KURGAN CULTURE |
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http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/Kurgans.htm http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Z1PzeZUTmGwJ:www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf <= in HTM format |
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Introduction |
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The
Kurgan people culture
existed during the fifth, fourth, and third millennia
BC, they lived in northern Europe, from N.Pontic across Central Europe.
The word "kurgan" means a mound or a barrow in Türkic.
Kurgan culture is characterized by pit-graves or barrows, a particular method of
burial. They are also called the Pit-grave people (Pit-grave culture), or Barrow people (Barrow culture).
The earliest Kurgan sites of the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BC are in the N.Pontic, from where they spread by about 2000 BC to Central Europe, crossing the Dnieper River. Wherever Kurgan culture spread, it was marked by common elements unlike those of the surrounding Bronze-Age cultures. Fourth millennia BC: Kurgan peoples had spread across the entire area north of the Black Sea, across northern Europe, and probably east to the natural barrier of the Ural Mountains. In the Caucasus area, they enjoyed a primitive metal culture. When the portable archeological objects, like ornaments, weaponry and other objects more often used in exchanges, are combined with ceramics, and all this is supported by a similarity in the funeral ceremony, the most permanent ethnic attribute, then the ethnic movement is sufficiently proved. This is the case observed in the migration of the Kurgan (Pit Grave) carriers cultures ( Miziev, 1990, p. 18). The carriers of the Kurgan Pit Grave cultures, the most ancient nomadic sheep breeders, at the end of the 4th - the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC spread fanlike from the Itil-Yaik center to the north into the Ugro-Finnish tribes. There they entered into a close contact with the indigenous population, which explains the mass of the Türkisms in the language of the Finno-Ugrians and vice-versa. From the Itil-Yaik center the ancient Kurganians spread to the west and mixed with the tribes of the Late Tripolie cultures (Tripolie is dated ca. 4,600-3,500 B. C.). This explains the penetration of Türkisms and the elements of the Türkic culture to the indigenous tribes in the N.Pontic steppes. Those ancient nomads who left to the southwest entered a close contact with the tribes of the ancient N. Caucasus. From there they penetrated territory of the future Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Near East Asia, where they came into contact with the most ancient settled farming tribes. Some of them also began to engage in agriculture and settled on the land. Along with the nomadic husbandry, the local herding also appeared at that time. Migrating to the east, the Kurgan people intermixed with tribes of the yellow race, gradually many of them acquired Mongoloid features. There, in the steppes of the Sayano-Altai mountains, Central Asia and Kazakhstan, they became one of the main components of the Türkic peoples: Kazakhs, Kyrgyzes, Khakases, Altaians, Tuvinians, Uigurs, Yakuts, Uzbeks, Turkmen, etc. Through the south of the Turkmenistan and Aral steppe the most ancient nomads penetrated into the Northern Iran and Afghanistan, where they also met the most ancient agricultural tribes. The traces of influence of the Itil-Yaik Kurgan Pit Grave culture on the cultures of the neighboring tribes were shown in the works of M.P.Grjaznov, O.A.Krivtsovo-Grakova, S.V.Kiselyov, N.Ya.Merpert, A.X. Halikov, N.L.Chlenova, K.A.Akishev, I.I.Artemenko and other archeologists. So, in the N.L.Chlenova's opinion, the active links of the archeological cultures whose initial native land was the Itil-Ural region, were active in a huge territory during many millennia. She writes that the ceramics with excessively extended shaded triangles is found in the Baikal, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, Northern Afghanistan, Ukraine and in the Danube Bulgaria. This culture extends from the Yenisei river to the Bulgaria for more than seven and a half thousand kilometers ( Chlenova, 1972, p. 120-126; 1981, p. 22-26). N.L.Chlenova's conclusions are confirmed by V.I.Molodin, basing on the results of the research in the Baraba steppes (Western Siberia). As he said, the funeral ceremony of the Barabians coincides completely with the Pit Grave ceremony. The author unfolds a unique continuity of the Baraba culture with the Pit-Grave culture of the Itil-Yaik. By his belief, the carriers of the Pit-Grave cultures came to the Baraba from the north and northwest at the end of the Neolithic Age ( Molodin, 1985, p. 75-77, 171. Molodin, W. I. - US$36.00 BARABA IN THE BRONZE AGE Area of the Ob-Irtysh Rivers (Novosybirsk, 1985) 200 pp., illus., 175 x 268 mm). The retrospective study of the historical and ethnographical, and ethno-cultural features of Türkic peoples, Kurgan ceremony, - results in a conclusion that genetically these elements go back to the Pit Grave culture, Andronovo, Timber Grave and Scythian tribes. Stated differently, there are all reasons to consider the Pit Grave, or Kurgan culture a basis for the formation of the ethno-cultural features for the most ancient pra-Türkic tribes of the Euro-Asian steppes.
