The Minusinsk hollow is a repository of Siberian history.

The Minusinsk hollow, also called the intermountain depression, is located on the border of Khakassia and the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Around the valley there are mountain ridges. Its southern and southwestern borders are framed by the mountain systems of the Western Sayan. The north-western and western sides of the basin are "guarded" by the Abakan range, and in the east is Vos Exact Sayan. The Minusinsk hollow was discovered only from the north, where the West Siberian Plain stretches. The large rivers Abakan, Yenisei, Chulym and Tuba turn the mountain valley into a green and fertile land. Even on the eastern dunes of the basin there is a beautiful pine forest.

The Minusinsk hollow is famous for its gardens, founded by the exiled Decembrist Krasnokutsky. Another Decembrist named Krivtsov in the letter called this area Siberian Italy. Such a forest name of the basin was not in vain - the nature that surrounds Minusinsk is very diverse and rich. The Krasnoyarsk region abounds in beautiful clean lakes surrounded by willows and poplars and rugged mountain rivers. Rich meadow meadows alternate with salt marshes and feather grass steppes, and among the mountains hide alpine meadows, fragrant with hundreds of herbs and flowers. Part of the surrounding mountains is covered with wild taiga, which is rich not only with wood, but also with a valuable kind of marble.

In addition to the picturesque places, the Minusinsk hollow is full of history. Even now archaeologists find in it traces of various epochs, beginning with the Paleolithic and ending with the Middle Ages. A variety of tribes and cultures left "traces" in the form of cemeteries and ancient burial mounds, the ruins of cities and settlements, rock art, stone statues and figures of unknown creatures. The sculptures of stone animals were especially interesting for scientists. It was these samples of ancient art that attracted the first archaeologists to Siberia.

Minusinsk district was full of such sculptures. Some figures, carved from granite or sandstone, look like flat steles, others represent high reliefs Height. Particular attention is drawn to a group of stelae with animal guises, topped with characteristic headdresses. From this group stands a stele, called "Shirinskaya Baba". It resembles an ancient totem, in the center of which the face of a man-beast, framed by ancient ornamentation, is carved. Under the mask is a snarled muzzle of a wild beast, and above it you can see a realistically executed human face. All together is a very harmonious and mysterious composition, the mystery of which has not yet been revealed. Scientists have just started to unravel the secrets of ancient stele. Only in the 1960s historians established that virtually all the Yenisei stelae were carved by the tribes of the Okunevo culture, which inherited the name of the Okunevsky ulus, near which excavations took place.

The Minusinsk hollow keeps the history of not only local peoples. I went through the hollow and the horde of Genghis Khan, leaving a trace of burnt castles and ruined cities. They find here scientists and remains of ancient ways, along which caravans from Central Asia, Arabia, Tibet and China went. For more than a century historians and archaeologists have been solving riddles and restoring the history of this ancient corner of the planet.