Post: #1

A strange story out of the wicked wilds of Siberia:

Quote:Agafya Lykova, 71, airlifted to hospital after suffering 'acute pains' in intense cold at her forest home more than 100 km from nearest town.

Clasping her icons and spring water, the devout Old Believer was flown for treatment.

The reclusive hermit was rushed to Tashtagol hospital in Kemerovo region on the personal orders of the governor of Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev.

Clasping her icons and spring water, the devout Old Believer was flown for treatment after getting a message to the outside world that she was in pain in her legs, restricting her movements.

Previously Agafya has refused to be flown out of the forest home built by her parents - where she was born - after they opted out of the Stalinist USSR claiming religious persecution.

A source said: 'Now Lykova feels better. Doctors removed the acute pain. It is planned that she will stay at the hospital for examination and treatment for a week.'

Her family fled into the wilderness in 1936 and when they were discovered living off the land after being spotted from the air in the 1970s, they had no idea World War Two had started - or ended.



Despite this she is expected to ask to go back to the only home she has ever known.

Today she admits that the extreme winter cold on her lonely farmstead is 'unbearable' - with temperatures sinking to minus 40C - but she has repeatedly refused offers to live in a village or town where she could be helped.

Recently she has been bothered by wild bears and foxes seeking food. Despite this she is expected to ask to go back to the only home she has ever known.

Her little plot is located close to a river about some 150 metres up a remote mountain side in the Abakan Range, in south-western Siberia. She was the fourth child of Karp and Akulina Lykov and for the first 35 years of her life she had no contact at all with anyone outside her family.

It was in the summer of 1978 that a group of geologists accidentally stumbled across the family, with scientists reporting that Agafya spoke a strange blurred language 'distorted by a lifetime of isolation'.

Her father had taken the decision to flee normal civilisation in 1936 after a communist patrol arrived at the fields on which he was working and shot dead his brother.



Gathering a few meagre possessions and some seeds, he took his wife, Akulina, their nine-year-old son, Savin, and two-year-old daughter Natalia, and headed off into the forest. Over the years they retreated deeper into taiga, building a series of wooden cabins amid the pine trees.

When their metal pots had disintegrated beyond use, they were forced to live on a staple diet of potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds. The Lykovs subsided mainly on trapped wild animals and cultivated potatoes. They had no firearms, no salt and did not know how to make bread.

However a bad winter in 1961 killed off everything in their garden and they were reduced to eating their own leather shoes. The cold weather, and lack of food, tragically proved too much for Akulina who died.

Once the family was discovered they continued to live in the wilderness and, apart from salt, knives, forks and handles, they opted not to adopt any methods or items from the modern world.

Sadly just two years later three of the four children also died: Savin and Natalia suffered kidney failure and Dmitry died of pneumonia. Agafya's father died in his sleep in February 1988, but despite her age and the risks to her health she continues to live permanently at the little homestead.

Kemerovo region governor Aman Tuleyev keeps an eye out for her, regularly delivering her provisions including cabbage, flour, grapes and her favourite oranges.

Vladimir Makuta, head of Tashtagolskyi district, said: 'It is important for us to know she has everything she needs, that she'll live another winter and will have food.'

Previously she has been supplied with salted cabbage and a bag with dried fruit, flour, sugar, candles, matches. Millet and oats were sent for Agafya's chickens, also hay for her goats.

Agafya is an Old Believer - a religious movement that splintered from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century, endured persecution both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution.

In hospital, Agafya has received gifts of fruit from the Kemerovo governor along with a scarf, felt boots, and clothes.

This is utterly fascinating. More information here:

Quote:A 70-year-old hermit who has spent her entire life in the Siberian wilderness has been airlifted to a hospital to treat a pain in her legs.


Stalin, Siberia and salt: Russian recluse's life story made into film
Read more
Agafia Lykova is the last remaining member of a deeply religious family that fled civilisation in 1936 and did not know about the second world war until geologists stumbled upon them in 1978. After she contacted the “mainland” with an emergency satellite telephone to ask for medical help, the governor, Aman Tuleyev, ordered her evacuation from her homestead near the Abakan river to a hospital in Tashtagol, according to the Kemerovo region website.

Doctors have “removed the acute pain” in her legs and plan to keep her in hospital over the next week, it said. Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported that the pain was related to cartilage deterioration.

