Светлана Жарникова – Ornamental complex of the Nort of Russia (страница 5)

In conclusion, the author, on the basis of the analysis of archaic geometric and plot ornamentation, which remained in the North Russian peasant environment until the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, as well as existed for a long historical period among those peoples of Eurasia, whose ethnogenesis is associated with the migrations of Indo-Iranian peoples of the Eneolithic era - Bronze and Early Iron, and on the basis of modern data of paleoanthropology, paleoclimatology, archeology and history, he considers it possible to draw the following conclusions:

Firstly, on the territory of Eastern Europe, in particular the Russian North, the ornamental tradition, the origins of which lead to the Upper Paleolithic Kostenko and Mezinian cultures, has developed continuously over the millennia, transforming and changing, but retaining in the East Slavic tradition the most ancient archetypes that have developed even more than 20 millennia ago.

Secondly, the data of archeology and anthropology indicate that these ancient ornamental complexes, formed in Eastern Europe, were brought to Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, to the agricultural oases of Central Asia, to the Transcaucasus, Iran, Afghanistan and Northwestern India from steppes and forest-dampness of Eastern Europe by those agricultural and cattle-breeding, Aryan tribes, which in the II millennium BC began to advance east and southeast from their ancient ancestral home.

Thirdly, preservation in East Slavic and Indo-Iranian mythological fund of a number of absolutely identical plots, rituals and representations, a significant similarity of sacred vocabulary indicate that the addition of these mythopoetic representations and ritual-ritual practice took place in ancient times among closely related tribes living for a long historical period in neighboring interspersed, territories.

Fourthly, many complex and laborious images of ancient Indo-Iranian mythology get the possibility of a certain decipherment when correlating them with the archaeological sites of Eastern Europe of the Paleolithic-Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, as well as comparing them with the subjects of Russian, and in particular, North Russian, folk art.

Fifth, in connection with the question of the location of the ancient ancestral home of the Indo-Iranian tribes, the author turns to the hypothesis of the outstanding Indian thinker and politician Bala Gangadhar Tilak about the northern ancestral home of the Aryans. Proceeding from the fact that the texts of the "Mahabharata" and "Avesta", evidence of Scythian and ancient Greek mythology (Bongard-Levin G. M., Grantovskay E. A. From Scythia to India. M. 1983, Kuklina I. V. Ethnogeography of Scythia according to antique sources. L. 1985) place the ancestral home of the Aryans in those latitudes where the day lasts six months and the night lasts six months, the North Star and the Big Dipper are constantly high overhead, to the north lies the freezing sea, over which the aurora shines, and the main geographical landmark of this ancestral home is the Sacred Mountains, stretching from west to east and dividing rivers into flowing into the North and South Seas, the author comes to the conclusion that the only possible identification of these sacred mountains with those latitudinal uplifts in the north of Eastern Europe, which include the Subpolar Urals, Timan Ridge and Northern Uvaly. This conclusion is made on the basis of the fact that it is here that the main watershed of the rivers of the basin of the Caspian and White seas is located, and also due to the fact that it is at these latitudes that all those natural phenomena are observed on which attention is focused in the above-listed ancient sources. As one of the visual proofs, a map of Ptolemy (Rom. 1490) is given where in the north (according to the Ptolemy's grid at a latitude of 63-64 °, that is, at the latitude of the Northern Urals) mountains called Hyperborean and having a latitudinal orientation are placed. It is from these mountains, according to Ptolemy, that the Volga originates, called by the ancient Avestan name RHA, what can be considered true, so the ancients did not know the true source of the Volga, and such large tributaries as the Kama, Vyatka, Vetluga, Unzha, Kostroma and Sheksna really originate from the Northern Uvals. The author of this work notes that it is in the watershed and at present that very interesting from the point of view of the possibility of comparison are widespread their toponyms and hydronyms with Indo-Iranian vocabulary.

