Светлана Жарникова – The Distaff and the phallic cult (страница 5)
It is important to emphasize that the similarity we have noted concerns mainly the ancient elements of the culture of the compared regions. This gives reason to associate them not so much with later cultural and trade relations, but with the genetic relationship of the population of these areas. According to anthropological and ethnographic studies, the Russian population of the European North was formed as a result of the advance of Slovenes and Krivichi to the North from the Middle Dnieper region and their introduction into the environment of the Letto-Lithuanians and Baltic Finns, who belonged to the Atlantic-Baltic group of anthropological types.72 In turn, the data of craniological and archaeological studies indicate that the basis for the formation of the Atlanto-Baltic types was the Indo-European tribes that penetrated the European North from more southern regions. 73
Mezen
Thus, the analysis of images on the Mezen spinning wheels allows us to speak about the broad ties with other regions of Asia and Europe reflected in the art of Mezen, which, in all likelihood, determined those features of the Mezen painting, which researchers often identified as unusual and "mysterious". In the light of the considered ethnic ties, the similarity of the Mezen paintings with the oldest paintings in Eurasia becomes clear. We have already talked about the ancient Greek and Azeline cultures. In addition, I will point out the similarities with the art of other ancient cultures - the Cretan-Mycenaean, Etruscan, Thracian, Koban, Urartian, as well as with the Central Asian archaeological culture of Anau. On the decorated household and religious objects of the listed cultures, we see the same ornamental elements repeating in similar combinations: shaded triangles, crossed rhombuses and squares, swastika figures, various kinds of crosses, etc. The similarity is sometimes striking, especially if we bear in mind the considerable distances space and time, separating these cultures from the Mezen culture we are studying.
The geography of archaeological cultures testifies that related tribes took part in their creation, occupying vast territories in the northern steppes from the Black Sea region to southern Siberia and Central Asia. Within these limits, as most scientists believe, was the homeland of the Indo-Europeans. Archaeological sites related to them in this territory can be traced from 3-2 thousand BC until the next time, including the Scythian era. Various Scythian tribes are known to have taken part in the ethnogenesis of not only the Slavic, but also the Finno-Ugric peoples. Therefore, some of the elements of the Mezen painting, which we consider as a result of the interrelationships of the Russian population of Mezen with the neighboring Finno-Ugric population, in their deep origins may refer to Indo-European antiquity. Thus, images of men in two-horned headdresses have analogies in the petroglyphs of Lake Onega and the White Sea, in the sculpture of Tripoli and in the ceramics of the Komarov culture. The horse, so often depicted on the Mezen spinning wheels, was, as is well known, a typical chthonic animal of the Indo-Europeans. Among the characteristic subjects in the art of the latter include the image of a horse harnessed to a cart (chariot).
In the worldview of the Indo-Europeans, the opposition of the dark and light principles (black and red horses on spinning wheels) is explained. The roots of these views, according to researchers, go back to the Proto-Indo-Iranians, in whose mythology good and evil forces were personified, respectively, by white and black horses. 74 A comparative study of mythology has shown that a number of ritual representations associated with a horse (horse sacrifice, a horse near the "world tree", etc.) coincide among the ancient Indo-Europeans and some Asian peoples who spoke Altai, in particular Turkic, languages, which, according to researchers, reflects ancient contacts between these peoples 75.
The Indo-European community can explain the similarity of the Mezen painting with the Dipylon style and other varieties of the ancient Greek, the so-called geometric style, which we mentioned. In this regard, the resemblance of lions on the pediments of houses in the Mezen painting with the relief figures of lions on the "lion gates" in Mycenae, discovered in due time by G. Schliemann, will not seem so surprising. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that in many elements the culture of the Indo-Europeans goes back to an older, substratum population in relation to them. It is known, for example, that the cart was borrowed from the ancient Sumerians; compositions with lions, as well as some elements of the Greek geometric style, are found in the art of ancient Crete, and such an element characteristic of Indo-European art as the swastika (not uncommon, by the way, in the Mezen painting), goes back to the pre-Aryan population of India. It is possible that the Mezen painting reflects precisely these more ancient forms of the considered elements of Indo-European art. Hence the originality of the Mezen painting, its similarity with the art of the Finno-Ugric and Siberian peoples, neighbors with the Russians Mezen, as well as the Siberian peoples, who have preserved stages of more ancient elements in everyday life and culture. However, these questions require further research.
Arhangelsk region. Pogorelets village. Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist on Mezen. Photo by Valery Bliznyuk.
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20. For example, in some regions of Siberia, when laying a house in tribute to the soused (to the brownie) in the front corner they put a small cedar with a root, saying: “Here, mother-sibling, a warm house and a shaggy cedar; Громыко М. М. Трудовые традиции русских крестьян Сибири (XVII -первая половина XIX в.). Новсибирск. 1975. p.292.
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