Original message VERB
Where did the name "Russian" come from?Before speculating where the name “Russian” itself came from, and where these same Russians came from in Europe, it is necessary to remember one detail: the territory where they settled for a long time Slavic tribes, despite the fact that each tribe had its own name, bore and common name- Russian land. Early medieval chronicles and legends of all without exception speak about the land of the Russians Slavic peoples. Not only that, but the ancient Scandinavians considered themselves Russians until the 9th century! “Nordic Russians” and “Dan Russians” are recorded in Arab and Byzantine chronicles. There is indisputable information that the early Germans - the inhabitants of modern Bavaria and Saxony - also considered their land Russian and called themselves “Russians” until the 13th century AD. This is evidenced by the works of such famous German researchers as Hermann Wirth, Otto Rahn, Rene Guenon and others. There is information that the ancient Celts, before they were conquered by Caesar’s legions, also called themselves Russians. And their neighbors in Northern Italy brought two of their self-names to historical times: Tyrrhenians and the most ancient - Etruscans (the root “Rus” is evident).
Historical science explains the self-name of peoples, especially nomadic ones, but the name of the leader; settled peoples - by locality; sometimes the self-name of an ethnic group arose due to some cultural traditions that this ethnic group adhered to. For example, the ancient Hittites and Chatti, having come to the territory of Asia Minor from more severe northern regions, they built their dwellings in the old fashioned way: where there was wood, they were cut down, and where there was not enough of it, they were entirely made of adobe. In both the first and second cases, avoiding the mud brick technology adopted by its closest neighbors - the inhabitants of Syria and Akkad. For this they received the nickname “Khatniks” or “Hutts”, “Hittites”. Self-names of tribes arose for other reasons. A serious factor was belief in some god, whose name, in the end, became the self-name of the entire people; or prolonged isolation, when people began to believe that only they existed on earth. Take, for example, the self-name of the American Eskimos: when translated into European languages, it sounds like “real people.” The northeastern Chukchi call themselves approximately the same.
And now let’s return to the now incomprehensible, almost mystical word “Russ”. Why did the Slavic tribes of Eastern and Western Europe, despite their self-names (Polyans, Drevlyans, Radimichi, Krivichi, Vyatichi or Croats, Serbs, Obodrits, etc.), believed that they all lived on Russian soil, and that they were all, ultimately, Russians? Russes is a basic and sacred self-name associated with the memory of some ancestor or with the forces of the Cosmos itself. What does the self-name “Russ” mean, and what meaning does it carry, many researchers and scientists have tried to unravel. Describing the beauty and breadth of the Russian land, the author of “The Tale of Bygone Years,” chronicler Nestor, refuses to give an intelligible explanation for the self-name “Russian Land” and the word “Russies.” In all likelihood, the meaning of this word was lost long before his time. The unknown author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” also did not know the meaning of the word “Russian”. In addition, the Russian land in his era narrowed significantly: with bitterness and pain, he narrates in “The Lay...” that the Russian land is behind, and ahead is the wild steppe - the Polovtsian land. And in subsequent times, right up to the reign of Ivan the Fourth, the steppes of the Don, Kuban, and Volga were called the Wild Field in Rus'. And, probably, only a few - mostly the descendants of Russian Vedic priests, to whom knowledge was passed on from generation to generation - knew that the expanses of forests and fields lying up to the Yaika-Ural River and further to the east were once also Russian land, where time immemorial lived the tribes of eastern Russ-monasteries of nomads, lake Russ fishermen and plowmen.Normanists, adherents of the Western historical concept, even in the time of Lomonosov tried to prove that the self-name “Russ” comes from a Scandinavian root, because the tribes of the ancient Vikings also called themselves “Russians”. M. Lomonosov himself fundamentally disagreed with this theory, who rightly believed that the name of a densely populated country rich in cities, which the Vikings themselves called “Gardarika,” i.e., the country of cities, could not have come from the rural semi-wild population of Scandinavia. Gardarika in Viking times numbered hundreds of towns and cities, while there were only seven in the entire Scandinavian Peninsula settlements, not all of which resembled cities. It turns out that there once lived a Country of cities without a name, without a self-name, there lived a people who had inhabited it from time immemorial, and suddenly the Vikings came and gave the name to the people - the Russians, and from that time the country began to be called Russia. Wild? Certainly!
