The high cliffs, stretching like a solid wall for forty kilometers along the coast of the Lena River, resemble the walls of a medieval castle or frozen stone giants. This is none other than the famous Lena Pillars (Yakutia). For the Yakuts they are a symbol of courage, love and fidelity. After all, the Lena Pillars are the fossilized figures of two lovers who were bewitched by a terrible dragon. The serpent wanted to marry a girl, but her fiance defeated him in a duel. And yet the lovers were not destined to live together; the dragon finally managed to take revenge by turning them into stone. So says the ancient legend...
What are Lena Pillars?
Lena Pillars (Yakutia) are high vertical cliffs of unusual shape, stretching along one of the banks of the Lena River. When you see them for the first time, you are amazed by their harsh and majestic beauty. This miracle of nature is located in the natural park of the Republic of the same name. Stunning cliffs from forty to one hundred meters high are becoming more mysterious and beautiful every year due to the peculiarities of the local climate.
Creation of the park
The Lena Pillars Natural Park was created after the decree of the President of the Republic of August 16, 1994. The main activity of the park is the development of eco-tourism, which is becoming increasingly popular. The reserve welcomes guests on its territory throughout the year, offering specially designed tourist routes.
Lena Pillars (Yakutia) is a real miracle of nature. The mountain system stretches for tens of kilometers along the river coast. It consists of vertical cliffs, as if growing from the bowels of the earth. The Lena River seems to be protected from the outside world by a mountain range.
The unique park is located in the Olekminsky and Khangalasssky districts of Yakutia, 200 kilometers from Yakutsk. It is divided into four zones: Buotamsky, Sinsky, Lena Pillars and Tukulan Sands. The park is located on the banks of the Sinaya, Buotama and Lena rivers, from where the pillars got their names. Currently, these wild places are very popular as part of eco-tourism.
Stone forest
The unusual Lena Pillars (Yakutia) as unique geological formations are included in the list. In addition, they are a natural monument of world significance. A couple of years ago, the Lena Pillars (Russia) and the surrounding areas were taken under UNESCO protection.
Why does the mountain range have such an unusual shape? In fact, the pillars are made of limestone, which, under the influence of the harsh climatic conditions of the region, fell into pieces, forming vertical rocks of stunning shape. The Lena River is protected for many kilometers, with rocks located close to each other.
History of the stone forest
The mountain range from which the pillars eventually emerged began to form 550 million years ago. Once upon a time, a sea splashed on these lands, at the bottom of which limestone accumulated. It disappeared from the face of the earth during the period when the Siberian Platform was uplifted. Limestone formed rock formations, river valleys and faults. The bizarre shape of the mountains was influenced by factors such as weathering and erosion. The process lasted for quite a long time, and already 400 thousand years ago a stone forest appeared, which still delights the human imagination for centuries.
Eyewitnesses say: the Lena Pillars are especially beautiful at dawn, when they are illuminated by the rays of the sun and resemble a medieval castle. The Lena River, flowing at the foot of the mountains, gives this picture an even more majestic appearance. The ridge looks completely different at sunset. In the evening hours, the rocks take on an ominous appearance, reminiscent of the abode of an evil sorcerer.
On the slopes of the rocks many caves were found, on the walls of which were painted in yellow paint those who lived in these places. In addition, their tools were found. Therefore, the Lena Pillars natural park is of interest from an archaeological point of view. The remains of rhinoceroses, mammoths, bison were discovered here, and in the rocks there are fossils of trilobites that lived on earth more than 200 million years ago. It is thanks to the unique finds on the territory of the reserve and unique natural attractions that the park was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Reserved lands
The natural park, on the territory of which the Lena Pillars are located, has a fairly extensive territory. Its area is 81 thousand hectares, and the length of land along the Lena River is 220 kilometers.
On the territory of the park, in addition to the Lena Pillars, there are other equally interesting natural objects. Buotama rocks are mountain formations located below the mouth of the Buotama River. Their peculiarity is the multi-colored texture, which appears due to the combination of limestone and dolomite.
Sinsky pillars are not very high, they rarely exceed the 100-meter threshold. In addition, on the territory of the reserve there are sandy Tuculans. Such large sand massifs are more typical of deserts. Their uniqueness lies in the fact that they are located in the middle of the taiga and occupy a fairly large area. For example, one of the dunes is about 5 kilometers long and almost 900 meters wide.
