Scythians. Aryans. Gimbutas, Maria at the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Introduction.

The work of Herodotus is a historical source. The fourth book of Herodotus “Melpomene” was carefully studied by the first Russian scientist - historian V.N. Tatishchev. I.E. Zabelin. studied the ethnographic material contained in the fourth book of Herodotus, on the basis of which he decisively rejected the hypotheses of the Iranian or Mongolian origin of the Scythians. Such famous historians and archaeologists as Solovyov S.M., Karamzin N.M., Rostovtsev M.I., Neihardt A.A., Grakov B.N., Rybakov B.A., Artamonov M. turned to the works of Herodotus. I., Smirnov A.P. and many others. Melpomene of Herodotus is the only historical work that has reached us in full, containing historical (chronologically earlier information than contemporary information to Herodotus), geographical, archaeological (about burials), ethnographic, military and other information about the Scythians and Scythia. This work is an attempt to prove, based on the information of Herodotus, that the Scythians were our ancestors, and the Scythian language was the proto-language of the Slavs. Herodotus’ text contains a large number of toponyms, proper names, and names of tribes that inhabited our territories in the 6th – 5th centuries BC. There are references to legends of the 2nd millennium BC. Deciphering the Scythian language using linguistic methods alone is impossible. It should be carried out with the involvement of existing at the moment data from archaeology, anthropology, ethnography, geography, additional historical sciences, etc. On the other hand, information contained in archeology and anthropology, etc., cannot provide complete information without data contained in our language. In order to understand how this data can be used, consider the method that I use to decipher our proto-language.

Introduction.

The father of history, Herodotus, visited our southern territories between 490 – 480 – 423 BC. At the same time, he wrote the main work, which contains the most important data for historians. The fourth book of Herodotus “Melpomene” is dedicated to our territories, which the Father of History calls Scythia, and the inhabitants of the country Scythians. Officially, Scythologists adhere to the Iranian version of the Scythian language, and the Scythian tribes are called Iranian tribes. However, both the Scythian and Iranian languages have a single Indo-European root, so comparing the two languages one can only come to a common root. This root is primary, the two subsequent languages are secondary. Thus, we can only talk about the time of their separation from the common root, but not about the origin of one from the other. For it can just as well be argued that the Iranian language originated from Scythian. Consequently, linguistics alone is not enough to study an ancient language. It is necessary to involve other sciences: archeology, ethnography, onomastics, etc.

Chapter I. Analysis of the text of Herodotus using data from archeology, ethnography, linguistics and other sciences.

Maria Gimbutas(Gimbutas is the husband's surname; correct - Maria Gimbutienė, lit. Marija Gimbutien, English Marija Gimbutas, nee Maria Birutė Alseikaitė, lit. Marija Birut Alseikait, January 23, 1921, Vilnius, Lithuania - February 2, 1994, Los Angeles) - American archaeologist and cultural scientist of Lithuanian origin, one of the largest and most controversial figures in Indo-European studies, whose name is associated with the promotion of the “kurgan hypothesis” of the origin of the Indo-Europeans. Doctor honoris causa of Vytautas Magnus University (1993).

Biography

She was born into the family of a doctor, public figure, author of books on Lithuanian history and medicine, Danielius Alseika (1881-1936), and an ophthalmologist and public figure, Veronica Alseikienė.

In 1931 she moved to Kaunas with her parents. After graduating from high school (1938), she studied at the humanities department of Vytautas Magnus University and graduated from Vilnius University in 1942. She married the architect and figure in the Lithuanian press Jurgis Gimbutas. In 1944, she and her husband went to Germany. In 1946 she graduated from the University of Tübingen. Since 1949 she lived in the USA, worked at Harvard and the University of California.

In 1960, Gimbutas visited Moscow and Vilnius, where she met her mother. In 1981 she gave lectures in Vilnius and Moscow. Died in Los Angeles; On May 8, 1994, the ashes were reburied at the Petrashion cemetery in Kaunas.

Kurgan hypothesis

Gimbutas is the author of 23 monographs, including such general studies as “Balts” (1963) and “Slavs” (1971). She was an innovator in archeology, combining archaeological research itself with deep knowledge of Indo-European linguistics. Made significant contributions to the study ancient history Indo-European peoples and, in particular, the Slavs.

In 1956, Marija Gimbutas came up with the Kurgan hypothesis, which revolutionized Indo-European studies. She looked for the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans in the steppes of Southern Russia and the steppe zone of Ukraine (Yamnaya culture). Tried to identify archaeological evidence of the invasion of the Indo-European steppe people into Western Europe (“kurganization”). Joseph Campbell compared the significance of her early works for Indo-European studies with the significance of deciphering the Rosetta Stone for Egyptology.

