Kurgan hypothesis. Eurasian barrow culture Rules for applying for participation in the Congress

The Kurgan culture appeared in the South Caucasus over six thousand years ago, approximately in the first half of the 4th millennium BC, synchronously with the emergence of yaylag cattle breeding in this region, and existed until the spread of the new religion-Islam in the Caucasus (VIII century).
Ancestral cemeteries of pastoralists are usually confined to certain places, most often to winter roads, which could be located far from seasonal camps. Therefore, for some ancient cultures, the finds made during excavation of graves are practically the only materials for reconstructing their way of life, determining the time and historical and cultural appearance. When constructing a grave, the ancient people had in mind a dwelling for their relative, who, in their opinion, departed to the afterlife. As a rule, the mounds are located in groups, often quite large (up to several hundred). Such groups of mounds are called burial grounds. In its original meaning, the Türkic word "kurgan" is a synonym for the word "settlement", or rather, a fortress.
The famous Italian scientist Mario Alinei writes: “The tradition of erecting barrows on graves has always been one of the most characteristic features of the Altai (Turkic - GG) steppe nomadic peoples, from their first historical appearance to the late Middle Ages. As you know, the word kurgan is not Russian, not Slavic, and not of Indo-European origin, but a borrowing from the Turkic languages. The word kurgan 'burial mound', has penetrated not only into Russia, but also throughout Southeastern Europe (Russ.kurg; n, Ukr. Kurh; n, Beloruss.kurhan, Pol.kurhan, kurchan, kuran 'mound'; Rum . gurgan, Dial. Veng. korh; ny), and is a borrowing from Türkic: Dr. Turk. barrow ‘fortification’, Tat., Osm., Kum. mound, Kirg. and Jagat. korgan, Karakir. korqon, everything from Türko-Tat. kurgamak ‘fortify’, kurmak ‘build’. The area of ​​its distribution in Eastern Europe closely corresponds to the area of ​​distribution of the Yamna or Kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe. "
Back in 1951, the Soviet archaeologist SS Chernikov wrote: “Burial mounds, for the most part belonging to the era of early nomads, are grouped mainly in places most favorable for winter grazing (foothills, river valleys). They are almost completely absent in the open steppe and in other areas of summer pastures. The custom to bury their dead only in winter quarters, which still exists among the Kazakhs and Kirghiz, undoubtedly comes from ancient times. This regularity in the location of the kurgans will help to determine the areas of settlement of the ancient nomadic tribes during further excavations. "
The Kurgan culture in the South Caucasus appears at a time when the role of cattle breeding is growing here, and the main source of our knowledge about the life of the local population is the burial mound. The intensification of animal husbandry could be achieved only with the transition to a new type of economy - yailag cattle breeding. The South Caucasians were the first of the cattle breeders of Eurasia to master the vertical way of nomadism, in which herds in the spring are driven to rich mountain pastures. This is confirmed by the topography of the burial mounds located near the passes high in the mountains.
K.Kh. Kushnareva, a leading Russian archaeologist, has been researching the archaeological sites of the South Caucasus for more than 20 years. She led an archaeological expedition on the territory of Azerbaijan (Khojaly burial mound, Uzerlik settlement near Aghdam). Back in 1966, she wrote in Brief Communications of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (the work was written jointly with the famous archaeologist A.L. Yakobson): “To solve the problem of the emergence and development of semi-nomadic cattle breeding, the expedition team had to expand the area of ​​work, including the area adjacent to the Milskaya steppe Nagorno-Karabakh. Only a parallel study of the synchronous monuments of the steppe and mountain regions could answer the question of what changes took place in the economic structure of the population of Azerbaijan by the end of the 2nd millennium BC. and in what relationship were these two geographically different areas? The Khojaly burial mound (explored by K.Kh. Kushnareva), located on the main road going from the Mil steppe to the high-mountainous pastures of Karabakh, was subjected to research. Digging inside a huge stone fence (9 hectares), where there was no cultural layer, made it possible to suggest that this fence most likely served as a place for cattle corral, especially during an enemy attack. The construction of burial mounds of significant size high in the mountains, on the routes of migrations, as well as the sharply increased number of accompanying weapons (Khojaly, Archadzor, Akhmakhi, etc.) compared to the previous period, indicate the dominance of the semi-nomadic, yaylag form of cattle breeding during this period. However, to support this conclusion, it is necessary to return to the steppe in order to find and study settlements there, where for the winter months the herdsmen lowered the herds that had greatly grown by that time from the mountains. It should be noted that if in the foothill and mountainous regions of Azerbaijan, before the start of the expedition, many mainly burial monuments of the late II - early I millennium BC were investigated, then not a single settlement in the Mil steppe was discovered. As an object for excavations, they chose a settlement located at the foot of one of the three giant burial mounds in the Uch-Tepe tract. Here, in the deep steppe, among vast pastures, small rectangular dugouts were discovered, which were used only as winter roads. From here, in the spring, the population and livestock moved to the mountains, and the abandoned dugouts, collapsing, awaited their return in late autumn. Thus, the excavations of synchronous steppe and mountain monuments proved with indisputability that at the end of the 2nd - the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. , on the territory of Azerbaijan, that form of distant pasture, yaylag cattle breeding has already developed, which dominates here to the present time and makes archaeologists and historians consider these areas for three millennia as a single cultural and economic region united by one historical fate! "
