Who said that Kazan is 1000 years old?

And a new remark: “You did a good job. But we live in the 21-st century, and all of your finds are dated visually. And there are other, more precise methods of dating”… For instance, coal should be dated by radiocarbon measurements and for ceramics the best method is thermoluminescence analysis. So we did all the necessary measurements in Vienna and Berlin.

Thus, even if we hadn’t had that Czech coin, we would have proved that Kazan is 1000 years old in any case, with the help of other finds, first of all - with the help of the plainest of our finds – ceramics. If not for ceramics, there wouldn’t have been any ground to speak about city.

We have a lot of women’s embellishments, tools, weapon, and all these objects are dated by the earliest period – the end of the 10-th – beginning of the 11-th centuries. We studied carefully all the finds and only then suggested this date at various international scientific conferences. Practically all prominent archaeologists working in the field of medieval history of Russian cities, as well as foreign colleagues, historians, archaeologists, numismatists and other specialists were invited to take part in 3 international conferences. Thus we managed to prove the age of Kazan collectively.

I’ve already mentioned several times the period of the end of the 10-th – beginning of the 11-th centuries. Then why do we speak about the year 1005? Well, actually this date is very relative. There is no method to say exactly Kazan’s date of birth. Still some objects found on the territory of Kremlin show that Kazan is even older than 1000 years.

I ask you not to pay too much attention to this Czech coin, it only proves the existence of trade relations with the West.  Without trade and Volzhsky land trade way there would be no Kazan. That’s the meaning of this coin. But it belongs to the year 929; that is long before Kazan appeared! There was found another coin – Arabic dirham, but it is even more ancient, the scientists think it belongs to the year 908. Seems that this coin was in use for some time, perhaps it was worn as embellishment…

There are other finds as well, for instance a bronze cover plate for a bridle, a gilded cover plate of Hungarian type. There’re lots of them in Hungary, but only 5-6 items were found on the territory of former Soviet Union. Such covers were used only till the middle of the 10-th century. Finds of this type testify to the fact that there were strong trade relations between medieval Kazan and foreign countries.