What new things did we learn about Putin during the election race. What new have we learned? Primitive excerpt from the Bible

Paradoxically, paleontology is a young and rapidly developing science. Every year, fossil researchers make many discoveries and put forward new hypotheses. Lenta.ru invites you to recall the most interesting paleontological events of the past year.

How dinosaurs disappeared: new versions

Unraveling the causes of the extinction of dinosaurs is one of the most popular areas of paleontological research. Most experts agree that volcanoes and meteorites were involved to some extent in the total disappearance of the Mesozoic giants. But sometimes representatives of other sciences join paleontologists, and here the fun begins.

So, Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall (Lisa Randall) is sure that the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that saved the world from dinosaurs. To blame this hypothetical cosmic substance, which does not interact with anything and is not recorded by any instruments, for killing dinosaurs seems somewhat eccentric, but the arguments of Randall and her colleagues deserve to be at least mentioned.

According to physicists, our galaxy, known by the romantic name of the Milky Way, is crossed by a disk of dark matter. Invisible, it nevertheless causes gravitational perturbations in celestial mechanics, which leads, in particular, to various statistical outbursts, for example, a sharp increase in the probability of a comet colliding with the Earth. Such a surge is indeed recorded every 35 million years, and one of them falls exactly at the end of the Cretaceous period. So the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs could indeed have been "launched" by dark matter.

Image: Lisa Randall, Matthew Reece, arXiv:1403.0576

However, there are other versions. A group of British paleontologists from the Universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford and London believe that giant lizards. If that same meteorite had fallen a little earlier or a little later, everything could have been different.

The fact is that 66 million years ago, at the time of the fall of the Chicxulub meteorite, the main contender for the role of the killer of dinosaurs, the Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems were in a state of severe crisis. The lower floors of their trophic pyramids were knocked out, the species diversity of the fauna was steadily declining, and the conditions for a new burst of speciation were just emerging. However, a global catastrophe caused by a meteorite put an end to the usual course of things, and when the dust settled, mammals had to create new species. One way or another, thanks to chance or dark matter, our furry ancestors got a chance and brilliantly realized it.

Paleozoic love

You should not think that all paleontologists are focused solely on disasters and extinctions. There are also very positive people among them who study, for example, sex and sexual positions of the most ancient inhabitants of the Earth. And their research can surprise no less than the cosmic perturbations that cost the lives of dinosaurs.

It turns out that one of the earliest postures used by vertebrates for procreation was the famous missionary position. Dr. Kate Trinajstic of the Australian University of Curtin found in the rocks of the Devonian period (and this is no less than 400 million years ago) fossilized appendages of armored fish that performed the function of penises. Having reconstructed the passionate inhabitants of the Devonian in all details, the inquisitive researcher came to the conclusion that the most comfortable position for copulation of these fish was "belly to belly".

Image: John Long

However, even armored fish tried to diversify their marital relations. Therefore, representatives of another Devonian species - Microbrachius dicki - copulated shoulder to shoulder, or, more precisely, fin to fin. Microbrachius males grew L-shaped appendages for themselves and attracted their partners in, “hugging” with their front fins and docking with their genitals. Another Australian paleontologist, Flinders University professor John Long, managed to establish this.

Classic design

In general, the fossils of the Paleozoic living creatures that inhabited the Earth long before the dinosaurs presented one surprise after another last year. What is worth, among other things, the discovery of a complex and almost modern cardiovascular system in the Cambrian arthropod Fuxianhuia protensa!

We, who have absorbed the evolutionary wisdom of school textbooks since childhood, still believe that the older, the simpler and more primitive were terrestrial organisms. Meanwhile… “This animal looks quite simple, but its internal organization is carefully thought out. For example, there are multiple arteries to the brain, a pattern very similar to modern crustaceans,” says Professor Nicholas Strausfeld of the University of Arizona. In his opinion, the vascular system of Fuxianhuia is even more complex than that of many modern crustaceans. However, the apparent paradox of a scientist.

“Today, different groups of crustaceans have different vascular systems, but they all go back to what we see in Fuxianhuia. With the course of evolution, some segments of the body of these animals specialized in specific tasks, others lost their significance, and the elements of the vascular system in them became less complex, ”the Russian portal PaleoNews quotes Professor Strausfield.

But if it was only about the vascular system! It turns out that it was also no worse than modern ones. This was revealed thanks to the uniquely preserved fossils of ancient Chinese marine predators, the anomalocaridids Lyrarapax unguispinus, 500 million years old. Three of their fossil representatives were studied by the same American professor, who established that the predators of the Cambrian seas thought with exactly the same brain as modern velvet worms - onychophores.

Image: Nicholas Strausfeld

The gif clearly shows how the resolution of Pluto images changed from 1930 to 2015.

New Horizons may be considered one of the most ambitious NASA missions of recent times. The interplanetary station was launched in January 2006, and a year later it ended up near Jupiter. The gravitational maneuver around the giant planet allowed the device to accelerate, and as a result, in almost 8 years, New Horizons flew to Pluto, covering a distance 32 times greater than from the Earth to the Sun. The distance is really colossal, and information from the transmitting devices of the device comes very slowly: somewhere around 1 kilobyte per second. According to the expectations of NASA specialists, all spectographic, photographic, isometric data about Pluto and its satellites, which have accumulated on two onboard flash drives, will be transmitted for more than a year (about 470 days).

Its size is larger than expected

New Horizons image of Pluto and its moon Charon
Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Because of its atmosphere (albeit rather thin), scientists have been unable to determine the exact dimensions of Pluto. Adequate data were obtained only at a sufficient approach to the planet. New Horizons indicated its exact diameter - 2370 km (for comparison: this is less than the distance from Moscow to Omsk). But it turned out to be much more than previously thought. The discovery immediately stirred up supporters of the idea that Pluto should be recognized again as a full-fledged (and not dwarf, as it is now considered) planet.