Realizing the inconsistency of the conclusion of the Normanists, many generations of not only Russians, but also advanced European researchers tried to find the root of the self-name “Russian”. However, solving this problem turned out to be very difficult. The deeper the scientists dug, the more mysterious the problem became.Are Russians a bearish people?
According to most scientists, there was undoubtedly an answer to this question, and not only in Russia, but also in the West. The trouble is that written sources that could shed light on this matter were irretrievably lost during the period of general Christianization of Europe. A number of scientists, mainly from Belarus, believe that the word “Russ” once referred to a bear that was especially revered in Rus'. Bear - the one who knows honey - is the second allegorical name of the sacred beast, which remained in everyday use, and the ancient “Russ” was forgotten. Now there is only the “people of bears” - the Russians. The name of the Russa River allegedly comes from the ancient sacred word “bear”. According to some scientists, many bears lived on its banks in those ancient times. This answer is, of course, simple and even logical, considering that the word “Russ” once meant the animal that we know as a bear. But, unfortunately, here we encounter only a hypothesis. We do not have direct evidence that “Russian” and “bear” are the names of the same animal. There is something else: both in Russian and in German languages the bear is called by the word “Ber”. In German this name is still alive, but in Russian it is preserved in the word “den”, i.e. “ber’s lair”. Consequently, the word “Russ” could not possibly mean a bear. The bear was called in Russian, and in German, and in Iranian languages“berom”, and this does not require any special evidence. This means that the theory of “Russian is a bear” and “Russian people are bearish people” is utopian.Are the Russians people from the leopard tribe?
There is another theory of the origin of the word “Russ”. It was put forward by the famous Russian researcher Vladimir Shcherbakov. He believes that the word “Russ” comes from the word “race”, i.e. leopard. In his opinion, Russians are the descendants of the hypothetical people of the “sons of the leopard” who lived in the 7-8 millennium BC. e. on the territory of modern Asia Minor and Asia Minor. This people, according to V. Shcherbakov, once created a powerful Hatto-Luwian state that competed with Babylonia and Egypt. Later, the Hatto-Luwians created the state of Artsawa on the territory of Asia Minor, where the cult of the leopard race was most clearly expressed. According to Shcherbakov, part of the Hutts at the end of the 1st millennium BC. moved from Asia Minor to Europe and created a powerful Getian state on the territory of Thrace, which was later destroyed by Trajan. But over several centuries of war with Rome, part of the Goths settled in the north and populated the Carpathians; another large tribal association of the Goths moved to the East and populated the forest-steppe of the East European Plain. Here, in their new homeland, the word rass-leopard began to be used to describe the lynx, and the people themselves allegedly called themselves Russians.V. Shcherbakov considers the Hutts, Hutt-Luwians, Hittites, Goths, and therefore the Russians to be descendants of the Eastern Atlanteans. According to not only Shcherbakov, but also a number of other scientists, the war of the Atlanteans with the so-called Proto-Athenians in the Mediterranean was a war of the metropolis with a union of its own colonies. If you believe Plato, the colonies won this war, and if Shcherbakov, Eastern Atlantis won. According to the researcher, after this victory the Eastern Atlanteans settled over vast areas of Europe, Asia and North Africa. This, in his opinion, happened around 8-7 thousand BC. Later, Semites came to these lands from the Arabian Peninsula and pushed the first settlers to the north. So the descendants of the once powerful people ended up in Asia Minor, and from Asia Minor they moved to Thrace.