2500-2100 BC: A wave of destruction in Syria and Palestine. Many cities destroyed. The walled town at Bab edh-Dhra in Jordan, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, was destroyed about 2300 BC, in its cemetery outside the city walls, tombs predating the destruction were of the charnel-house type, graves post-dating the destruction are pits covered by stone barrows, containing single burials in a contracted position, with pottery and grave-goods unlike those of the mass graves in the earlier period. These are the characteristics of the Kurgan Culture people: The most ancient nomadic tribes of the Itil-Yaik were Caucasoids, but among them were also types with insignificant Lapanoid, also considered Mongoloid, features (Gerasimov, 1955).They practiced animal husbandry, in rubbish dumps at Kurgan hill-forts and villages are found bones of lots and lots of horses, many cattle, and a few pigs, sheep and goats. Few bones of wild game (such as deer) were found, so Kurganians were not a hunting culture. Horse-heads carved in diorite were found, with harness-marks cut into them to indicate bridles. The Kurganian horse-herders, like the Scythians, may had rode geldings only, their main herds being kept wild under stallions, and controlled through the mares which were hobbled near the settlements and milked regularly. Both wild-horse bones and bones of domesticated horses were found in Kurgan sites, modern bone-analysis specialists can apparently tell the difference between the two types. Moreover, modern methods allow to discern between a harnessed horse and a herd horse. The chances of finding bridled horse buried with its owner exist even though for each riding horse were thousands of the herd horses. Kurgan people typically lived on flat steppe grasslands, near wooded areas and watercourses. There were mixed forests of oak, birch, fir, beech, elder, elm, ash, aspen, apple, cherry and willow. There were aurochs, elk, boar, wild horses, wolves, fox, beaver, squirrels, badgers, hare and roe deer. Their ornaments were made from elk antlers, cattle and sheep bones, and boar tusks, one of the most common implements found at their settlements was a hammer-hoe made from elk antler. They had bone awls, chisels, and polishers, and wooden bows with flint-tipped arrows which were carried in skin quivers (called in Turkic "kolčan, kulčan", another loan to Slavic - Translator's Note), Scythian-style. They fished: in their villages were bone harpoons, points, fishhooks, and also fish bones. They had wool and flax.Kurgan people didn't raise much grain (that is, they were not heavily into farming) - only a few sickles were found in their villages, though archeologists found grindstones, pestles, and saddle-querns, also found was millet grain and melon seeds. One object which may have been a ploughshare was discovered. Beneath one Kurgan barrow-mound, a stretch of ground protected by the mound itself showed unmistakable plough-furrows. Kurgan people used two- and four-wheeled wagons with big unspoked wheels of solid wood. Examples of these have been found, along with of clay images: toy wagons, buried with royalty (maybe?). Also found were copper figurines of yoked oxen in pairs, so oxen probably drew these solid-wheel carts - which were of about the same proportions, wheel to cartbed, as a child's toy cart with a low rim around it.Metal objects. Early Kurgan period: copper awls plus tanged, leaf-shaped copper knives or small daggers. Late Kurgan period: daggers, awls, flat shaft-hole axes. The Kurgan people of the northwest Caucasus mountain region (a center for metallurgy from way back) at about 3500 BC and afterward possessed gold and silver vases, beads, and rings, also bull, goat and lion figurines, also copper axes, adzes, daggers and knives. No bronze objects were found, this means they either had no knowledge of alloying, or no access to tin. The last is unlikely, tin was available to the Persians and Greeks in later days, though the sites of the ancient tin mines are not known. The Kurgans would have panned their gold from rivers in the Caucasus mountains: gold, copper and silver can be found raw in their pure form, ready for use. The lion figurines at first sound odd, there are certainly no lions in Europe or Asia today. But there is artwork depicting lions, and references to wild lions in the mountains of Macedonia and Asia Minor, which came down into settled lands and preyed upon livestock. So the Kurgan artisans were probably familiar with lions. Equally, there were wild bison in the north of the C. Europe right up to the modern times.The early scholar-traveler P. S. Pallas ("The Southern Provinces of the Russian Reichs", originally published 1812) remarks that in the steppes of the lower Volga lived a giant land reptile called the Coluber Jaculator lizard, named the