The entire reserve is undeveloped land, so any work on its territory is prohibited. Rivers such as Lena, Buotama and Sinaya flow through the park. There are many protected lands and lakes. Natural reservoirs are shallow (from two to three meters) and are filled with rainwater. Their banks are usually flat and marshy.
The park has a wide variety of fauna and flora. There are 500 species of plants, 20 of which are listed in the Red Book, 42 species of mammals, a large number of fish, and more than a hundred species of birds.
Local Legends
Since ancient times, the Lena Pillars and the surrounding lands have been shrouded in an incredible number of secrets and legends, and the Yakuts tell a lot about them. For many centuries, mysterious pillars were something inexplicable and scary for people. They instilled genuine horror in any person who saw them for the first time.
Local residents say that this area has its own Bigfoot. The Yakuts call him Ulmesh. His height reaches ten meters, he wears a pointed hat and sometimes attacks hunters, and sometimes, on the contrary, helps them. Local peoples generally endowed these mysterious places with special powers. For them, the Lena Pillars were a sacred place that instilled horror and fear. People were terribly afraid of angering the spirits living in the rocks. Many believed that the pillars were people frozen forever, punished for something by supernatural forces. Mere mortals were afraid to even approach these places. And only shamans and elders had the right to approach the pillars, thereby proving their connection with the spirits.
Climate of the protected area
The territory of the park is located in a sharply continental climate. The Lena Pillars Nature Reserve is plunged into cold in winter, which lasts for almost six months. The temperature sometimes drops to -36 degrees. But in the summer the temperature is between 20-40 degrees.
Do not forget that the reserve, like the whole of Yakutia, is characterized by permafrost. For this reason, the soil freezes at great depths (from 100 to 700 meters). This situation arose due to the remoteness of the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain ranges of Siberia block the path of air masses moving from the Indian and Pacific oceans. But the cold masses of the Arctic get here very quickly. For this reason, this region is characterized by extreme weather conditions.
Lena Pillars (Yakutia): how to get there
As we already mentioned, the Lena Pillars are located in Yakutia. The nearest village from them is the city of Pokrovsk - located 104 kilometers away, and Yakutsk - 200 kilometers away. Despite the climatic and weather conditions, getting to the reserve is not difficult. For example, you can fly from Moscow to Yakutsk by plane, and then take a five-hour voyage on a comfortable ship to the Lena Pillars nature reserve (Yakutia). It is best to purchase tours from one of the agencies, then you can ride in comfort on one of the ships. It is also possible to rent a private motor boat. However, traveling by this type of transport is not very convenient, but its cost is lower than a ticket on a ship.
Local travel companies also organize winter tours to the Lena Pillars. Riding on prepared off-road vehicles is a pleasure for people who love extreme sports. Tourists are brought directly to the mountain range through the bed of the Lena River by snowmobile.
You can get to the Lena Pillars both in summer and winter. The park has specially designed routes that allow tourists to get acquainted with natural sites. One of the most popular is climbing the rocks at the mouth of Labuya. The road runs along a path lined with log steps with wooden railings. The ascent takes about 50 minutes. There is also a shorter, but prohibited trail. You can use it to reach the peaks in 25 minutes. Tourists strive to climb up to see the stunning views and capture them on camera.
Lena Pillars are tall columnar rocks, the origin of their name is associated with the Lena River, along which these stone formations stretch for 80 kilometers. The Siberian miracle is located less than two hundred kilometers from the city of Yakutsk. In 1994, the authorities of Yakutia organized a national park of the same name, which, in addition to the Lena Pillars, included several other important objects of the Republic, and in 2012 the Lena Pillars were included in the UNESCO list.
On average, the height of the Lena Pillars is about 100 meters. Individual rocks reach 200 m, the highest point is 321 m. Similar rock formations can only be seen in the USA (Grand Canyon) and Australia (Uluru). Scientists, historians, and archaeologists never tire of making presentations, writing reports and messages about these unique rocks.
How were the Lena Pillars formed?
Bizarre stone sculptures hanging over the surface of the water sometimes resemble the ruins of ancient castles, which instilled superstition in the local ancient peoples and forced them to compose legends. Modern scientists know how the Lena Pillars were formed: more than 1.5 billion years ago, Siberia was a continent almost completely covered with water. In one part there was the open sea, and in the other there was a large salt marsh, and they were separated by a reef belt.