The theory put forward by V. Shcherbakov is quite real and does not contradict either archaeological excavations or anthropological research. Indeed, in the territory of Western and Minor Asia in 8 thousand BC. e. The ancient distinctive culture of farmers and cattle breeders flourished. And the boundaries of this culture are quite extensive. The ancient farmers lived in fortified cities (Çatalhöyük), mastered all the major crafts, raised domestic animals except horses, and, in all likelihood, revered either the leopard or some species of now extinct cat. We can agree with Shcherbakov that these people called their totem “race”. But V. Shcherbakov is wrong in that this word gave the name to the people of the “Russians” and, moreover, to the vast territory of Eurasia, inhabited since ancient times, albeit by related, but still different tribes and even peoples.This researcher, developing his theory of the origin of the Russian people, ignored the culture of the ancient Aryans. If he had compared Sanskrit (the language of the Proto-Indians - Aryans) and the ancient Russian language, he would undoubtedly have come to the conclusion that, in essence, these are varieties of the same language, and in this language the word “Rusa” means the concept of “light, clear, radiant " The Russian word “russ” is more archaic and has its roots, as many scientists believe, in pre-Aryan vocabulary. Until now, a certain hair color in Rus' is called light brown, it is not dark or black. Therefore, Shcherbakovsky “race” could be called that way based on the color of his coat. Actually, almost everyone wild cats Europe and Asia, including the leopard and lynx, this color predominates. In Sanskrit - the same quality: light, radiant. But there is some discrepancy here: the fact is that in Rus' the word “light” also meant the quality of the soul. “Light” meant emitting a special spiritual light, carrying a higher, divine meaning. It was not for nothing that the ancient Russians called their princes Your Serene Highness. From here another meaning of the Sanskrit word “Rusa” becomes clear - radiant...
It would seem that the answer to the question has been found. The word “Rusa” means personal traits human, and external, and the bearers of these qualities began to be called Russians, and the land on which they settled - the land of the Russians or the Russian land, Russia or Russia.The Russians are the people who came from heaven!
But it turns out that not everything is so simple. The fact is that the words of ancient languages, which include Sanskrit, and even more so the ancient Russian “Prakrit”, always had a double meaning: external and internal. External value the words “Russa”: light, radiant - there is no doubt that this is what it is. Its internal meaning is unclear. That esoteric sacred cipher, which, in all likelihood, determined the name of the people. And in order to unravel it, it is necessary to go deeper not into the Indo-European layer of culture, but into a more ancient one, into the Hyperborean.About the time of the legendary northern continent-Very little of Arctogea has reached us, and even then only in myths. But, as you know, myths were created by people to preserve and transmit especially valuable knowledge to future generations. Let's try to decipher some of them and connect them with modern ideas about the Earth, Space and the knowledge of the ancients. Take, for example, the myths of Ancient Greece: in them the God of the sky is called Uranus. It is interesting that Uranus-sky can be traced in the names of some cities of Sumer, for example, the city of Ur - the heavenly city, or the city of Nippur - the city under heaven. The root “ur” is also in the name ancient capital Assyria - Ashur, and in the name of the country Urartu, even the Ural Mountains contain the same root, etc. And everywhere the root “ur” is associated with the sky, Space... Now let’s remember the Rigveda. This ancient text speaks of Mount Meru, on the top of which stood the palace of Indra himself. As you know, Mount Meru was located under the North Star or, in Russian, the celestial Kolo. Let's try to decipher the name of Mount Meru, especially since in this word we see the already familiar letters “p” and “u”, but in a different combination. What would that mean? The sky is Ur, the mountain is Meru. The letter combination “me” means the word “place”.
If we consider that the Russian language and the language of the ancient Aryans are essentially two branches of the same proto-language, and the word place is undoubtedly archaic, then everything becomes clear. Then why not “ur”, but “ru”? What's the point here? If you read “ru” from right to left, you get the familiar “ur” - sky. Feedback is encrypted here. That is, a mountain standing in the place where they came from heaven. If we turn to ancient Russian mythology, we will encounter the same thing: at the birth of the Universe, the Great Svarog created the star Sedava, and under it Mount Alatyr, and on that mountain Alatyr subsequently fell the Alatyr-stone with the inscriptions of Svarog to his relatives - the Russian people. Here there is a connection between the Earth and the Sky, and what is clearly expressed is not a departure from the Earth to the stars, but, on the contrary, a coming from the sky to the Earth. AND strange star Sedava is obviously one of the stars that in ancient times played the role of the modern Kolo-Polar star, and below it is Mount Alatyrskaya on Buyan Island, and the Svarog stone flies to this mountain from the sky. Therefore, the word “ru” means coming from heaven.Russians are a luminous people.
