Long time ago, in Promethean era, along with the acquisition of fire, people were given the first laws in the form of Commandments, hallowed by myth rituals together with the names of the gods, to worship. This was the time of formation of the primitive worship at the dawn of civilization. Places, where the contact of people and gods was taking place, were marked by a special stamp in the form of the Sanctuary. Marking area of the Earth by such special places is the essence of sacred geography. Through the mystery of practices in the sanctuaries under the supervision of the mysterious heavenly teachers-missionaries people were taught the primary law in the form of religious dispensation, which made it possible to survive in the Nature and become like their teachers, that is, gods. From the word “commandment” was born the concept of “Sanctuary” – a special taboo territory, where you cannot hunt and fish, build houses, fight, etc. This place is the place of Higher Force’s honor.

Kara-Dag is a very bright evidence of the embodiment of the above mentioned place. The indigenous inhabitants of Taurica were named by the Greeks as Tauri. In their linguistic affiliation they were Indo Aryans and in their language the territory of Taurica was called Calitri, i.e. “Land of Kali” or “dwelling place of the goddess Kali”. What kind of goddess was it that Taurs revered so much that in addition to bringing her as a sacrifice the cattle’s offspring, the first harvest, they even sacrificed people, mostly imprisoned foreigners? You can send the curious reader to the literature of the religious studies, where there is told a lot about bout her. Cali (Indo-Aryan that is the Proto-Indian “black”) is the most formidable of the goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, wife of the god Shiva (Russian et al. Siva). This is the same Shiva, who occasionally sends people the earthquakes and floods, spinning the whole world with his terrible dance. Thus, the Earth periodically scours from the accumulated sins of “the wickedness of man”. Kali is the symbol of destruction that also means a new creation, renewal through getting rid of the old.

Cali comes from darkened with anger face of the goddess Durga (militant hypostasis of the Vedic Virgin). She is always present on the battlefield, where the wounded soldiers die and at the funeral fires. The black skin, terrible and in a necklace of human skulls, she leads the souls of the departed out of their graves in the moonlight nights, tying together being with obscurity. During war, in the din of battle, when people were dying, terrible Cali’s laughter is heard along with the accompanying scream of her hunting dogs, which are the same bloodthirsty and abominable. She kills at a distance and if someone will call her anger, he will not survive. That is why the Greeks called her Hecate (“far-smashing), and were scared of her.

At the largest and highest peak of the Karadagh Mountains there was the sanctuary of this goddess, which was served by a caste of Brahmins priests in the strictest escorts. This mountain is still called the Sacred and this name is indigenous. There are many names like this in the Crimea, and in the lands surrounding the Black Sea. Experts talk about the common linguistic roots in Circumpontic zone in those ancient historical epochs (VII – V thousand years BC, and perhaps much earlier), which subsequently collapsed, but the names remained.

In Europe, for example, until nowadays the whole country is called Montenegro. The name “Black Sea” has the same origin despite the fact that in different historical periods, it had other names. Original name survived and it is inviolable. In the native dialect of the Taurus, it sounds like «Temarunda», i.e. “giving dark watery depths”. The exact literal translation is very difficult. Expert of the Black Sea names Academician O. Trubachev from Moscow significantly specifies the real interpretation: Tem-arun-da is «feeding dark abyss”. How did the name “Black Sea”, “Black Mountains” appear and when is a big question. Trubachev carefully alludes in his writings, that the name “Cimmeria” means nothing more than “Black Sea”.

The city port was called “Caliera” those days. Cali means “black” and “era” means “mountain”. Black Mountain or the Kara-Dag. The sanctuary of the formidable black goddess has disappeared more than thousand years ago. The ancient Greeks gave evidence that on top of the Sacred mountain in their age there was established the cult of the god-healer, a skilled Asklepios – the son of prophetic Apollo. Orpheus himself devoted Asklepios hymns.

The sons of Venice and Genoa, who have never heard about some black goddess-ogress, will they call their own city by her name? It is absolutely impossible. But the fact is there – Venetian port city of the XIV century in Koktebel, which was in the harbor, was called then Caliera. Another mystery is the stories and incomprehensible vitality of Indo-Aryan names with their deep mythos-ritual power, when the people had already died.

