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A century in the Siberian wilderness, the old believers who time forgot, by Sophie Pinkham, read by Olga Koch.

In the summer of 1978, a team of geologists exploring southern Siberia found something rarer than diamonds. While searching for a helicopter landing site amid the steep hills and forested canyons of the western Cyan Mountains,

their pilot caught sight of what appeared to be a garden, 150 miles from the nearest settlement.

Hovering as low as he could, he saw a house. No people were visible, but someone was clearly

tending the garden. He and his geologist passengers were shocked

to find a dwelling in an area long considered too remote for human habitation.

When the four geologists set up camp ten miles away, it was the mysterious homestead that was

first in their mind. Who could live here?

Were the inhabitants the last Mohicans of the Brezhnev era? The geologists ventured to the settlement

bearing gifts, and a pistol, just in case. They were greeted by a dishevelled old man

dressed in patched-up stacking cloth. This was Karpo Sosipovich-Likov, the patriarch of the family.

Inside a tiny dark cabin, the geologists found Karp's two adult daughters, Natalia and Agafia,

weeping and praying. Four miles away, by the riverside, lived Karp's two middle-aged sons,

Savin and Dimitri.

It soon became apparent that none of the members of this aging family had interacted with

outsiders in decades.

None of the lick of children had ever seen bread, but when the geologists offered them a loaf

and some jam, they refused. We are not allowed that, they said, in a refrain that would become familiar to all their visitors.

Natalia and Agafia were hard to understand, not only because of their archaic vocabulary,

...