The Lena Pillars rocks began to form about 550 million years ago, as a result of the uplift of the Siberian Platform and the growth of reefs. Under the influence of the movement of tectonic plates, faults and deep river valleys formed in the thickness of the earth's surface. Under the influence of water and wind, the carbonate rocks acquired the shape that we can see today, but modifications of this World Heritage Site are still ongoing.
The value and global significance of the Lena Pillars
Each layer of the Lena Pillars preserves the history of the continent and the entire Planet. The formations contain traces of primitive worms and mollusks. Each glass of fossil reefs contains the remains and skeletons of living organisms that ceased to exist millions of years ago. In the area where this landmark of Yakutia is located, the remains of a mammoth, bison, Lena horse and woolly rhinoceros were found. The carcasses of dead animals were preserved not thanks to the permafrost inherent in the remote northern regions of Russia. The bodies of deceased representatives of the ancient fauna were enveloped in tiny particles that fell off the reef slopes in clouds of turbidity. The clay deposit hardened, the animal tissues petrified, retaining their structure.
This world heritage of Russia has changed the way scientists think about the evolution of the Earth. Transitional forms of different types of living organisms were found in the Lena Pillars. For example, researchers concluded that ringworms are not at all one of the most primitive animals from which other species were formed. The fossils found prove that most groups of worms, on the contrary, “lost” the legs of their ancestors who possessed them. And although the conclusions have been drawn, any 4th grade Natural History textbook still does not always contain reliable information about the origin of earthly animals.
Tourism and protection of the Lena Pillars
Today in the Far East, where the Lena Pillars are located, tourism is actively developing. The reserve attracts with its amazing taiga landscapes, unique flora and fauna. Here you can find not only bears, hares, squirrels and moose, but also such rare animals as wapiti and wolverine. The Lena River and its tributaries are home to sturgeon, nelma and other types of fish. Any report for children will tell you that on the territory of the reserve there are dozens of plants and animals from the Red Book of Russia.
Many tourist routes include mountaineering to the tops of the Lena Pillars. A large number of observation platforms allow you to view the majestic nature of Siberia, as if on a map. Motor ships ply along the Lena River for vacationers, attracting tourists with a wide variety of recreation programs. And yet, the mysterious Lena Pillars, which keep the secrets of the origin of earthly life, are not conducive to noisy relaxation. Exploring these places should be done slowly and thoughtfully. Even the photo shows what immense beauty lies in these ancient rocks - the majestic nature of Siberia is more suitable for philosophical reflection and comprehension of the meaning of life.
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Lena Pillars is a geological formation and natural park of the same name in Russia, on the banks of the Lena River. It is located in the Khangalassky ulus of Yakutia, 104 km from the city of Pokrovsk. The Lena Pillars are a complex of vertically elongated rocks stretching for many kilometers, intricately piled up along the bank of the Lena, cutting through the Lena Plateau with a deep valley. The pillars reach their greatest density between the villages of Petrovskoye and Tit-Ary.
The rock formations, whose height reaches 220 meters above the river level, are composed of Cambrian limestones. Tectonically, the Lena Pillars lie within the Siberian Platform. The beginning of the formation of rocks that formed this natural monument is usually dated to the Early Cambrian - 560-540 million years ago. The formation of the Lena Pillars as a relief form is dated to a much later period - about 400 thousand years ago, that is, relatively recent geological time. The territory of the Siberian Platform was subject to gradual uplift, which resulted in the emergence of faults and the formation of deep river valleys. This led to the activation of karst processes, which, along with ongoing erosional weathering, gave rise to such bizarre and diverse forms of rocks composed of carbonate rocks.
In ancient times, this place was considered sacred. Mere mortals were not allowed to approach the Pillars, otherwise heavenly punishment could fall on them. Only elders and shamans had the right to visit the sacred place to talk with the spirits of the rocks. The reverence evoked in people by this place is explained by the visual feature of the rock formations - from a distance they resemble petrified people standing at full height. Many legends have been associated with this illusion.