Proponents of recognizing Pluto as a dwarf planet, in turn, argued that it is only one of many such objects in the Kuiper belt (a region similar to the asteroid belt where material accumulated after the formation of the solar system) and not even the largest of them - Eris on that moment was considered larger. Therefore, to call it a planet in the full sense of the word, such as, for example, Mercury, is inappropriate. But the emerging fact that Pluto is larger than Eris is unlikely to undermine the argument and make it possible to appeal the status. Especially in the Kuiper belt every now and then there are new dwarf planets, and some may be larger than both Pluto and Eris. In addition, Eris is still larger than Pluto in mass, since it is much denser.

The real color of its surface

Pluto and Charon colored with color filters
Photo: NASA/APL/SWRI

Few realized that the photos of Pluto that went viral on social media did not reflect the realistic colors of the planet's landscapes. The colors in the pictures were specially enhanced with filters to show the difference in the structure of the surface. This helped scientists understand the chemical composition of the ice, as well as estimate the age of geological objects. All of this could further show scientists how space weather affected surface dynamics.

What color is Pluto's surface really? Back in 2002, when the Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of the distant planet, researchers suggested that it had a red-brown color. After the detectors installed on New Horizons gave more detailed color images, these guesses were confirmed. Possible explanations have emerged: the reddish-brown color is most likely the result of a chemical process between methane molecules in Pluto's atmosphere and certain ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun and distant galaxies. The same phenomenon is observed on Saturn's moon Titan and Neptune's moon Triton.

Strange absence of craters

Relief of Pluto
Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

When looking at the first images of the surface in more detail, the researchers were especially surprised by the absence of craters on Pluto. It is known that most of the planets of the solar system are completely riddled with dents formed as a result of asteroid bombardments. Planets without craters (or with a minimum number of them) - Earth, Venus and Mars - are geologically active, so the resulting craters are covered with more and more layers of rock. Thus, scientists have suggested that the surface of Pluto cannot be older than 100 million years, which by geological standards (the planet itself formed 4.5 billion years ago) is a relatively short period.

Possible geological activity

Ice mountains on the surface of Pluto
Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Geological activity must be fueled by something. But what could be heating up Pluto? On many planets (including the Earth) there is a slow process of decay of radioactive materials, which provide heat to the interior. But Pluto is too small to contain enough of these materials. Typically, small planets with active geology, such as Jupiter's moon Europa, are heated from the inside due to the phenomenon of tidal acceleration. The planet shrinks and decompresses like a tennis ball, now approaching, then moving away from larger objects, because of this, its bowels are warmed up. But this is unlikely to happen with Pluto, since there are no large planets nearby that can influence it.

Alternative hypotheses suggest that Pluto may have an underground ocean that is cooling by releasing heat very, very slowly. Also, maybe the surface of the ice found on the planet is a kind of blanket that slows down the rate at which internal heat is lost.

All these questions are of particular interest, since the answers to them can be applied to many other planets.

The Nature of the Heart on Pluto

One of the funniest images of the heart-shaped spot on Pluto
Photo: dorkly.com

New Horizons cameras have made it possible to see a huge heart-shaped spot on Pluto. This romantic detail contributed to the viral distribution of the picture on the networks. It was found that the spot-heart was formed as a result of a powerful collision many millions of years ago. Probably, the giant cavity is filled with frozen gases - nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide.

Also, the researchers were very surprised by the vast mountain ranges of ice. The height of some peaks reaches 3 km, and this is another indication of possible geological activity.

Unusual atmosphere

The New Horizons spectrometer was able to capture the nitrogen atoms that were part of Pluto's atmosphere. Moreover, they were at a distance exceeding seven radii of a dwarf planet - this is much further than calculations show. No other elements could be detected, from this it was concluded that Pluto has the cleanest nitrogen atmosphere of all the planets in the solar system.

The study of particles also led to the conclusion that their "escape" from the atmosphere is happening faster than expected. The outflow of part of the atmosphere was known before, the same process took place with the Earth billions of years ago. It is believed that getting rid of excess nitrogen contributed to the development of life on our planet.

satellites

Photograph of Charon, Pluto's largest moon
Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

The New Horizons flyby collected data and detailed images of Pluto's five moons, including Charon, the largest of them. Prior to this, objects were only dim points of light.

Charon, believed to be a faceless ball of ice, turned out to be a whole world with rocks, depressions, deep crevices (one of them is deeper than the Grand Canyon). Although the satellite has craters, there are also fewer than expected, which means there are chances for geological activity. The satellite has a large, mysterious dark spot, which the researchers found to be a complete surprise. This is probably a crater formed sometime a very long time ago, and over a long time it could be filled with gases.

Snapshot of Nikta and Hydra
Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Curious details have become known about Nyx and Hydra - two more of the five satellites. Nikta, resembling a fruit chewing gum measuring 42 by 36 km, has a mysterious red spot (according to assumptions - a crater), and Hydra is shaped like a giant gray mitten 55 by 40 km. Photos of the other two satellites, Kerberos and Styx, will not be received until mid-October.

Vikings are usually portrayed as cruel people obsessed with the passion for profit. And few people know that among the leaders of the warlike people there were also women. Or that these great navigators were in contact with representatives of more than 50 cultures - from modern Afghanistan to Canada.

I get wet under the January drizzle in a crowd of people waiting for a raid by a detachment of "Vikings" with a "leader". Despite a stormy evening, the town of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands is full of festive excitement. A father standing next to me with two small children notices reddish smoke behind the town hall building and, unable to contain his laughter, explains what is happening: “Looks like these guys set fire to the whole building!” Smiles flicker on the faces of those around them - they all gathered here to look at ... a fire, more precisely, at a Viking ship on fire. It is the burning of the boat that is the culmination of the up-helly-o holiday, a symbol of the ancient heritage of the Vikings.

