs (if painted). Some of the Talma images were painted in the brick color of ocher; others were gouged or scraped out with the point of a spear. The rocks above the paintings are black from the soot of ancient people’s fires.
Modern humans also left their mark next to the ancient images: they scratched in the year of their visit, 2003. There are also several indentations from bullets on the rock, from poachers testing the range of their guns. Judging by the fact that they hit the images directly, they must have been aiming for them.
Belousovo resident Konstantin Melentyev, 36, led us on our excursion to the Talma pisanitsy. He moved here three years ago from Irkutsk with his wife and two daughters. In the summer of 2023, his third daughter was born here. “When the pandemic started, it got boring in the city,” he explained. His wife was born in Belousovo, so Melentyev bought some land from her relatives and built a home over a span of six months. He works as an electrician in Verkholensk, a larger village nearby, and earns extra income as a guide, leading tourist groups around the Kachug District, including to the Talma pisanitsy.
“It’s raining – for a day, two, maybe three. Someone’s sitting under the cliff face like under an awning. They’re not going anywhere. And they sit and scribble,” Melentyev said, offering one down-to-earth explanation of the artworks’ origin. “People started changing – their brains started working. Creativity appeared, and the urge to be creative.”
There are several platforms where you can see the ancient images up close. Most of the drawings are on the one closest to the village. To see the rest, we walk along the Talma River (which branches off from the Kulenga in Belousova) and direct our gaze at the rock faces above. Some images are distinct, some barely visible, some small and some large. A few were outlined in chalk by researchers who came here on an expedition more than half a century ago. Thanks to overhanging cliffs, the chalk hasn’t been washed away by the rain. This human hideaway still provides excellent shelter.
Researchers believe that ancient people lived along the Kulenga River because it offers a direct route to Lake Baikal. Archeological excavations unrearthed a large shell proven to be from the opposite side of the lake, suggesting that ancient people traversed it. Streams flowed into the valley year-round, and people knew they could find water here. Ancient people lived in this narrow valley under the protection of two rock walls. Excavations have shown that they would either dig earth houses or build shelter out of animal hides.
On the shore across the river from the pisanitsy is Khortei-2, the ancient human settlement that Seismopoisk geologists blasted with explosives. Teachers and students from the history department at Irkutsk State University began excavating here in 2007. They were unable to complete their study of the settlement before they had to close the site. Now, it looks like a field overgrown with grass. Nothing indicates that there are archeological treasures hidden underground. The settlement got its name in Soviet times from the name of a nearby village, Khorta, which doesn’t exist anymore – locals left during the post-Soviet era and their abandoned homes burned down. As with the ancient human settlement, all that’s left is an empty field.
The Talma rock drawings were discovered in the eighteenth century by historian and traveler Gerhard Müller, at the time of the Great Northern Expedition, but he didn’t consider them important. Soviet historian Alexei Okladnikov studied and described them only at the end of the 1960s. Okladnikov was born here, in Verkholensk Uyezd, in the village of Konstantinovka. For 30 years before beginning work on the Talma pisanitsy, he studied the nearby Shishkin pisanitsy.
The forces of nature drew Okladnikov to Belousovo: the river had washed some of the shore away and revealed human bones. He found the remains of a young woman with a nephrite necklace on her chest. That’s when excavations started on the Kulenga. It was a sensation. He also visited the Talma pisanitsy.
Okladnikov, already a well-known researcher at the time, as well as a department chair at Novosibirsk State University, was welcomed into the home of local forestry worker Roman Nechayev, whose daughter Tatyana Sergeyeva, many years later, took the initiative to protect the village bridge from geologists. The whole village talked about Okladnikov’s arrival, and in 1977 he published a book, The Upper Lena Petroglyphs («Петроглифы Верхней Лены»), based on his expedition’s findings. In it, he described each image in detail, and, for a long time, it was the only scholarly work about the Talma pisanitsy. The second was the graduate thesis of Tatyana and Gennady Sergeyev’s son Roman: “The Upper Lena Petroglyphs – The Talma Pisanitsy.”