Legend
It was a long time ago. Once upon a time, in the place where tourist ships now stop, on the Lobuya River there lived a terrible dragon. Every day he flew around his castles, which at that time were golden, and he built not only castles, but also minarets, loopholes, and bridges with his magical command. On a sunny day they sparkled so much that it was even scary to look at them. This light blinded the eyes, and therefore local residents tried to avoid these places. In the evening, when the sun hid behind the huge rocks, the golden color turned into marble-violet, and then the rocks became so gloomy that they inspired fear and horror in those who finally ended up in these castles.
The dragon kept all the inhabitants of Prilenye in fear, and no one had the courage to chop it down. Everyone knew that he lived in a cave located at an altitude of about 70 meters, and therefore inaccessible. Every year, at the time of the large flood of the Lena River, when the sun's rays heated the ice rocks, the dragon woke up and demanded cattle, birds, deer, and horses as tribute from the inhabitants of Prilenye. For the Yakuts this was a painful burden. But they could not do anything, and they had to collect this tribute and please the insatiable womb of the dragon.
But one day the dragon learned that in one of the distant villages lived a beautiful girl, Kere Kyys, the daughter of the famous Yakut shaman. The dragon demanded that the Yakuts give him a young girl as his wife. The residents offered him a large ransom for the girl in exchange, but he refused. Then the shaman went out to the people and asked for advice. Everyone was silent for a long time. The people understood very well that it was very bitter for the shaman to part with his beloved daughter. Everyone completely forgot about the parents of the young man Khorsun Wal. An elderly man came out through the crowd of people and told everyone that his son had gone hunting a month ago with several of the same young men and in two suns they should return and that Kere Kyys was his bride. After a long separation, they were supposed to get married. No one expected the dragon's choice to be so cruel.
It was deep, clear night. In the summer, in these places it is night and day. The last minutes of the shaman's prayer were approaching. A high fire burned in front of him, and people stood around. Suddenly, a human figure appeared in the flames and smoke. It was clear that it was a young man. In his hand he held a large dagger. At this time, the exhausted shaman fell. His prayer ended. The image of a young man that appeared foreshadowed the release of the shaman’s daughter.
The next day, Kare Kyys was dressed in the most beautiful Yakut dress. It was decorated with shiny pieces of glass, beads, and the sable trim gave the girl the appearance of a squirrel. She really was like a squirrel. Graceful, fragile and very mobile.
The time has come for the dragon to arrive. The sun has dimmed. A strong wind rose. The waves on the river immediately became so high that God forbid any fisherman should end up on the river at that time. A whistle and roar was heard, so loud that the residents could hardly stand it, but love and respect for their beloved girl did not give them the strength to run away from this terrible place.
The monster landed not far from the crowd. Everyone was trembling with fear, and only Kere Kyys proudly raised her head and slowly walked towards the dragon. The beauty of this beautiful girl excited even the dragon. He usually emitted flames from his terrible mouth, but this time he froze. He forgot to perform his intimidating gesture. Kare Kyys turned to the people and her father, and everyone understood from her calm look that she was saying goodbye to them, but not forever. She remembered her lover every minute, and the hope of meeting him soon gave her unimaginable strength. She walked closer to the dragon and sat on his huge paw. The paw was so scary, covered with some kind of cold scales, that only at that moment the thought of fear flashed through the girl’s mind. But at that moment the dragon let out a loud whistle - his gratitude to the people for such a gift - and soared upward. After some time he was in his domain. And Kere Kyys, in an unconscious state, was lowered by the dragon's servants onto a golden stretcher and carried to a beautiful castle. From that moment on, the girl’s life began in fear and anticipation. In fear - when a dragon appears. Waiting for when her beloved Khorsun Wal will appear. When the dragon appeared, the girl hid in the farthest corner of the castle. He himself brought her food and drink. But she did not touch them until the dragon flew away. For the dragon these were the most wonderful moments of pleasure. He even forgot the daily raids on the Yakut naslegs and did this only when food supplies ran out.
After some time, Khorsun Wal returned from hunting with his peers. He immediately rushed to the shaman’s yurt, but sad news awaited him. His great love for the beautiful Kara Kyys gave birth to such rage and contempt for the dragon that he began to prepare for a mortal fight. Life without his beloved was impossible for him. He told the shaman his intentions, and he agreed with the young man. One night, the shaman, having gathered the elders together, read a prayer, sprinkled the young man with holy water, giving him so much strength that he could defeat the dragon. Khorsun Wal was ready for a mortal fight.