In 1973, K.Kh. Kushnareva, returning to this topic, writes: “We are well aware of the comprehensively substantiated thesis of BB Piotrovsky about cattle breeding as the dominant form of farming among the ancient aborigines of the Caucasus. Developing in its main features, apparently already at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. and the form of yaylag cattle breeding, which has survived to this day, with pasture of cattle in the spring-summer season to mountain pastures, makes us consider the steppe expanses of the Mil, where mounds rise, and the mountain range of neighboring Karabakh as a single cultural and economic region united by one historical fate. The nature of these areas dictates conditions to people now. The form of the economy has remained the same here. Working in the Mil steppe for many years, we, the members of the expedition, twice a year observed the "migration of peoples", in which in the spring nomads with their families and equipment necessary for a long life, as well as the processing of meat and dairy products, were loaded onto horses, camels , donkeys and accompanied huge flocks of small ruminants to the mountain ranges; in late autumn this avalanche descended into the steppe, and some of the winter roads were located directly in the area of ​​our kurgans. "
In 1987, K.Kh.Kushnareva once again returned to this topic and wrote: “Near the Khojaly burial ground, located on the main path of cattle breeders leading from the Mil steppe to the high-mountainous pastures of Nagorno-Karabakh, a stone fence was discovered that surrounded an area of ​​9 hectares; it was most likely a livestock pen during periods of possible attacks. The very fact of the existence of a large burial mound on the cattle driving route, as well as a large number of weapons in the graves of Karabakh, indicated the intensification of cattle breeding and the existence of a yailag form during this period, which contributed to the accumulation of great wealth. To corroborate this conclusion, it was necessary to return to the steppe to study the settlements, where during the winter months the pastoralists descended from the mountains. Such settlements were not previously known. A settlement near the large Uchtepa burial mound was chosen as an object for excavation; a group of small winter dugouts was opened here.
From here, in the spring, the herders moved to the mountains, and in late autumn they returned back. And now the form of the economy has remained the same here, and part of the dugouts of modern pastoralists are located in the same place where the ancient settlement was. Thus, the work of the expedition put forward and substantiated the thesis about the time of the formation of distant-pasture cattle breeding and about the cultural and economic unity of the steppe Mile and mountainous Karabakh already at the end of the II - beginning of the I millennium BC, the unity based on a common economy. The expedition found that in ancient times the steppe lived on a multi-structured economy, in oases irrigated by canals, agriculture and cattle breeding flourished; there were large and small stationary settlements with solid mud-brick architecture. Cattle breeders lived in desert inter-oasis regions in winter; they created short-lived settlements of a different type - dugouts, which were empty from spring to autumn. There were constant economic ties between the inhabitants of these functionally different settlements ”.
In the article “Khojaly burial ground” K.Kh. Kushnareva writes: “The Khojaly burial ground is a unique monument. The mutual arrangement of various types of burial mounds and an analysis of archaeological material indicate that this burial ground was created gradually, over many centuries: the earliest of the existing burial mounds, small earthen mounds, date back to the last centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. e .; burial mounds with stone embankments-VIII-VII centuries. BC ... It should be considered in close connection with other monuments of the foothill, mountain, and steppe regions of Armenia and Azerbaijan. And such a formulation of the question is legitimate, if we take into account the specifics of the form of economy, which took shape in these areas by the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. We are talking about semi-nomadic cattle breeding. The most ancient routes along which the cultural ties of the tribes inhabiting the steppe and mountainous regions were carried out were the main waterways (in Karabakh-Terter, Karkar-chai, Khachin-chai), along which, as a rule, archaeological monuments are now grouped; along the same routes went (as at present) the annual movement of nomadic pastoralists.
The entire appearance of the mounds themselves, as well as the features of the inventory, characterize the tribes that created this monument as cattle breeding. The giant burial mounds, in which the leaders of the tribes were buried, could arise only as a result of the collective efforts of a large association of people. The location of the monument on the ancient nomadic highway makes it possible to think that this complex was created gradually by pastoral tribes who moved along it every year with their herds. Such an assumption can most likely explain the immense size of the burial ground, which could not have been erected by the inhabitants of any one nearby settlement. "
