The Asia-Europe boundary markers come as a huge surprise to me.
I have always thought that the Ural mountain boundary was just a broad undefined aproximate line, and now there are markers!
Where is the Asia-Africa boundary line then? and N - S America?
Jesper
----- Original Message -----
From: "michael donner" <m@...>
To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 3:30 PM
Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] Re: Contient marker
gorgeous stuff peter
this is our finest happy hour
wonderful to see how a presumably all natural boundary still had to be
diligently searched out & agreed upon
& how an initially vague consensus gradually grew into official reality
yet with seemingly nothing of consequence ever really dependent on it
i would suggest that this round score of obelisks redeem all obeliskoids
everywhere & naturally comprise a premium search category
also the fact that parts of the intercontinental boundary dont coincide
with any administrative boundaries only emphasizes its rarefaction & purity
so it is truly a monumental line
& especially so wherever it is not a boundary
m
>
>Another fine Europe-Asia boundary marker. Nice one.
>
>This boundary is intriguing: it is a continent boundary, but there
>are sections of it that don't coincide with any administrative
>boundary. This is why even the Russians don't always know for sure
>where that boundary is.
>
>I found two Russian articles on the internet, which I have translated
>for you. Do visit the second article yourself, though: it has nice
>illustrations.
>
>The first one:
>
>The Sibirka - a boundary stream
>
>Yuriy Dunayev
>
>Ten kilometres west of Nizhneye Selo, on the road to Staroutkinsk, we
>cross a bridge over the little river that bears the name Sibirka. It
>starts on the eastern slope of the Kirgishan heights and after 16
>kilometres pours its waters into the Chusovaya from the left.
>The well-known scholar of Siberian history P.A. Slovtsov considered
>this little river the boundary of ancient Siberia. Before the Ural
>was visited by Alexander Humboldt and Gustav Rose, however, in the
>world of science the name Ural was given to a less significant
>height, which is situated considerably more to the west - between the
>coach stations Kirgishanskaya and Grobovskaya, and which constitutes
>the water divide between some tributaries of the Chusovaya and the
>Ufa.
>Peter the Greats ambassador to China, Izbrant Ides, considered, for
>example, the right bank of the Chusovaya, where the Stroganov
>settlements ended, at the place the Mezhevaya Utka flows into the
>Chusovaya, as the beginning of Asia. Academician I.G. Gmelin, who is
>known for his many years of travel through Siberia with S. Müller,
>travelled from Kungur to Yekaterinburg almost exactly along the
>present Moscow-Siberia trail, and considered the Ural mountain range
>to be one of the ridges that runs parallel to the Ural, and to which
>belongs Klenovaya mountain, at the foot of which at that time the
>boundary post was situated.
>Doctor A. Erman from Berlin, who travelled across the Ural in 1828
>together with the Norwegian scientist professor Heistens and
>lieutenant Douai, had his attention drawn by his coachmen to
>Kirgishan mountain, who said that that's where the boundary between
>Russia and Siberia is. That's why it is not surprising that P.A.
>Slovtsov too considered the little river Sibirka to be the boundary
>river. He wasn't mistaken, either.
>A testimony of the fact that the boundary used to run along this
>little river is the find by the pupils of Staroutkinsk school no. 13
>of an ancient boundary stone on one of the banks of the Sibirka. This
>stone divided, according to its inscription, Muscovy and the Sibirian
>khanate. That is why the stream Sibirka, which flows into the
>Chusovaya at a spot at 57°09' N. lat., is the most ancient boundary
>of Russia and Siberia, and this is why it got its name, too.
>By the way, A. Dmitriev in "Permskaya starina" mentions, that in 1681
>the village Sibirka was situated on the banks of the river - and
>consisted of only one farm.
>
>Source: <http://uralstalker.ekaterinburg.com:8081/2000/07/0007-06.html>
>http://uralstalker.ekaterinburg.com:8081/2000/07/0007-06.html
>
>The second one (yes, Russians seem to call every boundary marker an
>obelisk!):
>
>Boundary guard in the Ural
>
>V. Terentyev
>
>More than three thousand kilometres the Ural mountains stretch from
>north to south. This mountainous boundary in the centre of Russia is
>firmly established and is maintained to this day. This is a big merit
>of the great statesman and explorer of the Ural, Vasiliy Nikitich
>Tatishchev. He is the first Russian that called these mountains Ural.