courageous Sheltopufik, he wrote that it "is not venomous, is often six feet long, it moves about with erect head and breast, and when pursued defends itself by darting against the horse and his rider. There are likewise two other species of reptiles, the Berus, and the Halys, both of a poisonous nature." Large lizards like those of the species mentioned by Pallas inhabited the lands of Asia from the N. Caspian steppe all the way to the Persian Gulf. It is probably not a coincidence that the earliest dragon legends come from the same area. Kurgan pottery: this was very primitive, made from clay mixed with crushed shells and sand. The pots were decorated with incision-marks made by a triangular stick, with pit impressing (?), cord impressing and impressing with a stick wound with cords.Neighbors: The expansion of Kurgan culture brought it into neiborhood of many different peoples. The expansion was mostly peaceful, and the simbiotic influences considerable and diverse. Soon after the first encounter are evident the traces of genetical and cultural influences of the nomadic lifestile, technology, art and rituals upon the settled aboriginal population. These traces are visible for the settled agricultural communities, while the influences upon the hunter-gatherer communities are ephemeral and practically undetectable. The settlements neighboring Kurgan sites came in two types. The first is a simple village, usually located on a river terrace, there would be ten to twenty small, rectangular, semi-subterranean houses with pitched roofs supported by thin wooden posts. There would be stone-walled hearths, usually one hearth per house, but situated either indoors or just outside. A very large village could have up to two hundred houses. The second type is a hill-fort placed on a steep river bank in a place difficult of access - usually a promontory at the juncture of two rivers. Note: both types of settlement had the advantage of being defensible, so the neibors of the Kurgan people had to put up with being raided by their neighbors, and probably raiding them right back. That is, they were well acquainted with war. The semi-subterranean houses sound like the underground homes of the Slavs, Armenians and Gobi desert peoples, which existed right up to modern times, the Armenians lived underground by reason of the cold of their winters, and the Gobi people by reason of the intense heat of their summers. Also, in the Russian steppe as late as 1900, the Cossacks lived in semi-subterranean houses. They did it to escape the terrible storms and blizzards of the winter months, taking underground with them all their livestock and fuel, and many a disgusted British traveler attests to it.Some examples of excavated settlements neighboring the Kurgan sites: Hill-fort One (Miklajlovka, where the Podpil'na River meets the Dnieper): a settlement guarded by massive stone walls 3 meters high, built of about ten courses of large stones. It had rectangular houses totally unlike the river village houses: built with timber walls on massive stone foundations (the last up to one meter in height) and two or more large interior rooms. In the last period of usage, the fort became very large, girdled with huge walls and ditches, and held houses with stone foundations and wattle-and-daub walls.Hill-fort Two (Skelja-Kamenolomnja, on promontory overlooking Dnieper River): it was built on a site with cliffs on three sides, and a thick stone wall on the slope approaching the fourth side. Within the boundaries were rectangular houses on stone foundations. Also found were workshops for fabricating polished stone tools, battle-axes and mace-heads etc. (i.e. Battle-Axe Culture neighboring the Kurgan site - Translator's Note) Hill-fort Three (Liventsovka at Rostov on the Don): this stood on a high hill surrounded by a massive stone wall, with ditches both inside and outside the wall. There were square or circular hearths in the houses.Hill-fort Four (Nagyarpad, southern Hungary): this housed an estimated 250 people, in fifty small houses standing in rows along a paved road leading to the top of a steep hill. Two large wooden houses, probably royal, stood on the terrace at the terminus of the road. These hill-forts are the prototypes for Greek, Illyrian, Celtic, Baltic, Germanic etc castle-hills et al. Walls and citadels built from massive stones are characteristic of the earliest historical times, the proper term for such work is Cyclopean, from the ancient Greeks who were convinced only giants could have built on such a scale.Graves: the Kurgan people left rich treasure-graves containing gold, silver and precious stones. These important graves are set aside in separate cemeteries, and the bodies are committed in timber or stone houses. One body of a man was dressed in a garment onto which gold ornaments had been