We meet up with Roman Sergeyev in an Irkutsk café. Due to his work and kids, he is less and less able to get away from the city to his parents’ place in the village. He has four sons. The oldest is 21, the youngest four months. Roman arrives with his six-year-old son, Kostya, in tow. They’re wearing white t-shirts with an image of the rock paintings and a caption: “The place where rocks speak.” Roman had the shirts custom-made. He came up with the catch-phrase himself.
“Everything here is symbolic,” he said about the paintings on the T-shirts. “At the top is a drum, which symbolizes the sun. The wind is blowing the drum’s tassels toward the east, the direction in which ancient people migrated. In the middle are a Buryat arrow and a Russian pike – that indicates that two peoples live here. The deer at the top is the emblem of the Kachuga people. Below is a shaman, who made the vitally important decisions.”
Roman is 45. He was born in Irkutsk, but from a young age spent every summer with his grandparents in the village of Ust-Talma, 300 kilometers away. He was named after his grandfather, the forester, and Roman is a bona-fide nerd when it comes to the Talma pisanitsy. He graduated from the history department at Irkutsk State University as an accredited “historian-archeologist,” but now runs a business selling auto parts. That’s the work he does for money. The work he does for love is at the Irkutsk Interregional Astronomical Society. He’s one of its founders.
It was Roman’s grandfather (the forester who hosted Okladnikov) who first showed him the rock drawings. “Granddad hitched up the cart, and we went by horse,” he said. “Granddad had some hayfields there. I remember him calling me when I was small: Romka, come here. And he showed me the paintings on the rocks. I was five.”
In 1995, road work was done next to the pisanitsy and part of the rock wall was accidentally removed. Roman was 17 at the time. He was quite upset. That’s when he realized he wanted to become a historian and dedicate his life to preserving the pisanitsy.
Six years ago, Roman’s parents moved from Irkutsk to Tatyana’s childhood home in Ust-Talma. Their house is 300 years old, and was built by Tatyana’s great-great-grandfather on her mother’s side. It has three adjoining rooms and a large kitchen. Endless fields stretch out behind the property.
Roman dreams of one day living in Ust-Talma. “Have you seen how much land there is there?” he said. “Though really, there’s no land. Every abandoned house has an owner.”
To this day, Tatyana coats the ceiling and walls throughout the house with light blue paint, just like her ancestors did. “In the past, they had nothing, so they added bluing for color,” she explains. “Now I’ve gotten used to it – I don’t want to change a thing.” This is the house where her father took in the scholar Okladnikov.
Tatyana was educated as a Russian language and literature teacher. In her youth, she started working in the Ust-Talma school, then followed her husband to Irkutsk, where for 40 years she worked in early childhood education and raised three children. Roman is the oldest.
“I said to him back when he was in school, ‘Romka, you just need a banner and you’ll be the second Lenin,’” Tatyana said.
Roman read his way through his grandparents’ entire library. He regrets that after their death he didn’t keep their Stalin-era books. He said they were written clearly – not how people write today. “The state had an interest in people being knowledgeable,” Roman said. And he adds: “Now, the state has no need for knowledgeable people.”
At the Astronomy Society, Roman works with children. He acquires telescopes for schools and works with sponsors to stage festivals. In the summer of 2023, he put on the first-ever Regional Astronomy Festival in Belousovo. It was called A Little Corner of Russia: from the Earth to the Sky. He brought 50 school-aged kids to the village from throughout Kachug District. The students heard lectures on astronomy, archeology and history, and visited the Talma pisanitsy. The festival got covered by a number of regional internet sites.
“We teach the children what’s most important: critical thinking,” Roman said. “Astronomy helps people understand their place in the world.”
