Ignatievka Cave (''Ignateva cave'', ''Ignatievskaya cave'', , also known as ''Yamazy-Tash'') is a large

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

cave Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance undergrou ...

on the banks of the

Sim River The Sim (, ''Eśem''; ) is a river in Chelyabinsk Oblast and the Bashkortostan, Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia. It is a tributary of the Belaya (Kama), Belaya, part of the Volga Drainage basin, watershed. Its length is , and its drainage basi ...

, a tributary of the Belaya river in the southern

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. In 1980 a partial wall painting of a female figure was discovered. The twenty-eight red dots between her legs are believed to represent the female

menstrual cycle The menstrual cycle is a series of natural changes in hormone production and the structures of the uterus and ovaries of the female reproductive system that makes pregnancy possible. The ovarian cycle controls the production and release of eg ...

. The cave also contains

microliths A microlith is a small Rock (geology), stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 60,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Austral ...

, remains of animals and more

cave painting In archaeology, cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric art, prehistoric origin. These paintings were often c ...

s, as well as a stratum of

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

settlement.. Although some sources associate the paintings to the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories ...

, the age of the drawings continues to be debated. The

radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...

of the charcoal drawings has resulted in more recent numbers, between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago. The attempt to date the red pigment of the female figure yielded no result.. In this respect, the age of the drawings remains unclear so far. Ignateva Cave can be freely visited although it is best to travel via the small village of , which is off the main road past

Sim, Chelyabinsk Oblast Sim () is a town in Ashinsky District of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sim River, west of Chelyabinsk and is the administrative center of the oblast. Population: History It was founded in 1759 and named Simsky Zavod (, li ...

, heading eastwards, about . The track to the cave is very rough and has not been improved for years. The cave mouth is about above the small river backwater and reached by a metal ladder. On entering the cave visitors must stoop low as the ceiling lowers quickly to about in height, and then it increases again to or more. Part of the inner cave can only be reached by crawling through a very narrow space about in height but this provides views of some of the better red

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colou ...

markings. The local guide from Serpiyevka noted that the cave was not lived in (there were no fire markings), but hypothesized that it was a sacred site mainly used for religious ceremonies and adulthood rites from the markings. The

Kapova cave Shulgan-Tash Cave (), also known as Kapova Cave (), is a limestone karst cave in the Burzyansky District of Bashkortostan, Russia. It is located in the southern Ural Mountains, approximately south-east of Ufa. Located on the Belaya River (Kama), ...

is located some from the Ignatievka cave. File:Игнатьевская пещера (Ямазы-Таш).jpg, Alternative view of cave entrance File:Вход в пещеру..jpg, Looking out from the cave File:Рисунок первобытного человека в Игнатьевской пещере.jpg, Ochre figure of a person

References

{{Navbox prehistoric caves Caves of Russia Limestone caves Caves containing pictograms Landforms of Chelyabinsk Oblast Archaeological sites in Russia * Bagautdinov Airat Maratovich. Deciphering the signs and drawings of the Ignatius Cave (Yazma-Tash). Star map. Life and death. Ufa. 2023. - 47 p. ISBN 978-5-00177-668-0