For our topic, the fact of finding a bronze tip of a "whistling" arrow in the Khojaly burial ground is very interesting. In the article “Khojaly burial ground” K.Kh.Kushnareva writes about this: “The burial inventory of large burial mounds is very diverse and numerous. Here we meet the weapons and vestments of warriors, jewelry, ceramics. For example, bronze arrows have a small through hole, which most likely served to amplify sound during flight. Finds of similar arrows in other places of the Transcaucasia (Jalal oglu, Borchalu, Mugan steppe-GG) are already accompanied by iron objects. The Mingechevir material from soil burials makes it possible to attribute these arrows to the third, most recent variety and to date them to the end of bronze and the beginning of iron. Cast tetrahedral arrows follow the shape of older bone arrows. "
According to experts, the ancient Turks used the so-called "whistle arrows" for a long time. Such an arrow, most often, on the shaft, below the tip, had a bone whistle in the form of a ball, elongated or biconical faceted shape, equipped with holes. A rarer type is one-piece tips with whistles, which at the base have convex cavities with holes or, outwardly, similar to bone, elongated-rounded iron cavities with holes in the place of the neck. It is believed that the purpose of the whistling arrows is to intimidate the enemy and his horses. There is information that such arrows indicated the direction of fire and gave other commands. With the development of horseback riding and equestrian combat in loose formation by the Turks, the bow and arrows became their main weapon of defeating the enemy at a distance. It was from the time when the soldiers became, first of all, horse archers, that the symbolic value of this type of weapon has grown immeasurably. The invention of signal whistle arrows with bone balls and holes that whistle in flight contributed to the appearance of a different symbolic meaning for such arrows. According to legend, the heir to the throne of the Xiongnu Shanyu used these arrows to educate his soldiers in the spirit of unquestioning obedience. Anyone who shoots an arrow “not where the whistle flies, will be cut off his head”. As objects for shooting, he alternately chose his horse, "beloved wife", the horse of his father, the ruling Shanyu Tuman, until he achieved complete obedience from his soldiers, and was able to direct an arrow at his father, kill him, make a coup, execute his stepmother and brother and seize power. The whistle has become a kind of symbol of the soldiers' devotion to the military leader.
Russian researcher V.P. Levashova writes: “The noisy and whistling arrows are especially interesting. Their tips have slots in the blades of the feather, and such an arrow, with a helical plumage of the shaft, flew, rotating around its axis, and the air passing through the holes made noise. Such arrows were exclusively military, and the noise they made frightened the enemy's cavalry. Chinese chroniclers speak of these whistling arrows as weapons of the Turkic peoples, which is confirmed by their numerous finds in the burials of the Altai Turks of the 7th-8th centuries. "
It can be assumed that the bronze arrowhead with a hole found in the Khojaly burial ground is two millennia older than similar Xiongnu arrows.
As is known in historical science, the question of the ethno-linguistic affiliation of the tribes-carriers of the Kurgan culture is still being discussed. Some researchers ascribe it to the Indo-European tribes, others associate it with the "steppe Iranians", others with the Hurrian-Urartian, Caucasian-Kartvelian and, possibly, Pranakh-Dagestan tribes, etc.
The ethnocultural difference in the funeral rituals of the South Caucasian population (proto-Türks) is most vividly reflected in the burial mounds. We can be convinced of this by comparing the main features and details of the burial rituals of the aforementioned peoples and tribes (Iranians, Pranakho-Dagestanis, Pravainakhs, Hurrito-Urarts, Caucasian-Kartvelians, etc.) reflected in synchronous archaeological materials.
For example, according to some researchers, the ancestors of the modern North Caucasian peoples (Chechens, Ingush) in ancient times had various burial structures (stone boxes, crypts, pits covered with stone slabs in the mountains; pits covered with a tree, tombs made of logs and covered with a tree - in the foothills), which were widespread here from the 3rd millennium BC.
The Dagestan peoples, who have lived in the north of the South Caucasus since ancient times, mostly buried their relatives in ground pits. For example, the Dagestan researcher M.A. Bakushev. writes: “The study of the burial complexes shows that the leading type of burial structure on the territory of Dagestan in the period under study (III century BC-IV century AD-GG) was a simple ground grave (pit) , sometimes surrounded by a ring or a half-ring of stones, sometimes with a partial lining of the grave with a stone, often with an overlap of stone slabs. Ground pits are represented by two main shapes in terms of plan - wide oval and rectangular and narrow elongated-oval and elongated-rectangular ... Among the burials of local tribes there are so-called secondary and dissected. As noted, the researchers have not given a weighty explanation of this ritual, its religious and ideological basis has not been determined, which is primarily due to the difficulty of interpreting the osteological remains observed in archaeological practice. The understanding of secondary burials proposed in the work also presupposes the implementation of special burial and other rites and customs, such as exposing a corpse, isolating the infirm and their subsequent burial, connection with the rite of calling the rain, with the reburial of the deceased, etc., which finds some confirmation in ethnographic materials, in the information of written sources. The ritual of dismembered burial is observed in isolated cases and, as I think, is primarily associated with human sacrifice (which excludes the term "burial"), as well as with the special circumstances of death or the qualities of a particular person to whom a similar procedure was applied, which is not included actually into the concept of "funeral rite". The burials of individual human skulls, found in some burials of burial grounds in Dagestan, which reflect, on the one hand, the human sacrifices of a socially dependent person, and, on the other hand, the idea of ​​the head as a “receptacle of the soul,” belong to the same type.
