Where did the Alans come from? Alans and their role in the history of the North Caucasus. What were the neighboring peoples called Alans
Alans - debunking the myth of "Mingi-Tau", magazine No. 1, 2020 “Stalin was brought another list of those subject to repression, where the first name was Abaev. Opposite it, he put a tick with a red pencil and said: “Leave this one. Good scientist. Transfer to Moscow. Everything turned out to be simple: the leader used the books of Vaso Abaev (in particular, his work “Ossetian language and folklore”), of course, without mentioning it anywhere” 2. Abaev fulfilled the assignment given to him, removed the Turkic people from the territory of the Caucasus and justified that in the Caucasus, only one people can be called - Ossetians. It was at his suggestion that in modern Alanian studies a point of view was established about the continuity of the Indo-Aryan and Iranian-speaking peoples in the following sequence: Scythians and Sarmatians → Alans → Ossetians, and the opinion expressed by Abaev became an indisputable scientific statement. However, the belonging of the Scythians to the Indo-Aryans and the assertion that they were an Iranian-speaking people are at least the inventions of Miller and Abaev. Their statements turned out to be so strained, if not fictional, that serious scientific research has repeatedly appeared in the modern press, completely breaking the ideas and constructions of Abaev. Science has never seen a more falsified book than the "Dictionary of Scythian Words" compiled by Abaev. Neither world history nor world linguistics knows such a blatant forgery. * It was during Stalin's time that Ossetians were unexpectedly appointed to be Alans, and for this statement and "scientific justification" a huge machine called the USSR was involved. One modern researcher noted that at one time in our country it was difficult to find even a newspaper, a magazine or any other publication where the question about the Alans and Ossetians did not appear in the crossword puzzle. Even in "Pionerskaya Pravda" there was a question in the crossword without fail: Who were the ancestors of the Ossetians? The answer is 5 letters. On the topic of Ossetians - the descendants of the Alans, tons of papers were written with references to one or another historian, philologist, linguist, but no one opposed the fact that some of these texts were corrected at the discretion of Ossetian historians and no one objected to their anti-scientific version. And now when it comes to the fact that some Caucasian peoples - Ingush, Chechens, cannot be direct descendants of the Alans, then gross accusations are poured. Therefore, it was very difficult for such Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus as Karachays and Balkars to argue with Ossetian authors until a new science appeared: DNA genealogy. But let's start in order. In the USSR, Vasily (Vaso) Ivanovich Abaev became the author and creator of the theory of the origin of the Ossetian people from the Alans. Here is a brief biographical note about him. Here is a page of his biography, this is not our opinion, but taken from materials posted on many sites on the Internet. He is called an outstanding scientist, he is an Iranian-Ossetian scholar, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor, Doctor of Philology, senior researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, full member of the Asian Royal Society (Academy) of England (1966), corresponding member of the Finno-Ugric Society in Helsinki (1973), twice laureate of the Prize. K. Khetagurova, Honored Scientist of Georgia and North Ossetia, laureate of the USSR State Prize. Author of many works on general and comparative linguistics, Iranian studies and Ossetian studies: Nart epic (1945), Ossetian language and folklore (1949). One of Abaev's main works is Historical and Etymological Dictionary of the Ossetian Language (1958); it traces the etymology and history of Ossetian words on the material of 190 languages of the world and the connection of the Ossetian language with Iranian and Indo-European, as well as with Turkic, Finno-Ugric and other languages. Emyurleni tereninden 85 Article Vasily (Vaso) Abaev was born in 1900 in the village of Kobi in the family of an Ossetian highlander. He received his primary education at a rural school, and his secondary education at the Tiflis 6th Classical Gymnasium (1910–1918). From 1918 to 1921 he worked as a teacher at the Kobi primary school. In 1922 he entered the Leningrad State University on the Iranian level of the ethnological and linguistic department of the faculty of social sciences. He graduated from the university course in 1925. At the same time, at the suggestion of N. Ya. After graduating from graduate school in 1928, he was sent to work at the Caucasian Historical and Archaeological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Tiflis, and in 1930 he was enrolled as a member of the Japhetic Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was later reorganized into the Institute of Language and Thought. N.Ya. Marr, in Leningrad. Since 1929, he has been a professor at the Department of General Linguistics at LIFLI. From December 16, 1930 to December 1931, V. Abaev combined work at the institute with work at the Public Library, at first and. about. chief librarian for the Eastern Department with half