In the deep, lost African jungles between the states of Zimbabwe and Botswana, there lives a tribe, most of whose inhabitants have only two toes on their feet. Two thumbs perpendicular to each other...
This disease, or hereditary deformity received from someone light hand called "claw syndrome". Some doctors believe that it is caused by an unknown virus. Others express the opinion that this is the result of marriages between close relatives.
Paul du Chaillu, an American traveler of French origin, was the first to learn about the strange inhabitants of Central Africa. In 1863, he published a book in which he described his adventures in Africa, mentioning in it a tribe of people with two toes, whose name is Sapadi. 
A hundred years later, the English newspaper The Guardian published the article “In Search of Africans with Two Fingers. Mysterious tribe." The article mentioned a tribe living in inaccessible areas of the Zambezi River, whose people walk on two fingers. Most readers considered the article a canard and did not pay attention to it. special attention. But reports of two-fingered people began to appear in other media.
After a short time, the ethnographer Buster Philips wrote in one of the geographical magazines about an unusual African tribe of ostrich people. He described that one day, near the small town of Feira, he noticed two-fingered people in the branches of a tree. They were collecting something, but when he approached, they quickly descended from the tree and quickly ran away. Phillips pointed out that ostrich people are about one and a half meters tall, completely wild and live separately in their own closed world. They feed on wild cereals, tree fruits and mushrooms.
The article caused a flurry of publications. Many publications around the world began to publish notes and even photographs of Africans with “ostrich paws.” Scientists refused to believe it, claiming that the hype was a pure hoax. 
However, military pilot Mark Mullinu managed to take an excellent photo of a two-fingered man from a tribe living between the Kanyembe and Shewore rivers. The neighboring tribes called these people the Vandoma. The number of this tribe was about 300-400 people, and every fourth had claw syndrome.
In 1971, a scientific expedition was organized to search for a tribe of two-fingered people. It is unlikely that it would have been successful if contact had not been previously established with the leaders of neighboring tribes. It was only thanks to their intervention that the elder of this strange tribe received the guests.
Scientists have found that ostrich people consider themselves descendants of people from Mozambique. Historian Dawson Mungeri from the National Archives in Harare expressed the opinion that the “ostrich” gene could have been brought to those places by a visiting woman, whose descendants subsequently entered into closely related marriages.
One of the tribe members was brought to England and subjected to examination. Scientists have found that the gene responsible for the appearance of claw syndrome is dominant. It is enough to inherit it from one of the parents, and two toes instead of five on each foot are provided. 
According to Professor Philips Tobias, this mutation is unlikely to disappear as a result of natural selection, since it does not make a person defective. And this is so: Sapadi are excellent runners, they climb trees like monkeys, jumping from one tree to another. Sometimes members of the tribe do not leave the trees for several days, collecting fruits, leaves and insect larvae.
Some of the tribe's customs seem strange. For example, before the wedding, the future husband and wife must lie side by side on the hot sand without food or water for 24 hours. At the same time, the guy’s hands are tightly tied to the girl’s hands.
Or this ritual: on the new moon, at least a dozen sapadis are buried waist-deep in the ground. Those buried loudly pronounce prayers and spells all night, and the rest of the tribe burns fires, enveloping the worshipers in fragrant smoke.
At the same time, these seemingly primitive savages are skilled healers. Using antediluvian homemade instruments, they are able to perform such complex operations that an experienced surgeon would not always undertake them. And their ointments, tinctures, and powders have truly wonderful properties.
Over time, ostrich people were discovered in other areas of Africa. For example, in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Most likely, these were the people mentioned in ancient writings. Strabo, the ancient Greek geographer and historian, wrote about the apistodactyls, the mysterious inhabitants of Central Africa whose feet are “turned back.”
The ethnic diversity on Earth is amazing in its abundance. People living in different corners planets are at the same time similar to each other, but at the same time very different in their way of life, customs, and language. In this article we will talk about some unusual tribes, about which you will be interested to know.
Piraha Indians - a wild tribe inhabiting the Amazon jungle
The Pirahã Indian tribe lives among the Amazon rain forest, mainly along the banks of the Maici River, in the state of Amazonas, Brazil.
This nation South America known for its language, Pirahã. In fact, Pirahã is one of the rarest languages among the 6,000 spoken languages around the world. The number of native speakers ranges from 250 to 380 people. The language is amazing because:
- does not have numbers, for them there are only two concepts “several” (from 1 to 4 pieces) and “many” (more than 5 pieces),
- verbs do not change either by numbers or by persons,
- there are no names for colors,
— consists of 8 consonants and 3 vowels! Isn't this amazing?