Meanwhile, a detachment of "Vikings" led by the leader makes his way through the streets. The bright light of many torches is reflected in the glass of the windows and illuminates the faces of the audience. Here the crowd murmured approvingly, barely seeing the slender silhouette of the ship - the "fighters" are dragging it along.

The first real Vikings landed on the rocky shores of Scotland 1200 years ago, easily breaking the resistance of the defenders of the land and capturing it. For seven centuries the Scandinavians ruled the Shetland Islands until they finally ceded them to the King of Scotland. Today, no one speaks the Old Norse dialect in these parts, but the locals are still proud of the Viking heritage. Every year they carefully prepare for up-helly-o by reassembling a life-size replica of the Viking ship.

Meanwhile, a crowd of torchbearers, cheered by the songs of the audience about the ancient rulers of the seas, drags the ship into a fenced area. At the signal of the leader, they begin to throw torches at the ship, and it is quickly engulfed in flames. Another moment - and the fire runs up the mast. Sheaves of sparks rush into the night sky. The gathered children are dancing merrily: everyone feels like participants in an incendiary performance.

The latest discoveries of scientists confirm that not only men were engaged in military affairs. The sword depicted above was found in the burial of a female leader.Photo: Gabriel Hildebrand, Stockholm Historical Museum.

Folk festivities continued until late at night, and I watched the general fun. I wonder how Viking culture still excites the minds of people. Brave medieval sailors and warriors have long sunk into oblivion, but still live in the imaginary worlds of writers, filmmakers and comic book authors. Each of us can easily remember a lot about the "virtual Vikings": what lands they inhabited, how they fought and feasted, and even how they died. But do we know who they really were, how they perceived the world around them and what kind of life they led?

Modern scientific methods - such as space sensing, DNA and isotope analysis - have allowed scientists to obtain a lot of new data. In Estonia, archaeologists are carefully examining two burial ships containing the remains of dead warriors, trying to understand the reasons for the ferocious cruelty of the Vikings. In Sweden, the remains of a female warrior are being explored, which are changing the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe role of ladies in the military hierarchy of the Vikings. In Russia, archaeologists and historians are studying one of the foundations of the economy of the local Vikings (Varangians) - the slave trade that flourished in their times. And it turns out that the world of this people was much more complex and interesting than previously thought. “The study of the Vikings is moving to a new level,” is how Jimmy Moncrief, a historian at the Shetland Heritage Trust in Lerwick, describes the latest discoveries in the field.

In the middle of the 8th century, the Vikings left the shores of Scandinavia, and the thirst for new lands took them thousands of nautical miles from their native Baltic and North Seas - in the next 300 years they climbed much further than scientists expected. Thanks to the best design of sailing ships in those days and excellent knowledge of maritime affairs, the Vikings visited the territory of 37 modern countries - from Afghanistan to Canada. In their campaigns, they met with representatives of dozens of cultures, traded busily, especially appreciating luxury items. They wore Asian kaftans, dressed in silks, and stuffed their pockets with silver dirhams from the Middle East. The cities of York and Kyiv, subject to them, prospered, they colonized large territories in Great Britain, Iceland and France, founded settlements in Greenland and even reached North America. No other European navigator of that time dared to go so far. “Only the Scandinavians decided on this adventure,” says archaeologist Neil Price from Uppsala University (Sweden). “That was the unusual thing about the Vikings.”

The ruins of the Scandinavian "long dwelling" on the coast of Shetland are reminiscent of the glorious past of the Vikings. Having ousted the Picts from their land, the Scandinavians established their laws here for a long 700 years, until it was their turn to cede the archipelago to the King of Scotland. Photo: Robert Clark

However, the well-being of the Scandinavians was based not only on trade and travel around the world. The Vikings made constant raids on the coast of Western Europe, attacking suddenly and with unusual brutality. In northern France, they rode up the Seine and other rivers, stuffing the holds of ships with trophies taken along the way and spreading terror wherever they passed. They managed to get about 14 percent of the accumulated wealth of the Carolingian empire (who considered themselves the heirs of Rome) in exchange for empty promises of a peaceful life. The Viking Age, according to Price, is “not for the faint of heart.” Historians are wondering: what was the beginning of the pan-European slaughter? How and why did the peaceful Scandinavian peasants turn into a real disaster for the whole continent?

The Viking raids began around 750, but the prerequisites for such a turn of history appeared almost three hundred years earlier. According to Price, Scandinavia was in chaos at the time. Its lands were divided by more than 30 kingdoms, each of which built fortresses in the struggle for power and territory. At the same time, a natural disaster occurred on Earth - the planet was enveloped in a giant cloud of dust, formed as a result of a series of cataclysms - from the eruption of a large volcano to the impacts of several comets or large meteorites. Because of this, early in the year 536 the sunlight dimmed, and over the next 14 years, the average summer temperature in the Northern Hemisphere fell. The cold snap and the darkness that covered the Earth brought death and devastation to Scandinavia, located at the northern limits of agriculture. For example, in the province of Uppland, located on the east coast of Sweden, three-quarters of the villages were empty: the inhabitants died from wars and famine.

Catastrophic climate change seemed so terrible to people that they gave rise to one of the most terrible legends in the world - the prophecy of the end of the world, Ragnarok. According to legend, the harbinger of the end of the world will be the death of the god Balder, after which winter will come to earth for three years - Fimbulvetr: the sun will be eclipsed by clouds, and the weather will worsen so that it will become impossible to live. On the day of Ragnarok, gods and monsters will meet in a deadly battle, and all living things will die.

