Archeologist Ryabinin found the oldest castle in Russia

     Eugeny Aleksandrovich Ryabinin is an author of several books and many articles, Ph. D., who has a talent to discover unique ancient monuments. It was his team that in the 70s of the last century dug out at Zemlyanoy Gorodische (Ground Town) a smithy and a set of tools of a smith, its owner. The analysis of the flooring logs from the smithy has given the foundation date of Ladoga, the year 753.


     It was also Ryabinin who has discovered Lyubsha castle. (XIII-the beginning of the IX century) The old town Lyubsha emerged at a foreland at the point where the small river Luybsha flowed in to the river Volhov. The excavation had been made about 30-40 meters wide and approximately the same dimensions long. The stone frameworks of the castle evidence that the Slavs seated themselves there before the Scandinavians because at that time such constructions were erected neither by the Ugro-Finnish tribes nor by the Scandinavians.


     There is a U-shape bulwark at a downhill side, most convenient place to attack the fortress. The bulwark was mounded upon the old one and fixed by the breast walls from below and higher. The wooden frames at the foundation of the bulwark provide an equable shrinkage of the bank and masonry.

     An overall area of the fortress is circa 1500 square meters, the length of the bulwark is 70-100 meters. The bulwark was topped by a horizontal platform about 3 meters wide where the cut crates empty or filled with sand and stones were found. At the top there was a breastwork and something that reminds a battle pass, e.g. a classic variation of a simple form of counterwork.


     Presumably, some kind of the ground buildings were situated at the fortress, the agglomerate of slag that usually remains near a forge-fire gives this supposition. Perhaps there was a smithy because a series of bronze ingots and melting pots were found there.

     A pot with an iron inner part testifies that the citizens of the town could produce steel. They put an iron bloom into a pot and eliquated slag from it. Such technology was not common for the Slaves and for Easter Europe of the first half of the XIII century. The excavations of the smithy at Ground Town (the 70s) showed that steel, discovered there was produced in the middle of the XIII century probably by the Scandinavians who had gained that skill; in this case steel was produced by the Slaves.


     One of two iron spears dug out at Lyubsha looks very much alike to one found by Zorian Hodakovsky at the beginning of the XIX century in the grave of Oleg the Oracular. Probably the founders of Lyubsha and a man buried in the burial hill were the western Slaves who came there from Europe.


     At the excavation the researchers have found the fish-scale that laid here for 1300 years. It’s the trace left in times by the “fish-eaters”, the Finnish tribes who populated this area in the dugouts before the coming of Slaves.


     During the 3 years of excavations 400 objects were found in Lyubsha: 25 preforms of ship rivets, more than 20 arrows, including cataphract arrows that riddle the metal, spears with one and two spikes, a cover of the small-casting form made from fire-proof grit for high-melting bronze and silver, a mould for silver, 2 agraffes with ornament, the beads of different shapes and colors, a gold-glass “pronizka”, e. g. a bead gold-colored from inside, a stand for the cords of a musical instrument, a bone fretsaw and etc.

     A hypothesis has resulted from the excavations of Ryabinin that the Slaves and the Scandinavians settled close to each other; the Slaves lived in Lyubsha, the Scandinavians populated Ladoga. The Slaves controlled the entrance “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, the Scandinavians couldn’t resigned it. There is a chance that Riurik destroyed the Slavic fortress in order to cease the civil discord.