sewn: 68 lion images, 19 bulls and 38 rings. (Scythians, who succeeded the Kurganians in N.Pontic, too wore garments decorated all over with small gold plaques, like beads but flat and stamped with tiny images.) Necklaces of animal teeth were common. Sun images were also commonplace. Also found were stag figurines with enormous antlers, ornamented with concentric-circle motifs, these were probably linked to rock engravings of stags with supernatural antlers. Also found were horse-heads carved from stone, mounted on rods and used as scepters. (The scepters was the archeologist's interpretation, the garment hung with metal and horse-wand sounds shamanistic to me. Wands surmounted by horse-heads are a well-known accouterment of Mongolian shamans, who also make a point of sewing metal objects and ribbons onto their ceremonial garments. The more metal the better was their rationale, ie the heavier the garment, the more desirable it was, as for the wands with horse-heads, modern shamans use them as drum-sticks and also as "magic horses" for spirit journeys.) Braziers were found in Kurgan houses and grave-houses: these burned charcoal and also cow's-dung. Ashes and charcoal were found in the graves: fires had been lit in the braziers inside the grave-houses. The charcoal deserves a special mention because while dung as fuel is free and easy to gather (and cow-droppings, pastoral peoples say, burns better than those of horses or sheep) charcoal has to be specially prepared, but dung burns with an acrid fume and people who live in homes heated by dung fires usually develop eye problems, while charcoal burns with little or no smoke and those who enjoy a charcoal fire are happier and healthier.Red ochre was found in the graves . . . but then, red ochre graves go from southern Palestine to the coast of England. Also found were metal cauldrons. . . as in the Scythian graves, where the household goods were buried with the dead chief. The graves of poor people usually contained only a ceramic pot, a flint tool, or nothing. Also found in some graves were bones from the tails of sheep, the rationale is that the tails of Asian fat-tailed sheep were buried with the dead. The fat-tailed sheep themselves have been raised in Central Asia since before history began. Herodotus mentions them, and they were commonly kept by nomads from the Bedouin of north Africa right up into Siberia. Unlike European breeds, these sheep grow enormous tails (Türkic 'kurdük'), rather like the humps of camels, fat and marrow-like substances are stored in their tails, just as with the humps of camels, and the sheep themselves are better able to endure arid country. The tails themselves used to be cut off and kept to provide cooking fat, for the kitchens of Türkic, Persian and Arabian women. And they still are to this day.And since the harnesses of Kurgan horses were made from bone and leather, the graves of poor Kurgans contained only flint tools, and the only worked metal was sewn on people's clothing, one might conclude these people were still well in the grip of the Stone Age. The mortuary houses themselves mimicked actual houses, being made of timber or of stone slabs. Husbands were frequently buried with their wives, sometimes an adult was buried with one or more children. Animal bones were found jumbled in pits near the graves, Kurgan graves north of the Black Sea usually included snake skeletons, sometimes up to ten of them. (Note: Edith Durham in her book High Albania mentions that many old graves in the Albanian mountains - one of the remotest places on earth - were frequently marked with pre-Christian symbols, suns and crescent moons combined with Christian crosses were common, and a serpent image which the Albanians told her represented courage and war, ie the snake was the mark of a hero!) Sometimes human bones were found jumbled in with the animal bones in the adjoining offering-pits. It was a Türkic custom up to historic times for animals to be sacrificed at the grave, their flesh eaten and their bones then collected in skins and interred.These grave-houses were covered by earth or stone mounds, and then topped with stone stelae. Each stela was carved with a crude human shape, male, holding a mace or axe in one hand, one figure holds a bow. In the graves of men, ornamental axes of antler, copper, stone, or semiprecious stone were found. Some of these axes were made from nephrite, serpentine, diorite, amber, or other materials obviously not meant for utility. The amber came from the Baltic region, and since mother-of-pearl and faience beads were also found in the graves, this certainly points to a thriving trade between regions. The knucklebones of sheep were found in many graves (particularly the graves of children) throughout European sites. Knucklebones are a gaming device.And how do you play