Protecting The Ancients

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.