Location: Ancient boulders in the Tashkazan tract between Karamyshevo and Yashauche villages , Cheremshansky district
A real miracle of nature is located at the Tashkazan tract of the Cheremshansky district in the south of Tatarstan. This place is located approximately between the villages of Karamyshevo and Yashauche, where nature has created many boulders of a rounded and bizarre shape.
This natural object is located far from large settlements and roads, it is a long ravine about five kilometers, in which boulders of various shapes are randomly located – from half a meter to 3.5 meters in diameter.
How the ancient boulders appeared
Some people say, that in ancient times a river flowed here and eroded soft and hard rocks and rounded them. Then the river disappeared, but rounded stones remained in this ravine.
According to another version, these stones are the result of long-term weathering of sandstone rocks. They were then buried by sedimentary and alluvial rocks, and only then were again opened by surface waters. And then that many geological landforms were formed.
The third version states that a glacier visited our region, which, retreating, dragged huge boulders behind it, and rolled up rounded miracle stones from them for hundreds of centuries.
The boulders and local traditions
Since ancient times, there were settlements iocated in the region, and therefore some archeological monuments are located nearby. According to the assumption of local residents, there was an ancient sanctuary here, supposedly on ancient boulders there are bowl-shaped recesses with stains of old blood. According to a legend, animals were sacrificed to pagan gods and spirits here. Local old-timers claim that earlier in this tract one could find old animal bones.
No one lived in the tract itself, someone considered it too sacred, while local Tatars believed that this was an unclean or cursed place, and tried not to go here again. The tract really looked very unusual for mostly flat local landscapes.
But the tract with the boulders remained ant kept many mysteries. People jokingly or seriously called these boulder “dinosaur eggs.” Moreover, people saw that these stones are not just lying – they are slowly moving in the thickness of sand and loam. Soil erosion occurs, roofing felts there is an invisible movement of the layers of the earth – but these boulders move slowly, someone horizontally, and someone goes deep into the earth.
Tashkazan tract and the surrounding area
Around the tract there are very picturesque places around. The height of the cliffs of the Tashkazan ravine is more than four meters, if you climb to the very top, a beautiful panorama of fields, meadows and copses opens up. The sandstone itself heats up quite quickly from the sun, so on a summer day it is very warm here. Not only the boulders themselves are of amazing shape, but the walls of the ravine themselves also – they seem to be hewn with a huge chisel and then rounded by the hand of an ancient mythical giant. The walls here take on a variety of forms: depressions, ledges, meanders, roundness – a real surrealism from mother nature.