The subsequent wave of invaders who destroyed this port city was the Turkish-speaking. The name of Kali-era, they translated into their own language: Kara-Dag. And this name is still used today. Linguists call this phenomenon tracing, i.e. translation of the old names into another language. All this still awaits its researcher. Kara-Dag despite its strong lived-in and a huge literature contains many mysteries that have yet to be discovered. In any case, this part you have known what the real name – “Black Mountain” means.

It has already been said enough about the uniqueness and singularity of the Karadagh Nature Reserve, including its features and characteristics, which do not fit into the generally accepted system of natural areas. It is natural to assume that it affected the animal and vegetable world in some way. Indeed. Wildlife of Kara-Dahg fades out by the range of its performance beyond the accepted norms of the nature, even within the Crimea, which itself is unusual in the structure of its inhabitants. Kara-Dag has its own endemism that is, dwelling on its territory of rare and very rare species of animals and plants, which are not found anywhere else on Earth. One-third of the Crimean endemics are situated on Kara-Dagh.

There are allocated three landscape zones in Kara Dagh:
1) from the sea up to 250-300 m above sea level – the zone of steppes, hornbeam-oak, shrubby woodlands;
2) from 250 m to 400 m above sea level – the zone of forests and fuzzy-oak woodlands;
3) from 300 m to the summit “Sacred” – the Rock-oak zone, forests with fluffy oaks and hornbeams.
Besides there are identified two more micro landscapes: complex of volcanics (Beregovoy, mountain Sacred) and a complex of sedimentary rocks (the rest of the reserve’s territory), and, of course, the marine landscape (water park).

Nature Reserve “Kara-Dag” is one of the major centers of biodiversity in Crimea. There are more than 2400 species of flowering plants (excluding mosses) throughout Crimea. Almost half of these species (47% or 1,170 species) is shown in the Kara Dagh. Only this fact alone tells volumes. The whole flora reserve has 2782 species of plants. Many of the species listed in Red Data Books of different ranks, and 46 species – those most endemic. Here there are such kinds of plants, which refer to local endemics, meaning they live only in the Kara Dagh, and nowhere else. Moreover, except for perennial grasses (Eremurus Junge, campion, Anthemis Transhel, etc.) there is a whole tree reaching 6 m high – Poyarkov’s Hawthorn, with large eatable fruits of bright yellow color.

All plants of Kara-Dagh array are mostly likely to the Eastern Mediterranean type, and slightly more than 10% of the species are the plants from the Ukrainian and Kazakh steppes. Close to endemic group of plants with very limited distribution area is situated along the Black Sea. It is worth a special attention, because it also applies to some groups of animals. These are the Crimean-Caucasian, Crimean-Balkan and Crimean-Asian minor species of animals and plants. All these species are of great scientific interest, together with the relics, that is, species survived from the preglacial period and the past geological epochs.

Kara-Dag was studied by such famous scientists as Gablitz K.I., Peter S. Pallas, geologists AE Fersmann and Pavlov A.P., a leading expert on sea shores Zenkovich V.P. and other prominent researchers; the best specialist of the Black Sea Andrusov N.I., a president of the Geographical community Berg L.S., the most famous Soviet zoogeographer Professor Puzanov I.I., the most prominent Soviet botanist Wolfe E.F. and many others. It is impossible to enumerate all.

For a long time there has been a lasting dispute in the scientific world: is the Kara-Dag mountain with all the Crimea, so sharply different from the steppes of the peninsula, maybe the last remnants of the Black Sea Atlantis – Pontida that once linking the Crimea with the Turkish Black Sea coast? Too much data has been accumulated in favor of this bold assumption. This could be in the Pliocene (i.e. 1-2 million years ago).
And Pontida was linked with the Balkans and the Caucasus territories. Otherwise how else could get accustomed here so well for a long time plants’ and animals’ species found nowhere else and originally coming from the Caucasus, the Balkans, Minor Asia and the Crimea at the same time! Professor Rubtsov N.I. even thinks that nothing else is possible to suppose.

