Peoples Of Eurasia Research Articles

NEVRUZ FESTİVAL İN TURKİC PEOPLES AND TURKEY

Although mythology, that is, shorthand for unknown times, unusually conveys everyday life with the help of symbols, it cyclically tells about the creation of the world and the apocalypse. The mythology of the steppe peoples also transmits their early times from generation to generation in the form of oral culture. This oral culture is a product of a nomadic lifestyle with livestock farming. Steppe peoples have their unique perception of time and the universe in their mythologies. Nauryz culture also reflects their perception of the universe and time. The purpose of the article is to reveal the content of the Nauryz holiday, personifying spring and fertility, the new year, and the beginning of the year, in the culture of the Turkish people, which is filled with meanings and elements symbolizing spring, the joy of life, water and sacred purification, renewal, abundance, fertility, and awakening of nature. The time of the awakening of nature has been celebrated at various times in agricultural and livestock societies since ancient times. Nauryz is a widely celebrated holiday among the peoples of Eurasia, who devote their lives mainly to animal husbandry. Although the Turkic peoples living throughout Eurasia celebrate Nauryz in different ways and continues to exist as a common value. This study will examine the origins of the Nauryz holiday among the steppe peoples and the Turkic world, as well as its development among the Ottoman Turks and Turkey in the light of some archival documents, as well as research and source studies.

Why the Turks? On the etymological method in Fredegar's account of the Trojan Franks

This article is part of a larger project that seeks to understand the role of the etymological method in historical writings. I analyse the account of the Trojan origin of the Franks in the Chronicle of Fredegar and demonstrate that Fredegar uses the etymological method as an epistemological resource and a catalyst to the narrative, and that taking this into account sheds light on some of Fredegar's narrative choices. Particularly, the use of the etymological method explains the extraordinary association of the Franks with the Turks, which has long puzzled historians. My conclusions advocate for an inclusive and methodologically careful consideration of etymological stories to understand the internal logic of medieval historical narratives and the methods that shape their messages. My reading suggests that Fredegar's is not a story of ethnic uniqueness but a scholarly account of kinship between the peoples of Eurasia.

The Cuckoo Image in the Buryats Traditional Concepts and Rituals

Purpose. The study is devoted to identifying the image of the cuckoo in the Buryats mythological ideas and traditional rituals.Results. In the first part of the work, a general description of the cuckoo image is given based on the vocabulary and small genres of the buryat folklore. It was found that the Buryats particularly noted the voice and physical dexterity of this bird from its other biological features. It was also associated with such a negative trait of a person as idle talk.The second part of the study examines the Buryats mythological ideas about the cuckoo. It was found out that the cuckoo appears in the Buryat epic as a sacred bird, a conductor of the celestials will. It has a feminine origin: women are believed to turn into this bird after death as a punishment for easy virtue and committing suicide. The cuckoo image is also associated with the motif of werewolf, ideas about the evergreen needles acquisition by larch trees and the milk wine invention. In the Buryat epic, this bird often acts as a bearer of knowledge about the past and a wealth giver. The dual nature of the magical effect of the cuckoo’s voice was revealed: on the one hand, it can be beneficial for man and nature, on the other hand, it can destroy a person. The negative features of the cuckoo image are associated with the symbolism of death, which is reflected in folk signs, in particular in the superstition about the cuckoo ability to predict a person’s life expectancy.The third part of the article highlights the cuckoo image in the Buryats shamanic ritual. It has been established that it was localized in the shamanic rite of the Aghin Buryats, probably being a relic of totemism.Conclusion. The study shows that the cuckoo image in the mythological ideas of the Buryats is very ambiguous. This bird was revered as a sacred feathered. It personified the feminine principle. The cuckoo was characterized by solar and celestial symbolism, in addition it acted as a fertility symbol, which was manifested in the correlation of the image with nature rhythms and renewal. This bird was associated with sacred trees (the shamanic Mother Tree and the World Tree). At the same time, the image of the cuckoo also had negative characteristics, primarily because it was closely associated with ideas about death.The study shows that some traditional ideas of the Buryats about this bird find parallels with the mythological concepts of other peoples of Eurasia, which is explained by their universality or typological identity and, probably, intercultural contacts that took place in the past.