Meanwhile, Kere Kyys became comfortable in the castle and began to greet the dragon more tenderly. She realized that she needed to pretend to be tender and loved, and then she would be able to unravel the secret of eternal life and the amazing magic of the dragon. She began to talk to him, talked about her childhood, games with children, and gradually began to talk about the prayers of her shaman father. But the dragon accepted her stories with a grin, especially when the girl talked about her father. The dragon considered himself an unsurpassed sorcerer.
And then one day Kere Kyys asked the dragon a question: “How can you cast a spell, create such castles, raise the surface of the water high into the sky?” The dragon had no idea that this was a treacherous question. It never occurred to him that anyone would dare to fight him. And he told the girl that the magical power was in his tail. If he loses his tail, he will lose his magical power and then die.
Khorsun Wal was approaching the Lena castles. When he found himself in the ravine of the Lobuya River, he began to call for the dragon. He did not fly out of his cave for a long time. He was about to appear in the castle of his slave. But the loud cry of some young man made him curious, who dared to come into his domain and disturb his peace? Kere Kyys also heard the voice of Khorsun Wal. She began to prepare to leave the castle with great excitement, but was afraid that a dragon was about to appear. When she realized that the dragon had no time for her, she descended on the veins of the beads, which she had been preparing for a long time in order to someday escape from the monster. The girl ran as fast as she could to the river. At this time, the dragon flew up to the young man. Flames sparkled from his mouth. All the foliage of the trees caught fire. There was smoke all around, it was impossible to breathe. Khorsun Wal began to swing his sword and try to strike the dragon. But the forces were unequal. After the first blow of a sword hit the body of a giant beast, Khorsun Wal felt heaviness in his legs. It turned out that he went into the ground up to his knees and, in fact, was chained to the place where he stood. At this very moment, a gentle and familiar voice was heard nearby. He recognized his beloved. “Be sure to hit the tail. This is the magical place of the dragon,” the girl managed to shout, and then some forces threw her to the other side of the river. She was petrified in the place where she found herself. She couldn't even utter a word. But Khorsun Wal heard what his beloved shouted to him and, contrivingly, dealt a fatal blow to the dragon’s tail. The dragon flew up in excruciating pain, but could not even flap its huge wings and collapsed to the ground.
Everything in the sky immediately turned black. Golden castles, loopholes, minarets, hanging bridges turned into huge basalt rocks. Khorsun Wal himself turned into a huge rock, embedded in the ground. People, having heard a terrible explosion, realized that the time had come to free them from the magical powers of the dragon, and quickly headed to the place where the terrible battle took place. But they saw exactly the same picture that we can see now. A lonely rock on the right bank of the Lobuya river and a prominent rock in the image of a young man on the left bank of the river. People took off their hats and bowed low to these rocks in memory of the brave Khorsun Wal and his beloved Kara Kyys. The memory of them, of their impartial love will live in the hearts of the Yakut people forever.
The people stood in this ruin for a long time. In the silence and silence, no one noticed how a tall tree covered with dense foliage appeared near them. This tree appeared in the place where Kere Kyys’s father, the great shaman, stood. And people called him Tree Shaman. And when they began to leave, everyone hung either a piece of cloth or the skin of an animal on a tree branch. Since then, a Shaman tree must grow in sacred places, and the Yakuts hang it with all sorts of decorations so as not to provoke the anger of the spirits. Legends say that a hunter who does not leave a memorial sign on a tree will not have luck in the hunt and may even get lost, or even die.
You can admire the Pillars from the river - this is a wall of slender, tall remains of a rare shape, they stretch out like something growing out of the ground. The view from above and the hiking route are also quite impressive. The closer you get to the Pillars, the more bizarre shapes they protrude from the total mass of the stone wall. Some formations resemble ancient Gothic castles, others resemble tall medieval towers without windows, others resemble rows of stone trees or elongated faces of people. Silence, calmness and smooth water surface create a special mood. When the sun sets, the shadows lengthen and begin to move - this creates the illusion of mobility of the rock pillars.
