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Isolated Russian Family Had No Knowledge of World War II, Moon Landing

Isolated Russian Family Had No Knowledge of World War II, Moon Landing

Sure, you’ve thought about just giving it all up to go live out in the wild. Who hasn’t? Well, one Russian family did just that in the 1930s, and they and their descendants have been living and dying out there ever since, totally cut off from society. Karp Lyko and his wife fled religious persecution, building a small cabin in the Siberian wilderness. There, they raised their children in a one-room hut, completely cut off from the rest of the world. When they were discovered by a group of geologists in the ’70s (the first non-familial humans their children had ever seen), the Lykos had never heard of the Second World War, had no concept of jets or atomic bombs and refused to believe that men landed on the moon. But they could hunt for game barefoot in the Siberian winter, so it evens out. However, they started dying off rapidly (possibly from their weakened immune systems’ exposure to the geologists). Their daughter, Agafia, lives in the Siberian wild to this day, completely alone. Read the whole, amazing story over at Smithsonian

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