An Early-Modern Counseling Initiative Against Tobacco Addiction: Duhan Treatises

Spreading rapidly among the peoples of Eurasia after the discovery of America, tobacco entered the Ottoman Empire at about the same time. This brought the conservative attitude of the state and society towards tobacco and tobacco consumers. In this age, when people grasped the universe in its religious integrity, tobacco users were also accused of religion for using an innovation that was not present in human life before. This article is specifically about tobacco treatises written in the Ottoman Empire. The main view that I will argue in the article is that tobacco treatises are based on shaping people's lives and guiding them. The vast majority of treatises state that tobacco is religiously forbidden and emphasize its negative aspects on health and home economics. For this reason, while the main factors in proving the ideas are thoughts on the harms of tobacco in social and individual terms, the tools used are primarily the Qur'an and hadiths. While the aim is human health, the preservation of traditions and the prevention of waste, it is the religious debates that seem to be at the forefront. However, neither these treatises nor the intervention of the states could stop the spread of tobacco. A rather subjective reasoning was made in the works, and therefore the result of convincing the other side rarely took place. Excessive expressions, on the other hand, basically have content that can lead people to this because of the insulting style they have, instead of warning them and directing them to stay away from tobacco. This article is intended to be a reading of all these debates and cultural adaptation procedure.

ВКЛАД ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫХ ПРОГРАММ РЕСПУБЛИКИ КАЗАХСТАН «МӘДЕНИ МҰРА» («КУЛЬТУРНОЕ НАСЛЕДИЕ»), «ХАЛЫҚ ТАРИХ ТОЛҚЫНЫНДА» («НАРОД В ПОТОКЕ ИСТОРИИ»), «РУХАНИ ЖАНҒЫРУ» «АРХИВ –2025» В ИЗУЧЕНИЕ ИСТОРИИ И КУЛЬТУРЫ КАЗАХСКОЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОСТИ

The specifics of the problems of Kazakh Oriental studies are connected with the historical and perspective role of the country, which occupies a key position in the system of interrelations of civilizations of the East and West. The geopolitical situation of Kazakhstan, the multinational composition of the population, the state of development of ethnic identity and national idea pose the problem of a deep, versatile, free from speculative, abstract and simplified approaches to studying the history and dynamics of the development of statehood and problems in the context of the history of the countries and peoples of Eurasia. Over the past thirty years, the historical science in the post-Soviet space has been actively working on an objective revision of many issues, in particular, related to the problems of statehood, identity, preservation of cultural identity, historical cultural heritage. Historical science has acquired a new qualitative characteristic, defined in the form of new approaches to scientific problems, free creative search, as well as increased interest in the problems of ethnogenesis, statehood, nomadic studies, religious studies, international relations and common historical heritage.

Серебряные сосуды из Майкопского кургана (Ошад): реалистичные рисунки с магическим подтекстом

In 1897 Russian archaeologist N. I. Veselovsky excavated an Early Bronze Age burial mound on the eastern outskirts of Maykop town. He found some silver vessels covered with images, made by the technique of contour embossing. Although the landscapes, flora and fauna on these objects, most likely performing a ritual function, were conveyed with a high degree of reliability, the original meaning of the images still remains a subject of controversy. The total floristic and faunal composition of the drawings is quite extensive: two species of plants, three species of birds, eight species of mammals. Most of the researchers who previously dealt with this issue spoke about the impossibility of considering these images as ordinary drawings, believing that they have a deep meaning. The joint circular movement in the sun is considered an extremely favorable magical effect for most of the peoples of Eurasia. The large wild animals are important intermediaries between humans and gods. For example, in ancient Hittite and Siberian mythology, they represented the sacred totems “beasts of the gods” or “patron spirits”. Most likely, the drawings on the vessel “with the landscape” make up a single semantic composition, the plot, perhaps the simplest map-scheme: a bear guards the World Tree growing far in the north at the foothills of the World Mountain, where the two sacred rivers originate from.

The Law of the Mongols as Seen by John of Plano Carpini: Historical Legal Verification

Research objectives: The goal of the article is a comparative analysis of information recorded by John of Plano Carpini on Mongolian and Mongol Empire law, along with other sources on the Mongolian law and legal traditions aimed at determining the objectivity of diplomat’s materials and observing the evolution of traditional law of the Mongols. Research materials: Verification is carried out on the basis of the work “The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars” by John of Plano Carpini, making comparisons with the corpus of other historical sources, including travelers’ notes and historical chro­nicles by authors of the medieval and modern eras, as well as materials of ethnographic research on the legal traditions of nomadic peoples of Eurasia. The novelty of the study: The presented article is the first attempt to compare the information of John of Plano Carpini on the customary and imperial law of the Mongols with other sources on Mongolian law to observe certain legal traditions of the Mongols and the evolution of law among the Eurasian nomads. Research results: The author has found that the majority of information from John of Plano Carpini on Mongolian law in the middle of thirteenth century can be characterized as objective as it is confirmed by the data from independent sources dating from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries. These include testimonies of other foreign travelers who visited Mongolia in different epochs, medieval historical chronicles, studies resulting from ethnographic research, etc. Besides that, the value of the information of the diplomat is emphasized within the context of comparative legal research on the history of the state and law of the Mongol Empire and Chinggisid states.