The first thing tourists see in the forest when they come to look at the ancient human artwork is the warning signs. Roman got the idea for them in 2020. He thought they might stop vandals. The villagers all pitched in money for them.
Olga Skorova, director of the local community center, led the fundraising effort. She appealed to residents via a group instant-messaging chat. At first, people were reluctant, but then she wrote: “[The pisanitsy] are a legacy from our ancestors, and we must preserve them for our children.” Belousovo residents sent in 100, 200, even 500 rubles. The largest donation was 2,000 rubles.
The first warning sign cost residents 6,000 rubles. It reads: “Attention! This specially protected area is under government protection! All types of construction and commercial activity are forbidden within the borders of this area!!! Violators are liable under Article 243 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.” It also provides telephone numbers for reporting illegal activity. The sign is posted beneath the pisanitsy.
Village residents weren’t able to raise funds for a second sign. By October 2020, prices had risen dramatically. A sign suddenly cost three times as much. Roman approached Kachug District officials for assistance. To help get the sign installed, district tourism development specialist Aleksandra Nesterenko spoke at a session of the district Duma. “We’ve reached the point where we [the authorities] aren’t able to put up a road sign,” she said. “Soon, people will have to fix their roads and bridges themselves.” Her speech helped; the Duma provided funds for the signs.
Today, the warning signs are a sieve of bullet holes. Not only do they not stop anyone, but they have become a target for hunters. The Seismopoisk geologists were unbothered as they drove past the bullet-ridden signs and into the forest.
People have also damaged the actual Talma pisanitsy – they cut out pieces of the flagstone containing ancient drawings and used them for fireplaces in their own homes. And poachers don’t stop at shooting up the pisanitsy. Right by the petroglyphs, hunters have set up an area for butchering animals. Everything here is soaked with blood, with bones and skins lying all about.
On top of that, the flagstone itself has started to dry out and fall. Older village residents have told Roman that there used to be a gigantic image of a dragon on the rock face. They called it “the serpent” and gave it a wide berth in the dark. The serpent completely collapsed; Roman has never seen it.
Roman said that the older people had never heard of rocks falling here. But now it happens often. His theory is that the rock is drying out due to climate change. In his childhood, there were always high rivers flowing through the region. Four years ago, they dried up completely and the riverbeds became overgrown. This year, the rivers are flowing again.
Roman dedicates all his free time to the Talma pisanitsy. He led the charge to get them designated a nationally significant landmark by pestering the Irkutsk Oblast office in charge of protecting cultural heritage sites.
The fight for national landmark status took 28 years. The Irkustk office started applying to add the rock paintings to the list of protected landmarks in 1995, but they were denied. Roman thinks the drawings didn’t meet certain criteria. There are fewer here than at the site of the nearby Shishkin pisanitsy. “On the other hand, they’re right in front of your eyes,” he said. The Ministry of Culture finally approved the request in 2023.
Roman hopes that this new status will help preserve the petroglyphs. By law, any actions destructive to nationally significant landmarks are a criminal offense.
From the road above, the geologists’ camp near the village of Zhitova is clearly visible. Blue-and-white trailers are scattered across the field. Local guide Konstantin Melentyev – Roman’s eyes and ears on the ground – shows us the Ural trucks with their blue cabs – they’re used specifically to transport explosives. There’s an armored personnel carrier next to them.
In March 2023, the same month the pisanitsy were declared a national landmark, residents of Belousovo, Zhitova and Ust-Talma started hearing explosions coming from the forest. A local went into the forest and saw that geologists had used bulldozers to clear snow not far from the Talma pisanitsy. He told Melentyev, who took photos and sent them to Roman in Irkutsk. Roman in turn got in touch with the cultural heritage office.
“I think they were assuming we simple folk wouldn’t be hanging around the forest in winter, so there wouldn’t be anyone to see their geologists,” Roman said.