Remarkable Kara-Dagh (and Crimean in general) orchid flowers with their unique buttonholes coincide in all their characteristics with Caucasian, Balkan and Minor Asia flowers. The same is with the large blue-violet Crimean carabus, which is closely related carabus inhabiting the Balkans. Crimean lizard and gecko have very close “relatives” in the Caucasus and the Balkans. Dragonflies of the Crimea are close to the dragonflies from Minor Asia. The fauna of Crimea has many Mediterranean species: leopard colubrid, horseshoe, cicadas, mantises, etc. All of these animals and plants are well “packed” in Kara-Dagh and remain inviolable for millions of years now. “Thus, – states Rubtsov – eventually there is revealed a very large group of species with ranges completely or partially surrounding the Black Sea, and uniting in this way the countries, which are now separated by the sea”. Member korrespendent of the Science Academy of the USSR, a famous expert on the Black Sea biogeology Muratov M.V. in this way explains why in Crimea in general (and in Kara-Dagh in particular) survived a part of the Mediterranean and the Caucasian fauna and flora.

Therefore, protection of such a corner and its heritage cannot be overemphasized. Such rare herbaceous plants like Fisher’s fenugreek and lenticular vetch, Schober’s shrub nitraria after some time can only be seen on Kara-Dagh, or next to it territories. This list, unfortunately, is replenished easily and rapidly. For example, juniper trees are cut down mercilessly and soon this valuable relic of the wood will remain only in the reserves.

Kara-Dagh plant world is not yet fully studied; there is no single book on plants of Kara-Dagh. Once in high school (in the Soviet Union times) on the lessons of botany, pupils were told that the real grass steppes remained only in one Ukrainian reserve: “Askania Nova”. Some of the Crimean reference books there was seen evidence that there were found 7 species of feather grass in Crimea. But at the Kara-Dagh this typical inhabitant of the steppes, all of which had long been made in the Red Book, noted as much 8 species! These kinds of surprises are often seen in Kara-Dagh.
If we talk about the animal world of Kara-Dag separately, then the number of species there is not rich. The vertebrates’ world there is poor. Number of species of mammals barely reaches 35, typical inhabitants of the mountains and forests, such as weasels and moles, which are widespread everywhere, here are not present at all. However there are very widespread the inhabitants of the Balkans, the Caucasus and Minor Asia. There exist endemic forms of fox, badger and wild mice. But the most interesting and important feature of the Kara-Dagh fauna is its composition. In a limited area here are present species typical for the forest, steppe, rocky-shore and coastal seascapes.

There are even semi-desert inhabitants, and once there was caught a bog turtle, although, according to zoologists, it is absolutely nonsense. There are no conditions for the habitat of this species. However it occurs. Overall, together there are recorded 12 species of amphibians (amphibia) and reptiles. Birds were more fortunate, there are found more than 200 species, though not all of them nest here.

There are only 300 species of birds in Crimea, while in Ukraine there are 400 of them. There can be found 105-107 species of fish in Kara-Dagh waters – more than half of all fish species of the Black Sea. Comments on these figures are unnecessary; they speak for themselves, especially in light of the foregoing. Well, about the invertebrates it will be mentioned very briefly. Their army was huge and omnipresent, especially insects. Only in Kara Dagh alone the rare butterflies from the Red Book are more than 20 species. It is difficult to specify this figure. In total, Kara-Dagh fauna officially has 3816 species and 125 of them are in the Red Book.

A very interesting statistic comes from a study of Rhopalocera Lepidoptera (i.e. butterflies), which are known to live anywhere and they are always a lot of them. Throughout Crimea onecan see 73 families of butterflies’ representatives. Thus, on Kara-Dagh there are 72 families (!). This is more than 90%. That is, while in the Kara-Dagh area, you can get acquainted with almost all families of Lepidoptera of the Crimean peninsula.

Yet, the emphasis is made again on the main feature of the wildlife in the Kara-Dagh Reserve: safeguarding of the rare flora and fauna, which in other places have not survived, and some were originally only here.
Only Kara-Dagh mountain group has a unique variety of Pontian wheatgrass, Scutellaria Oriental, Crimean lemon. There lives a rare stone marten or belodushka, so named because of the white spots on the neck, unlike the European marten, which is yellow. There is nesting a Peregrine Falcon at Kara-Dagh, stunning in its beauty and agility bird whose nests’ number in Crimea is smaller than the number of fingers on one human’s hand. Clearly, the diverse role of this fortunately protected area will only increase.