A lot of books and special articles have been written about the funeral rite of the Iranians. For example, the famous Russian scientist L. S. Klein argues that burial mounds are sharply different from Iranian ones, since they have nothing to do with the typical Iranian concern “about protecting the dead from contact with the ground ... "Towers of silence", astodans, ossuaries, feeding the dead to dogs and birds, cutting flesh from bones, etc. "
The well-known Russian researcher I.V. Pyankov, using the example of the Bactrians, describes in detail the funeral rite of the ancient Iranians. He believes that before the adoption of Islam, all ancient Iranians had a single rite of burial of deceased relatives and writes about this the following: posthumous rituals? I have already tried to answer this question in my previous works, therefore I will limit myself here only to a brief retelling of the results I have obtained. The rite of "exposure", when a corpse was exposed in an open place so that dogs or birds would leave only bare bones of it, was the most important defining feature of a vast ethnic community, known in the ancient sources of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic times as Ariana. The main peoples of Ariana were the Bactrians and Sogdians in the north, the Arachotes, Zarangis and Areans (the northern part of their region, by the time Aristobulus wrote his work, was administratively part of Hyrcania) in the south. During the first half and middle of the 1st millennium BC. the central Iranians actively settled in all directions, preserving their customs and rituals. In the west, such settlers were magicians who took root in Media as one of its tribes ... Archaeologically, the rite of "exhibiting" is recorded by the complete absence of burial grounds and frequent finds within settlements - in garbage pits or in the ruins of old buildings - individual human bones gnawed by animals. Sometimes there are crumpled burials in pits under the floors of houses or in courtyards. The descendants of the carriers of cultures of this circle continue to adhere to their funeral rite even later, until the spread of Islam, although now some of them have a desire to somehow preserve the cleaned bones of their dead: this is how ossuaries and mausoleums appear ... Almost without exception, researchers see in the rite “ exhibiting ”and its various manifestations in Central Asia are signs of Zoroastrianism or, at least,“ Mazdeism ”. Numerous inconsistencies and differences are attributed to "unorthodox", the peripheral position of Central Asian Zoroastrianism. The similarity of the Zoroastrian funeral rite with the Bactrian one described here is really great in the main points ... The Bactrians and other Central Iranians, judging by archeology, for some categories of the dead had a special method of burial - crumpled corpses in pits under the floor of a house and in courtyards. In "Videvdat" and among the later Zoroastrians, this method turned into a temporary burial, permissible, but fraught with desecration of the soil and home ...
Of course, the Zoroastrian funeral rite itself also penetrated into the countries of the Bactrians and other Central Iranian peoples, i.e. a rite peculiar to canonical Zoroastrianism, developed among magicians (we do not know of another Zoroastrian canon). It is well known that magicians performed priestly functions among these peoples in the era of the Achaemenids, and then under the Arshakids and Sassanids, to the extent that these peoples were part of the respective powers. And beyond them, for example, among the Sogdians of late antiquity, magicians with their temples of fire played an important role. But burials made in Central Asia according to the rite of magicians are not easy to distinguish by archaeological materials (by which only one can judge about them) from burials made in accordance with pre-Zoroastrian folk customs (as already noted, even the real burial rite of the Sassanid Persians, in which Zoroastrianism of the magicians was the state religion, practically did not differ from the funeral rite of the ancient Bactrians). It is possible that the increase in the influence of Zoroastrian magicians in the Central Iranian ethnic area is evidenced by the appearance there (to the least extent in Bactria) of ossuaries (hums and simple box, not statuary). The coming of the Savior and the future resurrection are provided for by the teachings of Zoroaster himself, and the bones of the deceased are a guarantee of individual resurrection, which therefore need a more careful attitude. Another important feature is the appearance of dakhmas of the classical type in the Sassanian, and in the east - in the Kushan-Sassanid time. So, the Bactrian rite of "exhibiting" is a specific feature, an important ethno-defining feature of the Central Iranian peoples - an ethnic community that can also be called the "peoples of Ariana", "Avestan people", etc. On the basis of this rite, the Zoroastrian rite was formed. But where did the Bactrian rite itself come from, which differs so sharply from the funeral rituals of other Iranian peoples? To the east of Bactria, in the mountainous regions from the Hindu Kush and Pamir to Kashmir, inhabited autochthonous tribes, which the Indo-Iranians, and after them the Greeks, called "Caspians". Their ancestors - the creators of the cultures of the mountainous Neolithic in these places - became one of the most important substrates in the formation of the Bactrians and related peoples, carriers of the later cultures of Central Asia. The funeral rite of the Caspians, described by Strabo (XI, 11, 3; 8), in his own words, almost did not differ from the Bactrian one, and only the original, primitive meaning of this rite, associated with totemistic views, here appears quite openly: he was considered blessed, whose corpse has been stolen by birds (this is a particularly auspicious sign) or dogs. It is especially noted (Val. Flacc. VI, 105) that Caspian dogs are buried with the same honors as people in the "graves of husbands."