the salary, and then the chief librarian of the ONL. In 1935, Abaev was awarded the degree of candidate of philological sciences (without defending a dissertation), in the same year he was appointed head of the Iranian office of the Institute of Language and Thought (the emphasis in this word is placed on the first syllable). Working outside of Ossetia, Abaev did not break ties with his homeland and provided great assistance to local workers, editing and reviewing scientific and other literature, advising them when traveling to the republic. So, in January 1941, Abaev was sent to Ossetia with a special assignment from the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences to advise on the study of the Ossetian Nart epic. During the Great Patriotic War, Abaev failed to return to Leningrad, and in 1941-1945. he worked at the North Ossetian and South Ossetian research institutes, and in 1944 he also headed the department of linguistics at the North Ossetian Pedagogical Institute. Only in the autumn of 1945 did he return to Leningrad. In the autumn of 1945, V. Abaev returned to Leningrad and again began working at the Institute of Language and Thought, which was transformed after a discussion in 1950 into the Institute of Linguistics. There he published his fundamental work on the Ossetian language and folklore. In 1952, together with the main core of the institute's scientists, he was transferred to Moscow. In 1962 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philology (without defending a dissertation), and in 1969 he was awarded the title of professor. Vaso Abaev made a significant contribution to various areas of linguistics. He published more than 270 works on the theory of etymology and the history of linguistic studies, Iranian and Indo-European linguistics, and on various issues of general linguistics. Especially much has been done by scientists in the field of Ossetian and Nart studies. All 86 "Mingi-Tau" were subjected to deep research in Ossetian works. No. 1. 2020 main problems of modern grammar and lexicology, phonetics and morphology, dialectology and history of the Ossetian language. Vaso Abaev is the compiler of the Historical and Etymological Dictionary of the Ossetian Language. Of the large number of folklore works, Abaev’s studies dedicated to the world-famous heroic epos “Narty” stand out. In a number of works, Abaev acts as a literary critic, having published articles on the work of Kost Khetagurov, Geor Maliev, Seka Gadiev, as well as separate theoretical works on various problems of literary criticism. Abaev participated in the XVI Congress of German Orientalists (Halle, 1958) and the XXV International Congress of Orientalists (Moscow, 1960). V. Abaev was a full member of the Royal Asiatic Soc. of Great Britain and Ireland and a corresponding member of the Finno-Ugric Society in Helsinki. He lectured at the Collège de France (Paris, 1966). Vasily Abaev - Honored Scientist of the North Ossetian ASSR (1957) and the Georgian SSR (1980), the first laureate of the State Prize. Kosta Khetagurova (1966), laureate of the USSR State Prize (1981). He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, medals “For the Defense of the Caucasus” and “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945”. Vaso Abaev lived to be 101 years old. An entire era in Russian linguistics and Iranian studies is associated with his name. Abaev became the first pioneer in Alan studies, who made a lot of efforts to establish the idea of Ossetians belonging to the Alan ethnic group. And it happened, as we believe, that's why. When Stalin had the idea of fighting the Turks, he began to look for a specialist who could fulfill this complex idea of the leader, write a scientific justification for the absence of the Turks in the Caucasus. The choice fell on Vaso Abaev not by chance. On the one hand, the beloved student of N. J. Marr, who not only practically replaced his teacher after his death, but also successfully promoted the new doctrine of language, taking into account the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of language. And now we need to dwell in some detail on the teachings of Marr and the fulfillment of his precepts by Abaev. * * * Here is a brief biography of the linguist, philologist and archaeologist Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (1864/65–1934). He was born on December 25, 1864 (January 6, 1865 according to the new style; according to other sources, May 25, or June 6 according to the new style, 1864) in Kutaisi. His father was the Scot James Marr, the founder of the Kutaisi Botanical Garden, who, having become a widow at the age of 80, married a young Georgian woman. My father spoke only English and French, my mother only Georgian. Marr's childhood passed in Georgia and among the Georgians, he began to study other languages at the Kutaisi gymnasium and showed outstanding abilities for them. Marr's works are written in Russian. In 1888 he graduated from the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, in 1891-1918 he taught there, from 1902 he was a professor, from 1911 he was the dean of the faculty. From 1912 Marr was an academician (of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, then the Russian Academy of Sciences, and then the Academy of Sciences of the USSR). In 1918–1934 director of the State Academy of the History