The events that began in 536, according to Price, were very reminiscent of the mythical winter Fimbulvetr. However, the terrible prophecy did not fully come true, and when summer finally returned to the northern lands, the population began to recover. However, the Scandinavian peoples retained the aggressive traits acquired during the years of bad weather. The leaders formed well-armed detachments, captured the wastelands and settled on these lands. All this is reminiscent of the plot of the "Game of Thrones": a real militarized society has arisen, exalting the values ​​​​of wartime - fearlessness, courage and deceit - above all others. On the island of Gotland, where many untouched graves from those times have been found, “every second man was buried with a weapon,” says Jon Jungqvist, an archaeologist at Uppsala University.

The first Viking raids were on monasteries, which kept many valuables like this golden pendant. It was discovered in one of the Viking caches during excavations in Scotland. Photo: Robert Clark, courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland

In the course of the formation of this society armed to the teeth, “new technologies” of the 7th century came to Scandinavia - sailing ships began to master here. Skillful carpenters learned how to build graceful boats, under the sails of which detachments of armed fighters could be delivered much further than before. On ships, the brave rulers and their loyal warriors easily crossed the Baltic and North Seas, discovering new lands, plundering cities and villages and enslaving civilians. Scandinavian men, whose chances of starting a family in their homeland were extremely small, could easily find a girlfriend on campaigns - by convincing or simply forcing a woman to go with them.

The combination of all these factors - several centuries of land conquest and the founding of kingdoms, an abundance of young single warriors and the emergence of new types of ships - led to the fact that a wave of Vikings poured onto the shores of the European continent, drowning foreign lands in blood, cruelty and fires.

Around 750, a group of Vikings landed on the sandy cape of the island of Saaremaa, located off the coast of modern Estonia. Here, a hundred miles from their native forests near the city of Uppsala, the soldiers pulled ashore two large ships. Their faces and bodies were covered in blood - a fierce battle had just ended. In the holds they brought four dozen chopped to pieces of the bodies of their dead comrades, among whom was the leader. All the dead are young men of strong physique, for many of them this battle was far from the first. On some bodies, deep stab wounds were visible, others were cut with an ax, some corpses lay completely decapitated. One of the warriors was scalped by a sword blow. The surviving fighters gathered the pieces together and laid them in the hold of the larger of the ships. Then they covered the comrades-in-arms with a cloth, on top of which they laid out the shields that belonged to them, building a burial mound out of them.

In 2008, diggers laying an electrical cable near the Estonian village of Salme came across human bones. They notified the local authorities about the chance find, and they immediately called archaeologists. Today, Neil Price never ceases to be amazed at how lucky he is. “This is the first time that archaeologists have been lucky enough to find a burial site for a Viking military unit that died in a raid,” he explains. The special value of the burial is also in the fact that the discovered warriors died 50 years before the Scandinavian invaders made the first attacks on the English monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in 793: for a long time this event was considered the first Viking attack on foreign lands. “The most unusual thing about the find is the huge number of swords,” explains Price. Many scholars believed that the first raids were made by Scandinavian detachments, consisting of several dozen poor peasants with simple spears and bows in their hands, led by several experienced warriors who wielded swords and other complex weapons. Burial in Salma refutes such ideas: more swords were found here than human remains. This means that the Scandinavians, who occupied a fairly high position, went on early sorties.

On a January morning, I am led through many corridors to a small warehouse located in an industrial area in the south of Edinburgh. Here, for more than a year, scientists have been sorting out valuables from the Galloway treasure that once belonged to one of the Scandinavian leaders. He plundered them in numerous raids, and was buried with them about 1100 years ago in the south-west of Scotland. Now it is a collection of rare and extraordinarily beautiful objects - from gold bars, brocade from Byzantium or from some Muslim country to an enameled Christian cross. Independent archaeologist Alwyn Owen, who studies the life of the Vikings, claims that she has never seen anything like this in her entire life: “This is an incredible find, just incredible!”

The iron bits found in the burial place of a noble Scandinavian warrior in Sweden are decorated with gilded bronze. Although the Vikings are known as skilled shipbuilders, the nobility also loved horses - they kept valuable breeds. Photo: Robert Clark, taken at the Uppsala University Museum

Alwyn laid out several artifacts on the table - she is engaged in restoration. What catches my attention is a graceful golden object in the form of a bird, reminiscent of an estel, a small pointer used by the clergy when reading religious texts. Nearby lies a gold pendant of fine workmanship, most likely a reliquary. Alwyn herself examines the silver brooches intently. They are engraved with mythical creatures and anthropomorphic faces. According to Owen, almost all of them were made for the Anglo-Saxons. “It seems that some settlement or monastery once had to endure a terrible shock,” she suggests.

Obviously, the owner of these treasures had a weakness for beautiful things, and instead of melting down the loot into ingots, he preferred to collect unusual art objects. According to archaeologist Steve Ashby of the University of York, the Vikings had a good taste for rarities made by foreign craftsmen, and among the elite, the possession of a large number of such artifacts was considered a sign of high status. “The cream of Scandinavian society was a real dandy,” Steve explains. “And luxury items were on display.”

Even the leaders of the Vikings loved to line their eyes, chose bright clothes and wore catchy jewelry: rings, neck torcs, large brooches and massive bracelets. At the same time, they did not compete in who outdid whom: each item was a living reminder of a distant campaign and served as a coveted reward for courage and bravery. An experienced Viking with one appearance showed all the delights of a warrior's life, prompting young Scandinavians to join the ranks of fighters and swear allegiance to him in exchange for a share in the loot. “The military elite could not afford to be modest - they needed new blood, new fighters,” Ashby explains.