Sixth, modern anthropological data play a huge role in resolving the issue of the ancient population of the European north of our country, which indicates that a certain flattening of the face, characteristic of the ancient population of the north of Eastern Europe, noted on the skulls of the Oleneostrovsky Mesolithic burial ground and traditionally associated with the arrival of of this population because of the Urals "from the territories of the Finno-Ugric peoples, can be explained not by the Uralic origin, not by the mixing of Caucasians with Mongoloids, but by the mixing of northern Caucasians with southern ones (Gokhman I. I. Anthropological features of the ancient population of the north of the European part of the USSR and the way their education.Anthropology of the modern and ancient population of the European part of the USSR. L. 1986). This anthropological type was widespread in the Mesolithic of Eastern Europe and was identified in Ukraine, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, the Mesolithic of Yugoslavia, the Neolithic and Eneolithic of Czechoslovakia. In the Mesolithic period, traces of population migration from the Ural regions to the territory of the north of Eastern Europe "were not found" (Oshibkina S. V. Mesolithic Sukhona and Eastern Prionezhie. M. 1983. p. 284). But since during this period the racial trunks were already formed (Gokhman I. I. 1986), and the peoples of the Ural family developed that special, specifically "Yukaghir" Mongoloid, which A. G. Kozintsev considers to be inherent in one way or another to all peoples of this language family (Cranioscopy and racial classification. SE. 1987. p. 2), then the migration to the north of Eastern Europe of a significant amount of the Ural population in the subsequent Neolithic-Bronze Age seems unlikely. Such a resettlement of the carriers of "Yukaghir" Mongoloidism would have left a noticeable mark on the anthropology of the inhabitants of the Russian North. However, V. P. Alekseev considers the anthropological characteristics of the population of the Vologda, Kostroma, Yaroslavl and Tver provinces to be close to those found in the medieval population of Ukraine and, in particular, near the glades in the middle reaches of the Dnieper (Alekseev V. P. Anthropology of the European part of the USSR. M. 1981), and T. I. Alekseeva came to the conclusion that: “The glades are, apparently, the only group of Slavs in which the anthropological features of the Scythians of the forest belt is manifested” (Alekseeva T. I. Slavs and Germans in the light of anthropological data. VI. 1974. No. 3, p. 62).

Thus, the population of the Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver, Novgorod and Vologda provinces, having anthropological characteristics close to the early medieval Slavic tribe of Polyans, to a certain extent retained the "anthropological features of the Scythians of the forest belt." In the light of all of the above, the thesis of Slavic assimilation in the 1st millennium A.D. significant substratum Finno-Ugric population of the North of Eastern Europe seems unsubstantiated. Seventh, on the basis of modern data of anthropology, archeology, linguistics, as well as on the basis of materials from such a source that has preserved an exceptional archaism as Russian folk culture and, in particular, North Russian peasant art, we can conclude that, probably, the territories of the North East Europe was inhabited by Indo-European tribes in the deepest antiquity, since the lands east of Onega and White lakes were not subjected to the last (Valdai) glaciation, significant migrations of the population from beyond the Urals during the Paleolithic-Bronze period to these territories were not, and the most ancient human sites here belong to the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, and in recent years, a significant number of sites of the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age have been found.

The author considers it possible to assume that it was on the lands of the north of Eastern Europe that the initial period of the history of the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) peoples took place, and that their immediate neighbors were in the south, south-west and west - the Proto-Slavs and Prabalts, and in the north-east - the Proto-Finno-ugry.

This localization of the ancient ancestral home of the Aryans explains many of the riddles of the hymns of the Rig Veda and the Avesta; it also explains a lot of very ancient borrowings from Indo-Iranian languages into Finno-Ugric languages. Modern anthropologists do not reject the possibility of movement during the Upper Paleolithic-Mesolithic period from the north of Eastern Europe in the Urals and Trans-Urals of some groups, to which the modern population of these territories owes the lightening of pigmentation (Gokhman I. I. 1986. p. 220). This localization makes it possible to explain the numerous ancient convergences in sacred vocabulary, mythology and ritual among Indo-Iranian, East Slavic, Baltic and Finno-Ugric peoples. In the process of subsequent ethnic shifts, mutual influence and transformation of tribes and tribal associations, the Proto-Slavic-Indo-Iranian relations became even deeper and more versatile, which is clearly evidenced not only by archaeological materials, but also by the commonality of many cultural traditions that have developed over millennia and, of course , folk art, in visible images reflecting the long-term residence of Indo-Iranian and East Slavic peoples in close, and often common territories of Eastern Europe.