of Material Culture, in 1921-1934 director of the Japhetic Institute of the Academy of Sciences founded by him, transformed in 1931 into the Institute of Language and Thought of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1926-1930. director of the Public Library, in 1930–1934 Vice President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He held Marr and a number of other leadership positions and at the same time taught at Leningrad University and other universities. Marr died in Leningrad on December 20, 1934. But behind these sparse lines lies a rather stormy activity, half of which took place in the Russian Empire, where he was not only a scientist, but also a believer and even the headman of the Georgian church in St. Petersburg. The second half of his life, and with it considerable scientific activity, was already in the Soviet Union, where he had to adapt to the new Bolshevik ideology. We will quote V.M. Alpatov, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philology, Professor from his serious work “The History of a Myth: Marr and Marrism” Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, although he was a polyglot, never once in his life listened to a single theoretical course in linguistics. He learned only the general concepts of comparative historical linguistics about the relationship of languages and language families, did not know how to put into practice the method of comparative historical analysis, but, nevertheless, he was drawn to broad and far-reaching constructions that he could not prove. In Marr's character there were many qualities inherent in a great scientist - great natural abilities, extensive knowledge, great capacity for work, enthusiasm for work, conviction in the correctness of his ideas, desire for generalizations, interest in interdisciplinary research, concern for students, talent as an organizer of science. . However, all these qualities were devalued by a complete lack of a sense of proportion and self-criticism. And any of the positive qualities of Marr, going to the extreme, turned into the opposite, the vastness of knowledge - into superficiality and approximation, efficiency and enthusiasm - into graphomania, conviction - into dogmatism, the desire for generalizations and new ideas - into the promotion of fantastic hypotheses, concern for students - into despotism in relation to them, the talent of the organizer - into the desire for monopoly. Marr was called "the iron-handed dean." Even before the revolution, he expelled all competitors from the field of Caucasian studies (by the way, the only one where he really was a professional), quarreled with all the students of the first generation as soon as they began to show independence. These properties had less effect on Marr's scientific output while he was engaged in the subject in which he was prepared. But, to the misfortune of himself and science, even in the pre-revolutionary years, Marr began to go more and more into the field of linguistics, where he was an amateur. Even before the revolution, he announced the existence of the so-called Japhetic family of languages, which included almost all the languages of the Mediterranean and Western Asia, whose family ties were not even found out at that time. This delusional hypothesis was still within the limits of the theoretically possible, but the degree of scientificity of its development is already evidenced by the fact that Marr categorically included the undeciphered Etruscan language and the Pelagic language, about which nothing was known at that time except their name. Here is his opinion: “Basque belongs to the Japhetic family of languages and is related to Georgian, Svan, Abkhaz, Batsbi, Lak. The Pelagian language, - Marr wrote further, - on the one hand, in the west, is related to Etruscan, on the other hand, in the east, with such a language as Lezgian or Lak and ancient Urartian in Armenia" 1 . All this nonsense was perceived at that time as a new phenomenon in linguistics. And since the “Japhetic languages”, with the light hand of Marr, became more and more and it became more and more difficult to explain the commonality of their origin only by migrations of ancient peoples, Marr had to make a choice between the results he wanted to obtain and the principles of comparative historical research. linguistics. And the choice was made - in favor of the desired results. In November 1923 (since that time, the Marrists then counted the "new era" in linguistics), Marr made his first report, where he denied the basic postulates of the science of language. The "Japhetic theory" turned into a "new doctrine of language" (although the term "Japhetic theory" as a synonym for "new doctrine" existed later). Marr was never able, despite the huge number of published works, to give a coherent exposition of his teaching, separate fragments of which he subjected to countless modifications until the end of his life. However, in its most general form, this doctrine boils down to two propositions. The first of them was diametrically opposed to the usual linguistic ideas about the development of a family of languages as a gradual disintegration of the once single proto-language into different, but genetically related languages. According to Marr, "proto-language is a scientific fiction that has served its purpose," and the development of languages