According to linguistic scholars, Piraha men understand rudimentary Portuguese and even speak very limited topics. True, not all male representatives can express their thoughts. Women, on the other hand, have little understanding of the Portuguese language and do not use it at all to communicate. However, the Pirahã language has several loanwords from other languages, mainly Portuguese, such as "cup" and "business".
Speaking of business, the Piraha Indians trade Brazil nuts and provide sexual services in order to buy consumables and tools, for example, machetes, milk powder, sugar, whiskey. Chastity is not a cultural value for them.
There are several more interesting moments associated with this nation:
- Pirahã have no compulsion. They don't tell other people what to do. There seems to be no social hierarchy at all, no formal leader.
- This Indian tribe has no idea of \u200b\u200bdeities and God. However, they believe in spirits, which sometimes take the form of jaguars, trees, or people.
— it feels like the Pirahã tribe are people who don’t sleep. They can take a nap of 15 minutes or at most two hours throughout the day and night. They rarely sleep through the night.
The Wadoma tribe is an African tribe of people with two toes.
The Vadoma tribe lives in the Zambezi River valley in northern Zimbabwe. They are known for the fact that some members of the tribe suffer from ectrodactyly, three middle toes are missing from their feet, and the outer two are turned inward. As a result, members of the tribe are called “two-fingered” and “ostrich-footed”. Their huge two-toed feet are the result of a single mutation on chromosome number seven. However, in the tribe such people are not considered inferior. The reason for the common occurrence of ectrodactyly in the Vadoma tribe is isolation and the prohibition of marriage outside the tribe.
Life and life of the Korowai tribe in Indonesia
The Korowai tribe, also called the Kolufo, live in the southeast of the autonomous Indonesian province of Papua and consist of approximately 3,000 people. Perhaps before 1970 they did not know about the existence of other people besides themselves.
Most Korowai clans live in their isolated territory in tree houses, which are located at an altitude of 35-40 meters. In this way, they protect themselves from floods, predators, and arson by rival clans who take people, especially women and children, into slavery. In 1980, some of the Korowai moved to settlements in open areas.
Korowai have excellent hunting and fishing skills, and are engaged in gardening and gathering. They practice slash-and-burn agriculture, when the forest is first burned and then crops are planted in this place.
As far as religion is concerned, the Korowai universe is filled with spirits. The most honorable place is given to the spirits of ancestors. In times of need, they sacrifice domestic pigs to them.
The indigenous peoples of Africa are colorful and very interesting, especially for residents of other continents. But there is one mysterious tribe here, even their neighbors avoided meeting them for a long time. We are talking about the Vadoma tribe, which lives in Zimbabwe. The scientific world has long doubted the existence of the mysterious ostrich people, as other nationalities called the Vadoma, although mention of them can be found in the descriptive works of the ancient Greeks. Their existence was confirmed by strange footprints in the sand, reminiscent of both human and ostrich tracks, eyewitness accounts of rare encounters, and frequent references in mythology and folklore to local residents who considered ostrich people to be sorcerers and treated them with awe and respect.
Outwardly, they are no different from other representatives of the African race: they have black skin, curly jet-black hair and characteristic features faces. They are very friendly, welcoming and sociable. But their feet have a very strange structure. Most representatives of this tribe usually lack three middle toes, and the big and little fingers form something similar to the letter V. This deviation is called ectrodactyly and is believed to be the result of genetic mutations. Vadoma themselves do not suffer from such a defect in any way; they move normally, lead an active lifestyle and can even climb trees quite deftly, thanks to such peculiar legs. The Vadoma are a very developed tribe, whose representatives have extensive knowledge in the field of pharmaceuticals and medicine, and they associate their origin with the red star Litholafisi, that is, with the planet Mars.
But how did it happen that in this African tribe such strange structures of the lower extremities are observed? Scientists believe that the whole point is in the isolation of the tribe and the order prevailing there. According to the laws of this society, men can only marry women of the Vadoma tribe. The elders strictly monitor compliance with this rule. So it turned out that, due to their relatively small number, incest flourishes in this people, which led to genetic disorders. Scientists believe that less than a thousand people are not enough to maintain a full-fledged gene pool. However, over the past few decades, the Vadoma have gradually abandoned their reclusiveness and gradually become closer to the surrounding tribes. As a result of marriages of two-fingered Vadoma with healthy representatives of other nations, two-fingered children are born, which confirms the persistence of this genetic mutation. The gene that causes this syndrome is dominant, that is, it is most likely to appear in children if one of the parents is its carrier.
But the Vadoma people are far from the only owners of such legs. Ectrodactyly also occurs in other inhabitants of the globe, but is most common among small, isolated tribes of the African continent. Research on these peoples may be useful to scientists working on genetic diseases.
In the deep, lost African jungles between the states of Zimbabwe and Botswana, there lives a tribe, most of whose inhabitants have only two toes on their feet. Two thumbs perpendicular to each other...
