Solving ancient mysteries
Who does not dream of traveling to faraway places? Sometimes our desire for a change of scenery is thwarted by lack of time or money. But you don’t have to go far to acquire some fresh impressions. Obukhiv and Kaharlyk raions in Kyiv oblast are famous for their unique scenery and you don’t have to travel more than 60 to 80 km from the Ukrainian capital. Here you will find unique places that have preserved the secrets of the ancient Trypillian civilization.
VISITING OUR ANCESTORS
Trypillia is rightly considered the most wonderful pearl on the archeological crown of Kyiv oblast, where over a hundred years ago a local history student named Vikentii Khvoika discovered the Trypillian culture. According to scholarly data, this Slavic civilization existed only for 1,500 to 2,000 years. Other research sources indicate that Ukrainians are the descendants of Europe’s first Trypillian land-tilling culture that existed for 3,500 years, from 5,700 to 2,200 BC.
Researchers continue to debate this hypothesis. One of its opponents is Academician Petro Tolochko, who believes that Trypillia is a narrow and well-trodden path in history. Among its proponents is the equally reputed academician, Yurii Shylov, who regards Trypillia as the cradle of the entire civilization. The inhabitants were the ancestors of Ukrainians, who at one time settled in the Balkans. Anthropologist Serhii Seheda claims that the Trypillian-Aryan tribes and today’s Ukrainians form an uninterrupted line to this very day, and that the Trypillians laid the foundations of the Ukrainian nation.
While scholars debate this issue, the Kyiv City State Administration’s Culture and Tourism Department offers tours of the area, where locals in their vegetable plots are still digging up pieces of earthenware dating back 8,000 years. If you are lucky, you will see some archaeological digs that take place there on a regular basis. Although the most important archaeological finds were made during Khvoika’s lifetime and sent to museums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv, the local history museum has numerous items on display that prove that the Trypillians were the first to invent the wheel (6,500 years ago), domesticated horses and cows (8,000 years ago), and cultivated 12 varieties of grain (including three kinds of wheat, barley, rye, and peas). Trypillian ceramics are beautiful. Long before the Sumer and Chinese civilizations our forefathers decorated their earthenware with signs and symbols that would spread across Europe and the Orient, including yin and yang; svarha, the symbol of the sun; the cross, symbolizing the sun, fire, and eternal life; and an image of the Primeval Mother — the woman-protectress. Among the unsolved mysteries of Trypillia are the bipartite ceramic pieces (“binoculars”) whose designation is still being debated: they may have been ritual vessels, candlesticks, or musical instruments, like African tam-tams.
Tourists should proceed from the State Archaeology Museum to the private Museum of Trypillian Culture. It was not founded by civic organizations or prosperous businessmen but by enthusiasts with medium incomes, including collector Oleksandr Polishchuk, construction worker Volodymyr Lazorenko, artist Anatolii Haidamaka, and scholar Yurii Shylov. This museum is the cultural gem of Kyiv oblast, and its exhibit is based on Polishchuk’s collection currently valued at seven million dollars. All the items on display were salvaged, collected in ravines and quarries, where all these artifacts were discarded.
In the 1930s, a special resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union instructed every school to engage in regional history studies, along with archaeological digs, and establish regional history museums. On the outskirts of Trypillia anyone could unearth an archaeological treasure. Among the finds were genuine masterpieces. For many years, fragments of earthenware collected dust in school and village museums without professional restoration. When the Communist Party was no longer there to supervise the process, all this was junked. In one of the many ravines on the slopes of the Dnipro River Polishchuk found three tons of fragments of unique earthenware. The restoration of a 40-cm jug cost the collector between 100 and 800 dollars.
Says Polishchuk: “Owing to private collections, our country has retained its archaeological wealth. Otherwise, all of it would have long been exported, especially to Russia, where a number of oligarchs, including Bryntsalov, are admirers of Trypillian culture. I see my goal in life to promote this culture in Ukraine and the rest of the world, so that the greatest possible number of people can learn about it. Since this museum opened two years ago, 12,000 people have come here. Visitors are charged a token admission fee, while the management has to pay all taxes as a business entity, without any concessions, including electricity, gas, and land lease bills.
Polishchuk is convinced that in order to attract more tourists a tourism infrastructure has to be developed. His plans include the creation of a Trypillian village complete with wooden and thatched- roofed two-story structures built exactly the way they were constructed 8,000 years ago, with the addition of modern household equipment and amenities. Five hectares have already been allocated for the project.
THE UKRAINIAN ATLANTIS
Whereas enthusiasts like Khvoika and Polishchuk saved the Trypillian culture from oblivion, the villages on the right bank of the Dnipro, with their inimitable environs and folkways, suffered the same lot as Atlantis, when they were inundated by the Kaniv water reservoir in the early 1970s. There is a memorial to this Soviet man- made disaster, a church that looms over the waters in the vicinity of Rzhyshchiv. It was built by a group of monks on the highest point in the village of Husyntsi in 1857. Its golden domes could be seen from a great distance.
The church experienced alternating periods of well-being and persecution and ruination. In 1969 the chairman of the local collective farm used his budget to finance major repairs. He was then reprimanded by the oblast party committee. Locals still remember the chairman with love. Thanks to his restoration, this church has endured 30 years of standing in water. Today it stands on a silted island, as though raised above the water by human or heavenly forces. A few years ago an executive of the Top Service Company undertook to reconstruct the church (his dacha was located nearby). He hired a developer, who fixed the windows and covered the roof with asphalt felt, but that was the end of it because the philanthropist was later arrested and jailed on murder charges.
Apparently, Bishop Serafym of Bila Tserkva wants to revive this house of God. If so, in several years his plans will come true, and we will have another Church of the Mother of God on the Water. Today it will cost you 15-20 hryvnias to hire a boat from a Rzhyshchiv fisherman to get there and explore this unique historic site. To reach the small island and hear the voice of the sunken Ukrainian Atlantis in the sonorous silence of the temple, you will have to walk through clumps of water chestnut, which was entered on the World Conservation Union’s Red List of Threatened Species after the 1933 famine in Ukraine. You will realize that the past sometimes returns to the present.