How Did Sapiens Really Come into Being in Eurasia and Where Is It Heading Right Now?

Generations of archaeologists, ethnologists and now also genetic researchers are investigating the question: What makes Eurasia a unique evolutionary territory? We must recognise that mental evolution as a Eurasian unifying anthropological force is even more important than biological evolution. We can no longer ignore the fact that the number of people in Eurasia has increased tenfold over the past 200 years, i.e. since the French Revolution. Homo sapiens is on the way to becoming homo billionis, the creature that emotionally fits into a herd and seems to feel safer there the larger this herd is. This process proceeds on the entire planet, but in Eurasia it is the most obvious. Whether sapiens or billionis, there is no question that human must change if he wants to survive in Eurasia with resources getting scarcer and population higher, given his development in the recent past. To do so, however, at least in Eurasia human would have to control himself rationally and set hard limits to his cultural, mental and social drives and dreams, instead of relying on collective control and correction of the nature of Eurasia that he has supposedly subjugated.

Родина в философии евразийства

The article is dedicated to one of the basic ideas of the philosophic movement of Eurasianism - the idea of the Motherland. Unlike the other philosophical trends of the first wave of emigration, Eurasians were the only ones who understood the Fatherland not speculatively, but geographically. Eurasians could be called the first political scientists of the Russian philosophical tradition: they tried to predict the political situation in the abandoned Russia in order to build a new state on the ruins of Bolshevism in the future. They formed the concept of the Motherland from four components: a historically formed territory, power for possession of the territory, religion (Orthodoxy), and culture (common for the entire middle Eurasia, which was yet to be created on the basis of Russian culture). The author of the article insists on the fact that the idea of a common culture was reduced to declarations and was not developed by the participants in the movement. Besides, the theme of culture exposes some structural contradictions in the Eurasian theory (it contradicts the anti-colonial pathos of some works and looks retrograde against the background of innovative political forecasts). Eurasians’ religious themes were also poorly developed, some participants in the movement even ignored the subject. Detailed historical, economic, and national issues did not remove the general “narrowness” of the theory: the Motherland was uniquely defined only as mestorazvitie [local development] (P.N. Savitsky’s term), which created a contradiction Eurasians did not feel: in the domestic policy, in modern terms, they were globalists who insisted on the victory of the centripetal forces in the “Ocean of Eurasia”; in the foreign policy, they were anti-globalists who seriously believed that a closed (but large) economic system is more efficient than a global one. This contradiction brings us to the main semantic gap of the Eurasian theory: all the creators of this doctrine refused to understand that, for the “middle lands” of Eurasia, Russian culture and the Russian language, in one way or another, represented the language and culture of the colonialists. They simply did not see this significant problem, looking at Eurasia with Russian eyes and insisting that the Russian people in Eurasia were then “the first among equals”. In addition, the concept of mestorazvitie created a negative assessment for all who had dropped out of their own “local development”. Emigration, thus, became the periphery of the Russian and Eurasian idea, meaningless from the point of view of the processes taking place in the Motherland. For this reason, in the author’s opinion, Eurasianism was doomed to an early decline: the ideas of Eurasianism lost their vitality as soon as the emigration realized (in the late 1920s - early 1930s) that there was no way back to Russia. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

The Kazakh Steppe and its Political Elite in the Conditions of Revolutionary Transit in Eurasia at the Beginning of the 20th century