Roman went with heritage office personnel to the scene to investigate. They saw roads built from felled trees to allow heavy machinery to pass, and boreholes for the geologists to place explosives in. “They recorded the spots and checked them against the maps,” Roman said. “The maps confirmed without a doubt that the boreholes went into an archeological landmark: the ancient human settlement Khortei-2.”
There had been plans in 2020 for a big Russian-Canadian archaeological expedition here, Roman said. Canadian researchers were to bring a special type of equipment that would allow them to see what was underground without unnecessary digging. But the expedition was first delayed by Covid and then completely canceled due to Russia’s War on Ukraine. The Canadian researchers have broken off relations with their Russian colleagues.
On behalf of local residents, Roman phoned the number on Seismopoisk’s official website, warning that geologists were carrying out work next to a nationally significant archeological landmark. “At first they denied it, saying that their company wasn’t working in that area,” Roman said. “Then the head engineer spoke with me and insisted they were working strictly based on the maps, in permitted locations. Then they started telling me that the head engineer had quit.”
Oksana Popova, a resident of Tolmachyovo who has a law degree, helps Roman bring attention to the pisanitsy and to correspond with the government. Over the course of the spring and summer of 2023, Oksana received 18 responses from various levels of government. They all said the same thing: the work Seismopoisk was doing was legal.
Nonetheless, the Cultural Heritage Office filed a court case against Seismopoisk and in June 2023 they won. Seismopoisk was fined 100,000 rubles.
Sergei, a geologist with 42 years of experience who works for a company in Irkutsk explained how this could happen, asking us not to publish his surname. “If we’re working next to an architectural landmark in Irkutsk,” he said, “we have to coordinate what we’re doing with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Center [now called the Office for Preservation of Objects of Cultural Heritage] before we start the work. Things have always been strict in these situations. They don’t let you do surveying work without permission from the Heritage Preservation Center.”
Sergei said that, as a rule, geologists can tell what section of land they should work on based on a soil sample. If a piece of land is gravelly or has loose soil, there can’t be any antiquities there. Ancient human settlements are found in natural soil. Geologists, as a rule, are allowed in only after archeologists have finished their investigations, Sergei said.
“One time, when we were at a work site,” Sergei said, “we discovered an ancient human settlement. Because of that, they shifted the railway line there by 500 meters. I can’t even imagine how a bunch of geologists managed to destroy an ancient human settlement.”
After the Seismopoisk incursion, heavy machinery returned to Belousovo on June 10, 2023. This time it was five all-terrain trucks bearing the logo of the Irkutsk company Sigma-Geo. Melentyev again took photos and sent them to Roman in Irkutsk. Roman went to the company’s office that same day with papers. He warned them that an archeological landmark was located next to Belousovo and told them about the criminal case against Seismopoisk.
Nikolai Sobolev, the company’s head engineer, later explained that he didn’t know that there was a historical landmark in the area. “Give me the coordinates of the pisanitsy,” he said. “We’ll bring the information to the client and refuse to complete any work in this location.”
Later in the year, Sobolev said that, after he received information from Roman, the company approached the Cultural Heritage Preservation Office and discussed their plans for working near the landmark. “We worked everything out like we’re supposed to, didn’t get in anyone’s way, and they didn’t have any issues with us,” Sobolev said. Sigma-Geo stopped working in the region, and their heavy equipment left.
There are 10 villages in the Belousovo rural settlement: Belousovo, Talma, Ust-Talma, Khobanova, Shemetova, Obkhoi, Zhitova, Gogon, Ikhinagui and Magdan. Officially, based on census data, a total of 546 persons call the region home. In reality, there are more than 1,000, as many live here unregistered. It’s also unclear where one village ends and another begins. Nature is vast here, and houses, many of them abandoned, are scattered across fields between the mountains.
There are jobs here at the school, the kindergarten, the administration, the community center, the post office, the first-aid clinic, private shops and one state store, where the prices are higher than at the private ones.