This disease, or hereditary deformity, was given the name “claw syndrome.” Some doctors believe that it is caused by an unknown virus. Others express the opinion that this is the result of marriages between close relatives.
Paul du Chaillu, an American traveler of French origin, was the first to learn about the strange inhabitants of Central Africa. In 1863, he published a book in which he described his adventures in Africa, mentioning in it a tribe of people with two toes, whose name is Sapadi.
A hundred years later, the English newspaper The Guardian published the article “In Search of Africans with Two Fingers. Mysterious tribe." The article mentioned a tribe living in remote areas of the Zambezi River, whose people walk on two fingers. Most readers considered the article a canard and did not pay much attention to it. But reports of two-fingered people began to appear in other media.
After a short time, the ethnographer Buster Philips wrote in one of the geographical magazines about an unusual African tribe of ostrich people. He described that one day, near the small town of Feira, he noticed two-fingered people in the branches of a tree. They were collecting something, but when he approached, they quickly descended from the tree and quickly ran away. Phillips pointed out that ostrich people are about one and a half meters tall, completely wild and live separately in their own closed world. They feed on wild cereals, tree fruits and mushrooms.
The article caused a flurry of publications. Many publications around the world began to publish notes and even photographs of Africans with “ostrich paws.” Scientists refused to believe it, claiming that the hype was a pure hoax.
However, military pilot Mark Mullinu managed to take an excellent photo of a two-fingered man from a tribe living between the Kanyembe and Shewore rivers. The neighboring tribes called these people the Vandoma. The number of this tribe was about 300-400 people, and every fourth had claw syndrome.
In 1971, a scientific expedition was organized to search for a tribe of two-fingered people. It is unlikely that it would have been successful if contact had not been previously established with the leaders of neighboring tribes. It was only thanks to their intervention that the elder of this strange tribe received the guests.
Scientists have found that ostrich people consider themselves descendants of people from Mozambique. Historian Dawson Mungeri from the National Archives in Harare expressed the opinion that the “ostrich” gene could have been brought to those places by a visiting woman, whose descendants subsequently entered into closely related marriages.
One of the tribe members was brought to England and subjected to examination. Scientists have found that the gene responsible for the appearance of claw syndrome is dominant. It is enough to inherit it from one of the parents, and two fingers instead of five on each foot are provided.
According to Professor Philips Tobias, this mutation is unlikely to disappear as a result of natural selection, since it does not make a person defective. And this is so: Sapadi are excellent runners, they climb trees like monkeys, jumping from one tree to another. Sometimes members of the tribe do not leave the trees for several days, collecting fruits, leaves and insect larvae.
Some of the tribe's customs seem strange. For example, before the wedding, the future husband and wife must lie side by side on the hot sand without food or water for 24 hours. At the same time, the guy’s hands are tightly tied to the girl’s hands.
Or this ritual: on the new moon, at least a dozen sapadis are buried in the ground up to the waist. Those buried loudly pronounce prayers and spells all night, and the rest of the tribe burns fires, enveloping the worshipers in fragrant smoke.
At the same time, these seemingly primitive savages are skilled healers. Using antediluvian homemade instruments, they are able to perform such complex operations that an experienced surgeon would not always undertake them. And their ointments, tinctures, and powders have truly wonderful properties.
Over time, ostrich people were discovered in other areas of Africa. For example, in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Most likely, these were the people mentioned in ancient writings. Strabo, the ancient Greek geographer and historian, wrote about the apistodactyls, the mysterious inhabitants of Central Africa whose feet are “turned back.”
Yuri Trukshans from the village of Lielvarde in the Latvian SSR writes: “The history of Latvia is very varied and replete with a large number of different events. Unfortunately, we, living in Latvia, were deprived of the opportunity to study our history... As for the Courland settlement at the mouth of the Gambia, I would like to note that this period in history was very interesting...”
“I would like to know more about everything that concerns the naval officer Etienne Bottineau. I'm not just curious. I suddenly realized that if I had met Etienne Bottineau two centuries ago, he would have trusted me with his secret!” - A. Tarantsey, a reader from the Lipetsk region, writes to the editor.
“We know so little about the secrets of Africa - about healers, ostrich people, the army of the Persian king Darius (not Darius, but Cambyses - N.P.) that perished in the sands of the Sahara, about the Canary Guanches, the heirs of the Atlanteans,” he notes in the letter N.I. Gromov from Kolomna.
“You publish little material about Africa and its tribes,” writes E. Malgina from Khabarovsk, “they once wrote more. Hasn’t anything increased in the last 10-20 years?”