Old Europe

Gimbutas's later works, especially the trilogy "Goddesses and Gods" Old Europe"(1974), "The Language of the Goddess" (1989) and "The Civilization of the Goddess" (1991), caused opposition in the academic community. In them, following in the footsteps of Robert Graves's The White Goddess, Gimbutas painted an idealized picture of the matriarchal pre-Indo-European society of Old Europe - built on peace, equality and tolerance for gays (a fragment of this society is the Minoan civilization). As a result of the invasion of the Indo-Europeans, the “golden age” was replaced by androcracy - the power of men, built on war and blood. These judgments of Gimbutas caused a positive response among feminist and neo-pagan movements (eg Wicca), but did not receive support in the scientific community.

A particularly controversial reaction was caused by Gimbutas's interpretation of the Terterian inscriptions in 1989 as the oldest writing in the world, which was allegedly in use in pre-Indo-European Europe.

Memory

In Vilnius, on the house on Jogailos street (Jogailos g. 11), in which the parents lived in 1918-1931 and their daughter Maria Gimbutas lived in 1921-1931, a memorial plaque was installed. In Kaunas, a memorial plate with a bas-relief of Maria Gimbutas is installed on the house on Mickeviiaus g., in which she lived in 1932-1940.

Essays

Maria Gimbutas. Balts: People of the Amber Sea. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2004
Maria Gimbutas. Civilization of the Great Goddess: the world of Ancient Europe. Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2006. (Scientific editor. O. O. Chugai. Rec. Antonova E. M. Translated from English. Neklyudova M. S.) The original was published in 1991 in San Francisco.
Maria Gimbutas. Slavs: Sons of Perun. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2007.

Black Sea steppes and the Kurgan hypothesis

A number of scientists tried to present Central Asia as the Aryan ancestral home. The beauty of this hypothesis is that the Central Asian steppes (now deserts) were ancient habitats of the wild horse. The Aryans were considered skilled horsemen, and it was they who brought horse breeding to India. A significant argument against this is the absence of European flora and fauna in Central Asia, while the names of European plants and animals are found in Sanskrit.

There is also a hypothesis that states that the Aryan ancestral home was in Central Europe- in the territory from the Middle Rhine to the Urals. Representatives of almost all species of animals and plants known to the Aryans actually live in this area. But modern archaeologists object to such a localization - in ancient times, this territory was inhabited by peoples of such different cultural traditions and so different in appearance that it is impossible to unite them within one Aryan culture.

Based on the dictionary of words common to the Aryan peoples that had developed by that time, back in late XIX V. German linguist Friedrich Spiegel suggested that the Aryan ancestral home should be located in Eastern and Central Europe between the Ural Mountains and the Rhine. Gradually, the boundaries of the ancestral home were narrowed to the steppe zone Eastern Europe. For more than 50 years, this hypothesis was based solely on the conclusions of linguists, but in 1926 it received unexpected confirmation when the English archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe published the book “Aryans,” in which he identified the Aryans with the nomadic tribes of the Eastern European steppes. This mysterious people buried their dead in ground pits and sprinkled them generously with red ocher, which is why this culture received the name “ocher burial culture” in archeology. Mounds were often placed on top of such burials.

This hypothesis was accepted by the scientific community, since many scientists speculatively placed the Aryan ancestral home there, but could not connect their theoretical constructs with archaeological facts. It is curious that during World War II, German archaeologists carried out excavations in the Russian and Ukrainian steppes. They were probably trying to find magical weapons in the ancient Aryan burial mounds that could help Germany achieve world domination. Moreover, according to one version, the Fuhrer’s delusional military plan - to advance in two diverging wedges on the Volga and the Caucasus - was connected with the need to protect German archaeologists who were going to dig up Aryan burials at the mouth of the Don. And fifty years later, it was at the mouth of the Don and on the Russian coast Sea of Azov The outstanding Swedish scientist Thor Heyerdahl was looking for Odin's legendary city of Asgard.