The author examines the political situation in Kazakh society in the conditions of revolutionary transit at the beginning of the 20th century, taking into account the influence of foreign policy factors on it. The Great War forced the Kazakh political elite to analyse more closely the place of their region in the world and the fate of the peoples of Eurasia in the international context. Tomohiko Uyama and other authors draw attention to the international context of the Central Asian revolt of 1916. The role of foreign political forces in the events of the October Revolution and Civil War in the Kazakh steppe, as well as political orientations of the Kazakh political elite in the early 1920s, were not yet accurately taken into account. The author believes that the involvement in all-Russian processes determined the main reference points of the Alash autonomist movement in the conditions of revolution and Civil war, as well as the indifferent attitude of foreign political forces towards the Kazakh steppe. The aim of the article is to analyse the evolution of perceptions and initiatives of national figures involved in the process of Sovietisation of the region, regarding the strengthening of their power positions using the idea of world revolution. The study draws on new sources and the results of contemporary historiography of the history of the Alash movement. For Bolshevik foreign-policy strategy, the recognition of Soviet power by the Alash Orda was one of the stages in the drive towards world revolution in the colonial East. At the same time, the idea of the world revolution itself played an ambiguous role in the Bolshevik strategy. The author demonstrates that different groups of local Bolsheviks, as well as representatives of the central government, used it to achieve quite practical objectives. With the consolidation of Soviet power, the Kazakh Bolsheviks attempted to introduce the factor of the world revolution into the local political context. This was also reflected in Turar Ryskulov's project to create a Turkic Republic and a Turkic Communist Party.

Types of palm patterns in the indigenous peoples of Eurasia depending on the geographic coordinates of residence

Types of palm patterns in the indigenous peoples of Eurasia depending on the geographic coordinates of residence

The process of formation of the Kyrgyz state in the era of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane in the works of Askar Akayev

The article is dedicated to the process of formation of the Kyrgyz statehood in the era of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane studied in the works of A.A. Akaev. A.A. Akaevs approach as a researcher is characterized by scrupulous analysis, warmth and careful attitude to the formation of the Kyrgyz nation. A.A. Akaev identified the period from the XIII to the XV Century as ambiguous, complex, as the time of the Kyrgyz opposition to external expansion, especially hard to experience after the times Of the great power of the IX century. The Chingiz Era radically changed the life of the peoples of Eurasia, including the Kyrgyz ethnic group. Being a time of tragic struggle for independence, this era at the same time strengthened the centripetal tendencies of Kyrgyz statehood, which culminated in the formation of specific features of national unity in 1508 during the time of Muhammad-Kyrgyz. This is the historical conclusion that A. Akaev brings the reader to.

Plants in Culture: A Paradigm of Anthropology [Rasteniia v culture: paradigmа antropologii

The article introduces a special theme of the issue on “Plants in the Culture of Peoples of Eurasia: From Magic to Resource”. We take a retrospective look at the polyfunctionality of plants in the history of human culture and trace their polysemanticism, symbolism, and variety of applications (in food, medical, sacred-magical, and legal matters) from antiquity to the present day in various regions and among various peoples. We discuss the state of the art in research in these areas and review the principal directions of scholarly studies, such as ethnobotany or phytoanthropology, in Russian and other academic traditions. The thematic section features contributions by V.B. Kolosova, K.A. Jernigan and O.S. Belichenko, A.A. Novik and M.V. Domosiletskaya, O.D. Fais-Leutskaia, and V.N. Davydov.

Институт интеллектуальной собственности в культурно-историческом и стратегическом залоге

Relevance. The rapid expansion of the space of action of the relations of the «knowledge economy», the institution of intellectual property (IP) is enhanced by «digitalization», the whole economic architecture of the world is changing. The high dynamics and complexity of changes in economic systems and the world order, «knowledge circulation », complicate effective adaptation and constructive participation in these processes. The world is faced with the need to assess the cultural, historical and strategic consequences of all the effects of the institutionalization of IP relations. Methods. The article uses a systemic, cultural and historical analysis, based on global political economy and historical («old») institutionalism. The initial formulation of questions in this area should be of a qualitative, conceptual nature. This article uses this approach, but relying on available statistics and the possibility of a qualitative comparison of the consequences of the institutionalization of IP rights. Results. The contours of the institutionalization process, the introduction of IP relations into the global political and economic turnover, its main groups of interests and beneficiaries are considered. Qualified consequences for the economic architecture of the world and the redistribution of «world knowledge». The role of the Agreement on IP Regimes (TRIPS) in the formation of intellectual-monopoly capitalism has been determined. The effects generated by the regime of «closed science» and «closed markets» are highlighted. The mechanism of making a profit based on IP rights is considered. Signified of the importance of the advanced development of the ability to use the appropriate institutions, adequate to features of historical Russia’s cultural ecumene and civilizational characteristics of the peoples of Eurasia, and the need for a strategic transformation of personnel training systems. Discussion. The change in the economic architecture of the world and the unforeseen effects of the redistribution of «world knowledge» as a result of formation of intellectual-monopoly capitalism is an indisputable historical fact. Its consequences for the future of humanity have not been studied, uncertainty and risks are growing. It requires its awareness, consideration of the cultural and historical significance of the effects, requires the involvement of researchers from various subjects and civilizational perspectives.

