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mis — —<— i — ——— At present, the only things that point to the existence of these archaeological expedition from Yakutsk attempted to find the constructions are ancient place names that have survived in part hemisphere he had discovered. The team members had with them and all manner of rumours. But each of those toponyms repre- a guide who had seen the structure several times in his youth, but sents hundreds, if not thousands, of square kilometres. he said that the area was greatly changed and so they failed to find In 1936, alongside the Olguidakh ("place with a cauldron") anything. It must be said that in that locality you can pass within River, a geologist directed by elderly natives came upon a smooth 10 paces of something and not notice it, so earlier discoveries metal hemisphere, reddish in colour, protruding from the ground _have been pure luck. with such a sharp edge that it "cut a fingernail". Its walls were Back in 1853, R. Maak, a noted explorer of the region, wrote: about two centimetres thick and it stuck out of the ground roughly —"In Suntar [a Yakut settlement] I was told that in the upper reach- a fifth of its diameter. It stood leaning over so that it was possible _es of the Viliuy there is a stream called Algy timirbit (which to ride under it on a reindeer. The geologist despatched a translates as "the large cauldron sank") flowing into the Viliuy. description of it to Yakutsk, the regional centre. In 1979, an Close to its bank in the forest there is a gigantic cauldron made of copper. Its size is unknown as only the rim is visible above the ground, but several trees grow within it..." The same thing was recorded by N. D. Arkhipov, a researcher into the ancient cul- tures of Yakutia: "Among the population of the Viliuy basin there is a legend from ancient times about the existence in the upper reaches of that river of bronze caul- drons or olguis. This legend deserves atten- tion as the areas that are the supposed loca- tion of the mythical cauldrons contain sev- eral streams with the name Olguidakh— ‘Cauldron Stream'." And here is a passage from a letter penned in 1996 by another person who vis- ited the Valley of Death. Mikhail Koretsky from Vladivostok wrote: "I was there three times. The first time was in 1933, when I was ten—I travelled with my father when he went there to earn = sa a 50 = NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com DECEMBER 2003 — JANUARY 2004