Lena Pillars is a unique monument of archeology and history. The remains of animal organisms were ideally preserved in their deposits. The fauna here was extremely diverse: various representatives of groups with bone and mineral skeletons, buffalos, mammoths, rhinoceroses, horses. Some samples preserved soft tissue and even embryos. That is why the protected area has such high scientific value. Stone formations are not the only landscapes of the Lena Nature Reserve that evoke admiration. Tuculan sands are located in the same territory. This loose, migrating mass of light color develops across the territory, creating bizarre wavy dunes. Within the sands there are areas of cold northern desert.
The Lena Pillars Nature Reserve is located entirely on undeveloped lands, and therefore any economic work is prohibited here. In addition, several waterways of the region flow through the park: the Lena, the second longest river in Russia, and its tributaries - Buotama (sites of primitive people were found along its banks) and Sinaya.
On the territory of the national park there are many lakes with a depth of two to three meters, formed both in natural depressions and on flat watersheds. These lakes are filled with water thanks to rainfall (and therefore during drought, large reservoirs become shallow and small ones dry up completely), their shores are flat and almost always swampy.
The diversity of the flora and fauna of the national park cannot but amaze: there are about 500 species of plants (about twenty of which are listed in the Red Book of Russia), 42 species of mammals, more than a hundred species of nesting birds, a huge number of fish and quite a few reptiles.
Currently, this unique geological formation is included in the list of wonders of Russia and is a natural monument of world significance. Several years ago, UNESCO took the territory where the Lena Pillars are located under its protection.
Area: 1.387 million hectares
Criteria: (viii)
Status: inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2012
Component objects:
Natural Park “Lena Pillars” (678,000, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Khangalassky district, Pokrovsk, Ordzhonikidze St., 56)
The Lena Pillars Natural Park is located in Central Yakutia, in the middle reaches of the Lena River.
The park got its name because of a unique ridge of rocks - fabulous stone sculptures in the form of pillars and towers stretch along the banks of the Lena for tens of kilometers. The height of some reaches 100 meters. This natural monument is made of Cambrian limestone - a rock formed more than 500 million years ago.
The bizarre shape of the rocks is the result of thermokarst and erosion processes associated with the development of permafrost. In addition, in the park there are small areas of the desert landscape - unique blowing sands - tuculans - isolated and independently developing sand ridges with slopes practically unfixed by vegetation.
“Lena Pillars” is a set of natural-territorial complexes of different morphology and origin, combining ancient, currently collapsing, remnant karst forms and modern deposits. Burials of bone remains of ancient fauna were discovered here: mammoth, bison, Lena horse, woolly rhinoceros.
The basis of the park's fauna consists of representatives of the Siberian fauna in combination with southern taiga and Arctic species. The park is home to 21 species of rare and endangered plants listed in the Red Book. The fish fauna includes 31 species. 101 species of birds nest in the territory. In general, the fauna here is typical of the middle taiga subzone of the Palaearctic with the distribution of animals such as sable, brown bear, squirrel, elk, chipmunk, etc. The inhabitants of the mountain-taiga complex include musk deer, northern pika, and the mountain-forest form of wild reindeer. A number of species - wapiti, field vole, some representatives of bats and insectivores, are characteristic of the southern taiga fauna and here lies the northern border of their range.
On the southern slopes, larch-pine or pine-shrub forests in combination with steppe areas are common. In the northern areas there are larch and spruce forests.
The climate here is sharply continental with low (up to -60˚ C) temperatures in winter and high temperatures in summer (up to +35˚ C).
The average height of the Lena Pillars reaches 220 m above river level.
At the base of these river rocks are limestones of the Cambrian period, about 550 million years old, formed from the bottom sediments of a shallow and warm sea that once existed here. The Lena Pillars themselves were formed much later - “only” about 400 thousand years ago.
The Lena Pillars are located within the boundaries of the tectonic Siberian Platform. About half a million years ago, as a result of tectonic processes, faults formed here, in which river beds began to emerge, and subsequently deep river valleys, which caused the development of karst processes (washing out of limestone rock). Together with severe erosive weathering and a significant amplitude of annual temperatures (up to 100°C: from -60°C in winter to +40°C in summer), it formed a unique configuration of the rocks. Each vertical crack in the limestone massif continuously expanded under the influence of water, wind and temperature, which led to the separation of the next block from the general rock massif.
Also noteworthy is the unusual variety of colors of the Lena Pillars rocks, in which red sandstone is interspersed with light gray limestone.