But if we discard research in the field of mythology and turn to science, then here we will encounter the same thing. For example, the prominent German scientist Hermann Wirth, the founder of the Hyperborean theory, describing in his work the religion of the inhabitants of Arctogea, calls the son of God by the name Ur. “Ur,” according to Wirth, is our earthly starry sky. Let's remember the Greek Uranus. Therefore, the word “Russ” has the meaning feedback: Heaven-Earth. Then how to decipher the letter “s” in this word? But the word “light” begins with it in all Slavic languages: Svetovid, Svetich, Yarosvet, etc. Of course, this word is no less ancient than the Sanskrit “rusa”, and perhaps even older. Then the word “Russ” is translated into modern Russian as those who came from heaven through the light, or “through the light.”By the way, this does not contradict modern ideas about the connection between energy and matter in physics. Theoretically, this option is possible: the transition of matter into energy and back. But not only theoretically. As scientists prove, this is how UFOs move in space. All this at first glance seems fantastic, but only at first glance. The fact is that there are still peoples alive and well on Earth who stubbornly prove that their ancestors came to Earth from Space. For example, the African Dogon claim that their ancestral home is the double star system Sirius. An interesting fact is that hundreds of years ago the Dogon knew the structure of Sirius, the number of its satellites and accurately named the planet from where their distant ancestors flew to Earth. Modern astrophysics cannot explain such knowledge. But not only the Dogon remember their arrival from the stars. The mysterious Ainu people also remember this. Hokkaido. However, their ancestral home is not Sirius, but another star, which they still refuse to name. Other peoples of the Earth also remember their origin from the stars, but this sacred knowledge is inaccessible to modern scientists: as a rule, it belongs only to initiates.
If you turn to Ancient Egypt, then here we see the same picture. For example, the location of the great pyramids at Giza - exact copy constellation Orion. In addition, the southern shaft, laid in the Khufu pyramid, was aimed (in 2475 BC - apparently when the pyramids were built) at the star Al-Nitak, the middle star of Orion's belt. This was proven by a number of researchers: Hancock, Bauval, Trimbel, Gantenbring and others. It is interesting that the mine coming from the queen’s tomb was targeted in the same 2475 BC. e. to Sirius.This begs a fair question: have the Russian people preserved the memory of the coming from outer space, in addition to their self-name? It turns out he saved it. First of all, these are myths about the Stozhary star. Later legends confuse it with the star Sedava, but the name itself says that these stars are different, since they carry different meanings. Sedava is an ancient proto-polar star, prehistoric Kolo. According to Bauval, Badawi and others, most likely the star is Alpha in the constellation Leo. Stozhary is a completely different star. Its very name says that it is a large, powerful luminary, many times (a hundred) times larger than our sun. So, there are myths that directly say that Stozhary was one of the main stars created by the Great Family, and from Stozhary the wisdom of the Gods came to Earth. In particular, the god Veles flew to Earth from this star in a fiery whirlwind. Veles, as is known from mythology, is one of the most ancient ancestors of the Russian people...
Therefore, the word “Russ” carries the following information:
a) information about the arrival from Space from a certain star Stozhara with the transfer of sacred knowledge and teachings to Earth (letters of Svarog, the arrival of Veles);
b) the word “Russ” means light, carrier of knowledge, radiating spirituality, god-man.
Map 1. Landscape zones of the European part of the USSR
Legend:
The historical roots of the Russian people go deep into the past. While the ancient annals contain considerable information about the Russian tribes in the ninth and tenth centuries AD, it is obvious that the corresponding groups of their ancestors had consolidated much earlier, at least in the Sarmato-Gothic period, and the process of their consolidation must have begun much earlier still , during the Scythian period. In general, the problem of the ethnogenesis of any people is extremely complex. We should not approach it in the light of such simplified traditional schemes as theory family tree languages, which for a long time was considered as a universal panacea not only by philologists, but also by historians.
With regard to the prehistoric background of the formation of the Russian people, we must especially avoid such generalizations as “the original pan Slavic language"(Ursprache, proto-language), which is supposed to have existed before the branching of the new Slavic languages, or the "original pan-Slavic homeland" (Urheimat, ancestral home), in which, according to the assumption, the ancestors of all Slavic peoples began their historical life. Such generalizations, while not providing any assistance to the historian, rather obscure the question. Jordanes, who wrote in the sixth century AD, already knew three groups of Slavic tribes: Veneti, Sklaveni and Antes. Other names were mentioned by earlier classical authors to designate the tribes of Southern Rus', which can be considered as groups of ancestors of the Sklavens and Ants. One should also take into account the information given by Herodotus (fifth century BC) regarding the Scythians and their neighbors. Any ethnological identification of classical tribes and national names is difficult, especially in relation to such peoples as the Scythians and Sarmatians, who united vast territories under their control. Their names could refer not only to the ruling tribes, but also to the local tribes they conquered. One should not think that each such invasion ended in the general extermination of local tribes who settled in the country long before the arrival of the conquerors. In any case, some of them usually received permission to stay in the country after recognizing the power of the invaders. Thus, after the arrival of the Scythians, some of the Proto-Slavic tribes may have remained on the border of the steppe territory, while other groups belonging to them may have been pushed into forest zone. As for Sarmatian rule, we have more convincing evidence that some of the ancestral groups of Russian tribes were already in the Black Sea steppes under Sarmatian control.