The first victims of the Vikings were the monasteries located on the coast and on the islands. The attacks were carefully planned and preceded by reconnaissance: Scandinavian merchants often visited the coastal settlements of Europe, strolled along the shopping malls, looking closely at the goods, and also noticed the weighty silver bowls and golden church utensils stored in neighboring monasteries.

At first, the Vikings planned their raids in the summer and attacked on several ships with a hundred or two warriors. They attacked suddenly, sweeping away everyone who got in their way, and by the time the locals had time to collect the militia, they were already rushing home in full sail. In the 9th century, in France alone, they managed to sack more than 120 settlements. “Had you lived in the northwest of France at the end of the 9th century, then, quite likely, you would have decided that the end of the world had come,” Price describes those times.

As the jewels flowed into Scandinavia, young men filled the ranks of the Vikings in droves. Detachments grew, turning into armies with 30 or more ships. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 865, it is mentioned how hundreds of ships arrived to the east coast of the country, on board of which there was a "great army". By land and rivers, the troops began to invade the interior of England, capturing vast territories.

Not far from the present-day town of Lincoln, archaeologist Julian D. Richards of the University of York is excavating one of the winter camps of that great army, the Torksey camp. It could accommodate from three to four thousand soldiers, and researchers believe that it was not just an army: it had its own forges, where the looted metal was forged, there was a brisk trade in the streets and children frolicked. Women were mainly engaged in household chores, but there were also those who led detachments of men into battle.

An early Irish source mentions a warrior named Ingchen Ruaid, or the Red Woman, who apparently got her name from the color of her hair. In the 10th century, she led a Viking flotilla to Ireland. Anna Kälström, an anthropologist at Stockholm University, recently completed a re-examination of a Viking remains found in the trading post of Birka in Sweden. The participants in the burial ceremony put a whole arsenal in the grave, which testified to the high status of the deceased. For decades, archaeologists believed the buried warrior was male. Imagine Anna's surprise when an analysis of the pelvic bones showed that the remains of a woman were buried there. The unknown leader enjoyed authority among many Vikings. “Together with her, we discovered chess-like pieces to play with,” says Carlotta Hedenstierna-Jonsson from Uppsala University. “Apparently, she developed battle tactics, which means she was at the head of the army.”

The fleet that sowed death and destruction throughout Western Europe was also used to transport slaves and goods between markets thousands of miles apart, from Asia Minor to Eastern Europe and perhaps even Iran. In medieval Arabic and Byzantine written sources there are stories about the caravans of armed Scandinavian slave traders and merchants, called Rus, who mastered the trade routes in the basins of the Black and Caspian Seas. “I saw the Rus... I did not see [people] with more perfect bodies,” wrote Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, an Arab traveler and diplomat of the 10th century. “And with each of them there is an ax, a sword and a knife.”

To learn more about eastbound trade, archaeologists are excavating ancient trade routes. On a June morning on the embankment of the Dnieper, I met with Veronika Murasheva, an archaeologist from the State Historical Museum (Moscow). Here, in the Smolensk region, there was the settlement of Gnezdovo, founded by the Eastern Vikings - Rus - 1100 years ago. Favorably located at the intersection of two trade arteries - the Dnieper, which flows into the Black Sea, and the many tributaries of the Volga, which carries water to the Caspian Sea - Gnezdovo flourished and grew, eventually occupying an area of ​​30 hectares. Studying Gnezdovo for a century and a half, Russian archaeologists have discovered many fortifications, warehouses, workshops, port buildings and about 1200 mounds, where valuable artifacts were found. As it turned out, Gnezdovo was chosen by the Scandinavian elite, who imposed tribute on the Slavic population and controlled trade flows in the south. Every year in the spring, merchants left here on ships loaded with valuable goods - furs, honey, wax, amber, walrus tusks and, of course, slaves. Many ships headed for the Black Sea to Constantinople. Arriving in the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Rus' actively sold the goods and bought on the way back another, no less valuable one: amphoras with olive oil and wine, glassware, colored mosaics and rare fabrics.

The second trade route led even further to the East, along the tributaries of the Volga, to the bazaars spread out on its banks and in the Caspian. Muslims generously paid for foreign slaves with silver coins - dirhems, because the Koran forbade the enslavement of brothers in faith.

Marek Jankowiak, a medievalist at Oxford University, has compiled records of more than a thousand dirham hoards found during excavations of Viking settlements across Europe. This allowed him to estimate the number of people sold into slavery by the Scandinavians - according to Marek's calculations, it turned out that several tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans, mostly Slavs, were enslaved only in the 10th century. Human trafficking brought the Vikings an income of millions of dirhams - unimaginable at that time.

Among the Vikings there were many legends about distant campaigns, one of them is the story of the merchant Bjarni Herulfsson. According to legend, his ship lost its way in thick fog while crossing from Iceland to Greenland. When the fog cleared, Bjarni and his squad saw new lands, little like Greenland: they were covered with dense forest. Bjarni, deciding not to waste time exploring new territory, went on until eventually his ship reached the New World - it seems that he was the first European who managed to see a new continent. Having accidentally discovered North America, the Vikings began to visit these parts regularly.

Their achievements in conquering the seas are still shrouded in mystery: were the Vikings the first conquerors of the New World? The Scandinavian sagas say that sailors in search of wood and other resources organized four major expeditions west of Greenland. The chroniclers report that as early as 985 they explored the lands on the northeast coast of present-day Canada and even wintered there in small settlements, logging, giving birth to children, trading and fighting with the Indians, and even managed to find thickets of wild grapes in a place that called Vinland. In the 1960s, the famous explorer Helge Ingstad managed to find in the north of Newfoundland in the town of L'Anse-au-Meadows, while excavating hills that resemble Viking "long dwellings", three large buildings, several huts, a furnace for processing swamp ore and fruits gray walnut, which grows hundreds of kilometers south of this place. Nearby was a peat swamp - a source of ore, which was valued by the Vikings, who smelted iron from it.

