Whale Alley

 sanctuary, archaeological site, paganism, interesting place, object of cultural heritage of federal importance (Russia)

In 1977, on an island in the Strait of Yttygran Senyavina near the south-eastern tip of Chukotka, an archaeological expedition discovered a unique construction of dug into the ground parallel rows of skulls and jaws of bowhead whales, which immediately dubbed the Whale Alley.

Whale Alley constructed from 50-60 skulls and 30 jaws of bowhead whales, hundreds of specially arranged stones, while in the coastal hillside of stone dug wells about 150 meat-storage facilities, which in some places the remains of food.

Authors finds - SA Arutyunov, I. Krupnik and MA members - carried the whale to the Alley of the Arts Punuk.
According to the researchers, Whale Alley was a central sanctuary of the large communal associations, covers a number of villages on the islands Seniavin Strait and the adjacent territory. Whale Alley gives ideas about religious and mythological ideas of the ancient whalers

In accordance with the accepted hypothesis today is through Beringia, which is 20-30 thousand years ago there was no strait and isthmus, moved to the New World Paleo-Indians. And later - in the III millennium BC - just moved from Chukotka to Alaska, and from there to Canada and Greenland Eskimos, ancestors of present.