goes in the opposite direction from plurality to unity. Languages arose independently of each other: not only the Russian and Ukrainian languages are not originally related, but each Russian dialect and dialect was once a separate, independently emerged language. Then there is a process of crossing, when the two languages are combined into a new, third language, which is equally a descendant of both ancestral languages. For example, French is a crossed Latin-Japhetic language, and the lack of declension and underdevelopment of conjugation is its original Japhetic feature. In turn, Latin is the result of crossing the "language of the patricians" and the "language of the plebeians", the latter also being Japhetic. The process of crossing languages will be completed under communism, when all the languages of the world merge into one, Marr argued. The second provision was as follows. Although languages arose independently of each other, they have developed and will continue to develop according to absolutely uniform laws, although at different rates. Sound speech, which arose in primitive society as a result of the class struggle, at first consisted of the same four elements sol, ber, yon, rosh, which had the character of “diffuse cries”. Gradually, words began to form from their combinations, phonetics and grammar appeared. Languages go through the same stages of development, determined by the level of socio-economic development. At some socio-economic stage, any nation has a language of a certain phonetic and grammatical type. Moreover, these languages, regardless of geographical location, also have a material similarity: Marr wrote that for any people at a certain stage of development, water will be called su, as in a number of Turkic languages. When the basis changes, the language, as part of the superstructure, undergoes a revolutionary explosion and becomes structurally and materially different, but traces of the previous stages remain in the language, up to four elements that can be distinguished in any word of any language. Marr called the search for such traces linguistic paleontology. Both positions of Marr contradicted not only all the linguistic theories that existed by that time, but also the accumulated factual material. It has long been established that, for example, Latin was the parent language for the Romance languages, that the simplification of morphology in French is not an ancient, but a relatively new phenomenon, recorded in monuments, that the separation of the Russian and Ukrainian languages also occurred in the historical era. At the same time, no one could prove the existence of the four elements or "language explosions" at critical historical epochs. But for Marr, established facts simply did not exist. In his research on the history of words, he rejected the strict phonetic laws discovered by nineteenth-century science, relying solely on external consonance, which could be assigned to any arbitrary development of meaning. So, Marr connected the German words Hund, “dog”, and hundert, “hundred”, which actually had different origins, inventing the following “patterns of development”: dog - totem “dog” - members of the genus - many people - many - one hundred. He calmly compared the French rouge, “red”, with a part of the races of the Russian red (he simply discarded the initial part of the root as unnecessary), linking both words with the primary element rosh, to which he erected the names of the peoples Russ, Et-Rus-ki, pe-las-gi, lez-gins, etc. All these exercises were pure imagination, moderated only by ideological considerations (Marr indignantly rejected the very real common origin of the words slave and work). Marr could say anything. Either he declared that the Russian language is in many respects closer to Georgian than to Ukrainian, then he defined the German language as transformed by a revolutionary explosion ... Svan, then he called the Smerds an Ibero-Sumerian layer of Russians. In the “new doctrine of language”, some of Marr’s previous ideas were preserved, first of all, the identification of “Japhetic languages”, which were already understood not as a family, but as a stage in language development, although Marr could not describe the signs of this stage. Nevertheless, even before the official recognition and inculcation of the “new doctrine of language” had undeniable popularity. It was not the attraction of scientific theory. That was the attraction of the myth. Marr's passion was due to many reasons. Among them are the scientific authority of Marr, based primarily on his early non-linguistic works, and the brightness of his personality, and the breadth of the range of his problems. But two of them were of particular importance: the coincidence of his activities with the period of the crisis of world linguistics and the consonance of his ideas with the era of the twenties. Criticism of Marr's "new doctrine of language" is a very simple task and accessible to anyone with a philological education. A flagrant inconsistency with the facts and the results obtained in science, lack of evidence and fundamental unprovability of provisions, illogicality, inconsistency, complete isolation from practice - all this is obvious. However, the question is natural: if the teaching is so obviously bad, why was it fundamental for Soviet linguistics for two decades? The gap