knucklebones with the knucklebones of sheep? The Uzbek nomads call it the Ashik-game (after ashik, the word for the anklebones of sheep) and played it as dicing, with four anklebones. The upper part of the bone they called tava, the lower altchi, and the two sides called yantarap. The player took all four bones in the palm of his hand, threw them up and got half of the stake wagered, if two tava or two altchi turned up, or the whole stake, if all four tava or altchi showed. The Venus figurines of the late Stone Age are not Kurgan. They pre-date the Kurgan expansion into Anatolian, Aegean, and Balkan cultures. Seated goddesses of clay, alabaster or marble also appeared in the N.Pontic and north Caucasus regions prior to the third millennium BC, these were borrowed from southern cultures in the Balkans and the Mediterranean.Male and female figures carved from stone (called in Türkic 'Baba') spread across the steppe from Danube to Amur Rivers, are attributed to the descendants of the Scythians, not to prehistoric peoples. According to late middle age chronicle, a legendary statue named Slata Baba once stood near upper Ob river. |
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Mario Alinei Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Palaeolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia, with an excursus on Slavic ethnogenesis Expanded version of a paper read at the Conference Ancient Settlers in Europe, Kobarid, 29-30 May 2003. – Forthcoming in “Quaderni di semantica”, 26. |
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About the Author
Mario Alinei is Professor Emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987, Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University. Founder and editor of "Quaderni di semantica" review, he is president of "Atlas Linguarum Europae". For incomplete list of his works see Literature at the bottom of the page |
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Citations from the work |
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4.4.3 The cultural sequence in Western Ukraine and in the Pontic SteppesCHART III: The cultural sequence in Western Ukraine and in the Pontic Steppes
Because of the appearing of the famous kurgan culture in them, the two sequences shown by this chart can be considered as quite well-known also to linguists. In fact, the evident contrast between the farming cultures in Western Ukraine, and the pastoral ones in the Pontic steppes is what moved Marija Gimbutas to envisage the epochal clash between peaceful autochthonous non IE farmers of the “Old Europe”, and the warlike intrusive IE who submerged them. Colin Renfrew has lucidly demolished this myth, but in my opinion has not given a satisfactory explanation of the contrast, which remains quite evident and important. In the PCT framework this quite conspicuous frontier proves to be the frontier between an already separated and flourishing eastern Slavic population of farmers to the West, and warlike Turkic pastoral nomadic groups to the East, which would be responsible, among other things, of the two innovations of horse raising and horse riding. Linguistically, this new interpretation has the advantage of explaining the antiquity and the quantity of Turkic loanwords precisely for horse terminology in both branches of Samoyed (i.e. Nenets - Translator's Note), in the Ugric languages, as well as in Slavic languages (see also further), and, more generally, the quantity of Turkic Neolithic terms in South-Eastern European languages, including Hungarian, which would have been brought into its present area precisely by the kurgan culture (Alinei 2003). Interestingly, the uninterrupted continuity of Altaic steppe cultures, from Chalcolithic to the Middle Ages, can be symbolized precisely by the kurgan themselves: for on the one hand, the custom of raising kurgans on burial sites has always been one of the most characteristic features of Altaic steppe nomadic populations, from their first historical appearance to the late Middle Ages. On the other, the Russian word kurgan itself is not of Russian, or Slavic, or IE origin, but is a Turkic loanword, with a very wide diffusion area in Southern Europe, which corresponds to the spread of the kurgan culture (Alinei 2000, 2003, and see further). 