A Tajik researcher from St. Petersburg D. Abdulloev writes: “According to the teachings of the prophet Zarathushtra, death is evil, therefore the corpse was considered endowed with evil spirits. In Zoroastrianism, burial of a person in the ground was categorically forbidden, since the body, in contact with the ground, could desecrate it. Burning corpses was also not allowed, since fire and air, like water and earth, were sacred for the Zoroastrians. In the part of the sacred book of Avesta, Videvdat that has come down to us, it is said that the Zoroastrian funeral rite was phased and for each stage there were special constructions ... The first building was the "kata", where the corpse was left in those cases when it was impossible to immediately transfer it to the "dakhma". In "dakhma" the corpse was exposed to be torn apart by birds and predators. The bones remained in the "dakhma" for a year, after which they became clean. Then they were collected and placed in the "astadan" - an ossuary. This was the third and last stage of the burial rite of the Zoroastrians, who believed that the preservation of bones was necessary for the coming resurrection of the dead. Another method of separating soft tissues from bones was also practiced. Thus, Chinese written sources report that a group of people lived outside the city walls of Samarkand who kept trained dogs that devoured the flesh of the dead. At the same time, the separation of soft tissues from bones was also carried out by people using a knife or other sharp objects. Author of the X century. Narshakhi writes that the ruler of Bukhara, Togshoda, died during a reception with the governor of the caliph in Khorasan, after which his entourage cleaned the soft tissues of the deceased from bones, placed them in a bag and took them with them to Bukhara. This information is confirmed by archaeological data. Thus, the process of separating soft tissues from the bones of the deceased is presented on a wall painting from Kara-Tepe near the city of Termez. It depicted a seated man under an arch holding a knife in his right hand and a cleansed human skull in his left. Near him lies a corpse, torn to pieces by dogs. "
According to B.B. Piotrovsky, the southern neighbors of the proto-Türks, the Urarts, also observed the principle of not desecrating the earth with corpses and buried their relatives in artificial caves in the rocks. Here is what BB Piotrovsky writes about the Urartian burial rite in the book “Kingdom of Van (Urartu):“ Among the funerary is the complex of rock rooms opened in 1916 by A.N. Kaznakov in the Van fortress, near the arsenal. An opening with a recess for the door axis in its inner part led into a square room of about 20 sq. m area and a height of 2.55 m. On the left wall of the room, at a certain height from the floor, there was an entrance to two small rooms. The first of them, rectangular in plan (4.76 m long, 1.42 m wide, 0.95 m high), in which you can only crawl, had a flat ceiling, and the next one was domed. The second room turned out to be quite interesting; at the floor level of the adjacent room, it had a cut-out for fixing the slab, which served as its floor and overlapped the underground, from which it led to a small chamber (1.07 m wide, 0.85 m high), which the researcher took for a cache. The nature of these small rooms allows us to join the opinion of A.N. Kaznakov, who considered the Van artificial cave described by him to be burial. The sarcophagus in it was apparently underground, while in the "Big Cave", "Ichkala" and "Naft-kuyu" sarcophagi could be installed on elevations ... During the excavation of one site of Toprakh-kale, a large number of animal bones were found and people, and the human bones were missing skulls. Leman-Haupt suggested that the corpses of people sacrificed to the god Khaldi, whose heads were kept in a special place, were piled up here. Urartian monuments confirm the existence of human sacrifice. On the Urartian seal owned by K.V. Trever and originating from Haykaberd, an altar is depicted, near which a decapitated human body lies; the carefully marked ribs suggest that the skin has been ripped from the torso. The list of gods from "Mher-Kapusi" mentions the gate, Khaldi and the gods of the Khaldi gate. In the Urartian texts, the gate of God refers to niches in the rocks. These niches sometimes have three ledges, like three niches, carved into one another, which should correspond to three doors leading into the rock, therefore the name of these niches in cuneiform is often written with a plural suffix. According to religious beliefs, a deity who was in a rock came out through these doors ... In the question of the significance of Urartu for the history of Transcaucasia, we must proceed not only from the establishment of genetic ties of the modern peoples of the Caucasus with the ancient population of the Kingdom of Van, but also from the significance that Urartu had for development of the culture of the peoples of the Caucasus ... The cultural heritage of the Urarts passed not only to their heirs, the Armenians, whose state grew directly on the territory of the Kingdom of Van, but also to other peoples of the Caucasus. "
Thus, archaeological data (rock paintings, stone enclosures, cyclopean fortresses, barrow culture, etc.) allow us to assert that the origins of the ancient Turkic ethnos are associated with the South Caucasus and the southwestern Caspian region, and the ancestors of Azerbaijanis are the proto-Turks, who created the above archaeological cultures.

