The watershed spot of an ordinary country teacher, Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich

Ayurzanaeva Saryuna

Grade 8 Orion

Scientific adviser

Sodboeva Larisa Dondokovna

Teacher of English

Aginskaya secondary school №1

The watershed spot of an ordinary country teacher, Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich

The annotation

Chapter 1. A teacher, a geographer, a researcher

Chapter 2. Discovery of an ordinary country teacher

Conclusion

Bibliography

Annotation

Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich was a teacher of geography in the Aginskaya secondary school №1 where he worked for many years. He was passionate about his profession, dedicated to his work and subject. He discovered a unique natural phenomenon, the watershed spot of three largest rivers in our country, the Amur, the Lena and the Enisei. Later he suggested that there were other three watershed spots on the planet. He put forward these hypotheses in 1977. These discoveries which were done by an ordinary country teacher of geography by analyzing maps and brilliantly confirmed later by expeditions are still being discussed. The scientific-practical conference "Zhalsarayn Timur Ukhinovich - teacher, geographer, local historian, researcher" was held in April 2010 in the village of Aginskoe. At the conference it was said that Timur Ukhinovich ranked rightfully with such great teachers as Zankov and Amonashvili and was decades ahead of his time.

The aim of our research is to learn about his life, his achievements and his research work.

At the beginning of our work we had to do the following tasks:

1. to tell about his life
2. to analyse the research work done by  Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich
3. to summarize all the facts about his discovery

While making a research we used the following methods:

1. collection of all information
2. analysis
3. observation
4. induction

        The subject of our research is the life of Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich.

The object is the discovery done by Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich.

The theoretical significance: Doing this research work we try to memorize the name of Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich, to define the importance of his discovery.

Chapter 1. A teacher, a geographer, a reseacher

Zhalsarayn Timur Ukhinovich was born in the village of Suduntui, Aginsky district, in 1928 in the family of a shepherd. He was the youngest of 13 children. In 1936 he started his studies at school. After finishing the school he entered the Aginsky pedagogical college. After graduating college he continued to study at the Faculty of Geography at the Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute.

        After graduating the institute Timur Ukhinovich came back to his native land and began his teaching career in the Aginskaya secondary school №1.  Even then, in the sixties and seventies, Timur Ukhinovich Zhalsarain introduced training based on the technology of logical reference notes (LOK or LOS - sheets of reference signals). This method of training developed memory, the ability to analyze and a  monologic well-structured speech.

Geography was his vocation. He tried to instill the love of this fascinating subject in his students. “We attended our geography classes with notebooks, pens, pencils and erasers. Geography lessons were lessons in searching for information on the atlas, we learned the ability to decipher the legend of the atlas, compare and analyze various facts”, one of his students said.

Timur Ukhinovich used a large map made of plywood with holes where chips with numbers were inserted. Using his hand-made map children studied the political system and economical zones. And he had a lot of such pedagogical discoveries. Based on the drawn maps,they studied islands, lakes, mountains, etc., divided them into basins, regions. He brought a gramophone and records with music from different countries to the lesson, the student's task was to guess the country by the melody and talk about it. So, Zhalsarain Timur Ukhinovich turned every lesson into a magical action. “He always adhered to the principle that the creativity of the teacher gave rise to the creativity of the student,” recalls another student.

He was an initiator of school trips to the Alkhanai, Lake Baikal, the Sokhondo Range, the Khetei Cave. His students are not so young now, but they remember these trips with warmth and joy. The famous buryat writer Zhamyan Baldanzhabon wrote about the trip to the Alkhanai in the  book "Secrets of the Alkhanai" where Timur Ukhinovich was the prototype of one of the characters.

Chapter 2. Discovery of an ordinary country teacher

Timur Zhalsarain analyzed  the literary, archival and cartographic materials in detail. The result of this hard work was the article "The spot of the great watershed". He wrote the article in 1977 and published it in the newspaper “Zabaikalsky Rabochiy”. In the article  he asserted that there are unique places in Transbaikal, to which he attributed the watershed spot  - the junction of the three river systems of the Amur, the Lena and the Yenisei. According to Timur Ukhinovich, this point is the Amuro-Leno-Yenisei junction. According to Dashidondokov Shirab-Nimbu Sanzhaevich, the Chairman of the Aginsky Department of the Trans-Baikal Branch of the Russian Geographical Society such concepts as “Watershed spot” and “Amuro-Leno-Yenisei junction” were firstly entered by Timur Zhalsarain.