In the post-war period, the most active supporter of the steppe hypothesis among foreign scientists was Maria Gimbutas, a follower of V. G. Child. It seems that Soviet archaeologists, historians and linguists should have been glad that world-famous scientists located the Aryan ancestral home on the territory of the USSR. However, ideology intervened: the whole point was in the biography of Maria Gimbutas, there was a sin behind it, such that it belonged to the jurisdiction of the notorious “first department”, and anyone who spoke positively about Gimbutas’ “kurgan hypothesis” came to the attention of “plainclothes historians” "

Maria Gimbutas was born in 1921 in Vilnius, which at that time belonged to the Poles, and later moved with her family to Kaunas, where in 1938 she entered Vytautas the Great University to study mythology. Already in October of the following year, Soviet troops entered Lithuania, although the state retained formal independence. And in the summer of 1940, Soviet troops finally established Soviet power in the country. Sovietization began, many scientists, including those who taught Maria at the university, were shot or deported to Siberia. The mass deportation of Lithuanians occurred in mid-June 1941, a week before the German attack. Already under the Germans, Maria graduated from university and married the architect and publisher Jurgis Gimbutas. Meanwhile, the front line is getting closer and closer to Lithuania, and in 1944 the couple decide to leave with the German troops. Maria leaves her mother in Lithuania. Finding herself in the western zone of occupation, she graduates from the university in Tübingen, since her diploma from Kaunas University, issued under the Nazis, is considered invalid, and after another three years she leaves for the USA, where she will work for many years at Harvard University and the University of California. In addition, she flew to excavations in Europe almost every year.

In 1960, she would be allowed to come to Moscow to see her mother. In the early 1980s, she was allowed to visit the USSR again - she would give several lectures at Moscow and Vilnius universities, but the official anathema to her scientific heritage would be lifted only with the collapse of the USSR. Back in 1956, M. Gimbutas defended his doctoral dissertation, confirming Gordon Childe’s hypothesis that the pit burials belonged to the Aryans. However, she goes further than Child and develops a chronology of the life of the Aryan civilization in the Black Sea-Caspian steppes and a chronology of the Aryan invasions of Europe and Asia. According to her theory, the Aryans as a linguistic and cultural community emerged more than 6 thousand years ago on the basis of the archaeological cultures of Ukraine (Sredny Stog and Dnieper-Donets) and Russia (Samara and Andronovskaya). During this period, the Aryans or their predecessors successfully domesticated the wild horse.

At the beginning of 4 thousand BC. e. under the influence unknown to science factors (most likely, these were unfavorable climatic conditions with frequent alternations of cold winters and dry years), several Aryan tribes went south. One of the waves of Aryan migration crosses the Greater Caucasus Range, invades Anatolia (the territory of modern Turkey) and, on the site of the conquered kingdom of the Hittite tribe, creates its own Hittite state - the first Aryan state on Earth in history. Another wave of migrants was less fortunate - they penetrated into the Trans-Caspian steppes and roamed there for quite a long time. After 2 thousand years, Iranian tribes that broke away from the Aryan community will push these nomads to the borders of the Harappan civilization. On the territory of Ukraine, the Aryans assimilate the Sredny Stog and Trypillian tribes. It was under the influence of the invasions of nomads that the Trypillians built large fortified settlements, such as, for example, Maidanetskoe (Cherkasy region).

In the middle of 4 thousand BC. e. For the first time, two- and four-wheeled carts appear, which would later become the hallmark of many Aryan cultures. At the same time, the Aryan nomadic society reached the peak of its development. Under the influence of the Sredny Stog culture and the tribes of the mountainous Crimea, the Aryans began to erect stone anthropomorphic steles. The Soviet archaeologist Formozov believed that the stone steles in the Black Sea region were related to the more ancient Western European ones. According to the Aryans, the soul of a deceased person inhabited such steles for some time (presumably a year or a month) after death; they made sacrifices to it and asked for magical help in everyday affairs. Later, the stele was buried in a grave along with the bones of the deceased, and a mound was erected over the burial. It is interesting that such rituals, reconstructed by modern archaeologists, are absent from the Vedas, the oldest Aryan ritual texts. This is not surprising, because, as we have already said, the Indian branch has already gone to the Central Asian steppes. At the same time, the first bronze weapons appeared in the steppes, brought by traders along large rivers - the Don, its tributaries and, possibly, the Volga.

By the end of 4 thousand BC. e. The Aryans invade Europe, but are quickly assimilated by the local population. Around 3000, Iranian tribes isolated themselves in the Volga region, they mastered the steppes of Western Siberia and gradually penetrated into the Trans-Caspian steppes, where future Indians lived. Under pressure from Iranian tribes, the Aryans penetrate into Northeast China. Most likely, it was at this time that the division between the veneration of devas among the Indians and the veneration of the asuras-ahuras among the Iranians took place.