>
>Tatishchev was also the man that came to the conclusion the Ural
>mountains were on the border of two parts of the world: Europe and
>Asia. This boundary, drawn by V.N. Tatishchev two and a half
>centuries ago, in spite of its conditional nature, still holds its
>historical meaning, is known the world over and is fixed by many
>obelisks with the inscription "Europe-Asia".
>
>The placing of these started in the Ural mountains already in the
>last century and is still being continued. The boundary markers were
>put up along the entire Ural range. They continue to attract
>tourists, because every one of them is different and has its own
>look. At present there are approximately twenty obelisks. A precise
>figure cannot be given, because no one has ever counted them, and
>news of them mostly comes from scholars of local history and tourists.
>
>In the central Ural area, in the Sverdlovsk province and around
>Nizhniy Tagil, there are many interesting and originally constructed
>border obelisks. At the occasion of the visit to our region of the
>successor to the throne, the future Russian emperor Alexander II in
>1837, the first marker "Europe-Asia" was placed in the Ural
>mountains - a marble pyramid with the coat-of-arms of the czar. After
>the October revolution it was destroyed, being a symbol of czarist
>power. On this spot in 1926 a new obelisk was erected. It stands on
>the Siberian trail some forty kilometres from Yekaterinburg, in the
>Pervouralsk rayon.
>
>Another monument from the last century, built in 1868 by order and at
>the expense of the gold industrialists of the Northern Ural, can
>still be seen today. It stands at the village Kedrovka on the road
>>from Kushva to Serebryanka. It is made of cast iron, and the form
>resembles a bell tower. The central part is crowned by a red, raised
>cupola, and on the corners are round columns, that are also crowned
>by small cupolas. They used to be gilded, and on the back side the
>czarist coat-of-arms shined. In the civil war the obelisk was
>destroyed. But tourists of the Nizhnyaya Salda factory have recently
>restored it.
>
>The address of another boundary marker is probably known to many: the
>mountain pass crossing the Vysokie Gory ridge near the village of
>Uralets on the road Nizhniy Tagil-Visim. It is a square column with a
>height of six metres. On top of it is a model of the earth globe,
>around which along a steel orbit turn a satellite and the space
>ship "Vostok".
>
>>From Nizhniy Tagil another marker can be reached: at the 25th
>kilometre of the Serebryanskiy trail you are met by a stele, placed
>there in honour of the 50th anniversary of October.
>
>Interesting are the geographical location and the history of the
>northernmost of all boundary markers "Europe-Asia". It stands at the
>coast of the Yugorskiy Shar strait. Here the Ural range "dives" into
>the waters of the Arctic Ocean. The marker was placed here in 1973 by
>the members of an expedition on the ship "Zamora", sailing from
>Archangel to Dickson. This is a modest and simple obelisk. They got a
>rusty anchor somewhere, attached a chain to it, and to a metal pipe a
>sign was attached, with the inscription "Europe-Asia" on it.
>
>Further, along the whole Ural range, obelisks form a chain, going
>>from north to south right to the city of Orenburg.
>
>Apart from the official "registered" obelisks there are in the Ural
>mountains a whole range of do-it-yourself ones, put up by tourists,
>school children, forest workers. For example, in the vicinity of
>Tagil near the village of Yelizavetinskoye on the old winter trail
>Tagil-Visim woodcutters have put up their sign: they planted a pine
>pole of about four metres in the ground, and on a surface made flat
>at the top they cut out the words "Europe-Asia". And in this way the
>boundary signs are put up.
>
>On the pictures: this is how the boundary markers look like in the
>Central Ural mountains; the northernmost obelisk on the bank of the
>Arctic Ocean.
>
>Source: <http://history.ntagil.ru/5_3_11.htm>
>http://history.ntagil.ru/5_3_11.htm
>
>Peter S.
>
>--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., granthutchison@c... wrote:
>> > <http://www.trailblazer-guides.com/books/transsib/index.html?http%>
>>http://www.trailblazer-guides.com/books/transsib/index.html?http%
>> 3A//www.trailblazer-guides.com/books/transsib/reading.html
>>
>> Ah, the only border monument mentioned in this group that I've
>> actually visited. I hung out of the space between two carriages on
>> the Trans-Siberian railway, camera at the ready, counting the km
>> markers towards 1777. Then the thing shot past at 60mph, and I hit
>> the shutter button more by reflex than anything else. The picture
>> turned out perfectly composed, as if I'd stood beside the line and
>> taken all the time in the world to line up and shoot!
>> The railway side (the only side I saw) has "<-Europe" and "Asia->"
>in
>> Cyrillic, as I recall. I'll dig out the slide and project it to
>make
>> sure.
>>
>> Grant
>
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