One of the most important tasks of the expedition was to search for archaeological materials related to the development of international trade in the Indian Ocean basin in the first centuries of the new era. The information contained in the "Peripla of the Eritrean Sea" (sections 30-31) suggested that Socotra (the island of Dioscurida) played an important role on the trade routes from the Mediterranean to India (see: [Bukharin, 2007, p. 111, 121, 123 - 126, 128, 178, 240, 245, 260, 282; Doe, 1992, p. 41]). However, despite many years of purposeful search, no archaeological materials that would undoubtedly relate to this time were found on the island. For this reason, the scientific literature has confirmed the point of view expressed by the famous researcher of antiquities of this region P. L. Shinni more than 50 years ago. It boils down to the fact that the merchants described by the author of peripla visited Socotra only briefly to replenish their water and food supplies, and then set sail towards India or the Red Sea (Shinnie, 1960, p. 108). This opinion remained in full force until 2010.

In November 2010, members of the Russian Integrated Expedition visited an ancient settlement located near the coastal village of Shuab in the far west of Socotra. From the surrounding area, it was called Kosh. The area of the settlement is about 2 hectares; in front of it from the north lies a wide strip of sandy beach, from the east it is skirted by a narrow spring stream with excellent fresh water. The Kosh cultural layer consists of sandy deposits with a large number of sea shells. The remains of the stone walls of ancient buildings, which are mostly small in size, protrude to the surface.

On the surface of the settlement, members of the expedition led by Yu. A. Vinogradov collected a large number of fragments of various ceramic vessels. Approximately 85% of these finds are found in fragments of round-bottomed pots, which can be considered local, although they are somewhat different from the ancient Socotrian ware. In particular, there is practically no ornamentation on them. About 15% of the finds are fragments of imported vessels. Among them, there are materials whose production centers were located in the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and India. Particularly revealing are fragments of amphorae, i.e. ceramic containers used to transport various products (primarily wine and olive oil) on ships. In their composition, a fragment of the amphora wall with the letter T drawn on it is distinguished.

Comparing these finds with the archaeological materials obtained during the excavations of the South Arabian port of Kana (Sedov, 2005, pp. 309-346), we can conclude that they mainly belong to its "middle" horizon, i.e. they date back to the II-V centuries AD. Socotra has finally discovered an ancient settlement that really dates back to the time of the active development of trade between the Mediterranean and India. For this reason, systematic archaeological excavations on Kosh are very promising.

For three years (2008 - 2010), the expedition's work was concentrated to the east of the city of Hadibo (the capital of Socotra), in the area of Wadi Hajra. The remains of settlements and burial grounds dating mainly from the Middle Ages were examined here. The main object of excavations was the settlement of Khajrya-4, discovered back in 1985. [Naumkin, 1989, p. 160; Naumkin and Sedov, 1993, p. 600-605; 1995, p. 224-229]. This monument is a whole series of archaeological sites located on an area of 1.36 hectares: the remains of buildings, a necropolis, a bypass wall surrounding both the settlement and the necropolis. At the Khajrya-4 site, archaeological sites

The largest of the buildings located here (24 x 12 m), oriented along the east-west line, was partially investigated. Its walls were built of large stones and plastered on the inside; the entrance led from the west.

Despite the fact that the building was not completely excavated, its layout in basic details is now quite clear. The entrance is followed by an inner courtyard, followed by three long rooms extending along the west-east axis; in the eastern part of the building there are three small rooms, in the central one of which the base of the altar is found. This base has a quadrangular shape (1.98 x 0.3 m, preserved height-0.16 m). Its long axis is oriented in the latitudinal direction. The altar was made of unfired clay and covered with lime plaster.

Based on the presence of an altar, the entire building can be interpreted as a Christian three-nave church. The available findings allow us to assume that the church existed within the chronological limits covering the VII / VIII-XII centuries. A more accurate dating will become possible after a detailed study of all the materials obtained. However, it is already likely that the church belonged to a Nestorian community, which confirms the view that Nestorian Christianity dominated Socotra (Naumkin, 1988, p. 29).