After 3000 BC e. the Aryan steppe community ceases to exist. Most likely, climatic factors are again to blame for this: the steppe stopped feeding the nomads, and the majority of the Aryan steppes were forced to become sedentary. The second wave of Aryans invades Europe. In general, at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. e. is a key date for many civilizations of the Old World. Around this time, the first pharaoh of the 1st dynasty, Less, ascended to the Egyptian throne; in Mesopotamia, cities unite into the Sumerian kingdom; Crete is ruled by the legendary king Minos; and in China this is the era of the reign of the legendary five emperors.

In the second half of 3 thousand BC. e. Aryans actively mix with the local population - Balkan-Danubian in Europe, Finno-Ugric (in Russia, Belarus and the Baltic countries). The descendants of such mixed marriages speak dialects of the Aryan language they inherited from their father, but retain the mythology and folklore of their mothers. This is why the myths, fairy tales and songs of the Aryan peoples are so different from each other. In addition, the Aryans quickly adopted the customs of local tribes, in particular the construction of permanent housing. The dwellings of the Aryan peoples of Russia and the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea are built according to Finno-Ugric models - from wood; dwellings in Central Europe and the Balkans - from clay, according to the traditions of the Balkan-Danubian civilization. When the Aryans, several centuries later, penetrated the Atlantic coast of Europe, where it was customary to build houses of stone with round or oval walls, they borrowed this custom from the local population. Aryan peoples who lived in Central and Western Europe, at this time we became acquainted with real tin bronze. It was supplied to tribes of itinerant traders, who received the name “Bell Beaker Cultures” from archaeologists.

In the vast expanses of Europe from the Rhine to the Volga, a new type of ceramics appears - decorated with imprints of twisted rope. Scientists call such ceramics “corded” ceramics, and the cultures themselves are called corded ceramics cultures. How did this first Aryan utensils come about? It is known that ancient people tried to protect themselves from the influence of evil forces with the help of various amulets. They paid special attention to food, because along with it, damage sent by a sorcerer or an evil spirit could enter the human body. The Western neighbors of the Aryans - the Trypillians, who belonged to the Balkan-Danube civilization, solved this problem this way: all their dishes were made in the temple of the patron goddess of the city, and sacred patterns and images of gods and sacred animals were applied to the dishes, which were supposed to protect the eater from damage . The Aryans communicated with the Trypillian people, exchanging grain and metal products, linen fabrics and other gifts from the land with them, and, without a doubt, knew about this Trypillian custom. In the ancient Aryan religion, a rope played an important role, which was supposed to symbolize the connection, the attachment of a person to heavenly deities (Zoroastrian priests gird themselves with such ropes in our time). Imitating the Trypillians and other peoples of the Balkan-Danube civilization, the Aryans began to protect themselves from damage when eating food by imprinting a rope on clay.

In the second half of 3 thousand BC. e. Aryan dialects are becoming independent languages, for example, Proto-Greek, Proto-Iranian. At this time, the Aryans who lived in Northeast China developed a strange custom of mummifying the dead. Its main mystery is that it arose spontaneously, without any external influences: neither the Chinese nor other Aryan peoples had anything similar. The closest analogies to mummification are known tens of thousands of kilometers from Northeast China - in the Caucasus. Some Caucasian peoples until the 19th century. n. e. They practiced mummification of corpses, but historians do not know Caucasian mummies from such an early time.

Around 2000 BC e. Iranian tribes have an amazing military invention - a war chariot. Thanks to this, the Iranians are invading the territory that we call Iran today. Over time, this invention was adopted by other Aryan peoples. The Aryan war chariots invade China, and the Aryans briefly become the ruling elite of the Celestial Empire, but are then assimilated by the Chinese. War chariots allow the Indo-Aryans to defeat the Harappan civilization of India. Other Aryan tribes - the Hittites - thanks to chariots, defeat the Egyptians in Syro-Palestine, but soon the Egyptians also mastered the art of chariot combat and defeated the Hittites with their own weapons, and the Egyptian pharaohs of the 18th dynasty often ordered court artists to depict themselves defeating enemies on such a chariot.

At the beginning of 2 thousand BC. e. Iranian tribes remaining in Central Asia are building the capital of their empire - the city of Arkaim. According to some reports, it was there that Zarathustra delivered his sermons.

In 1627 (±1) BC. e. an event occurred that changed history Ancient world. On the island of Ter a (other names Fira, Santorini) a terrible volcanic eruption occurred. The consequence of this was a tsunami up to 200 m high, which hit the northern coast of Crete, and the Cretan cities were covered with a layer of ash. Huge number this ash entered the atmosphere. Even in Egypt, quite distant from Crete, due to the volcanic fog in the sky, the sun was not visible for several months. Some records in ancient Chinese chronicles suggest that the consequences of the eruption of the Ter a volcano were noticeable even in China. It led to a significant cooling, and this, in turn, led to famine and drove people away from their homes. At this time, the proto-Italians moved from Central Europe to Italy, and the Greeks, descending from the Balkan Mountains, occupied mainland Greece and conquered Crete. During the 17th and several subsequent centuries BC, the Aryans populated almost the entire territory of Europe, with the exception of the Iberian Peninsula. The wave of migrations that swept Europe at this time led to the appearance of mysterious “peoples of the sea” in the Mediterranean, who made daring raids on Egypt and rich Phoenician cities.

