Putorana Plateau

69°N, 95°E

Central Siberia, north of the Arctic Circle — basalt trap 800 × 500 km, near the geographic center of Russia

[from the public record]

69.0000, 95.0000 · view on OpenStreetMap →

What's documented

The Putorana Plateau is a basalt massif covering roughly 250,000 km² in Central Siberia. Its lavas — the Siberian Traps — are linked to the end-Permian extinction event (~252 Ma) and represent one of the largest known continental flood-basalt provinces. The plateau hosts about 25,000 lakes; Lake Vivi, near its center, is conventionally cited as the geographic center of the Russian Federation. UNESCO World Heritage Site, 2010. Helicopter-only access across most of its area.

Notable & intriguing

The Siberian Traps eruptions that formed the Putorana basalts (~252 Ma) are the leading geological candidate for the end-Permian mass extinction — the most severe extinction event in the planet’s history, killing an estimated 81% of marine species.

Burgess et al., PNAS, 2014; Wignall, The Worst of Times, 2015.
Lake Vivi, near the plateau’s geographic center, was designated the geographic center of the Russian Federation by an official decree in 1992. A monument and an Orthodox cross were erected on its shoreline by a Russian Geographical Society expedition in 2003.

Russian Geographical Society; Roskartografia decree, 1992.
Most of the plateau has no road access. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 2010, citing it as “one of the most isolated and undisturbed mountain ranges in the world.”

UNESCO World Heritage List, inscription 1234, 2010.
The plateau hosts the migration of the Taimyr reindeer herd — one of the largest wild ungulate populations on Earth, with up to ~1 million animals at its peak, now in steep decline.

WWF Russia population surveys, 1990–2020.

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

Public-record imagery

Plateau surface — basalt traps and lake. Wikipedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · jxandreani · 2008

Satellite view (ESA) of the plateau's extent. Wikipedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 igo · European Space Agency · 2016

A waterfall on the plateau; the basalt is ~2.5 km thick in places. Wikipedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Vitaly Repin · 2008

Snow on the plateau. Access is helicopter-only across most of its area. Wikipedia Commons · Public domain · NASA · 2003

Referenced in the codex

1. We Are the Substrate The claim, the substrate-logic argument in three points, the Apkallu emerging from the deep waters to teach civilization. The long study, said plainly.
3. The Observers Above The third layer. The rectangle under the Vostok ice. The same rectangle in two other oceans. The man at Starbucks's "nearby galaxies" claim, taken seriously without being believed.