It is well known that after the death of the heresearch Nestorius, which followed shortly after his condemnation at the ecumenical council of Ephesus (431), the adherents of this doctrine were forced to flee to Persia. The period of formation of the Nestorian Church here falls on the end of the V-beginning of the VI century. Since the eighth century, its missionary movement begins, directed to central and South-East Asia, as well as to the Indian subcontinent. The Nestorian Church remained active and influential in the region until the end of the 12th century (Elders, 2003, p. 234). It is not surprising that in the VII-VIII centuries. missionaries reached Socotra and established a church community here.

A notable difference between the Socotra building and the usual church layout is that it does not have an apse, and the three naves are separated not by the usual columns, but by walls with three aisles. However, it is precisely this division of internal space that is characteristic of the Nestorian churches of Mesopotamia. These churches also often lack an apse (see [Fiey, (1959), pl. II, VI-X; Whitehouse and Williamson, 1973, p. 42]). In the decoration of ancient Nestorian churches in the Persian Gulf region, images of crosses and other Christian symbols are usually found [King et all, 1995, p. 69-70; Potts, 1994], which, unfortunately, has not yet been recorded in Khajra-4, but this should hardly prevent the proposed interpretation of the building discovered here, because its plan can only be compared to Nestorian churches. It is interesting that the width of the Socotri building fully corresponds to the width of the churches opened in the bay area - 12 m [Elders, 2001, p. 55]. The presence of household ceramics in the cultural layers of the building should also hardly be confusing. Similar findings were recorded in studies of churches in the Persian Gulf region (Bernard and Salles, 1991, p. 12], in addition, it is quite possible to assume that the Socotra church eventually lost its original function.

The beginning of the study of the Socotra Stone Age was marked by the sensational discovery made in 2008 by V. A. Zhukov of artefacts technically and typologically related to the oldest culture in the history of mankind. These findings refuted the then-established scientific opinion that the island was settled for the collection of incense not earlier than the era of the South Arabian states. During the field seasons of 2009 and 2010, new sites, localities and individual points with artifacts appeared on the archaeological map of the island, indicating that Socotra was not a temporary shelter,but a place of long-term existence of ancient hominids on this territory in such a remote era.

From the point of view of general geomorphology, Socotra Island is divided into three main geomorphological regions: the coastal plain, which borders the island mainly in the south with a strip of up to 8 km wide, a plateau - like hill with an average altitude of 300-900 m and the Hagier Mountains (maximum height - over 1500 m), stretching through the eastern part of the island in a sublatitudinal direction.

The largest number of ancient stone age items on Socotra is recorded in the flat "amphitheater" of Hadibo, which opens to the north-west to the Gulf of Aden, and in other directions is framed by the slopes and spurs of the Hagier mountain range. The valley is cut through by relatively large wadis: Khajrya (to the east of Suk), Dinaghen (to the west of Suk) and wadi on the eastern edge of Hadibo - the administrative center of the island.

It was at the mouth of Wadi Khajrya that the first tools were discovered, attributed to the corresponding member. Kh. A. Amirkhanov to the Oldovansk culture [Amirkhanov, Zhukov, Naumkin, Sedov, 2009]. The raw materials for their manufacture were mostly metamorphosed mudstones, the outcrops of which are abundant in the valley, less often-jasperoids and in some cases-quartzite-like rocks.

In the Hadibo plain (7.5 km in the W-B direction, 6 km in the S - S direction), processed stone is found almost everywhere, but the main spot is located in the area of the villages of Suk and Shek, on the left bank of Wadi Khajri, where the finds are associated with the destroyed surface of coarse-layered red-colored conglomerates-calcicrites, which, as noted by the researcher of geomorphology According to A. A. Lukashov, the islands"resemble the Wadi Gabr and Al-Guza calcicrites in Khadramaut, which lie at the base of the cultural layer of the Oldovan cave sites studied by H. A. Amirkhanov, in their external appearance, but not in the composition of inclusions."

