time, thanks to the random circumstances of Helmet: among the surrounding residents there is an unclear legend that in this area a large treasure was supposedly hidden in the ground by Hetman Mazepa; carried away by this legend and noticing cave openings on the steep banks of the ravine, the treasure hunters considered them to be corridors leading to Mazepa’s cellars, and, sparing no labor or expense, began to clear the cave passages from the earthy sediment that filled them. Of course, there was neither a cellar nor a kiada at the end of each cave passage, but during excavation, along with the sediment, the workers threw out of the caves those scientifically precious, but of no interest to them, household remains that testified to the living conditions of the ancient cave inhabitants.
In March 1876, I examined the ravine near the Kirillovsky Monastery together with prof. A.S. Rogovich: we found about 15 caves excavated in this way, and saw several others that had not yet been touched by treasure hunters and had just been discovered as a result of a fresh collapse of the edges of the ravine. The cleared caves were long arched corridors, up to 2*'<> arshins high and 1/* arshins wide, going deep into the soil in different directions. One of them, about 100 steps long, spiraling deeper into the forest layer, resembled one turn of a huge screw; the opening of this cave opened onto a small area, somewhat expanded by workers who were clearing and cutting off the upper part of the hill hanging over the entrance, and at the same time part of the cave itself several steps from the entrance. Due to this circumstance, the bottom of the front part of the cave remained not cleared and some ancient household remains were preserved on it. On that part of the site that once formed part of the bottom of the cave itself, at its entrance, there was a heap of rubbish, representing real kitchen remains. This heap, 1 1 arshin in diameter and about 2 arshins thick, consisted, according to its origin, of the shells of mollusks: Apaboia Supaea and Igpio Riciogit, and among the shells there were also other food remains: the bones of mammals and fish. The bones of animals (horse, pig and bull) were fragments of long limbs of bones, fragments of skull bones and individual teeth: all found specimens were not exposed to fire and did not show traces of cutting tools; their breaks are irregular and proprobably emerged from the crushing of bones by blows from large stones. Of the fish bones in the pile, only the vertebrae of small freshwater fish survived. In addition to these food remains, the heap also contained works of human art: fragments of clay vessels and stone tools. The pottery was molded without the help of a pottery wheel from brown or reddish clay, not purified and containing a significant amount of quartz grains; it was burned very poorly: only the outer surfaces of the walls of the vessels represent burnt, denser plates, while the entire thickness of the walls consists of a brown, earthy, spongy mass. There were no signs of ornamentation at all on the walls of the vessels. Among the heaps of shells, the following were found: a flint shell of irregular shape and a rather large piece of red ironstone, rounded on one side and on the other side representing a triangular pyramidal point.
Then, somewhat to the side of the weed heap, near the former wall of the cave, near its entrance, a pile of small round boulders was found; All of their specimens had the peculiarity that they were strongly burned and, from prolonged exposure to fire, softened to such an extent that they formed a loose mass that could be easily broken by hand. Finally, a little further from the entrance, at the bottom of the cave, a fragment of a flint saw was found, with small claws on the concave edge of the tool, very carefully finished through a series of small blows. Thus, a heap of kitchen remains found at the entrance to one of the caves, and the shards of vessels and stone tools found in it allow us to come to the conclusion that this cave served as a dwelling for primitive man, that its inhabitants ate mainly shellfish and fish, found to this day in the Dnipro, that, in addition, although to a lesser extent In large quantities, they ate mammals: bulls, pigs and horses; judging by the relatively insignificant number of bones of these animals in the pile of kitchen remains, it can be assumed that the inhabitants who ate them used only occasionally specimens of wild animals of these breeds. The people who lived in the cave were familiar with the use of fire; they had a hearth in the cave, deliberately made of boulder blocks; they fashioned crude vessels from clay and fired them very unskillfully;