Taking into account the above considerations, we must believe that the groups of ancestors of the Slavs appeared partly in the forest zone and partly in the steppes, and that the process of their formation was protracted and very complex. As we have already noted, from a historian's point of view there is neither sufficient evidence nor any necessity to postulate the existence of an original Pan-Slavic ancestral home. On the contrary, the evidence given by early authors, although rare, speaks rather in favor of the existence in ancient times of several - at least three - groups of Proto-Slavic tribes, different from each other. Each of them, even in remote antiquity, must have spoken its own dialect and had special customs. Moreover, each controlled its own territory. We will refer to these three groups as Western Slavs, Middle Slavs and Eastern Slavs. It can be assumed that at the time of the birth of Christ the habitats of the Western Slavs were in the region of the middle and upper Vistula: the settlements of the Middle Slavs extended from the Carpathians to the middle Dnieper, while the clans Eastern Slavs spread along the northern border of the steppes, through the territory known from the seventeenth century onwards as Left Bank Ukraine or Slobidshina (Kharkov, Kursk, Poltava, Voronezh provinces). Some Eastern Slavic groups may have penetrated further south, towards the lower Don region.
There is no archaeological evidence to suggest that the above-mentioned Slavic groups were simply new arrivals to the territory they occupied in the first century AD. On the contrary, the evidence points rather to a certain continuity of culture in this area during the millennium from 500 BC. to 500 AD We can thus conclude that the progenitor groups of the Slavic tribes settled in this place at least no later than 500 BC.
Linguistic relationships and cultural affinities do not necessarily imply racial kinship. Tribes belonging to the same "linguistic area" or the same "cultural sphere" may be racially different or belong to different anthropological types. History offers abundant examples of one people adopting the language and culture of another. Thus, during the expansion of the Roman Empire, the Celts and Iberians in Gaul and Spain respectively adopted the language of their conquerors - Latin language, on the basis of which modern French and Spanish evolved. No less striking is the example of the Persian language, which, after the conquest of Iran by the Arabs, underwent a complete change. Not only were Arabic words adopted wholesale, but the very structure of the Persian language was deeply affected by Arabic, despite the fact that Persian belongs to the Indo-European group of languages and Arabic to the Semitic group. Russian history similarly warns us against hasty identification of linguistic unity with racial unity. It is well known, for example, that the Scandinavians, who became ruling class The Kievan state in the ninth and tenth centuries quickly assimilated among the local population, adopting the Slavic language. Interesting example social group, united by culture and language, but built on varying racial elements, is the Russian nobility. Some of the most ancient Russians noble families have their ancestors among the leaders of the Alans and Varangians; others carry Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, German, Swedish, Mongolian, Tatar, Armenian or Georgian blood. All these heterogeneous elements merged together as the Russian language and Russian culture were adopted. Similar processes could take place in early period. The Antes, considered by historians of the sixth century AD to be the strongest tribe among the Slavs, were ruled by Iranian clans possibly from the second century AD. In the time of Procopius, their language was, however, Slavic.
Thus, recognizing the controversial nature of the issue, we can still assume, with all the necessary reservations, that the original Slavic tribes belonged mainly to the Caucasian race, different in their physical features from the Mongoloid. Each of the three Proto-Slavic tribes had, however. different neighbors and was thus exposed to the mixing influence of various alien ethnic traits. The Western Slavic group must have had certain relations with the Baltic (Lithuanian) tribes in the north and with the Germans in the west. The Middle Slavic tribe was perhaps in close relations with the Thracian tribes of Transylvania and the Balkans. The eastern group was more open to interbreeding with the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of the steppes - and their name is legion. Tribes of Thracian, Celtic, Iranian, Gothic, Ugric, Turkic and Mongolian origin pursued one another in endless succession. Each had to leave some mark on the country.