And Patricia Sutherland, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, while looking through old collections at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, accidentally stumbled upon ... fragments of Viking yarn. This yarn was found in a place where the representatives of the ancient Dorset Eskimo culture used to live, inhabiting the Arctic until the 15th century. But one of the most intriguing finds was a small stone vessel that looked like a metal melting ladle with traces of bronze on the inside, as well as tiny glass beads, usually formed when metal is melted at high temperatures. All this suggests that the Vikings were not only the first to land on Newfoundland, but also visited continental Canada...

Winter, wind. I hail a taxi to go to Shetland's Sumborough airport the morning after up-helly-o. There was almost no one on the streets - people were noisily celebrating all night. Children sleep soundly, dreaming about brave Vikings, and adults will put swords and helmets in the closet in the morning until the next holiday. But the spirit of the Vikings, as well as the romantic image of fearless warriors who built boats and conquered the cold seas in an effort to explore new lands, will never fade.

Vikings in the West and Rus' in the East

This historiographic construction became the basis for the fight against the "reactionary Norman theory", supposedly designed to belittle the ability of the Slavic people for independent development. The controversy in Russian science in the 1970s broke with the Soviet stereotypes of the era of the struggle against cosmopolitanism: endowing external influences on the development of the country with exclusively negative properties. Even then, Academician Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov, the head of Soviet historical science, spoke about the fundamental difference in the onslaught of the Normans in the West and the Varangians in the East: the coast of the Western countries was open to unexpected Viking attacks from the sea, the path to the East was more difficult. Only by cunning and deception could individual detachments penetrate deep into Eastern Europe, as did the prophetic Oleg, who captured Kyiv, pretending to be a merchant.

Note that in the west of Europe, the Normans took possession of the lands, as a rule, developed back in Roman times, with an established system of communications, a network of settlements. The situation was different in the east: the colonization of the forest zone by Slavic tribes did not end there, and rivers remained the main roads. Initial Rus', according to Eastern and other sources (including numismatic data), sought to establish itself on these paths leading to the centers of Byzantine and Middle Eastern civilizations. For safe navigation along the rivers of Eastern Europe, it was necessary to agree with the local tribes (for which it was necessary to at least know their language): the chronicle conveys an agreement - a “row” concluded in Novgorod by the Varangian squad and princes with the tribes of Slovenes, Krivichi and Mary, regulating relations between power and tributaries.

The pendant is a sign of belonging to the princely squad in Rus'. The bident is a princely sign of the era of Svyatoslav (X century), the banner on the back is close to the image from the coins of Olaf Kvaran, the Scandinavian ruler of York, Northumbria and Dublin (X century). Photo: from a private collection.

This system of relations spread by the middle of the 10th century along the path from the Varangians to the Greeks, which was mastered by the Russian princes: it is described in detail by the Byzantine emperor Konstantin Porphyrogenitus in the treatise “On the Management of the Empire” - Rus (“all the dews” in the treatise) leaves the capital of Kiev in winter polyudye to feed on the Slavs - tributaries (in the treatise - paktiots) until spring, when the rivers are freed from ice, and the path "to the Greeks" opens. (Note that before going to Byzantium, the “dews” bought ship timber from the Slavs to equip the boats.)

It is important that the tribute collectors called themselves (in agreements with the Greeks) "all dews", "Rus" or "all Rus". The same name was given to the princely squad in the chronicle legend about the calling of the Varangians. The term "Varangian" arose in Rus' when it was necessary to distinguish Scandinavian mercenaries from Rus' - that was the name of the princely squad. Already the chronicler of the end of the 11th century perceived the words "Rus" and "Varangians" as ethnonyms - the names of peoples: Rus was included by him among the Varangian peoples, among the Sveys, Urmans (as the Norwegians and Danes were called) and others. Historical onomastics has long clarified the origin of the word "Rus": the Baltic Finns, residents of the Eastern Baltic, call Sweden Ruotsi (in Finnish), Rootsi (in Estonian); the ancestors of these peoples, whom the Slavs called Chud, took part, according to the annals, in the calling of the Varangians / Rus - from them the Slavs took the word "Rus" as a designation for people from Sweden. At the beginning of the 19th century, an explanation was also proposed for the term "Rus" - "rowers, participants in the campaign on rowboats."

It is quite obvious why the Scandinavians called themselves "rowers" and not "Vikings" in Eastern Europe: here they could not make their way along the rivers, especially along the portages, on long ships; Accordingly, they went to the east, according to the runic inscriptions, “to Rus'”, to the west - “to the Viking”. No wonder the prophetic Oleg, on a campaign against Tsargrad, took the payoff "on the key" - an oarlock, that is, for each rower. In Staraya Ladoga, according to the Icelandic sagas and archeology, the Scandinavians had to re-equip ships to travel deep into the continent along the Volkhov.

Archaeological studies of the second half of the 20th - early 21st centuries have shown the interconnected development of urban settlements within an integral river network, especially on the way from the Varangians to the Greeks. The settlements connected with this path in the 9th-10th centuries developed synchronously, their necropolises, numbering many hundreds of complexes (in Birka, Gnezdov, Kiev), clearly belong to the same archaeological culture. The discovery of riverside quarters in Gnezdovo and Kyiv (on Podil) was sensational: these quarters were planned so that it would be more convenient to receive boats going along the rivers. This layout is very different from the traditional Slavic settlements and coincides with the one on which the coastal settlements (“wikis”) were created in the Baltic and the British Isles.

