Archaeology of the Indo-European Fatherland. A. G. Vinogradov

      In the modern world, the urgency of the problems of the ethnic history of the peoples of various regions of our planet is obvious. The growth of ethnic self-awareness, which has been observed everywhere in recent decades, is accompanied by an increase in interest in the historical past of peoples, in the transformations that each of them experienced during its many thousand-year-old formation. It became a spiritual need for a representative of a modern urbanized society to find the roots of his ethnic existence, to understand the diverse processes that led to the formation of that ethnocultural environment through which he perceives the world around him.

      Since the origin and historical existence of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of our planet was associated with numerous migrations, shifts to new territories, causing changes in a number of cultural factors, both among the alien people and the indigenous population, today, studying the ethnic history and culture of people, we, of course, study them in the process of historical transformations and mutual influences of many tribes and peoples, to one extent or another took part in their formation.

      Regional ethnohistorical research in our time is becoming especially acute, since it is knowledge of the history of one’s own people that helps a modern person to free himself from the narrowness of the nationalist view of the world, to understand the role and significance of the contribution to the common treasury of human culture of all peoples, to realize that humanity is one. Of course, it is impossible to solve the most difficult issues of ethnic history today without involving data from the most diverse fields of science.

      It is necessary to combine the efforts of ethnographers, historians, archaeologists, linguists, folklorists, anthropologists, art historians, as well as paleobotanists, paleozoologists, paleoclimatologists and geomorphologists, since the development and formation of peoples took place in certain climatic zones, in certain landscapes, with a certain flora and fauna, and this must be taken into account. Only if the questions posed by ethnic history will be given mutually supportive answers by all of the above branches of science, we can, with a certain amount of confidence, believe that we are close to a true understanding of a particular stage of the historical process.

      Therefore, at present, the search for an answer to any of the questions of the ethnic history of peoples cannot be considered legitimate without involving data from related sciences. This book answers this question.

      It was written in 1989—90. And since then could not be published in Russia.

      Although over the past time additional materials have appeared that confirm the opinion of the authors, nevertheless, we decided not to make changes, and publish it in the form in which it was written 30 years ago.

      Paleolithic

      Among the many unresolved problems of the many thousand-year history of the peoples of Eurasia, one of the most interesting is the problem of the ancient history of the European North of our country of that distant time, in which we must look for the origins and roots of a peculiar and unique North Russian folk culture.

      «The tale of the North is deep and captivating,» wrote Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich. «The northern winds are cheerful and cheerful. The northern lakes are thoughtful. The northern rivers are silvery. The darkened forests are wise. The green hills are experienced. The gray stones in the circles are full of miracles. We are all looking for the beautiful Ancient Rus.»

      N. K. Roerich. Kissing Dawns

      «The people do not remember that he would ever invent his mythology, his language, his laws, customs and rituals. All these national foundations have already deeply entered into his moral being, like life itself, which it has lived through for many prehistoric centuries, as past «on which the real order of things and the whole future development of life firmly rests. Therefore, all moral ideas for the people of the primitive age constitute its sacred tradition, great native antiquity, holy covenant of ancestors to descendants,» – these words of the outstanding Russian folklorist of the 19th century V. I. Buslaev, uttered by him at a ceremony in Moscow University in 1889, have not lost their relevance in our days.

      Turning today to the infinite depths of folk memory, captured in legends and tales, traditions and conspiracies, in songs and rituals, in traditional art, we voluntarily or involuntarily plunge into the darkness of centuries and millennia, we are leaving at a distant time when all these cultural norms are still only nascent.

      The prototypes of the characters depicted in the legends and the motives associated with them are formed already in the myth of the totemic ancestor, whose formation dates back to the Middle Paleolithic period, i.e. 100—50 thousand BC.

      What time was it and what is it remarkable for the territory of the north of Eastern Europe?

      O. Bader writes that during the «Mikulinsky» or «rice-Wurm» interglacial period characterized by a relatively warm climate, the first meeting of people with the Arctic Ocean in northeastern Europe probably took place. «All the locations of the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian implements stretched along the Western Urals, along the banks of the ancient Pra-Kama River (now Volga) from Volgograd to the mouths of Chusova, Obvi and Vishera, outlined the path that the ancients traveled, settling in Eastern Europe».

      This conclusion seems quite logical in the light of the latest paleogeographic data, indicating that in the Mikulinsk interglacial (130—70 thousand BC) in the European north of our country there was no tundra at all, up to 65° N Spruce and birch forests spread with the participation of hornbeam and other broad-leaved species, up to 60° N. came mixed broad-leaved forests of hornbeam, linden, oak and spruce. To the far north along the western tip of the Northern and Subpolar Urals at that distant time a wide strip of birch and coniferous forests with the participation of oak and elm extended. The average winter temperatures in northern Europe were then significantly higher than modern ones: in Scandinavia by 7°, and in the northeast of the Russian Plain by 7—8° and even 11°.

      Paleogeographers, soil scientists, paleoclimatologists came to the conclusion that «130—70 thousand years ago the conditions typical for the western Atlantic regions of Europe

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