4.4 Archaeological charts as means to reconstruct ethnic and language developmentOnce linguists assume Paleolithic continuity to explain the linguistic picture of Europe (and of IE Asia), they can make systematic and fruitful use of archaeological chronostratigraphical charts – both of Europe in general and of the different areas of Europe in particular –, in order to come to the identification of the languages (and dialects: a fundamental, more authentic relic of prehistory than standard languages!) involved in the different periods and areas of development in prehistoric Europe. As is known, these charts aims at representing, on their two axes, the chronological evolution of prehistoric culture in a given, geographic area. This is achieved by condensing the cultural development of the different sub-areas of the territory in the chart vertical columns, while the different periods of prehistory correspond to the chart horizontal lines. As examples, two European charts are reproduced here (fig. 4-5): the one that Gordon Childe kept publishing at the end of all the editions of his Dawn of European Civilization (Childe 1925-1957), and a combination of two more recent ones published by Lichardus & Lichardus (1985) in their synthesis on European Neolithic Gordon Childe chart Click on image to enlarge ==> CLICK HERE TO REDUCE Lichardus & Lichardus chart Click on image to enlarge ==> CLICK HERE TO REDUCE 5 Survey of recent theories on the origins of non Indo-European languages in Europe... It is also important to see how the origins of the non-Indo-European peoples and languages of Europe are currently seen by the respective specialists. 5.1 Uralic indigenism (Finno-Ugric and Samoyed)As far as the Uralic people and languages are concerned, a new theory of their origins was advanced about thirty years ago and is now universally recognized by linguists as well as archaeologists: it is called the Uralic Continuity Theory (UCT) and claims an uninterrupted continuity of Uralic populations and languages from Paleolithic (Meinander 1973, Nuñez 1987, 1989, 1996, 1997, 1998). Fig. 6. Map of Uralic settlements Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE According to this theory, which historically represents the first claim of uninterrupted continuity of a European people from Paleolithic, Uralic people must belong to the populations of Homo sapiens sapiens coming from Africa, who occupied mid-eastern Europe in Paleolithic glacial times (fig. 6: map on the left), and followed the retreating icecap in Mesolithic, eventually settling in their present territories (map on the right). Needless to say, the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) is the only model that can offer adequate synchronization of the IE language development with the Uralic one, as conceived by the UCT. 5.2 Basque indigenism? Recent discoveriesThe main novelties concerning Basque come from genetics, but also traditional linguistics has recently made a most important discovery.... ... A recent linguistic discovery, however, has cast serious doubts on Basque indigenism, at the same time producing evidence for a much greater antiquity of Indo-European than traditionally thought. And to make this discovery even more striking is the circumstance that its author is a well-known traditional IE specialist, Francisco Villar (Villar 2000). While this conclusion does not solve the problem of Basque origins, it does make in any case evident that the old doctrine of Basque indigenism, opposed to IE intrusiveness, can no longer be maintained. 5.3 Altaic indigenism in the Euro-Aasiatic steppesAlthough the origins of the Altaic (i.e. Turkic and Mongol) people and languages has not yet been the object of serious studies, the common opinion is that their presence in central Asia and eastern Europe should be attributed to a recent migration from an unknown focus (with the usual indifference for the lack of any archaeological evidence supporting this event), replacing an earlier layer of Iranian people, in turn considered also as invaders, submerging the prehistoric presumed pre-IE settlers: the typical scenario of ethnic ‘merry-go-round’ which characterizes the traditional theory. In my books (Alinei 1996, 2000, 2003), I have argued for Altaic indigenism in Asia and eastern Europe, on the basis – among other things – of the following points: Fig 7. Map of steppes Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE
(1) Throughout history, the Asiatic steppe area has always been inhabited by Altaic pastoral nomadic populations (fig. 7), characterized, among other things, by the use of funerary mounds called kurgan. (2) The word kurgan ‘funerary mound’, which is not only diffused in Russia, but is diffused in the whole of South-Eastern Europe (Ru. kurgán, ORu. kurganu, Ukr. kurhán, BRu. kurhan, Pol. kurhan, kurchan, kuran ‘mound’; Rumanian gurgan, dial. Hung. korhány), is a loanword from Turkic Tatar: OTc. kurgan ‘fortification’, Tat., Osm., Kum. kurgan, Kirg. and Jagat. korgan, Karakirg. korgon, all from Turkotat. kurgamak ‘fortify’, kurmak ‘erect’. Its distribution area in Eastern Europe corresponds closely to the spread area of the Yamnaya (i.e. Pit Grave -Tanslator's Note) or kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe. (3) As is known, the Yamnaya or kurgan culture descends from the steppic culture called Serednyi Stog (for bibliography