between the scientific weakness of the “new doctrine of language” and the strength of its influence is so enormous that it requires an explanation” 1. As it was rightly noted, the twentieth century brought to mankind many myths of various kinds. Among them, a prominent place was occupied by scientific myths, which in a distorted form reflected the notions of the omnipotence of science that had entered everyday life. Real science often did not correspond to such ideas, and pseudoscience consciously or unconsciously speculated on them, promising to solve any existing and non-existent problems. This appealed to the broad masses and representatives of the authorities, who were not specialists in a particular science, and many of them had no education at all. Using their support, the myth-makers achieved a monopoly position not only in science, but also in society. And here Marr was one of these myth-makers, if not the main myth-maker, who invented so much in history and linguistics that the consequences of his crazy ideas still resonate. Especially Marr was a sophisticated inventor of the myth of language. Yes, his lack of linguistic education (at that time strictly separated from Oriental studies) prevented Marr from scientifically testing his a priori hypotheses and did not limit his imagination in any way. Having learned a large number of languages at a practical level, moreover, he more or less fully possessed information about the history of only the Kartvelian and Abkhaz languages. At the same time, the already well-studied history of the Indo-European and Turkic languages was actually ignored by him. He gathered around him a group of students who were not linguists in the full sense of the word, but they were historians, orientalists, and it was easier for him to inspire them with something that they knew little about. Among his students were those who later became prominent scientists, such as I.A. Javakhishvili, I.A. Orbeli, A.A. Kalantar, A.G. SHANIDZE. But the outbreak of the First World War, and then the revolution of 1917 in Russia, interrupted Marr from working on archaeological expeditions in the Caucasus, and this became a great incentive for his theoretical work. Interest in the Caucasus, in the past of its peoples, has always been in the sphere of Marr's constant interests since pre-revolutionary times. It was then that he very energetically promoted the organization of the “Caucasian Historical and Archaeological Institute”. He repeatedly raised the question of creating such a scientific center in the Caucasus, in Tiflis. Back in 1906, he prepared a project for the organization of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. But these projects were thwarted by the resistance of the government, which was afraid that such a scientific center would turn out to be a conductor of anti-government ideas. activities set a specific task - compiling an ethnographic map of Russia with explanatory notes. Marr wrote three works for the commission: “The tribal composition of the population of the Caucasus”, “Caucasian tribal names and their local parallels”, “Talysh”, which are actually historical and ethnographic studies. At the same time, he wrote a number of works on historical geography, toponymy, ethnonymy, etc. It was Marr who was one of the first who proved the importance of onomastics, proving how important this science is for studying the historical past of the people. April 18, 1919 Council of People's Commissars, signed by V.I. Lenin approved the project of transforming the former archaeological commission into the State Academy of Material Culture. Marr was elected the first chairman of the GAIMK. Interest in the Caucasus led Marr to the conviction that the ancestral home of the peoples of the Caucasus should be sought far beyond its borders. “The multitude of Japhetic languages in the Caucasus and their location on the square of this region, which do not coincide with the degrees of kinship, prompt us to look for the ancestral home of the Caucasian Japhetids in another place and on a wider territory”1 . In his work “How does Japhetic linguistics live?” Marr noted the significance of the natural psychological kinship of the peoples of the Caucasus. “Our new linguistic doctrine,” he wrote, “after all, correctly illuminates this unity of them. This psychology, which springs like a living spring from the nature of the inhabitants of the region, its source, revealed by linguistics, what is taught? They create a new ideological ground for the unity of the peoples of the Caucasus, its inhabitants, they make the psychological necessity of such unity absolutely palpable. We are also convinced of its necessity by the economic study of the natural forces of the region, this need is also evidenced by the repeated over the centuries, giving brilliant results, an attempt to eliminate the life of the Caucasus by the joint efforts of its inhabited peoples. But natural-psychological kinship also requires cultivation, its growth and development must be supported artificially; each of the peoples of the Caucasus should be imbued with the consciousness of their kinship, its significance, as the most necessary natural historical factor of progress, should be realized first of all by the peoples of the most advanced, more free-thinking part of them, the youth, the true initiator of the future” 