“Because of the peculiarities of terrain features atmospheric precipitation moves to the north through the Vitim to the Lena, to the west through the Khilok to the Baikal-Enisei system and to the east through the Ingoda into the Amur river basin” he wrote in the article. He called these rivers the greatest for a reason. Timur Ukhinovich's brilliant idea was that he saw the uniqueness of the contact of the three largest river systems on the scale of the whole planet. He found the  point of contact by calculation, by analyzing geographical maps. So he made a theoretical geographical discovery or scientific forecast, which was confirmed brilliantly. Chita local historians organized an expedition to the Yablonovy Ridge in 1982 and the point indicated on the map by Timur Zhalsarain was actually determined by them.This point was a mountain with the height of 1236 meters, which was called the Watershed Mountain, later it was renamed into the Mount Pallas in honor of Peter Simon Pallas, the leader of one of the most famous academic expeditions of the 18th century, who crossed the Yablonovy Ridge. Unfortunately, Timur Ukhinovich  did not participate  in the expedition himself, as he was already at an advanced age. The main initiator and participant of this and other subsequent expeditions to this mountain was Yuri Timofeevich Rudenko, the chairman of the Transbaikal branch of the Russian Geographical Society, at that time a teacher at the Chita State Pedagogical Institute named after N.G. Chernyshevsky. Together with his colleagues-geographers, he found this mountain where the basins of the Amur, Lena, and Yenisei rivers connect. Yuri Timofeevich Rudenko played a significant role in promoting this discovery and made a huge contribution to bringing the significance of this event to the public consciousness. He always emphasized the contribution and priority of Timur Ukhinovich Zhalsarain in this discovery.

In April 2011, the second article called "Four spots on the planet" written by Timur Zhalsarain  was found. It was published in the newspaper "Aginskaya Pravda" in 1979. But, unfortunately his work  was not noticed by the scientific community in time. In fact, this publication was a completely unexpected turning point in the history of this discovery and even a sensation in some way. In this article Timur Ukhinovich spoke about the second watershed spot. According to him, this place is located in North America almost at the very border of the USA and Canada on the crest of the Rocky Mountains being the junction of the river systems of the Mississippi, the Columbia and the Nelson. This spot is also notable for the fact that it is located between three oceans - Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic. That’s why Timur Ukhinovich called it the spot of three oceans. Indeed it exists, this place is called Triple Divide Peak (Peak of three watersheds). This is one of the famous places in the USA, Glacier National Park of Montana.

Timur Ukhinovich indicated the third watershed spot between the river systems of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Western Dvina, located on the Valdai Upland. It is noteworthy that it is the spot of the three largest inland seas - the Baltic, the Caspian and the Black.

Timur Ukhinovich indicated the fourth watershed spot of the Ganges, the Indus and the Brahmaputra basins and regarded it as the highest watershed spot on the planet. “It is not water that flows from this peak, but a formidable natural phenomenon occurs - snow avalanches, sliding of glaciers towards the upper reaches of the three great Himalayan rivers”, Timur Ukhinovich wrote accurately describing the hydrological situation in this region. He also assumed that a human foot had never set foot on this place.

Conclusion

In 2013 a remarkable traveler-researcher, scientist of physics and mathematics  Sergey Yuryevich Balalaev made a presentation at the Roerich Museum (Moscow) about the highest watershed spot on the planet, presumably the Mount Kanglung Kangri, the peak on the crest of the Himalayan range, an altitude of over 6000 m above sea level. He also noted that these places have particularly harsh climatic conditions, are difficult to access, thus confirming the assumption of Timur Ukhinovich Zhalsarain. “It is gratifying to realize that all combined efforts - theoretical and practical - has led to the confirmation of the scientific idea of Timur Ukhinovich Zhalsarain about the existence of the triple Himalayan junction of the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra river systems”, writes Natalya Atutova, a member of the Trans-Baikal branch of the Russian Geographical Society, and most importantly, the daughter of Timur Ukhinovich, who continues to study her father's case.

Later they wrote about him that he taught lessons in an interesting, unusual way, using the methods that teachers use nowadays. Actually, his creativity went beyond the educational system for which Timur Ukhinovich was persecuted by education officials. Finally, they took away his classroom, which was the most equipped in the school, and tore off all the maps he had drawn, destroyed visual aids made by him and transferred it to the music classroom.

Timur Ukhinovich was nominated for the title of an excellent teacher of public education several times and rejected every time. This title was awarded to him only at the end of his life, when he was sick and old. It is also necessary to recognize the very disappointing fact that the archive of Timur Ukhinovich has been irretrievably lost. Timur Ukhinovich died in May 1991 and was buried in the village of Kusochi, Mogoytuysky district.

At the conference, which took place in 2010, the following words were sounded: “He was not appreciated during his lifetime, his name is now in oblivion”. However, the memories of the students, his works and discoveries made the name of Timur Ukhinovich Zhalsarain recognized.

Bibliography

1. http://www.aginsk-pravda.ru/news/nauchnaja_koncepcija_t_u_zhalsarajna_ob_istokakh_velikikh_rek_planety/2018-03-27-6205
2. http://www.aginsk-pravda.ru/news/nauchnoe_otkrytie_cherez_tridcat_let/2013-05-27-1171
3. http://www.aginsk-pravda.ru/news/nauchnoe_otkrytie_operedivshee_vremja/2018-11-22-6904