see Alinei 2000). It is within the latter culture that horse domestication and horse riding took place for the first time (fig. 8). Fig. 8. Map of Serednyi Stog (SS) and Kurgan (K) cultures Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE The most economical and productive hypothesis is then to consider both the Serednyi Stog and the Yamnaya cultures as Turkic, which would imply that Turkic people were the first to have mastered horse domestication, and to have passed it on to the neighboring people. This is confirmed by the presence of Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in both branches (Northern and Southern) of Samoyed and in some Finno-Ugric, the antiquity of which has been proved by specialists, and which imply the antiquity of the Turkic presence in Eastern Europe. For example: (1) From Ancient Tc qaptï, OTsh qap- ‘to grab with hands and teeth’: Proto-Samoyed (= PSam) *kåptê- ‘to castrate’; Sam. kåptê ‘male castrated reindeer’; (2) From Ancient Tc yam ‘the typical caravan-tent of the nomads’: PSam *yam, S. yamda- ‘to travel with caravan-tent’; (3) From Ancient Tc yuntâ ‘horse’ (generic): PSam *yunta ‘horse’, Sam. yuntê ‘idem’. (4) From Tat. alaša ‘pack horse’ (> Tchuv. laša ‘horse’), Osm., Crim.-Turk., Kaz., Kar.-Balk. alaša ‘castrated horse’: Mari alasa and Mordvin alaša ‘castrated horse’. Especially important is the presence of such Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in both branches of Samoyed, as it proves beyond any possible doubt that Turkic horse-riders were present in the area after the split between Samoyed and Finno-Ugric – the earliest split that occurred in the Uralic phylum, within the framework of the Uralic Paleolithic Continuity certainly datable to the remote prehistory – but before the split and the subsequent profound differentiation of the two Northern (Nenets, Enets, Nganasan) and Southern (Selkup, Sayan) Samoyed branches, which would be altogether absurd to date after the presumed ‘arrival’ of Turkic people in Asia in the 3rd or 4th centuries of our era. This also explains why horse terminology in the European area bordering Asia and in most of Eastern Europe is Turkic (and not IE, nor Iranian!). In Slavic, for example, we have: (1) From Tat. alaša ‘pack horse’ (> Tchuv. laša ‘horse’), Osm., Crim.-Turk., Kaz., Kar.-Balk. Alaša: Ru. lošad’ ‘horse’, lošá ‘colt’, lošak ‘mule’, Ukr. łošá ‘colt’, łošák ‘young stallion’, Pol. łoszak ‘horse’, ‘tatar horse’, łosze (Vasmer s.v., Buck 3.41); (2) From Tu. aygur ‘stallion’: Cr., Serb. ajgir, Pol. ogier ‘stallion’ (Buck 3.42); (3) From an Anatolian word, the three groups of cognate terms, represented by: (A) ORu. komon’, OPruss. camnet ‘horse’ (Lith. kumelys, Latv. kumelš ‘colt’); (B) Cr., Serb. konj ‘horse’, ‘castrated horse’, Cz. kůň, Pol. koń ‘horse’; (C) Cr., Serb. kobila, Cz., Ru. kobyla ‘mare’ (cp. Lat. caballus) (Buck 3.41, DELL); (4) From Tchuv. χomət, Kasan Tat. kamət, Kirg. kamįt, Mong. χomûd; Ru., Ukr., Slovk. chomút ‘horse collar’, Bulg. chomót ‘idem’, Slovn. homôt, Cz. chomout, Pol. chomąt, Sorb. chomot, all ‘horse collar’. The penetration of this loanword into the Germanic area (Germ. Kummet) as well as in North East Italian dialects, proves the importance of the notion, connected with the beginning of horse riding. In Hungarian and in the other two Ugric languages the main Turkic loanwords related to horse riding and vehicles are: (5) Ug. *luw3 (luγe) ‘horse’, Mansi low, lo, luw, Khanti loγ, law etc., Hung. ló (dial. lo, lu, lú), accus. lovat; Ug. *närk3 ‘saddle’, Mansi näwrä, naγr etc., Khanti nöγər, Hung. nyerëg; Ug. *päkka ‘reins’, Mansi behch (17th cent.), Khanti päk etc., Hung. fék; Ug. *säk3r3 ‘vehicle’, Khanti liker, ikər, Hung. szekér (UEW s.vv., cf. Róna-Tas 1999, 97). If IE or Iranian people had been the first horse-riders, as maintained by the traditional theory, we would expect to find a large number of IE or Iranian words also in neighboring areas, instead of this conspicuous series of Turkic loanwords. Also the presence of very ancient Turkic loanwords in Hungarian, recognized by Hungarian scholars and unrelated to horse-riding, proves the antiquity of the Turkic presence in the European area bordering Asia. As is known, many ancient Turkic loanwords in Hungarian are related to farming (‘corn’, ‘barley’, ‘plow’, ‘wine’ etc.), stock raising (pig, calf etc.), and to very ancient customs (totemic clan names), which specialists consider prehistoric and date to the period preceding the so called Honfoglalás (‘conquest of the territory’). 7 Slavic ethnogenesis in the framework of the PCT
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Additional Literature |
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Karalkin P.I., 1978. The most ancient method of milking cattle //
Ethnography of the Altai and Western Sibir peoples. Novosibirsk. |