MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS./ The artefacts, which archaeologists found in Yakutsk, prove the city’s founding date should be reviewed, the city’s press service said.
"During the construction, which began in the city center in 2017, scientists found remains of a settlement dated the XVII century. <...> As yet, experts do not name an exact date of the findings, but, according to Anatoly Alekseev (a scientific supervisor of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Humanitarian Studies and Problems of the North’s Low-Numbered Peoples - TASS), the found fragments belong to about the XV century. The main significance of the finding is that if scientists find the proofs, the date of Yakutsk’s founding may be reviewed," the press service said.
Yakutsk’s Mayor Arsen Nikolaev told TASS,"as soon as the cultural layer was removed, we organized there the security and rescue excavations." The first finding was a settlement’s remains, which the archaeologists date back to the XVII century, he added.
"The specialists have found more than 1,200 artefacts," the mayor continued. "They say, the earliest findings date back to about the XV century, and if this date is confirmed, we will have material evidence that Yakutsk is much older than it was thought."
According to the Institute’s expert Professor Rozalia Bravina, "the main surprise was fragments which are completely identical to samples of the local ceramics of the XV-XVI centuries."
"This proves, a settlement appeared on the territory of modern Yakutsk much earlier than in the XVII century," she added.
Scientists date the found artefacts on the basis of their "similarity with other samples of local ceramics, which earlier a Yakut ethnographer Anatoly Gogolev dated XIV-XVI centuries." The conclusions are due to be confirmed by radiocarbon tests, which may date the findings with accuracy of 30-50 years, experts say.