The only region globe The country that benefited from these climate changes was India. Vedic civilization flourished here. It was at this time that the Vedas and other ancient religious and philosophical treatises were written down.

The last invasion of the Aryan steppes into Europe around 1000 BC. e. leads to the emergence of Celtic tribes in Central Europe. True, some historians argue that this wave of migrants did not come to Europe of their own free will; they were squeezed out of the Black Sea region by the Iranian tribes of the Cimbri (Cimmerians) who came from across the Volga. The Celts will begin their victorious march across Europe around 700 and conquer vast areas from Spanish Galicia to Galicia, the Romanian port of Galati and Galatia (modern Turkey). They will conquer the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula.

This, in brief, is the history of the Aryan migrations to Europe, migrations that made the Aryans Indo-Europeans, that is, peoples living in both parts of Eurasia. At the time of their greatest expansion, the Aryan peoples occupied an area even larger than the empire of Genghis Khan, their lands stretched from Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.

However, even among supporters of the Kurgan hypothesis there is no unity. Ukrainian archaeologists insist that the Aryans formed in the European steppes between the Danube and the Volga on the basis of the Sredny Stog and Dnieper-Donets cultures, because at the settlement of the Dnieper-Donets culture the oldest bones of a domestic horse in Europe were discovered; Russian scientists suggest that the Aryans developed on the basis of the Andronovo culture of the Trans-Volga steppes and only then, having crossed the Volga, conquered the European steppes.

Some linguistic studies suggest that the latter hypothesis is more reliable. The fact is that the Finno-Ugric and Kartvelian (Transcaucasian) languages have common words that are not in the Aryan languages, which means they appeared at a time when the Aryans were not yet in the Eastern European steppes. In addition, this migration explains well why the Aryans preferred to move to Asian lands - China, India, Iran, Turkey, while migrations to Europe were less significant and much smaller populations went west. It is the invasion of the Aryans after crossing the Volga that explains the early and unexpected decline of Trypillian culture.

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Are mounds a sign of Indo-European civilization?

Frederick Cortlandt proposed a revision of the Kurgan hypothesis. He raised the main objection that can be raised against Gimbutas's scheme (e.g. 1985: 198), namely that it starts from archaeological data and seeks linguistic interpretations. Based on linguistic data and trying to put their pieces into a common whole, he received the following picture: the territory of the Sredny Stog culture in eastern Ukraine was named by him as the most suitable candidate for the role of the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans. The Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations to the west, east and south (as described by Mallory) became the ancestors of the Balto-Slavs, while speakers of other satemized languages can be identified with the Yamnaya culture, and western Indo-Europeans with the Corded Ware culture. Returning to the Balts and Slavs, their ancestors can be identified with the Middle Dnieper culture. Then, following Mallory (pp197f) and implying the homeland of this culture in the south, in Sredny Stog, Yamnaya and late Trypillian culture, he suggested a correspondence of these events with the development of the language of the Satem group, which invaded the sphere of influence of the Western Indo-Europeans.
According to Frederick Cortlandt, there is a general tendency to date proto-languages earlier in time than is supported by linguistic evidence. However, if the Indo-Hittites and Indo-Europeans can be correlated with the beginning and end of the Sredny Stog culture, then, he argues, linguistic data for the entire Indo-European language family do not lead us beyond the boundaries of the secondary ancestral home (according to Gimbutas), and cultures such as Khvalynsk on the middle Volga and Maikop in the northern Caucasus cannot be identified with Indo-Europeans. Any assumption that goes beyond the Sredny Stog culture must begin with the possible similarity of the Indo-European family of languages with other language families. Considering the typological similarity of the Proto-Indo-European language with the northwestern Caucasian languages and implying that this similarity may be due to local factors, Frederic Cortlandt considers the Indo-European family to be a branch of the Ural-Altaic, transformed by the influence of the Caucasian substrate. This view is consistent with archaeological evidence and places the early ancestors of Proto-Indo-European speakers north of the Caspian Sea in the seventh millennium BC. (cf. Mallory 1989: 192f.), which does not contradict Gimbutas' theory.