Physical-geographical Review

History is known to be the science reflecting on the past. If it is possible to use the word "science" in relation to loosely structured memoirs, stories, legends, myths, reflections of political situations and natural cataclysms. Subjectivity of human history is widely accepted as a description by people, who have principally different goals. Some try to change the world, others immortalize it. Realistically history is usually somewhere in the middle.

Billions of years ago the Earth boiled with volcanoes. Rivers of incandescent magma splashed out from the womb of the Earth through enormous craters. Lava congealed, forming the planet’s crust covering it entirely. In these times the Baltic shield formed and to the east, the Solovki islands appeared to the north. While cooling, congealed lava surrounded the bubbling core of the planet. The surface shook, splashing out the pent up tension. In the places of greatest strain the crust cracked, edges of slabs ran over of each other, forming the topography we see today.

Specialized scientific maps say that Solovki is located on the edge of an ancient platform, stratified with differentiated rocks, in the Archaean areas of formations. Man will name these stress points; mountain ranges. By the way, from the Finno-Ugric dialects the word tundra means huge spaces, covered with dwarfish bushes. Other variations translate to mean mountains. This means that some words we use today contain ancient memory.

Mankind had not yet appeared during the times of geological history. Actually, Solovki didn’t exist yet. This planet, later to be named “Earth, glaciated and experienced the periods of changes of magnetic poles. Life appeared and perished, the caps of ice covered mountains, bent the surface of planet, grinding monolithic rocks into a dust. At one moment there was a small catastrophe on the surface of planet. The underwater fault from Arkhangelsk, under delta of Northern Dvina River, and coming to an end to the east from Solovki began to move, possibly forming the islands with this motion.

During these 25 million years the land, that later will be named Solovki, appeared and disappeared several times basically unchanged, situated in the center of a large cavity. That is why sea and sea-glacial layers were accumulated there. About 30 thousand years ago, when the heap of these layers became great, the top of the islands formed. But Solovki became visible only when the last glacier had thawed, approximately 15 thousand years ago.