You have to cross the Lena River on a pontoon bridge to get from Verkholensk to Belousovo. It’s temporary. In the fall, it’s either swept away by ice or removed in time for winter, and when there’s ice on the river the villages are cut off from the outside world. Older people in poor health and pregnant women try to leave in winter. “We live on an island for four months of the year,” the locals say.
The Belousovo school stands atop a hill. The building – one-storey, wooden, dark and long – is visible from everywhere, and also houses the settlement administration, the kindergarten, and the medical office.
Forty children attend the village school. The main problem right now, said settlement head Andrei Petrov, is that there’s no firewood for winter. The lack of firewood threatens not only the school, but also many local residents. By law, the government assigns residents a section of forest to heat their homes, but it’s 30 kilometers away. You have to get there, fell the trees yourself, get them to the village, and chop them up. The school can’t do this. Older people like Roman’s parents can’t either. So most people buy firewood. And the Kachug District has the highest firewood prices in the oblast – 13,500 rubles per load – because it comes from so far away.
The Belousovo rural settlement’s annual budget is 11 million rubles. “We don’t have enough for salaries,” said Petrov. “Our income consists of the land-use tax and a portion of income tax. And our land-use tax is a pittance. Hardly anyone works agricultural land. So what are we supposed to live on?”
The Seismopoisk geological surveys in the area of the Talma pisanitsy brought 1.5 million rubles from income tax into the settlement’s budget. Petrov said that this money only “patched the holes.” He had pinned a healthy dose of hope on the geologists, thinking they would create “opportunities for regional development.” In truth, the geologists created about 10 jobs for men in Belousovo, working as drivers and laborers.
“I was hoping there would at least be some kind of opportunity for us,” Petrov said. “An example we looked at was the Zhigalovo District nearby. Gazprom showed up there and pays good money for the land under the gas flares. They’ve got 24,000 people working at Kovytka [a gas condensate field]. They all pay a good amount of income tax. Their region is active and starting to develop. And we’re dying.”
Seismopoisk also started up a couple of garbage dumps for the settlement, at no cost, near the villages of Shemetova and Ust-Talma. Started up, in this case, means they gathered refuse into tidy little mountains of trash. The dumps can’t be buried in the permafrost. In the future, someone will need to clean them up.
Geologists are exploring for oil and gas in Kachug District, Petrov said. He remembers a similar expedition coming to the area in 1987. Afterward, exploratory drilling rigs were installed in the settlement. “The rigs directly confirmed that there was oil or gas where they stood,” he explains.
Petrov said he didn’t know that geologists were working so close to the Talma pisanitsy and the Khortei-2 settlement. They had cleared their plans not with him, but with an agricultural agency.
Petrov is a local. He grew up in Gogon and lives in Verkholensk. He’s known about the Talma rock drawings since he was a child. His father was an agronomist who would take his son with him to visit the fields. He remembers Okladnikov – he and his father watched his expedition at work. “We won’t let anyone destroy our archeological landmarks,” he said decisively. At the same time, he doesn’t believe that the pisanitsy, despite being a valuable archeological landmark, will help tourism develop or support the villages’ survival.
“Before developing tourism, you have to build infrastructure, like decent roads,” he said. “Our roads are gravel – the dust flies everywhere. It’s impossible to get around. What normal tourist is going to travel here in those conditions? Plus, tourism is a seasonal business. How would we survive for a whole year on four months of tourism?”
The Talma pisanitsy aren’t included in development plans or programs, Petrov said. The phrase “protected by the government” really means that they’re not being protected by anyone – because the administration doesn’t get any funding for their protection. Petrov is not in favor of the warning signs or of attracting attention to the ancient artwork.
“We never used to advertise that we had pisanitsy,” he said. “When no one knew about them, people disturbed them far less. But now, unorganized tourism is causing nothing but harm.”
“The land here is rich,” said Roman. “Even in Soviet times, they did surveying and found oil and gas. But the information was lost during perestroika, which is why geologists are doing new surveys.”