The size of the site and the context of the location of the artefacts are difficult to determine, since individual finds are found both on the territory of the aforementioned villages and in areas where new buildings are being built, including industrial ones. But in any case, we are talking about a unique monument, with an area of tens of hectares and thousands of products, the study of which can give a complete picture of the life of the bearers of the Oldov culture.

The complex of products from the Khadib plain is characterized by its archaism. The raw materials for their manufacture were mostly metamorphosed mudstones, the outcrops of which are abundant in the valley, less often jasperoids, and in isolated cases - quartzite-like rocks.

A certain idea of the technical and typological characteristics of Oldovan Socotra is provided by the collection we collected in 2009 south of the village of Suk at the site of the foundation stone for a building under construction. From an area of 35 x 30 m, 306 artifacts were collected, of which 126 pieces fall on the wreckage and fragments.

Two items can be attributed to single-site, cuboid nuclei with an expressionless working surface. In 49 flakes and 2 lamellar flakes, with the exception of two specimens, the impact pads are covered with a pebble crust.

Of the 30 guns (10% of the total number of products), choppers account for 63%, or 19 copies, of which 18 are single-sided chopping tools. 11 guns from the site, without detailing, are classified as scraper-shaped.

The collection also includes one combined tool on large pebbles, along the long edge of which a one-sided chopper with an oval blade is formed, and on the opposite side a scraper-like area of small systematic retouching is clearly traced.

The described set of artefacts from the accounting platform does not reflect the entire tool set from both the Hadibo monuments and the island as a whole. First of all, it does not include oval-shaped scrapers with a carefully designed working edge and often with accommodation sections, which are usually located on the right side of the tool relative to its axis (perhaps such carefully made scrapers are characteristic of the olduvan Socotra). There are no beak-shaped tools with jagged retouching in the collected collection. It should also be noted that in Hadibo, and on the island as a whole, there are choppers and skobels of impressive size and considerable weight. With a high degree of probability, it can be assumed that they were intended for butchering the carcasses of large mammals, which are currently not found on the island, with the exception of those brought here by humans. It seems that the Socotra fauna was more diverse at the time of the Olduvan culture.

However, in general, we can say that the material from the accounting site is characterized by the main features of the Olduvan culture: a small number of single-site cuboid nuclei (or rather, the absence of typologically expressed nuclei); almost complete absence of plates; the overwhelming majority of tools made not on blanks, but on pebbles, fragments, tiles, etc. (this fact is most likely it indicates that the idea of the operational technical chain of the nucleus-billet-tool has not yet been formed among cultural carriers); the leading chopper tool, which in quantitative terms prevails over all other categories of tools; the absence of choppers.

As a matter of fact, all these cultural features are characteristic of the monuments of the Olduvan Socotra culture, both for those where the raw material base is mainly mudstones (Hadibo and the Mori massif to the west of it), and in the flint version in the Tarditrer Valley (central

part of the island) and at the village of Rakuf (eastern plateau). These four sections of the island's territory mentioned above are key to the study of the Socotra Stone Age, as products are found here in large numbers and over large areas.

In this regard, I would like to draw attention to the prospects of research in the largest valley of the island, with numerous temporary riverbeds-Tarditrer, where the processed stone is mainly concentrated around limestone outcrops with flint outcrops, but individual spots with finds and individual products are recorded outside them. It can be assumed that the remains are associated with sites-workshops of the Olduvan culture carriers, and the materials from the remaining points reflect some specific moments of the activity of fossil hominids. In particular, the largest choppers unaccompanied by other equipment in Tarditrera were found at a considerable distance from the remains. This made us pay attention to the fact that tools of this type are also located in other areas outside the main spots of finds. It can be assumed that it was in these places that the carriers of the Olduvan culture butchered the remains of animal carcasses left by predators. In general, the Tarditrer opens up opportunities for a comprehensive study of the life of hominids in certain territories. In addition, in some cases, the slopes of the remains allow you to lay exploration pits and excavations here.

