Family Lived 40 Years Without Human Contact

[BG45]

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article up that I think is well worth the time to read.  It's about a family of Orthodox "Old Believers" who fled the persecutions of the Bolsheviks so well that they didn't see another human being outside the family for four decades.  Some members of the family had never seen another human being or a loaf of bread.  They had never seen a television, didn't know a second World War had occurred.  (Photos and more text in the link.  It's huge.)

 

 For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II
In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga

 

Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs. This forest is the last and greatest of Earth's wildernesses. It stretches from the furthest tip of Russia's arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: five million square miles of nothingness, with a population, outside a handful of towns, that amounts to only a few thousand people.

 

...

 

Thus it was in the remote south of the forest in the summer of 1978. A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides that were close to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors' downdraft were so thickly clustered that there was no chance of finding a spot to set the aircraft down. But, peering intently through his windscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw something that should not have been there. It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time.

 

It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.

 

....

 

As the intruders scrambled up the mountain, heading for the spot pinpointed by their pilots, they began to come across signs of human activity: a rough path, a staff, a log laid across a stream, and finally a small shed filled with birch-bark containers of cut-up dried potatoes. Then, Pismenskaya said,

 

[quote]

beside a stream there was a dwelling. Blackened by time and rain,
the hut was piled up on all sides with taiga rubbish—bark, poles,
planks. If it hadn't been for a window the size of my backpack pocket,
it would have been hard to believe that people lived there. But they
did, no doubt about it.... Our arrival had been noticed, as we could
see.

The low door creaked, and the figure of a very old man emerged
into the light of day, straight out of a fairy tale. Barefoot. Wearing a
patched and repatched shirt made of sacking. He wore trousers of the
same material, also in patches, and had an uncombed beard. His hair was
disheveled. He looked frightened and was very attentive.... We had to
say something, so I began: 'Greetings, grandfather! We've come to
visit!'

The old man did not reply immediately.... Finally, we heard a
soft, uncertain voice: 'Well, since you have traveled this far, you
might as well come in.'

 

 

...

 

More in the article, way more.  It details the family's move out there to flee persecution for their faith, how they interacted with the geologists over the coming decades, and how they managed to survive 40 years in isolation in one of the world's most inhospitable regions.

 

 

[Basilisa Marie]

That is absolutely fascinating. 

[PhuturePriest]

[BG45]

I agree with both reactions.  :)

 

It really is one of the most interesting, if sad, things I've read in a while.

[Papist]

Impressive.

[Era Might]

Sounds like a cool article, will read later. I was looking at a map the other day and never realized how huge Russia is.

[IcePrincessKRS]

I saw that yesterday. It was really interesting. Amazing determination and will to survive under extremely difficult conditions.

[4588686]

I did that once.

[Spem in alium]

That's amazing.

[Augusta]

Reminds me of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout

 

(and related articles)

 

 

-AK

[eagle_eye222001]

Incredibly fascinating.

 

So amazing how they survived without metal (after the teakettles rusted out) as it would be hard enough to survive in the wilderness with a hunting rifle, and a some metal pans for cooking.

 

But to NOT even have a way to cook meat? :wacko:

 

 

That one wheat that grew........and then they survived because of that!!!!  But they had to replant it to get their crop going again!!!!

 

Just utterly fascinating as they basically had their own language style and everything!

[Gabriela]

I hope they get canonized some day.

 

Catholics can pray to Eastern saints, right?