Archaic roots of traditional culture of the the Russian North. (Collection of scientific articles). Svetlana Vasilievna Zharnikova

      ISBN 978-5-0065-4205-1

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      Svetlana Vasilievna Zharnikova

      Svetlana Vasilievna Zharnikova

      Introduction

      One of the most important tasks set by the time for cultural workers is the task of restoring national identity, self-respect of the people. The solution to this problem is impossible without the study, restoration and propaganda of folk culture, the system of value orientations that took shape among the people during the millennia of its historical existence. In this regard, the problem of identifying the deep roots of the North Russian folk culture is extremely acute today. One of the main issues is the issue of temporal stratigraphy in connection with the latest data of paleo-climatology, paleo-anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology. So, at present, thanks to the discoveries of paleo-climatologists, the time frame of the period of the initial development of the territories of the Center and the North of the European part of Russia is being revised. It is assumed that already in the Mikulinsky inter-glacial epoch (130—70 thousand years ago), when the average winter temperatures were 8—12 degrees higher than at present, and the climate in a significant part of the Russian Plain up to the northern regions was identical to the modern climate of the Atlantic regions of Western Europe, human collectives came to the coast of the White and Barents Seas. During the ice-free Valdai period (70—24 thousand years ago), people with a sufficiently developed level of cultural traditions continue to inhabit the territory of the Center and North of Eastern Europe, as evidenced by the burials of the Sungir in the Vladimir region and the Mezinskaya Upper Paleolithic site in the Chernigov region (25—23 thousand BC). During the glacial Valdai (20—18 thousand years ago), as it has now been found out, by no means all the territories of the Russian Plain (in particular, the Russian North) were covered with a glacier, since its extreme eastern border ran along the Molosh-Sheksninsky boundary… Thus, to the east of this border (up to the Urals), mixed spruce-birch and birch-pine forests and meadow grass steppes, that is, territories suitable for human life, were distributed.

      In the Mesolithic era (10—5 thousand BC), a period of warming begins in the vast expanses of the European North, and by the 7th millennium BC. here the average summer temperatures are 4—5 degrees higher than the modern ones, and the zone of mixed broad-leaved forests is advancing almost 550 km north of the modern border of its distribution. On the territory of the Vologda Oblast, the investigations of S. V. Oshibkina revealed a large number of monuments of the Mesolithic era. Anthropologically, the people buried in the burial grounds of this time are classical Caucasians without the slightest admixture of Mongoloid.

      During this period, no movements of the population from the territory of the Urals and Trans-Urals (the zone of formation of the Finns-Ugric tribes) were revealed.

      Similar conclusions were made by D. A. Krainov for the Neolithic era.

      Similar shifts seem unlikely in the Bronze Age, when the movement of the population to the north of Eastern Europe is recorded, as a rule, from the lands of the Dnieper region, the Middle Volga region and the Volga-Ok interfluve.

      Analyzing today the numerous finds of the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze ages in the territories of the Center and North of the European part of Russia, we can assume with a considerable degree of confidence that up to the end of the Bronze Age (the end of the 2nd millennium BC) here lived tribes of Caucasians belonging to the Indo-European linguistic community. Already in the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze eras, a whole complex of ritual and mythological structures was formed in the Russian North, which in various transformed and often extremely archaic forms was preserved in the context of folk culture up to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and even up to now. These are ritual texts, a drawing of ritual dances, an ornament-amulet, etc. It is no coincidence that researchers believe that in Russian folk culture, elements have been preserved that are more archaic than not only ancient Greek ones, but also those recorded in the Vedas.

      Thus, the previously accepted paradigm of the historical development of the European North of Russia, which asserted that these territories, starting from the post-glacial period, were populated by Finns-Ugric tribes who came from beyond the Urals (as a result of the pressure of the population surplus), which until the arrival of the Slavs here at the turn of 1—2 thous had a hunting-gatherer and fishing type of economy, is currently being revised.