Alexandre Dumas once said: “There is a certain charm in the word “Africa” that attracts us to it more than to other parts of the world.” But Dumas never saw real Africa - he only visited its north, Algeria, which, strictly speaking, is not Africa at all, but part of the Arab world. What could Dumas write about the rest of Africa! After all, there were their cardinals, their “secrets” Madrid court", their musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo!
Ostrich people
What associations arise with this phrase? Most likely, the image of a Bushman hunter is born, who, masterfully imitating a giant bird with the help of feathers and gait, approaches a group of ostriches and with a well-aimed throw twists the bola around the neck of one of the birds. But we are not talking about the Bushmen at all. The origins of this ethnographic search go back to ancient times. Strabo and Megasthenes also wrote about apistodactyls, the mysterious inhabitants of Central Africa, whose feet are “turned back.” Countless drawings of aegipodes, satyrs, and devils with cloven hooves adorned the works of ancient and medieval authors. Who was the prototype of these creatures?
The first to approach the solution, without knowing it, was the American traveler of French origin du Chaillu (by the way, he was the first of the white hunters to track down and kill a gorilla). In his book “Travel and Adventures in Central Africa” (1863) there are the following lines: “Everywhere I have been in Northern Gabon, these people are given the same name - “sapadi.” But du Chail was never able to see them.
Years and decades passed. In 1960, the English newspaper The Guardian published an article entitled “In search of Africans on two fingers.”
Mysterious tribe. From our correspondent. Salisbury, February 4." And the following information follows: African tribe, whose members move on two fingers, lives in inaccessible areas of the Zambezi River valley. Locals they say that these people have ordinary feet, but with only two toes, one larger than the other, and slightly curved. No one has ever studied this phenomenon.
The article was not taken seriously; they simply did not believe the newspaper. But the conspiracy of silence was broken. The information kept coming. People with two toes, running like the wind, were seen in one distant gorge in the Zambezi Valley. They feed on wild cereals and mushrooms. A certain Buster Phillips saw them in the Mpata Gorge, near the town of Feira. The man's height reached 1 meter 50 centimeters. They are wild and unsociable. Phillips first noticed several people sitting on the branches, they were tearing something from the tree, but when he approached, they quickly ran away. Local residents, their neighbors, were afraid of two-fingered people, they considered them sorcerers...
After some time - new information. "Rodigia Herald" publishes a note "A new theory about two-fingered animals." The famous American paleontologist J. Desmond Clark suggests that we are talking about ordinary local residents who wear sandals, and their footprints in the sand give the impression that they have only two toes.
Clark seemed to reassure the scientists. But then, as luck would have it, two photographs arrived, albeit unclear, taken by a certain Ollson in the town of Hartley - two Africans with “ostrich paws”. The pictures were accompanied by Ollson himself exclaiming: “It’s just fantastic how high and deftly they fly up the tree using these fingers!” But a photo can also be faked. That's exactly what they decided - a hoax!
The following publication significantly shook the position of the skeptics. It was called "X-Rays Prove Ostrich People Really Exist." One of the members of the mysterious tribe was taken to Salisbury and examined. According to the doctors, they have never encountered such a pronounced manifestation of such an anomaly - syndoctyly. The exact cause is not clear - either the parents’ malnutrition, or some kind of virus...
It was then, in the mid-60s, that this definition was born - claw syndrome. But they saw only one person, and still nothing was known about the whole tribe. Until finally, military pilot Mark Mullin managed to get a good photo of one of the tribesmen in the Kanyembe area, west of Feyre. Mullin argued that two-toed animals live precisely here, in the area between the Kanyembe and Shevore rivers. The neighbors call them vadoma.
We turned to M. Gelfand, an expert on local African tribes. He stated that he had not heard anything about them and would believe in two-fingered creatures when the expedition returned with the results. Other scientists joined in the research and found that we are not talking about the Vadoma, but about the Vanyai, known since the time of the early Portuguese travelers, whose homeland is the area where the Cabora Bassa dam and hydroelectric power station in Mozambique is now located. There are an estimated 300-400 of them, and one in four suffer from claw syndrome.
In 1971, an expedition was finally organized. The local chief who was approached by the scientists categorically stated that he knew of only one such family, where out of three sons, one died and the other lived near the Kanyembe police station. His name is Mabarani Karume.
He was a 35-year-old man, a father of five children, and none of them had any foot problems!
Karume was born at the foot of Mount Vadoma. His father previously lived in the mountains, and his mother was from the Korekore tribe. From their marriage five children were born (3 boys and 2 girls) and five more died. One of the three boys was two-fingered - Maborani. His mother’s sister had the same son, but he died early. Maborani claimed that there were no more people like him in the area. His feet actually ended in two toes - 15 and 10 centimeters long, located perpendicular to each other. Maborani was brought to Salisbury and x-rayed. The first and fifth fingers turned out to be developed, the second, third and fourth were undeveloped. With a height of 1 meter 65 centimeters, he had noticeable running abilities.