WikiLeaks for the first time published documents related to the activities of the Russian authorities. The organization claims that the St. Petersburg-based company, founded in 1992, is cooperating with Russian intelligence agencies, passing them the collected data of Russian subscribers. The company denied this information. The publication may reveal new details about the surveillance system for Russians, experts say. And the American press admits that the publication could have been agreed with the FSB.

"Unique Tracking Agent"

The Italian edition of Repubblica, in cooperation with which WikiLeaks published materials, writes that the time allocated to them before publication was not enough to understand all the "extremely technical documents."

The published data set is the first part of future publications under the general name "Russian Spy Files", writes WikiLeaks. The organization claims that the Russian company Peter Service cooperates with the Russian intelligence services and helps them to spy on Russian subscribers and Internet users. By supplying software to telecommunications companies, Peter Service installs systems on their networks that collect data on user activity, writes WikiLeaks.

Scheme of product deployment on the side of the telecom operator

The organization calls Peter Service a "unique tracking agent" that can provide government agencies with phone records and messages, device identifier numbers (IMEI, MAC addresses), IP addresses, cell tower information and other data. Repubblica notes that the published documents cover the period from 2007 to 2015, but they do not mention specific intelligence agencies with which the company may cooperate.

WikiLeaks recalls that, by law, operators must store user metadata for three years (the very fact of an action, but not the content of calls and messages). From 2018, when the Yarovaya package comes into force, operators will have to store Internet traffic, call records and any user messages for six months, and also transfer this data to special services upon request.

"Total Surveillance"

WikiLeaks claims that the Peter Service can handle up to 500 million connections per day. The search time for a record in the database is on average 10 seconds, and government agencies get access to stored information using the 538 protocol adapter - its description is also among the published documents.

WikiLeaks writes that thanks to the Traffic Data Mart (TDM) tool, you can find out which sites the user visited, how much time he spent on any page and through which device he did it. The tool also maintains a list of sites by categories of interest to the state: banned sites and blogs, email, weapons and drug trafficking sites, portals with terrorist or "aggressive" content. All this allows you to create a report on a specific device for a certain period of time, writes WikiLeaks.

Among the published Peter Service documents is a 2013 presentation that came out a few months after Edward Snowden spoke about the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance program and its collaboration with private US corporations such as Google and Facebook.

Addressed to the FSB, the Interior Ministry and "the three branches of government," the presentation invites "interested parties to join an alliance to create equivalent data mining operations in Russia," WikiLeaks notes.

Peter Service has denied all accusations of surveillance and collaboration with intelligence agencies. The company said that they work in strict accordance with the laws of the countries where their customers are. “Privacy is one of the tenets of our work. The company's employees do not have access to subscriber data, especially since the company has never transferred information about our customers' subscribers to the special services of any country, ”RIA Novosti quotes the company’s press service.

What's new said WikiLeaks

The main value of the Wikileaks publication lies in the fact that it provides an opportunity to start a conversation about the Russian surveillance system at the international level, says Andrey Soldatov, editor-in-chief of the Agentura.ru website, researcher of the Russian special services. According to him, there are few new facts in the publication.

“There are several technical details regarding the wiretap data exchange protocol that were not previously widely known. A few more things explain the psychology of engineers,” Soldatov explained.

At the international level, Peter Service has been known since 2013, thanks to the work of the international SpyFiles project. As part of it, several organizations compiled a register of companies that produce surveillance equipment, which then ends up in countries with authoritarian regimes, Soldatov said.

To surprise everyone, WikiLeaks should publish a "leak of another level," he continues. “There are two sides to the Russian surveillance system: one part of the equipment is installed by providers, and it is produced by commercial companies – a lot is known about it. The second is installed in the premises of special services, from where a cable is then thrown, which connects the two parts together. The leak is needed from the special services, ”explains Soldatov. At the same time, WikiLeaks was repeatedly accused of not publishing any information coming from Russian government agencies, he recalls.

Relations between WikiLeaks and the Kremlin

WikiLeaks has been repeatedly accused of sympathizing with the Russian government. For example, before the 2016 US presidential election, Foreign policy wrote, citing sources, that WikiLeaks published compromising evidence on Hillary Clinton obtained from pro-Kremlin hackers, but refused to publish documents that were “inconvenient” for the Russian government. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in an interview with Repubblica explained this by the lack of Russian-speaking specialists.

In addition, WikiLeaks criticized the Panama Archives. "OCCRP can do a great job, but the US government's funding of the attack on Putin in the #Panamanian archives undermines their integrity," the organization wrote.

The US OCCRP can do good work, but for the US govt to directly fund the

At the beginning of the week, the film "The Case of Sobchak" by Vera Krichevskaya and Ksenia Sobchak, dedicated to the fate of Anatoly Sobchak, the first mayor of St. Petersburg and former boss of Vladimir Putin, appeared on the screens. The President of Russia became one of the main characters of the film and gave him a detailed interview.

The BBC Russian service tells what new information about Putin's personality has become known from the documentary.

Sobchak helped Putin leave the KGB

Vladimir Putin, at the beginning of his work with Anatoly Sobchak, was a career KGB officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In an interview for the film, the president said that he even warned the future boss about this when he invited him to the post of adviser to the chairman of the Leningrad Council of People's Deputies. Putin himself then served as assistant to the rector of Leningrad State University for international work.

“I answered him - you know, I would love to go to work for you. But I’m afraid that this is impossible ... Probably, I can’t tell you about this, but I probably won’t seriously violate our rules, I can tell you that I am not just an assistant to the rector. I am a regular, active KGB officer," Putin described the conversation. According to him, Sobchak answered this "for the first and last time": "Well, figs with him."