Lena Pillars are still a sacred place for the Yakuts and Evenks today. In the old days, only shamans could come here; ordinary people were afraid of the spirits of the rocks, considering the pillars to be petrified people.
Lena pillars stand in groups along several long sections of the middle reaches of the Lena River, on its right bank.
National Natural Park "Lena Pillars"
Lena Pillars is also a natural park, organized in 1995 and subordinate to the Yakut Ministry of Nature Protection.
The Lena Pillars Natural Park was organized by a decree of the President of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in 1994 and a decree of the Russian government in 1995. Currently, it is subordinate to the Yakut Ministry of Nature Conservation. The documents of the park indicate that its main task is the development of eco-tourism.
In addition to the Lena Pillars, the park contains three more valuable natural objects: the Sinsky Pillars, the Buotam Pillars and the Tukulan sands - Samye Kumaga and Kysyl Elesin.
The tuculan sand zone, up to 5 km long, also includes separate sections of the cold northern sandy desert. There are also areas of permafrost with unique flora and fauna.
Proof that Stone Age people lived here - inhabitants of the banks of the Lena - is the site of an ancient man at the mouth of the Diring-Yuryakh stream, belonging to the Ymyyakhtakh culture and the Diring Paleolithic culture. The age of the latter caused fierce debate among archaeologists around the world.
Also in the area of the park, fossilized remains of representatives of ancient fauna were discovered: mammoth, bison, woolly rhinoceros.
Representatives of modern fauna living in the Lena Pillars area include musk deer, wapiti, northern pika, sable, brown bear, elk, and roe deer. Within the Lena area, which is part of the park, there are Siberian lamprey, Siberian sturgeon, taimen, East Siberian lenok, tugun, whitefish, pyzhyan, valek, East Siberian grayling, nelma, Siberian vendace, omul, muksun. Among the birds there are protected species of world significance: kpoktung, osprey, golden eagle and peregrine falcon.
Due to its natural criteria, the Lena Pillars were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012.
general information
Location: central Yakutia, Russia.Origin: the result of water and wind erosion, as well as a significant annual temperature range.
The Lena Pillars Natural Park was formed: in 1995
Lena river.
Numbers
Lena Pillars Length: 40 km.Average height above river level: 220 m.
Maximum height above river level: 321 m.
Distance: 104 km downstream of the Lena - Pokrovsk, 200 km - Yakutsk.
Area of the Lena Pillars Natural Park: 4.85 km 2 .
Climate and weather
Sharply continental.Winters are long and harsh, summers are warm, often hot, but short.
Average January temperature: -39°C.
Average temperature in July: +18.5°C.
Average annual precipitation: 320 mm.
Relative humidity: 70%.
Attractions
■ Natural: Lena Pillars geological complex, Lena Pillars natural park (including Lena, Buotam and Sinsk pillars, Tukulan sand dunes, permafrost ecosystems, forest bison nursery "Bizonorium"), Nozdrevataya cave.■ Historical: petroglyphs - rock paintings of animals, the site of the ancient man Diring-Yuryakh (and thousand BC).
Curious facts
■ In Siberia, picturesque rocky peaks, outcrops, and ridges of columnar-shaped outcrops formed as a result of weathering of crystalline rocks have long been called pillars. In addition to the Lena Pillars, the Nizhneudinsk and Krasnoyarsk Pillars are also known.■ The name of the large blowing sand massifs of tukulans comes from the Evenki “tukala” - sand. Accordingly, “tukalan” is a sand massif or dune.
■ Abroad, geological formations similar to the Lena Pillars are the multi-colored pillars of the Valley of Monuments along the border of the American states of Arizona and Utah, as well as the columnar forms of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and the Shilin Stone Forest in China.
■ In the area of excavations in 1982 at the site of the Neolithic burial of the Ymyyakhtakh culture of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Stone tools from the Deering culture were discovered, which were originally dated to 2-3 million years ago. But, if this is so, then man appeared in Siberia earlier than in North Africa - recognized by archaeologists as the ancestral home of Homo habilis (homo habilis). Subsequent analysis showed that the age of the Deering culture is 260-370 thousand years. This indicated that man had colonized the banks of the Lena already in the Lower Paleolithic and could potentially have penetrated from here to Beringia and from there to America. True, some scientists argue that the artifacts of this culture are not tools, but natural formations, that is, just stones.