But what about other evidence that mentioned other “two-fingered animals”? It turned out that both the leader and Maborani were wrong. Many ostrich people were found in Central and Southern Africa - in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana... They were found back in 1770 among the Maroons of Suriname, exported from Africa, and A. Humboldt himself wrote about them. Jan Jacob Hartsings in his book “Description of Guyana” called them “tuwingas” - most likely from the spoiled English phrases“Two-fungers” - “two-fingered”...
Whether the two-fingered Africans were really the prototypes of the strange satyrs and aegipodes is difficult to say now. However, they could be brought to North Africa and the countries of the Mediterranean as a curiosity from distant expeditions, and they were probably painted by Egyptian and Greek artists. You just need to look more carefully...
The Radar Man from Port Louis
I was looking forward to this parcel from the distant island of Mauritius - just a small package with photocopies of some archival materials.
For more than a century, there has been a mystery about Etienne Bottineau, who lived on the island of Mauritius in the second half of the 18th century - the beginning of the last century. The mystery is still unsolved... My friends obtained the treasured documents in the vaults of the capital of the Mascarene Islands - the city of Port Louis. Before that, I knew only the lines of Bottineau’s confession, quoted by the South African writer and historian L. Green in the book “Isles untouched by time”: “If irritation and disappointment cause my death before I can explain my discovery, then the world will lose some time of knowledge of art that would do credit to the 18th century.”
Bottineau, Etieya (1739-1813). Born in Chaatoso, Rien-et-Loire department, France. Died in Mauritius on May 17, 1813, aged 74. As a young man he went to Nantes, from where he left for the islands... These are lines from the “Dictionary of Mauritian Biographies”, published in Port Louis in a small edition. And most importantly: “In 1762, on board one of the ships of the Royal Navy, he came up with the idea that a moving ship should produce some kind of effect in the atmosphere. Some time after training, he was already able to detect the appearance of a ship on the horizon. But he was wrong so often that he soon stopped his experiments...”
But only for a while. In 1763 he arrived on the island and received the position of engineer. Good weather most of the year, and the fact that many ships sailed around Mauritius without entering port, allowed him to exercise to his heart's content. After some time, Bottineau was already making a bet. “He made a lot of money because three days before the ship appeared on the horizon, without a chimney at all, heralded its arrival.”
In 1780, Bottineau wrote about his amazing abilities to the then minister navy France de Castries. He ordered that all observations of an unknown employee from Mauritius be recorded for two years.
Observations officially began on May 15, 1782. Bottineau reported that three ships were approaching, which appeared on May 17, 18 and 25. On June 20, he predicted the arrival of “many ships,” and on the 29th, the first ships of the French squadron appeared, delayed by calm.
Bottineau demanded from the governor a 100 thousand livres bonus and an annual pension of 1300 livres for revealing his secret, recalling that from 1778 to 1782 he predicted the arrival of 575 ships a few days before they appeared on the horizon. But the governor was in no hurry to part with the money.
And now the offended Bottineau goes home. During the voyage, he “sees” 27 ships, which actually appear in the distance a little later, and declares that he “can predict the land.”
He fails to obtain an audience with the Minister of the Navy. But Bottineau seeks recognition from the public of the city of Lorient, showing them his abilities. At the same time, in 1785, the newspaper Mercure de France published “Excerpts from the memoirs of Etienne Bottineau about the naus-copy” - this is the name he gave to his gift. Judging by the press reports of that time, Jean Paul Marat himself, who was then writing a treatise on physics, became interested in the abilities of the colonial official. But they apparently failed to meet. It has not yet been possible to find any mention of Bottineau in Marat’s works and letters.
In 1793, Bottineau returned to Mauritius and persistently continued his experiments. On June 15, he announced that 20 ships would soon appear, but none of them arrived. They started laughing at Bottineau. But soon the scoffers had to apologize, because it turned out that the admiral of the squadron decided not to enter Mauritius and went directly to India.
Another feature that became known only recently: for some time he lived with Bottineau in Ceylon, in Colombo, where one of the editors of the book saw him. New biography Contemporaries", published in 1827. In its third volume it is said that Bottineau studied “animal magnetism” there. Let’s add to this: he studied at the school of animal magnetism, communicated with Indians who “could work miracles,” as Bottineau himself writes in his memoirs.