These separate groups are united by the custom of building mounds, new forms of economy - the growing importance of cattle breeding - and the spread of bronze products of similar forms. However, for example, the arrangement of barrows has local characteristics, and in some areas there is a gradual transition from corpses to cremations.

We have only circumstantial evidence that during the period of distribution barrow culture the role of cattle breeding is increasing, since the settlements are little known and the main source of our knowledge is the burial grounds. However, the very fact that the settlements of that time left few traces allows us to conclude that the population was more mobile due to the development of cattle breeding. In addition, the monuments of the Kurgan culture are located in places unfavorable for farming: on plateaus, stony or even moraine soils, infertile, but convenient for shepherding. Nevertheless, in some areas, the tribes of the culture of kurgan burials also occupy fertile soils (for example, in the Upper Palatinate or on the Middle Danube).

Kurgan burial grounds are usually small - from several dozen graves, no more than 50 in one group. But in the forest near Hagenau on an area of ​​80 sq. km Schaeffer discovered over 500 Bronze Age burial mounds, comprising several groups. The mounds have stone structures and are surrounded by a stone crown, sometimes there is a wooden structure inside. In one burial mound, there is no more than one burial (except for the entrance ones, dating back to a later time). The crumpled burials disappear. The deceased with accompanying equipment was placed either on the surface of the earth (in archaeological terminology - “on the horizon”), or in a pit. There are also cremations. Sometimes repeated burials come across: after the soft parts of the body decayed, the remains were transferred to another place, buried and a mound was poured over them. Separate joint burials of men and women are usually associated with the killing of widows.

