by Olga BAZANOVA, journalist On Moscow's northwest (Southern Tushino borough), on a picturesque hill at the confluence of the Bratovka and Skhodnya rivers, there lies one of the most famous patrimonial estates, Brattsevo. In the past it was owned and visited by high-born Russian nobles, eminent public figures and intellectuals who made this country's history. The "Bowl of Skhodnya". стр. 88 The present-day territory of Moscow and its region were settled back in ancient times, as it is very comfortable in layout and landscape diversity: high hills, numerous water bodies full of fish, dense forests rich in game and fowl. One of the best places is what we call the Skhodnya (or Tushino) Bowl: here the Skhodnya makes a U-turn, and its valley, following this U curve, forms a bowl of about 1 km across and as deep as 40 m, resembling a volcano crater or an amphitheater. This unique natural monument might have appeared due to landslide processes in the Holocene (postglacial period) taking place 9th-7th thous. years B.C. That time the river was more affluent than today: eroding in time the surrounding rock, it became shallow and finally found itself on the bottom of a giant bowl with boggy banks populated by amphibians, waterfowl and wader species that also occur here today. Many, for example, the moor frog, common newt, common lizard, grass snake as well as birds like the snipe, moorhen, and meadow pipit have been entered in the Moscow Red Book. The steep slopes of the bowl with their leafy forest were a suitable shelter for our forefathers. Here, in this very place, during the construction of the Skhodnya Hydro-power Plant (part of the Moscow Canal system*), the top of a petrified human skull of the New Stone Age, known to as the "Skhodnya skull", was found in 1939. * See: A. Firsova, "Art Deco in Russia", Science in Russia, No. 2, 2010.--Ed. стр. 89 Together with the "Zaraisk encampment"*, it is the oldest artifa ... Читать далее