Алексей Виноградов – Holy waters of the ancestral homeland of mankind (страница 1)

Holy waters of the ancestral homeland of mankind

Introduction

The problem of locating the original homeland of the Indo-European peoples has long confronted scholars. The discovery of Sanskrit, the first texts written in it, and the resulting fascination with ancient Indian culture were decisive for the emergence of Indo-European studies, a phenomenon most vividly reflected in von Schlegel's book, "On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians" (1808). Von Schlegel, the first to propose a single original homeland for all Indo-Europeans, located this original homeland in Hindustan. However, this assumption was soon proven erroneous, as before the arrival of the Aryan tribes, India was inhabited by representatives of a different language family and a different, distinct type—the Black Dravidians. However, this idea is shared by a significant number of Hindu scholars and politicians of the Hindutva school.

Modern anthropologists believe that modern European humans developed in Eastern Europe, between the Dnieper, Don, and Volga rivers. There are simply no earlier finds in other regions.

Until the early 1930s, the Soviet historical school based its definition of the Indo-European homeland on the works of A. A. Shakhmatov and L. I. Niederle. Based on natural geographical factors, the Indo-European homeland was located in Moravia and Silesia. Meanwhile, the homeland of the Eastern Indo-Europeans (Slavs, Armenians, and Indo-Iranians) was located in the Moscow and Tver regions, in the upper reaches of the Dnieper. It was assumed that the Eastern Indo-Europeans later migrated south along the Dnieper to the Black Sea region, where the Aryan Indo-Iranians formed, then migrated from the Don to Iran and India.

The Slavic homeland was located from Prussia to Pskov, along the banks of the Neman, Dvina, and the Gulf of Riga. The Slavs then migrated to Poland and further to the Balkans, Carpathians, and Ukraine. But then, in 1929, “Russian history” itself was recognized as counter-revolutionary, and in 1932-36 the “homeland theory” was declared by communist ideologists to be non-Bolshevik, fascist, and anti-scientific.

Russian Historical Atlas by K. Kudryashov

It should be noted that since the 1930s, a primitive theory has prevailed in Russia that all Eastern European hydronyms derive from an extinct Finno-Ugric language. Proponents of this theory typically consider themselves descendants of certain Finno-Ugric women raped by the Tatar-Mongols in the 13th century, and for this reason, they passed on the Russian language and customs to their descendants. Kievan Rus', which existed before this time, is somehow forgotten.

Not only the name of the river "Yelna" (fir tree), which is clearly of Slavic origin, is considered Finno-Ugric. According to this theory, the hydronym "balka" (beam) is taken from the Mordvin "vele" (village). One Russian researcher found that in the names, the word "ozero" (lake) is a calque of Finno-Ugric terms that have not survived to this day. The word "reka" (river) comes from the word "ruchei," and the word "ruchei" (stream) from the Finno-Ugric word "ega," the source of which is unknown. Moreover, in his opinion, the words "reka, ruchei, ozero" in the names of rivers, streams, and lakes have nothing in common with the Slavic words "reka, ruchei, ozero."

To determine the meanings of East Slavic hydronyms, a method is used to blend words from various Finnic and Ugric languages into a single hydronym. In other cases, such a hodgepodge is not used.

The latest trend among Russian Finno-Ugric scholars is to write all words in Latin. Since the Komi and, for example, the Mari, use Cyrillic, each author's notation ends up being unique, different from the others, and unclear as to what the original designation is. But it's confusing and "scientific."

The entire Finno-Ugric theory is a quasi-scientific invention, with no basis in reality other than a translation error from German into Russian of early 19th-century works on northern ethnography, later creatively developed by communist scholarship.

Of course, not all Soviet science supported such fabrications. The works of N. A. Bryusov, N. S. Derzhavin, B. V. Gornung, N. R. Guseva, V. V. Ivanov, archaeologists V. N. Danilenko, N. A. Chmykhov, and Yu. A. Shilov, and many other genuine scholars, are well-known.