5) E. Rademacher. Die niederrheinische Hugelgraberkultur. - Mannus, IV, 1925.

Black Sea steppes and the kurgan hypothesis

A number of scientists tried to present Central Asia as the Aryan ancestral home. The glorious merit of this hypothesis is that the Central Asian steppes (now deserts) were in ancient times the habitat of the wild horse. The Aryans were considered skillful riders, and it was they who brought horse breeding to India. A significant argument against 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 the Aryan ancestral home was located in Central Europe - in the territory from the Middle Rhine to the Urals. This area is indeed inhabited by representatives of almost all species of animals and plants known to the Aryans. But modern archaeologists object to such a localization - in ancient times, peoples of such different cultural traditions and so different in appearance lived on this territory that it is impossible to unite them within the framework of one Aryan culture.

On the basis of the dictionary of words common to the Aryan peoples that had developed by that time back at the end of the 19th century. 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 borders of the ancestral home were narrowed down to the steppe zone of 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 Vir Gordon Child published the book "Arias", in which he identified the Aryans with the nomadic tribes of the Eastern European steppes. This mysterious people buried the dead in ground pits and sprinkled them abundantly with red ocher, which is why this culture received in archeology the name “the culture of burials with ocher”. On top of such burials, mounds were often poured.

This hypothesis was accepted by the scientific community, since many scientists speculatively placed the Aryan ancestral home there, but could not connect their theoretical constructions with archaeological facts. It is curious that during the Second World War, German archaeologists carried out excavations in the Russian and Ukrainian steppes. They were probably trying to find magic weapons in the ancient Aryan mounds that could help Germany gain 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 associated with the need to protect German archaeologists who were going to unearth 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 of the Azov Sea that the legendary city of Odin Asgard was sought by the outstanding Swedish scientist Thor Heyerdahl.

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-renowned scientists have the Aryan ancestral home on the territory of the USSR. However, ideology intervened: the whole thing was in the biography of Maria Gimbutas, there was a sin behind her, and such that belonged to the jurisdiction of the notorious "first section", and anyone who spoke positively about the "barrow hypothesis" Gimbutas got on the note of "historians in civilian clothes ".

Maria Gimbutas was born in 1921 in Vilnius, which belonged to the Poles at that time, and later moved with her family to Kaunas, where in 1938 she entered the University of Vitovt the Great 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 Mary at the university, were shot or exiled to Siberia. The mass deportation of Lithuanians took place in mid-June 1941, a week before the German attack. Already under the Germans, Maria graduated from the 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 German troops. In Lithuania, Maria leaves her mother. Once in the western zone of occupation, she graduated from the university in Tübingen, since her Nazi diploma from Kaunas University is considered invalid, and three years later she leaves for the United States, where she will work for many years at Harvardék and the University of California. In addition, she flew out to excavation in Europe almost every year.

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

At the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. under the influence of factors unknown to science (most likely, these were unfavorable climatic conditions with frequent alternation of cold winters and dry years), several Aryan tribes left to the south. One of the waves of the Aryan migration crosses the Greater Caucasus Range, invades Anatolia (the territory of modern Turkey) and in place of the kingdom of the Hittite tribe conquered by them creates its own Hittite state - the first Aryan state on Earth in history. Another wave of migrants was less fortunate - they penetrate the Trans-Caspian steppes and wander there for quite a long time. After 2 thousand years, the Iranian tribes, who 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 Middle 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 the 4th millennium BC. e. for the first time, two- and four-wheeled carts appear, which will later become the hallmark of many Aryan cultures. At the same time, the Aryan nomadic society reaches the pinnacle of its development. Under the influence of the Sredniy Stog culture and the tribes of the mountainous Crimea, the Aryans began to erect stone anthropomorphic steles. The Soviet archaeologist Formozov believed that stone steles in the Black Sea region were related to more ancient Western European ones. In such steles, according to the ideas of the Aryans, for some time (presumably a year or a month) after death the soul of a deceased person entered, sacrifices were made to it and asked for magical help in everyday affairs. Later, the stele was buried in the 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 in the Vedas, the oldest Aryan ritual texts. This is not surprising, because, as we have already said, the Indian branch has already left for 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 the 4th millennium BC. e. The Aryans invade Europe, but they are quickly assimilated by the local population. Around 3000 in the Trans-Volga region, the Iranian tribes were isolated, they were mastering the steppes of Western Siberia and gradually penetrated into the Trans-Caspian steppes, where the future Indians lived. Under pressure from the Iranian tribes, the Aryans penetrate Northeastern China. Most likely, it was at this time that there was a division into the veneration of devas among the Indians and the veneration of the asuras-ahura among the Iranians.