As it turned out, he had students! A certain Feyyafe, who served under Bottineau, learned the master's abilities. On November 22, 1810, from the top of the Long Mountain, he noticed an English fleet, more precisely, a cluster of ships that were heading to Ile-de-France (the old name of Mauritius). Then he clarified that the ships were heading towards Rodrigues Island. Feyyafe hurried to the governor and announced that in the next 48 hours or a little later the British fleet would appear on the horizon. There was a commotion in the city. Feyyafe was put behind bars for spreading rumors. However, the governor still sent the Luten ship to Rodriguez to see what was happening there. But it was already too late. On November 26 at 10 am, 20 ships of the British Royal Navy, and later another 34, rained down on Mauritius with airborne artillery fire. Feyyafe was released from custody after the British occupied the island.
And yet, Bottineau’s visit to France was not in vain. Recently, his notes were found in the archives under the general title “Secret Memories Serving to Cover the History of the Republic from 1762 to the Present Day.” I found them in the study of the Mauritian scientist L. Pitot, “Historical Sketches for the Years 1715-1810.” Here are a few bitter lines from the memoirs of Etienne Bottineau himself, dating back to 1795: “The public may recall my experiments carried out in June 1793 with a large crowd of people, as well as in May 1794, organized by the city council (Port Louis.- N.N.). This did not at all protect me from the attacks and antics of individuals, namely: they mocked me when I predicted the presence of ships near the island, but they did not come at all. The answer is simple: they were not heading to our island! These people, who have not a glimmer of thought, did not believe anything, doubted everything, saying that I was a charlatan and that this could not happen. I am forced to live among this stupid rabble, stupid and cruel people, mired in routine, who are hostile to any discovery that falls even one iota out of their own primitive understanding of the world.” Here is another fragment: “I became another victim, mired in the musty atmosphere of godforsaken islands suffering from the despotism of officials...”
L. Pitot, having carefully analyzed all the documents, came to the conclusion that Bottineau was in perfect health, his convictions were firm, and what he wrote clearly indicated that his contemporaries did not understand him.
What kind of gift did Etienne Bottineau have? He himself never revealed his secret to anyone. Perhaps to two students, and even then not completely. But his letter to J.P. Marat has been preserved in Mauritius, which, in particular, says:
“A ship approaching the shore produces a certain effect on the atmosphere, with the result that the approach can be detected by an experienced eye before the ship reaches the limits of visibility. My predictions were favored by a clear sky and a clear atmosphere... I had only been on the island for six months when I was convinced of my discovery and all that remained was to gain experience so that nauscopy could become a true science.”
Maybe this is due to mirages, so frequent at sea? And not only at sea. French astronomer Camille Flammarion, in his work “Atmosphere,” writes about the terrible Fata Morgana, which appeared to the residents of the Belgian town of Verviers on June 15, 1815 - cavalry rushed through the air, guns fired silently, infantry moved to attack. On that day, 105 kilometers from Verviers, the Battle of Waterloo began...
Or is this the subject of a relatively young science - dowsing? But historians do not write anything about whether Bottineau had any instruments.
He died in 1813, taking the secret of nauscopy with him to the grave. In Mauritius they remember him! There is, of course, no monument, but Mount Montagne Long (Long), rising above the blue surface of the ocean, from where Etienne Bottineau made his observations, reminds today's scientists of their duty to science - to reveal the secret of his gift.
Lost in the Sands of the Kalahari
Who opened South Africa? Agree, the question sounds rather unusual. Indeed, they discovered America, and sailed to South Africa, rounded it at the cape Good Hope and moved on to India and the islands of Indonesia. According to the official version, the first European to do this was the Portuguese Vasco da Gama. On December 25, 1497, he landed on the mountainous shores, where the province of Natal is now located, and told his descendants that the inhabitants of those places build houses from branches and grass, make tools from iron, and have jewelry from copper, that they are friendly and hospitable...
What about the Portuguese sailor? Has no one been here before? The Phoenicians circumnavigated the continent in the 6th century BC - this has been proven. What about others? The question remains open.
It all started with the geodetic expedition of Reinhard Maack in 1907. “In mid-March we set up camp in Brandberg and went to explore the Tsisab Gorge. And here I am sitting in the shadow of a granite rock. The best examples are in front of me rock art. Unable to take my eyes off the colorful ensemble on the cave wall...” What struck Maak so much? Primitive artists “populated” the cave with hunters armed with bows and arrows, and various animals common in those parts. And in the center... In the center of the exhibition is an amazing White Lady. Her costume is strikingly similar to the clothing of matador girls from the palace of King Minos in Knossos (Crete) - a short jacket and something like tights stitched with gold threads. Headdresses are also similar. Some scientists, for example the famous French archaeologist Abbot A. Breuil, who wrote an entire book about the Lady, see not only Cretan, but also ancient Egyptian features in the image. This is not surprising, because the cultures of the two ancient states are intricately intertwined. The lady could be the Egyptian Isis or the Greek Diana. The figure behind is Osiris.