Putin combined work for Sobchak and in the state security agencies, but decided to resign during the 1991 coup. According to the president, the power structures supported the coup and he could not "rush back and forth" and "be both there and there at the same time." Putin himself has repeatedly spoken about this before, but in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak, he said that her father helped him and promised to call Vladimir Kryuchkov, the chairman of the KGB.

"I was so surprised a little, I think, well, why. Kryuchkov will send him away. He really called Kryuchkov and the report was signed literally within two or three days."

Sobchak's rival in the mayoral election called Putin to his team

A significant part of the film "The Case of Sobchak" is devoted to the election of the governor of St. Petersburg in 1996, in which Sobchak's deputy Vladimir Yakovlev ran against Sobchak.

"Anatoly Alexandrovich invited him [Yakovlev] to work, made him his deputy, trusted him. Well, how could he not betray him? He betrayed him, of course. There is no other name for it," Putin said in an interview for the film.

ALAMY, Sobchak accompanied by Putin at the opening of Austria Square in September 1992. To the left of Sobchak is the current head of the Russian Guard Viktor Zolotov

Yakovlev's candidacy was proposed in an analytical note addressed to Boris Yeltsin, one of its drafters was the political scientist Alexei Trubetskoy (Nightmarov) - he himself talks about this in the film. Other heroes claim that the document was handed over to Yeltsin by the then head of the Presidential Security Service, Alexander Korzhakov, and the ex-director of the FSB, Mikhail Barsukov.

Yakovlev himself said in an interview that he had discussed his nomination with Putin: "We spoke with Vladimir Vladimirovich. He didn't say 'don't go' or 'go.' It was just a normal conversation." Putin remembers this conversation differently. "He offered me to run with him. I refused, of course. I told him that it was impossible for me," President Ksenia Sobchak said.

Yakovlev's career did not end with work in St. Petersburg. In 2003, already during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, he became deputy prime minister, after the resignation of the Kasyanov government, he worked as presidential envoy for six months, and then headed the Ministry of Regional Development. In the government, Yakovlev, who, according to Putin, "betrayed Sobchak", worked until 2007.

Helping Sobchak, Putin risked permanently losing his job in the Kremlin

Having lost the gubernatorial elections, Sobchak remained in the spotlight as a defendant in a criminal case on abuses in the administration of St. Petersburg. According to the "Sobchak case", as he was called in the press, he was held first as a witness, and then became accused of abuse as mayor.

Anatoly Chubais, who was an adviser to Sobchak and went to work in Moscow with Putin after his defeat, says in the film that members of the presidential administration tried to help his former boss. Only Boris Nemtsov, who worked in the government, could postpone the arrest of Sobchak, who was in a pre-infarction state, by making a personal request to Boris Yeltsin. At the same time, "the risks of landing Sobchak were the highest," said Chubais.

In the fall of 1997, Sobchak, after being interrogated by the prosecutor's office, was hospitalized. "He didn't make faces in his hospital bed and didn't imitate anything. He was sick, he needed to be treated," Putin says in the film. According to him, he considered it his duty to help the former boss: “And here’s why. If I had doubts that he was to blame for something, I wouldn’t lift a finger. But I didn’t just know. I was sure I knew 100% that he was innocent."

As a result, Putin, who then worked as deputy head of the presidential administration, called his boss Valentin Yumashev, head of the Kremlin administration and Boris Yeltsin's son-in-law. According to Yumashev himself, Putin told him that he was "going to save" Sobchak.

“Putin told me: I can’t tell Boris Nikolayevich, I understand that he will not let me go and will not support me. Therefore, I am informing you. If some kind of failure suddenly happens, I would like you to tell Boris Nikolayevich that I could not do otherwise, I had to do it," recalls Yumashev. Chubais, commenting on these events, said that Putin and Yumashev "risked their heads."

“I did not plan some kind of breathtaking career, on the one hand, and on the other hand, there was the fate of Anatoly Alexandrovich, to whom I considered myself indebted. I thought, of course, that this could harm me, but I had no doubts about what I should do. I was gone," Putin says in the film.

Yumashev said in an interview that he warned Putin about his resignation in case of failure. "I said: Vladimir Vladimirovich, this is your right, but you understand that if everything suddenly fails, you will not be able to work anywhere else, and I will be forced to fire you."

Narusova for the first time spoke in detail about Putin's plan to save Sobchak

Sobchak's wife, Federation Council senator Lyudmila Narusova, in an interview with the BBC, said that it was Vladimir Putin who "instructed her how to do everything, how to organize, how to order an ambulance" to transport her husband to France for treatment. However, it was in the film "The Case of Sobchak" that she first told in detail what this plan consisted of.

According to Narusova, in early November, when Anatoly Sobchak was in a St. Petersburg hospital, she invited guests over the phone, which was tapped by the special services, supposedly to celebrate the 16th birthday of Ksenia Sobchak. She took her husband from the hospital for the holidays on receipt.

“The most important thing was to warn the French side to be met by an ambulance at the Bourget airport. Of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich helped me a lot here, who gave clear instructions. And when I told him that I understood everything, he was embarrassed and said: Lyudmila Borisovna, repeat ", Narusova says in an interview.

According to Sobchak's wife, she was able to negotiate with the French side through the Air France agency, but it was difficult to enter there during surveillance. "So the plan was this - I go to the Trussardi store, take different dresses from the hangers, go to the fitting room. Then I go out to the patio, which is combined with Air France, I go there, I ask for a certain employee. She gave me the phone, I called, returned in Trussardi, I bought some kind of dress, then with a beautiful branded package I left the store and got into the car," recalls Narusova.

According to her, the next day an article appeared in the press stating that "while Sobchak is in intensive care, his lady walks around expensive boutiques and buys clothes." So Narusova realized that the plan had worked.