Research Items

Abstract

Origins of the Russian Population IN discussing the evidence for a pre-Aryan element in the population of southern Russia, Dr. A. Bach-makoff compares conditions in prehistoric France, where, notwithstanding the evidence of Caesar, there is reason to believe that the Veneti were a pre-Aryan people, possibly related to the Picts, while in the south the Ligurians and Basques represent two branches of a race which may have extended from the Pyrenees to the Atlas (Z. Eassenkunde, 4, 2). In south Russia there is evidence for the existence of a similar pre-Aryan or Japhetic element, upon which the Aryans impinged about 1500 B.C. North of lat. 50 ° were impenetrable forests inhabited by Finns, but south of this line in the steppe country was a special kind of pre-Aryan population, which appears to be related to that of the Circassians (Kimmerians) of the Caucasus. The Aryans first impinging upon this population were Scyths or Iranians. The Slavs did not move before the Christian era, although it is possible that there were Slavs around Kiev, who were known to the Greeks in 450 B.C. These Proto-Slavs, however, remained quiescent for a thousand years. The effect of this Japhetic element on the Aryans can be estimated at two epochsâ first on the Scyths in antiquity, and secondly on the Slavs in the Middle Ages. The first question to be decided is that of the Kimmerians. It would appear that they were a branch of the Circassians, who settled on the banks of the Kouban. They seem to be persistent in Anatolia from the time of the Hittites. The evidence for the existence of this race as a principal element in the substratum of the Russian population is mainly linguistic. The name “Tcherkesses” is found in Kiev. Little Russian names end in—ko instead of—off. The suffix oukh, which appears in Russia, is of frequent occurrence in various forms in names in Asia Minor in antiquity, and there is also evidence for it in Elamite, Mitanni and Proto-Hittite.