Summarizing what has been said, it can be argued that it is precisely some of the original middle and eastern Slavic tribes that can be considered as a group of ancestors of the Russian people. These early Slavs settled mainly on the border steppe zone, although some of their units settled more north, in the forests, while other groups descended south into the steppes. Agriculture was supposed to be the main occupation of people: those who lived in the forests were engaged in hunting and beekeeping; those living in the south were cattle breeders. Since there were many fish in the rivers, fishing was also an important means of survival. Thus, the early Eastern Slavs were well acquainted with river life; they made boats by hollowing out tree trunks. Their skill in controlling ships allowed them to feel confident when entering the open sea, when they descended to the shores of the Azov and Black Seas. The diversity of their natural environment and economic conditions led to the early formation of different types of economic and social organization of people. Clan or family communities of the zadruga type must have predominated among groups whose main occupation was agriculture. Hunting and fishing groups represented a different type of social unit, while others who ventured south into the steppes and were used as warriors by Sarmatian leaders were perhaps organized into military communes of the late Cossack type.
The territory of the early distribution of the Middle and Eastern Slavs tentatively coincided with the area that later became known as Ukraine. Around the eighth century AD they spread over a wider area now called European Russia, but perhaps better labeled as Western Eurasia, the concept of "Eurasia" unites the regions of European and Asian Russia together. Western Eurasia can thus be considered as the first, unified ancient and medieval stage of Russian expansion, and Eurasia as a whole as its second and final stage.
In a certain sense, Western Eurasia already in ancient times formed a common geographical basis for the development of the Eastern Slavs, although at that time they actually occupied only its south. Geographically and economically, the South and the North were, as they are now, interconnected. To implement the approach to early history Eastern Slavs, we therefore need to study their prehistoric background within a broader geographical framework. Although the population of Western Eurasia was sparse in prehistoric times, the country was not a desert. Man lived here for many millennia, or rather tens of thousands of years before the birth of Christ. It was in ancient times that his main occupations developed throughout Eurasia; adapting to the natural conditions of the country, man created the early economy, and cultural traditions gradually formed for transmission to his descendants.
Scattered across the Eurasian plains, the settlements of prehistoric man were not isolated from each other. Relations, both peaceful and military, were established between various groups in the primitive “pre-clan period” (prenatal society), according to the terminology of Soviet scientists, and during the period of more organized clan life. There were migrations and wars; the merchants followed the warriors. Rivers may have served as major commercial routes at this time, and it is characteristic that most of the prehistoric settlements discovered before today archaeologists are located on river banks or nearby. Interaction various groups was not limited to local trade. It is quite striking that already in these ancient times commercial routes were established international importance, and the tribes of Western Eurasia were thus connected with adjacent countries.
Those involved in rural production in the middle Dnieper region established connections with people of similar interests in Transylvania and the Balkans. Commerce moved far to the south and east. Caucasian-type goods were brought to both the Dnieper and Upper Volga regions: painted pottery from the middle Dnieper region during this period shows striking similarities to pottery from Turkestan, Mesopotamia, and China. Just like in more late period, the Black Sea steppes were open to raids by nomadic tribes of Central and Eastern Eurasia. In fact, these steppes were simply a continuation of the Eurasian ones. There is no doubt that long before the arrival of the Scythians, their predecessors used the steppe zone for their migration. It was very important that the steppe road from China to the Black Sea passed through such provinces of ancient civilization as Iran and the Caucasus, the cultural basis of which was in Mesopotamia. Through the peoples of the steppes, these old centers of culture spread their light far to the north. In the second millennium BC, the inhabitants of the Upper Volga region sharpened their stone axes like the bronze axes of the Caucasians and decorated their clay products with typically Caucasian designs. Since the Caucasian culture of this era was influenced by the Hittite civilization, the stereotypes and designs of Hittite Asia found their way to northern Russia.
Map 2. Landscape zones of Eurasia
The student of Russian history cannot consign to oblivion the play of economic and cultural forces that took place on Russian territory long before the emergence of Russia proper. It was during this prehistoric period that the “living space” of Russian people was formed. Some knowledge of this basic background is necessary to understand the main trends of early Russian economic and political history.