A member of the Old Believer sect that split off from the Russian Orthodox church 350 years ago, Lykova’s father, Karp, took his wife and two children into the taiga after a Soviet patrol shot his brother, eventually settling more than 150 miles (240km) from the nearest village. The family survived for decades on their remote homestead, where winter temperatures reach -40C, without guns, salt or metal implements.


The youngest of four children, Agafia had not encountered any human beings outside her family, had read only the Bible and prayer books, and had never tasted bread or milk before she was 35. Outdated words and religious terms pepper her speech. She has lived alone since her father died in 1988, although bears and foxes sometimes disturb her looking for food.

Last year, the British director Rebecca Marshall began work on a documentary about Lykova, called The Forest in Me.

“When I finally met Agafia, what surprised me was that rather than feeling like a primitive situation, it felt like arriving in the future – to a world with no technology, the vast forest littered with discarded space junk,” Marshall told Russia Beyond the Headlines, referring to the fact that Lykova’s home is under the flight path of rockets from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. “It is an incredible and beautiful place.”

Here is a documentary I found online that I haven't had a chance yet to watch, but will soon:





Here we have a woman who has lived her entire life cut off from realities of the modern world. Her parents fled from Soviet Russia to the harsh wastes of the Siberian hinterlands. They existed on what they could cull from nature and were not dependent on the technology of modern civilization. They lived and she lives what we would consider an extremely culturally deprived existence.

For those who came only for my scintillating social analysis, this is the fascinating part. On one hand, she has grown up free of any of the social pressures we might consider untoward or inappropriate. On the other, she has lead an acultural life devoid of substantive human contact outside her family. In a sense, we have a real-life Kaspar Hauser here:



Kaspar Hauser was a German foundling who raised in solitary confinement. He stumbled into the streets of Nuremberg one day, fascinating locals with his story about his life locked away in a cell, with only a mysterious figure bringing him sustenance. While his story was pockmarked with inconsistency, what was most striking about his story was the end product: himself, as he had a most curious personality.

Kaspar was riddled with insecurity, felt a strong, nagging sense of inauthenticity and found it impossible to find a real connection with the world around him. He was a compulsive liar and as Alexander Mitscherlich, a famous psychiatrist, once observed about him: "[His] impoverished relations with his cultural environment left him with a feeling of being utterly at life's mercy."

While Agafya Lykova grew up with her immediate family and Kaspar Hauser did not, both seemingly share many similarities. They grew up in harsh, isolated environments completely disconnected from their respective cultures. This disconnect from any overarching culture left indelible prints on Kaspar's personality and I would imagine it has done so on Agafya's. I would guess that Kaspar's feelings of disconnectedness and being "utterly at life's mercy" would be reflected in Agafya, as she has lived her life purely at the mercy of nature.

If you want further reading on a related subject here in America, read about a girl called "Genie" here. The Wikipedia article is very detailed and thorough and I would recommend you take a half hour to read it through. Also, don't read it on an empty stomach. It is a stomach churner.

Post: #2

Thank you 2Wycked.

What an amazing story, & quite the social preponderance you scintillatingly put. Reminds me somewhat of this one - GQ: The Strange & Curious Tale of The Last True Hermit, which captured my imagination when I first read of him. The story you present here however is generational & I agree, utterly fascinating. I had no knowledge of Kaspar Hauser either. Again, thanks.

I plan to read about Genie after dinner.

Post: #3

WNB

Post: #4

Ok, I know that's terrible. I've read of this family before, but did not know any survived. Its It's an amazing story of survival and perseverance. However, I think staying in the wilderness permanently was a mistake, and cruel to the family

Post: #5

Solid summary 2wycked, I always enjoy reading about these kinds of experiences, it reminds you of the richness and range of life.


Here's a link that contains the above story, along with similar ones:

http://www.oddee.com/item_98706.aspx

For those who want to take the rabbit hole deeper, there's a lot of interesting stories in this as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

Post: #6

(01-17-2016 02:56 AM)2Wycked Wrote:  If you want further reading on a related subject here in America, read about a girl called "Genie" here. The Wikipedia article is very detailed and thorough and I would recommend you take a half hour to read it through. Also, don't read it on an empty stomach. It is a stomach churner.

I read it during breakfast while having a severe headache! Top that, motherfuckers!