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 nomad, and most of the Aryan steppe inhabitants were forced to become sedentary. A second wave of Aryans invades Europe. In general, the border of the IV and III millennia BC. e. is a key date for many civilizations in the Old World. Around this time, the first pharaoh of the 1st dynasty, Less, ascends the Egyptian throne; in Mesopotamia, the cities are united 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 the 3rd millennium BC. e. Aryans actively mix with the local population - the Balkan-Danube in Europe, the Finno-Ugric (in Russia, Belarus and the Baltic countries). The descendants of such mixed marriages speak dialects of the Aryan language inherited from their father, but retain the mythology and folklore of their mothers. That is why the myths, tales and songs of the Aryan peoples are so different from each other. In addition, the Aryans quickly adopted the customs of the 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 the Finno-Ugric models - from wood, dwellings in Central Europe and the Balkans - from clay, according to the traditions of the Balkan-Danube civilization. When the Aryans, several centuries later, penetrated the Atlantic coast of Europe, where it is customary to build houses of stone with round or oval walls, they will also borrow this custom from the local population. The Aryan peoples who lived in Central and Western Europe at this time got acquainted with real tin bronze. It was supplied to the tribes of itinerant merchants, who received the name from archaeologists "the culture of bell-shaped goblets."

On the vast expanses of Europe from the Rhine to the Volga, a new type of ceramics appears - decorated with prints of a twisted rope. Scientists call such ceramics "Corded Ware", and the cultures themselves - the cultures of Corded Ware. How did this first Aryan dish 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 in 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 Arians communicated with the Trypillians, exchanging grain and metal products, linen fabrics and other gifts of the land from them, and, no 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 still 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 by imprinting a rope on clay.

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

Around 2000 BC e. the Iranian tribes have an amazing military invention - the war chariot. Thanks to this, the Iranians invade what we call Iran today. Over time, this invention was adopted by other Aryan peoples. The war chariots of the Aryans invade China, and the Aryans for a short time become the ruling elite of the Celestial Empire, but then they are assimilated by the Chinese. War chariots enable the Indo-Aryans to defeat the Harappan civilization of India. Other Aryan tribes - the Hittites - use chariots to defeat the Egyptians in Syro-Palestine, but soon the Egyptians also master the art of chariot fighting and defeat the Hittites with their own weapons, and the Egyptian pharaohs of the 18th dynasty often order court artists to depict themselves striking enemies on such a chariot.

At the beginning of the 2nd millennium 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 the history of the Ancient World. On the island of Ter a (other names Fira, Santorini), a terrible volcanic eruption took place. 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. A huge amount of this ash was released into the atmosphere. Even in Egypt, far enough from Crete, because of 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 cold snap, and this, in turn, led to hunger and drove people out of their homes. At this time, the Protoitalians migrated 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 in the Mediterranean of the mysterious "Sea Peoples" who made daring raids on Egypt and the wealthy Phoenician cities.

India was the only region in the world that was benefited by these climatic changes. There is a flourishing of Vedic civilization. It was at this time that the Vedas and other ancient religious and philosophical treatises were written down.

The last invasion of the Aryan steppe people into Europe around 1000 BC. e. leads to the appearance 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 will 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 is, in brief, the history of the Aryan migrations to Europe, the migrations that made the Aryans Indo-Europeans, that is, peoples living in both parts of Eurasia. At the time of their greatest spread, the Aryan peoples occupied an area even larger than the empire of Genghis Khan, their lands stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.

However, even among the 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 the oldest bones of a domestic horse in Europe were discovered at the Dnieper-Donets culture settlement; Russian scientists suggest that the Aryans formed on the basis of the Andronov culture of the Trans-Volga steppes and only then, having crossed the Volga, they conquered the European steppes.

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