18.10.2011 18:42
There are 46 chromosomes in human DNA, half of which he inherits from his father, half from his mother. Of the 23 chromosomes received from the father, only one - the male Y chromosome - contains a set of nucleotides that is passed on from generation to generation without any changes for thousands of years. Geneticists call this set a haplogroup. Every man living now has in his DNA exactly the same haplogroup as his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, etc. for many generations.
The haplogroup, due to its hereditary immutability, is the same for all people of the same biological origin, i.e. among men of the same nation. Each biologically distinctive people has its own haplogroup, different from similar sets of nucleotides in other peoples, which is its genetic marker, a kind of ethnic mark.
Haplogroups change very rarely at intervals of millennia (in biology, such changes are called mutations), and geneticists have learned to very accurately determine their time and place. Thus, American scientists found that one such mutation occurred 4,500 years ago on the Central Russian Plain. A boy was born with a slightly different haplogroup than his father, to which they assigned the genetic classification R1a1 (its old name is R1a).
Currently, holders of haplogroup R1a1 make up 70% of the total male population of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and in ancient Russian cities and villages - up to 80%. This haplogroup also predominates in Poland, among the Lusatian Serbs, among the Czechs and Slovaks, i.e. it is common to Eastern and Western Slavs, which are the same genus.
Having emerged 4500 years ago on the Central Russian Plain (the place of maximum concentration of R1a1 - an ethnic focus), the genus quickly multiplied and began to expand its habitat. 4000 years ago, our ancestors went to the Urals and created Arkaim and a “civilization of cities” with many copper mines and international relations all the way to Crete (chemical analysis of some items found there shows that the copper is Ural).
Another 500 years later, 3500 years ago, haplogroup R1a1 appeared in India. The history of the arrival in India is known better than other vicissitudes of the territorial expansion of our ancestors thanks to the ancient Indian epic, in which its circumstances are described in sufficient detail. But there is other evidence of this epic, including archaeological and linguistic.
It is known that at that time the ancestors of the Eastern and Western Slavs were called Aryans (as they are recorded in Indian texts). It is also known that it was not the local Hindus who gave them this name, but that it is a self-name.
It is also known that the appearance of haplogroup R1a1 on the territory of India 3500 years ago (the time of birth of the first Indo-Aryan calculated by geneticists) was accompanied by the death of a developed local civilization, which archaeologists called Harappan at the site of the first excavations. Before their disappearance, this people, who had populous cities at that time in the Indus and Ganges valleys, began to build defensive fortifications, something I've never done before. However, the fortifications apparently did not help, and the Harappan period of Indian history gave way to the Aryan.
The first monument of the Indian epic, which talks about the appearance of the Aryans, was written down 400 years later, in the 11th century. BC e., and in the 3rd century. BC e. in its completed form, the ancient Indian literary language Sanskrit, surprisingly similar to modern Russian.
Now men of the R1a1 genus make up 16% of the total male population of India, and in the upper castes they make up almost half - 47%, which indicates the active participation of the Aryans in the formation of the Indian aristocracy (the second half of the men of the upper castes are represented by local tribes, mainly Dravidian).
Our ancestors also migrated to Iran. Iran, literally translated, is the country of the Aryans. The Persian kings loved to emphasize their Aryan origin, as eloquently evidenced, in particular, by the popular name Darius.
It is also known that part of the Rurik clan belongs to the R1a1 genus, and part to the N genus (Finnish tribes).
Our closest paternal relatives are the Celtic tribes (haplogroup R1b).
Germanic tribes corresponds to haplogroup I1a (its distribution clearly coincides with the distribution of the Nordic subrace), in Germany the related I2b is more common. The closest relatives of the Germanic tribes are the South Slavs, among them haplogroup I2a is common.
Accordingly, the Nordids are not Aryans; haplogroup I1a is practically not found outside Europe. Culture was brought to Iran, India, China and Egypt by the genus R1a and R1b (this haplogroup included the Tocharians, the people who brought culture to China, and this haplogroup was also discovered among the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun).
For many centuries, scientists have been wanting to know the origins of the Russian people. And if research in the past was based on archaeological and linguistic data, today even geneticists have taken up the matter.
From the Danube
Of all the theories of Russian ethnogenesis, the most famous is the Danube theory. We owe her appearance chronicle code“The Tale of Bygone Years,” or rather, the centuries-old love of domestic academics for this source.