Stochastic models support rapid peopling of Late Pleistocene Sahul

The peopling of Sahul (the combined continent of Australia and New Guinea) represents the earliest continental migration and settlement event of solely anatomically modern humans, but its patterns and ecological drivers remain largely conceptual in the current literature. We present an advanced stochastic-ecological model to test the relative support for scenarios describing where and when the first humans entered Sahul, and their most probable routes of early settlement. The model supports a dominant entry via the northwest Sahul Shelf first, potentially followed by a second entry through New Guinea, with initial entry most consistent with 50,000 or 75,000 years ago based on comparison with bias-corrected archaeological map layers. The model’s emergent properties predict that peopling of the entire continent occurred rapidly across all ecological environments within 156–208 human generations (4368–5599 years) and at a plausible rate of 0.71–0.92 km year−1. More broadly, our methods and approaches can readily inform other global migration debates, with results supporting an exit of anatomically modern humans from Africa 63,000–90,000 years ago, and the peopling of Eurasia in as little as 12,000–15,000 years via inland routes.

Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry

Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago1–5, but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago6, and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria1,2. They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania7 and Siberia8 who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.

Этнокультурный код Алтая

The article reveals the essence of the ethno-cultural code of the indigenous people of Altai, based on a complex of stable worldview concepts: the mythologema of the crossroads, the filosofeme “Jol” (“Path”), the sacral center concepts, etc., which make up the framework of the spiritual system of the nomadic peoples of Eurasia – Tengrianism. The study exposes key markers of the mentality of the indigenous inhabitants of Altai, manifested both in everyday life and in ritual practices; their actualization in the current sociocultural situation is substantiated and their potential for developing a strategy for the sociocultural development of the region, based on the integration of the biosphere and noosphere potential of the territory with its cultural code is revealed. It is emphasized that the mentality of the Altai people is free from religious and political dogmas; it is sensitive to changes that occur in the natural and social environment; it is focused on events occurring today. Methods. The methods of structural and functional and semiotic analysis were applied in the study. It is concluded that the sacral centers on the territory of Altai are of great significance in modern conditions, so the new model of socio-economic development of the region – the noosphere model – is based on the synthesis of science, ecology, veneration of the holy places of their people, ethno-cultural diversity and natural laws of social structure as the basis for the stability of life.

Social and Humanitarian Cooperation: Experience and Prospects

The article considers the main directions of social and humanitarian cooperation of the EEU member States, covering the fields of education, science, health, tourism and sports in order to improve the welfare and life quality of the Union countries' citizens. The goal is to create a single socio-humanitarian space that should not blindly reproduce the Western socio-humanitarian model of development based on the strategy of ”nurturing“ a loyal ”civil society“. Otherwise, there will be a discrepancy between the implementation of the goal of forming a single economic space and social and humanitarian programs imposed from the outside in the context of liberal democratic ideology, which are destructive for the peoples ofEurasia.

Традиционный костюм как культурный код: иконография, символика и семантика (на примере женского костюма)

The article is devoted to the research of the traditional costume as the material embodiment of the cultural code. The semantic-symbolic structure of a traditional costume undoubtedly reflects significant cultural information about its owner: social and age status, gender, self-awareness, etc. All this together reflects the cultural code of one or another national culture. From the perspective of this research, the traditional women’s costume of the peoples of Eurasia, which, in the opinion of researchers, allows even deeper understanding of the popularity of its motifs in the creative practice of modern designers. In the article, the very history of the emergence and evolution of the basic elements of a traditional women’s costume is considered as a kind of reflection of cultural codes. The researching on the basis of functionality expressed in everyday, festive, ceremonial and ritual functions of clothes is likened to structural components of a cultural code. At the same time, one can trace how over time the iconography, symbolism and semantics associated with his transition from one category to another change in a costume.

Asia in the Russian Imagination

This special issue of Sibirica is devoted to exploring Russia’s complicated relationship with Asia. Along with an edited volume (Russia in Asia: Imaginations, Interactions, and Realities, forthcoming), it is an outgrowth of the “Asia in the Russian Imagination” conference that was held at the University of Utah in March 2018. This conference brought together an interdisciplinary body of scholars from the United States, Canada, and Russia to discuss how Russians imagined and interacted with the peoples of Eurasia. Chronologically this conversation spanned the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Russia, and included not just the geography and peoples possessed by Russia but also the bordering states of Japan, China, and the Ottoman Empire. This is certainly not a new line of inquiry, but there is still much to be understood about these complex relationships, both real and imagined.