Roman’s view on village development differs greatly from that of Petrov, the local head. “We’re not against progress,” he said. “We’re not against jobs. But when it came to it, barely any jobs materialized.” He said that local men starting to work for Seismopoisk were promised monthly wages of 100,000 rubles (about $1000). In the end, they each got between 15,000 and 40,000.
“The absolute maximum was 80,000 [rubles per month] – one guy got it. I talked to him and he said they worked him like a dog: ‘I left on Monday and crawled home on Friday on all fours. I dined in the forest on canned meat, didn’t wash, didn’t rest.’” The worker in question declined to be interviewed.
Roman is confident that Russia’s future is in the countryside. He knows from his own experience that many people dream of moving to villages, if only there were land. One of his plans is to create an open-air ethnographic museum near the Talma pisanitsy for tourists to visit – and as quickly as possible. “The geologists will be followed by people with bigger ambitions and lots of money,” he said. “We have to act fast.”
“If we manage this, then when these guys with deep pockets show up wanting to pump oil and gas, they won’t be able to come here, to the valley,” he adds.
That said, Mikhail Sklyarevsky, from the Cultural Heritage Preservation Office, who supported Roman in his fight, retired this past summer. His departure, Roman said, was unplanned. “The Talma pisanitsy were Mikhail Yakovlevich’s final act,” he said. Now Roman has no one to rely on.
Roman said he believes that the area around Talma was a special, sacred place for ancient people. He thinks shamans gathered here. There’s a huge number of paintings of shamans: with one horn, three and even five. Here, perhaps, 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, people made important decisions – which is why, in his opinion, the Talma petroglyphs are much more valuable than the neighboring Shishkin ones.
“To this day we keep finding new things while studying the pisanitsy,” Roman said. In the summer of 2023, for instance, he and a group of researchers discovered that the dots ancient humans left on the stones turned out to point to the North Star and the Pleiades. Ancient people knew how to orient themselves. In addition, researchers found an image of the constellation Ursa Major on the stones.
“This is our mainstay,” Roman said of the pisanitsy. “We have a base under us, and we can push off from it to move further.”
After the court decision, the Seismopoisk geologists left the valley, Melentyev said. All that remains of their camp is their portable toilets.
“District officials called valley residents toxic,” Roman said with a grin. “They said we don’t want progress.” Lawyer Popova has heard these words expressed by government officials as well.
Roman, as before, has a hard time getting away from Irkutsk. He works all the time. His youngest son needs a special infant formula. Each container lasts five days and costs 2,000 rubles. After Kachug District officials told Roman there was no available land in Ust-Talma, he started building a house near Irkutsk. Prices for building supplies have gone up significantly in the past few months, he said. “In our reality, a man is always busy earning money to provide his children with what they need.”
The pisanitsy aren’t Roman’s only labor of love. He is also trying to find sponsors to put up a memorial plaque at the Belousovo school. He found out several years ago that two Belousovo residents served on the ship Koryetz, which took part in the historic 1904 battle between Russia and Japan in Chemulpo Bay, Korea.
“For me, putting up a plaque is a matter of honor,” Roman said late last year. “I gave my word to the people of the village. Once I’m done with the plaque, I’ll get moving on the ethnopark.”
Roman tells a story of how the French protect their famous cave at Lascaux. The cave started to deteriorate after too many tourist groups started visiting. So authorities built a copy of the cave for tourists to visit. In Japan, they put protective covers over ancient paintings to maintain their microclimate. This technology has been proposed for use in Russia.
However, another example comes to Roman’s mind, one closer to home.
There were also petroglyphs in the Ust-Orda Okrug, on Mount Mankhai, 100 kilometers outside Irkutsk. The walls with the paintings were blown to bits so that a rural road could be built.
This article was reprinted from People of Baikal: baikal-journal.ru
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