The dispute about the mysterious stranger has continued for eight decades. Equally compelling arguments are put forward by supporters of the local, proto-Bushmen origin of the rock ensemble, because there are many African elements in the drawings. For example, warrior helmets may be nothing more than hairstyles or headdresses of the Herero or Ovambo people. And the bows painted on the walls of the grotto look like the weapons of the warlike Matabele...
Maybe a North African woman will help solve the mystery of the White Lady of Brandberg rock painting, because there are interesting parallels between the Saharan and South African centers of primitive art. Maybe it was the people from the far north and Syli who were captured by an unknown artist in a place forgotten by God?
Not long ago, an expedition of South African scientists visited Brandberg (by the way, in the Herero language this massif is called Omukuruwaro - Mountain of God). They found the ensemble in a deplorable state. Many tourists who came here, wanting to get contrasting photographs, continually wiped the wall with damp rags, and individual drawings can only be distinguished today with the help of a magnifying glass...
Archaeologist J. Harding carefully studied the Lady's shoes and came to the conclusion that they resemble sandals... of the Bushmen.
And what about the giant foot imprinted in the fossilized clay of the High Veldt in the Transvaal province, 30 kilometers from the border with Swaziland? For the first time, white people learned about the mysterious print from the inhabitants of one of the Swazi villages. They told about it in 1912 to farmer Stoffel Koetse, whose grandson, Jan, became the keeper of the trail today. It turned out that stories about this “footprint of the spirit” were passed down from generation to generation among the Swazis, and for them the rock still remains a shrine.
The footprint is an exact copy, only many times enlarged, of a person’s left foot. Upon careful inspection, you can even see clay appearing between your fingers. It should be added that on the island of Sri Lanka, 44 miles east of Colombo, they found exactly the same footprint, only from the right foot. There he also became an object of worship. Cape Town geologist A. Reid said: “It is difficult to find a logical explanation for this phenomenon. One thing is obvious - it is almost impossible to carve a footprint in such a rock.”
Or maybe this is still a joke of nature, similar to the one that for so long brought to naught all the searches of travelers and scientists in the Kalahari Desert, looking for a legendary city lost in the sands? The enterprising American Farini, returning from South-West Africa in 1885, made a report at the Royal London geographical society about the ruins ancient city, which he discovered in the sands of the Kalahari. His message created a sensation, and for decades the search for the lost city of Farini did not stop.
And only in our days, it seems, a solution has been found. The expedition of the English explorer Clement stumbled upon a ridge of Ayerdonconniz rocks in the vicinity of Rietfontein. The landscape matched the description that Farini left in the book “Across the Kalahari Desert.” One of the block slabs resembled a detail of the ruins depicted in the traveler’s drawing. The surface of some pieces of rock could, if desired, be mistaken for being corrugated due to weathering. Succumbing to the play of imagination, Farini mistook the quirks of nature for the creation of human hands...
Odyssey of the Duke of Courland
This three-hundred-year-old story would have seemed fictitious and unreal to many if not for the indisputable evidence of the authenticity of everything that happened, collected in different years researchers from many countries...
In the second half of the 16th century, having supplanted Spain and Portugal, England and the Netherlands became the leading maritime powers. But smaller states were increasingly thinking about their place in the sun. Politicians in Sweden, Denmark, and Brandenburg dreamed of long sea voyages. Before their mind's eye stood the untold riches of the New World, flooding European markets.
The small Duchy of Courland also did not want to lag behind its enterprising neighbors. From 1642 to 1682, Duke James was in power here, “one of the crowned dreamers with great plans, all his life running around with plans, the size of which is in inverse proportion to their means” (as one of the later researchers wrote about him). Distinctive feature Jacob's policy was that mainly income received from the duke's estates was invested in overseas enterprises. The navy used exclusively the labor of serfs.
As often happened, when preparing such enterprises, which were a novelty for the natives of northern latitudes, the implementation of their plans was facilitated by the rich imagination of adventuristically minded organizers, a clear overestimation of the riches of the lands being discovered, but at the same time, an underestimation of their own strengths and difficulties encountered along the way.
The ideas that the Duke nurtured corresponded to the state needs of Courland. The Duchy needed new markets for its goods. An agreement has already been concluded with France on the supply of wine and salt to Courland. A solution to the “herring problem” has been found: Courland fishermen go out to the North Sea themselves, rather than buy fish in Gothenburg, Bergen and the ports of Holland. The import of ready-made dresses from Europe is limited due to the establishment of its own textile factories. Yakov intended to do the same with spices - not to depend on Holland, buying them there at exorbitant prices, but to deliver them from Africa and India on his own ships.