It should be emphasized that search operations on the island during the field seasons of 2008 - 2010 did not reveal any artifacts belonging to the Acheulean era or to later microlithic industries. According to all technical and typological characteristics, Socotra monuments belong to the Olduvan culture (without specifying which stage), the closest territory of which is North-East Asia, where it is replaced by the Acheulean era in about 1.4 million years.

However, the question of the dating of Socotrian materials and their appearance on the island remains open. Initially, it was assumed that the carriers of the Olduvan culture came to Socotra during global natural and climatic changes that took place during the ice ages, when large regressions of the sea level fell by more than a hundred meters and chains of small land areas separated by shallow water could form between the archipelago and the African continent.

However, a completely different scenario of the appearance of the Olduvan culture of the island is not excluded. A. A. Lukashov, based on the latest geological and geophysical studies [William Bosworth et al., 2005; Elia D'acremont et al., 2006; Marc Fournier et al., 2007], suggests the following possible scenario of isolation of the Socotra archipelago from the mainland land.

1) No later than 17.6 million years ago, the Aden continental rift was transformed into an oceanic rift, and about 16 million years ago, the Aden continental rift was transformed into an oceanic rift. The western "wedging" of the oceanic rift reached the target of the eastern tip of the Horn of Africa.

(2) Late Neocene-Early Pliocene (16 - 5.3 Ma) neotectonic movements of various signs led to the isolation of several tectomorphic structures within the present contour of Socotra: the asymmetric arched uplift of the Hagier Mountains, now exceeding 1500 m, and a series of overturned block morphostructures of the western half of the island.

3) The epoch of relative tectonic calm and stabilization took place in the archipelago area during the Pliocene and early Eopleistocene (5.3 - 1.8 million years ago). In connection with the global resumption of mountain-building processes, the fragmentation of the archipelago's territory has apparently continued since 1.8 million years ago. The Abd - el-Khoury Island shelf is cut off from the present-day eastern tip of the Horn of Africa by a powerful disturbance-a type of slit-shaped asymmetric graben, the bottom of which is inclined to the CER. This block-fault zone can be read in the bathymetry of the Arabian Sea in the form of a deep (up to 1000 m) ZSZ orientirovki Strait (Guardafui basin), which has been consistently cutting off the Abd-el-Khoury Island socle from the Guardafui Sea shelf for 1 million years. It can be assumed that it was the deepening of this graben that contributed to the final isolation of the Socotra archipelago from the African mainland. Based on the above, the carriers of the Olduvan culture did not settle the island in a certain period of time, but found themselves on this piece of land in an isolated state, along with the entire ecosystem, after its separation from Africa.

It seems that now only the materials of archaeological excavations can strengthen the position of one of the versions of the history of the appearance of the Olduvan culture on Socotra. However, it should be borne in mind that the Quaternary sediments on Socotra are thin and their distribution is limited.-

nothing. Nevertheless, at this stage, we find very promising excavations of the island's caves and the slopes of the Tarditrer Valley remnants.

Note that the importance of the Socotra stone industry, both in terms of geomorphological reference and age, is an order of magnitude higher than the finds of archaeologists of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens in 2010 on the island of Crete, where stone products were discovered from 700 to 130 thousand years old. According to the Greek Ministry of Culture, this is the time when geologists date the natural terraces on the sea coast where the artifacts were located. This is a rather significant observation, but it did not affect the decision of the publishers of the American journal "Archeology", published by the Archaeological Institute of America, to include the finds in Greece in the list of the ten most important discoveries of 2010. This once again confirms that the findings at open-type sites on Socotra should not cause doubts among some of our colleagues, who for some reason are sure that only materials from multi-layered sites, and even better from caves, are the only "correct" ones.

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Bernard V., Salles J. -F. Discoveries of a Christian church at al-Qusr, Failaka (Kuwait) // PSAS. 1991. Vol. 21.

Doe B. Socotra. Island of Tranquility. London, 1992.

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Fiey J.M. Mossoul chretienne. Essai sur l'histoire, l'archeologie et l'etat actuel des monuments chretiens de la ville de Mossoul. Beyrouth, 1959.

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