On a more serious note, I find it absurd that her father has not been investigated at all after the deaths of his first two children in suspicious circumstances.

Post: #7

Werner Herzog made a film about Kaspar Hauser in the 70s. It's worth watching.

Post: #8

(01-17-2016 05:08 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(01-17-2016 02:56 AM)2Wycked Wrote:  If you want further reading on a related subject here in America, read about a girl called "Genie" here. The Wikipedia article is very detailed and thorough and I would recommend you take a half hour to read it through. Also, don't read it on an empty stomach. It is a stomach churner.

I read it during breakfast while having a severe headache! Top that, motherfuckers!

On a more serious note, I find it absurd that her father has not been investigated at all after the deaths of his first two children in suspicious circumstances.

It appears that the social services completely dropped the ball. Her father topped himself once Genie was discovered.

http://genie.wikia.com/wiki/Clark_Wiley

Post: #9

The Kaspar Hauser story doesn't seem plausible to me. It's a pretty consistent finding in linguistics that children who grew up without human contact will be unable to learn language unless they have been exposed to it before puberty. Seems Hauser was just a clever con artist/lunatic.

Post: #10

Yes. We should all strive to live out in the wilderness where all of our family will die.. leaving us to fend for ourselves.
We may have to eat our own shoes.. but at least we won't have to deal with Facebook.

Post: #11

So they finally found that strong, independent woman we've heard so much about! She don't need no man!

Feminists around the world relieved, existence of their patron saint proven.
After the success of "The Revenant" it's only a matter of time now until we get the biopic starring Jennifer Lawrence as Agafya, a lone woman fighting the elements in the remote Russian wilderness, trying to survive against all odds, make it through the harsh Siberian winters, and lecturing sexist bears on how only "Yes means Yes". Nobody's getting raped by a bear in this movie.

Post: #12

(01-17-2016 07:54 AM)Celtic_Austrian Wrote:  So they finally found that strong, independent woman we've heard so much about! She don't need no man!

Except in this case it's true. Did you see her welding the axe at the beginning of the movie? She's obviously a tough old bird - a lot of young men these days wouldn't have a clue how to chop down a treee.

Post: #13

Are you kidding me?

Sharp end goes in tree, swing and repeat until tree is down.

I get that it's fashionable to talk about how worthless millenials are, but even a five year old can figure out how an axe works.

Post: #14

(01-17-2016 01:44 PM)Hannibal Wrote:  Are you kidding me?

Sharp end goes in tree, swing and repeat until tree is down.

I get that it's fashionable to talk about how worthless millenials are, but even a five year old can figure out how an axe works.

I've witnessed otherwise.

Post: #15

Psychological themes aside, this was how people lived in the Ice Age. 3 of 4 kids die in this case over one winter. Extreme natural selection.

Post: #16

(01-17-2016 01:44 PM)Hannibal Wrote:  Are you kidding me?

Sharp end goes in tree, swing and repeat until tree is down.

I get that it's fashionable to talk about how worthless millenials are, but even a five year old can figure out how an axe works.

I take it you haven't been hanging out with many boys lately?

Post: #17

(01-17-2016 01:49 PM)Horus Wrote:  

(01-17-2016 01:44 PM)Hannibal Wrote:  Are you kidding me?

Sharp end goes in tree, swing and repeat until tree is down.

I get that it's fashionable to talk about how worthless millenials are, but even a five year old can figure out how an axe works.

I've witnessed otherwise.

That's the saddest thing I've heard all day.

Post: #18

(01-17-2016 07:41 AM)Sourcecode Wrote:  Yes. We should all strive to live out in the wilderness where all of our family will die.. leaving us to fend for ourselves.
We may have to eat our own shoes.. but at least we won't have to deal with Facebook.

If Sourcecode was a zoo animal, he'd be something small, dumb and uninteresting like one of those small birds that pick lice off rhino's heads.

This post was clearly not about fetishizing some misguided sense of self-reliance, but about what such an acultural upbringing might have on a person's personality. Hence, the reference to Kaspar Hauser. While there might certainly be some benefits, such a life most likely has many deficiencies that become reflected in a person's personality.

Post: #19

Her physical condition and appearance seem great for someone who is a 70 year old pioneer woman. Her eyes seem very sharp

Post: #20

(01-17-2016 08:23 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  Her eyes seem very sharp.

That's just the one-thousand-cock-stare. There's more to this story.