The chronicler Nestor defined the initial territory of settlement of the Slavs as the territories along the lower reaches of the Danube and Vistula. The theory about the Danube “ancestral home” of the Slavs was developed by such historians as Sergei Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky.
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky believed that the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathian region, where an extensive military alliance of tribes arose led by the Duleb-Volhynian tribe.
From the Carpathian region, according to Klyuchevsky, in the 7th-8th centuries the Eastern Slavs settled to the East and Northeast to Lake Ilmen. The Danube theory of Russian ethnogenesis is still adhered to by many historians and linguists. The Russian linguist Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev made a great contribution to its development at the end of the 20th century.
Yes, we are Scythians!
One of the most vehement opponents of the Norman theory of the formation of Russian statehood, Mikhail Lomonosov, leaned toward the Scythian-Sarmatian theory of Russian ethnogenesis, which he wrote about in his “Ancient Russian History.” According to Lomonosov, the ethnogenesis of the Russians occurred as a result of the mixing of the Slavs and the “Chudi” tribe (Lomonosov’s term applied to the Finno-Ugric peoples), and he named the area between the Vistula and Oder rivers as the place of origin of the ethnic history of the Russians.
Supporters of the Sarmatian theory rely on ancient sources, and Lomonosov did the same. He compared Russian history with the history of the Roman Empire and ancient beliefs with pagan beliefs Eastern Slavs, having discovered a large number of coincidences. The ardent struggle with the adherents of the Norman theory is quite understandable: the people-tribe of Rus', according to Lomonosov, could not have originated from Scandinavia under the influence of the expansion of the Norman Vikings. First of all, Lomonosov opposed the thesis about the backwardness of the Slavs and their inability to independently form a state.
Gellenthal's theory
The hypothesis about the origin of Russians, unveiled this year by Oxford scientist Garrett Gellenthal, seems interesting. After spending great job By studying the DNA of various peoples, he and a group of scientists compiled a genetic atlas of migration of peoples.
According to the scientist, two significant milestones can be distinguished in the ethnogenesis of the Russian people. In 2054 BC. e., according to Gellenthal, the trans-Baltic peoples and peoples from the territories modern Germany and Poland migrated to the northwestern regions modern Russia. The second milestone is 1306, when the migration of Altai peoples began, who actively interbred with representatives of the Slavic branches.
Gellenthal's research is also interesting because genetic analysis proved that the time of the Mongol-Tatar invasion had virtually no effect on Russian ethnogenesis.
Two ancestral homelands
Another interesting migration theory was proposed by late XIX century Russian linguist Alexey Shakhmatov. His “two ancestral homelands” theory is also sometimes called the Baltic theory. The scientist believed that initially the Balto-Slavic community emerged from the Indo-European group, which became autochthonous in the Baltic region. After its collapse, the Slavs settled in the territory between the lower reaches of the Neman and Western Dvina. This territory became the so-called “first ancestral home”. Here, according to Shakhmatov, the Proto-Slavic language developed, from which all Slavic languages originated.
Further migration of the Slavs was associated with the great migration of peoples, during which at the end of the second century AD the Germans went south, liberating the Vistula River basin, where the Slavs came. Here, in the lower Vistula basin, Shakhmatov defines the second ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, according to the scientist, the division of the Slavs into branches began. The western one went to the Elbe region, the southern one - divided into two groups, one of which settled the Balkans and the Danube, the other - the Dnieper and Dniester. The latter became the basis of the East Slavic peoples, which include the Russians.
We are locals ourselves
Finally, another theory different from migration theories is the autochthonous theory. According to it, the Slavs were the indigenous people inhabiting the eastern, central and even part southern Europe. According to the theory of Slavic autochthonism, Slavic tribes were the indigenous ethnic group of a vast territory - from the Urals to Atlantic Ocean. This theory has quite ancient roots and many supporters and opponents. This theory was supported by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr. He believed that the Slavs did not come from anywhere, but were formed from tribal communities living in vast territories from the Middle Dnieper to Laba in the West and from the Baltic to the Carpathians in the south.
Polish scientists - Kleczewski, Potocki and Sestrentsevich - also adhered to the autochthonous theory. They even traced the ancestry of the Slavs from the Vandals, basing their hypothesis, among other things, on the similarity of the words “Vendals” and “Vandals”. Of the Russians, the autochthonous theory explained the origin of the Slavs Rybakov, Mavrodin and Greeks.
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