Academician Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov was convinced of the original Slavic settlement in the vast expanses of Eastern Europe. He begins the history of its modern population in the mid-second millennium BC and traces it back to Scythia during the time of Herodotus. He then traces the line of succession to Kievan Rus'.

Speaking of the Slavic peoples, B.A. Rybakov attributes their formation to two eras: he associates names like "Radimichi" with the later colonization of the 6th and 7th centuries, and names like "Polyane" with the Trzciniec-Komarov culture.

"B. V. Gornung speaks even more definitively of the separation of the Proto-Slavs in the mid-2nd millennium BC and directly links the Proto-Slavs with the Trzciniec and Komarów (a more developed variant of the Trzciniec) cultures. The vast region of the Trzciniec culture in its final form has revived the concept of a Slavic massif from the Dnieper to the Oder, in complete agreement with the latest linguistic data on the time of the separation of the Slavs... Thus, we can recognize the region of the Trzciniec-Komarov culture as the primary site of unification and formation of the first separate Proto-Slavs, who remained in this area after the massive dispersal of the Indo-Europeans—the "Lace-Led" people—had ceased. This region can be designated by the somewhat vague term "homeland"...

Let's consider the historical lifespan of each of the cultures reflected by the three maps: Trzciniec-Komarowska – about 400 years, Przeworsk-Zarubinets – about 400 years, and the Prague-Korczak culture – about 200 years. This gives us approximately a thousand years during which the area of a certain ethnic community, reflected on these maps, was a historical reality. We must necessarily take this into account and align our research into Slavic ethnogenesis with this reality...

The creation of a homogeneous archaeological (Trzciniec-Komarowska) culture was the result and material expression of the process of consolidation. Slavdom at that time was not completely monolithic – the single archaeological culture was subdivided into 10-15 local variants, which could correspond to ancient tribes or tribal unions, and possibly even to the original dialects of the Proto-Slavic language. The starting point we have chosen for the Slavic historical process—the mid-second millennium BC—finds the Proto-Slavic world at the level of a primitive communal system, but with a fairly rich historical past."

The ancestors of the current population of Ukraine include the precursors of the Bronze Age cultures—the Eneolithic inhabitants of Trypillian settlements, farmers of the 6th-4th millennia BC—as direct ancestors of the Slavs and as participants in the creation of their culture.

Academician B. A. Rybakov points out: "I recall B. V. Gornung's thesis that the Trypillians were among the linguistic ancestors of the Slavs." He devoted considerable space to interpreting the ornamentation on Trypillian ceramics, since it has been proven in the Soviet Union that these people were genuine Proto-Slavs, speaking a Proto-Slavic (or, more accurately, Old Russian) language.

B. A. Rybakov predicted that myths and legends survive not hundreds, but tens of thousands of years, and that many surviving traditions trace their roots back to the time of mammoth hunting. He identified parallels in Trypillian culture with the hymns of the Rigveda: "Trypillian painting is an exact illustration of the tenth hymn of the Rigveda."

Academician B. A. Rybakov wrote about the long journeys of the Aryans with their herds and called the Slavs their direct descendants. He considered the Dnieper region to be the homeland of the Aryans. In his opinion, the Rigveda was formed in this territory, and from there, part of the population migrated to India. He had a great influence on the development of the concepts of S. V. Zharnikova and A. G. Vinogradov.

N. A. Chmykhov (who was personally acquainted with both S. V. Zharnikova and A. G. Vinogradov) wrote about the roots of the Slavs in the Proto-Neolithic, long before the emergence of the Trypillian culture, and called Right-Bank Ukraine the original homeland of both the Slavs and the Indo-Europeans as a whole. In his opinion, settlers from Ukraine led the "Neolithization" of the Middle East and carried out the "Neolithic Revolution." N. A. Chmykhov considered the current population of Eastern Europe to be the original population, who inhabited the territory of the Indo-European homeland for 10,000 years, the only truly indigenous Indo-Europeans.

The connection between the Trypillians and the Slavs is usually proven through archaeological evidence. S. V. Zharnikova demonstrated the unity of the ornamental complexes characteristic of Old Russian and Trypillian monuments (we will not cite these materials here, as they are widely known and would fill many volumes).