Jacob also had other goals. The brilliance of the countless riches brought to Europe by the Portuguese and Spaniards blinded him. The Duke dreamed of turning Mitava into a northern center for trade in overseas goods. Thoughts about long trips wandered through the Duke’s head - each more tempting than the other. In 1650, the Duke instructed his agent in Amsterdam to form a “Company for the Guinea Trade” with the participation of Dutch traders, in order to thus “cease to depend on the whims of the East India Company.” However, the Amsterdam merchants did not dare to take upon themselves the protection of the Duke's three ships. But he did not abandon his plan and temporarily recalled the ships.
In September 1651, having taken on board one hundred mercenary soldiers in Holland, the ship "Whale" set sail for the shores of West Africa. On October 25, the ship dropped anchor at the mouth of the Gambia. The Duke's agents immediately began negotiations with African leaders. A small island ten miles upstream of the river was bought from the ruler of Kumbo for next to nothing. A little later, through various machinations, the Courlanders received the Gilfre region on the northern bank of the river, just opposite the island (it was called St. Andreas), for use, and the ruler of Barra sold them the Bayona region at the mouth of the Gambia. The Courland flag fluttered over the island of St. Andreas - with the image of a black crayfish on a red field.
A few months later, another ship of Duke James, the Crocodile, arrived at the mouth of the Gambia. The forts constantly housed a garrison guarding warehouses and living quarters, as well as a Lutheran church. The Duke, not without reason, was afraid of attacks by the Dutch and English. Cleverly playing on their discord, he managed to ensure that his ships sailed unhindered to the shores of West Africa.
Courland's trade with the West African coast reached its greatest flourishing in 1655 under Captain Otto Stihl, who proved himself to be a skillful and cunning administrator. Special commissioners reported to the Gambia about those goods that were in greatest demand in Courland. Local residents willingly bought metal products and fabrics in exchange for gold, ivory, wax, animal skins, pepper, roots, vegetable oil, coconuts.
Inspired by the successful progress of trade on the African coast, Jacob began to hatch plans for long-distance expeditions to the West Indies and the South Seas.
But times were changing quickly. The Courland territories at the mouth of the Gambia have dangerous neighbors.
After the Dutch took away most of their possessions in West Africa from the Portuguese, they became the de facto masters of the entire Atlantic coast. In 1631, the New African Society, created in England, founded trading posts in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. A little later the Swedes also appeared here. The Danes came after them, then the French. If we add to this the Brandenburg fortresses of the 80s of the 17th century, a very motley and characteristic picture of the division of the African “pie” will be created. These states behaved differently: some tried to establish peaceful relations with local leaders, not disdaining, however, to obtain “living goods” in the deep regions with the help of the leaders; others openly demonstrated force, capturing slaves.
Jacob was frightened by such proximity. He decided to look for new lands - away from aggressive neighbors. In 1651, he asked Pope Innocent X for permission to “embark on a difficult undertaking that would serve the benefit of the Catholic Church” (apparently, the Duke was not embarrassed by the fact that the Courland dynasty was Lutheran). Negotiations were conducted in Vilna and Polotsk with the papal legate Don Camillo Panfili. Yakov was ready to provide a fleet of 40 ships and several thousand crew members for the expedition to the South Seas, allocating 3-4 million thalers for this. But the plan was not destined to come true. On January 5, 1655, dad died unexpectedly. In the same year, the Swedish-Polish war broke out, into which Courland was also drawn. The Duke and his family were captured by the Swedes. The captivity lasted two years. During this time, trading posts in the Gambia began to fall into disrepair. They existed until 1666, when in March five English ships entered the mouth of the Gambia and demanded the immediate surrender of the fortress. The territory of the Courlanders came into full possession of England.
The Duke's possessions lasted a little longer on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean, which was settled in 1654 by Courland peasants and established plantations here. In 1696, after Jacob’s death, the last colonist returned home from there.
Trade relations between the trading posts on the West African coast and Courland itself lasted for almost fifteen years. Many ordinary Courlanders - serfs hired on ships as sailors or soldiers in garrisons - saw Africa and established contacts with Africans. This was the first acquaintance of the Baltic residents with the distant, unknown world of nationalities and tribes, amazing nature tropics. Undoubtedly, fragments of these vivid memories must have been kept in the memory of generations who lived in the coastal regions of Kurzeme.
Let us remember: after the Battle of Poltava, the Duchy of Courland was already under the influence of Russia. Of course, the participants in the voyages to Africa were no longer alive by that time. But the memory undoubtedly lived on. There were also archival documents. Courland, not far from St. Petersburg, could have been of considerable service to Peter I in preparing his expedition to the Indian Ocean (for a number of reasons it did not take place).
Who knows, maybe even today memories of the distant African coast and its inhabitants live in the old legends of the Latvians, the descendants of those serf sailors and soldiers?..