2 . Indigenous Caucasian peoples, even indigenous Caucasian languages, according to Marr, are not a phenomenon of local origin: the Japhetic family, to which the original population of the Caucasus belongs, here newcomers, just like the Ari-Europeans and Turks who subsequently appeared, not to mention others not introduced by entire tribes, the masses of the people, with the difference, however, that the Japhetic family emigrated from the former territory of its settlement neighboring from the south, if not the ancestral home, from Mesopotamia, naturally spilling over into the neighboring Caucasian countries in ethnic masses. The study of the history of the Caucasus allowed Marr to assert that the peoples of the Caucasus deserved the right to demand “a reassessment of the actual share of participation in the creation of a universal culture of Aryan or non-Aryan peoples, European or non-European countries, nationalities and states great or small in number and territorial size”1. In his outline of the historical process in the Caucasus, Marr wrote that throughout their history the peoples of the Caucasus were strong in unification and that now, when “life has demanded a revision of the relationship between the old and new national groups of the Caucasian world and the freedom of their new self-determination”, it is necessary “in in the interests of human internal cultural coexistence to restore on new principles the ancient solidarity that has been lost at the present time not only in real life, but also in the idea, in the minds of peoples bound by a common destiny” 2 . In the “new doctrine of language” he created (“Japhetic theory”), which he presented in November 1923, completely unscientific, completely unverifiable and unprovable statements, such as the origin of all languages from the “four elements”, the idea “Japhetic languages” as a kind of not genetic, but social-class community, and the like. What is this theory? And where did such a strange name come from? Strange as it may seem, the Bible came to Marr's aid. Marr wrote that the biblical Noah had three sons: Shem (Semitic languages), Ham (Hamitic languages) and Japheth (Yaphet). After the Flood, Japhet began to live in the Caucasus. From him, according to Marr, all the Caucasian peoples originated. Hence, all the Caucasian languages became, according to him, Japhetic. Despite the far-fetchedness and fabulousness of this theory, however strange it may seem, everyone accepted it as a discovery beyond any doubt. Well, then Marr delves into "an unexplored source of the history of the Caucasian world" 3 . The deeper Marr captures the material of non-written North Caucasian languages, the clearer becomes what he had long ago expressed at the end of the 19th century, but only in 1916 received a complete formulation, the statement about the paramount importance of studying non-written living languages, for understanding the completeness of the historical process. At first, Marr wanted to fix the relationship of the Georgian, Mingrelian, Svan, Chan languages with Semitic and Hamitic by such postulates. As he argued, after all, Shem, Ham and Japhet were siblings, and they had everything in common, not only the fact of birth, but they also communicated in the same language. But this was only the beginning of his pseudo-linguistic research, on which he did not think to stop. Soon he declared related all the ancient (dead) languages of the Mediterranean basin and Western Asia with living languages (Caucasian or Iberian-Caucasian), Basque, Vershik (Pamir), etc.1 Of course, to declare almost all languages of the East (as dead and alive) only by their descent from three siblings seems like an overstretch. But only for an unbiased reader, who does not even have anything to do with linguistics, but not for Marr. Nor was it a stretch for the internationalist communists, in a word, for all those for whom an idea conceived immaculately, i.e. without contact with the facts, was much more important than its scientific justification. As noted by V.M. Alpatov, Marr, as it were, picked up all the “poorly lying languages”, i.e. not assigned to specific groups and, without hesitation, attached them to the "Japhetic". So, language to language, more than a decent “collection” has gathered and, according to Marr, the Caucasus has become almost the parent center of all languages of the world, including all the ancient, ancient pre-Greek, Etruscan and Hittite languages. The Chuvash, Hottentot, and Kabyle languages also fell into the Japhetic languages. It turned out to be surprisingly simple and elegant: “... stubborn facts” made room in front of the “stubborn author”, wrote V.I. Abaev 2 . As time has shown, Marr's main linguistic idea - the kinship of all Caucasian languages - has not been confirmed 3 . But this will happen later, and while Marr's fame is expanding, new students are clinging to him. Quite quickly, new students from among the students began to appear in the group of already determined adherents. Such were V.I. Abaev, S.L. Bykhovskaya, A.N. Genko. Abaev, already in his second year of university, invited to the Japhetic Institute, created by Marr, as a freelancer, recalls this institution as one of the centers of intellectual life in Petrograd in the early 1920s. "They went to the 7th line of Vasilyevsky Island, driven by a thirst for new ideas and the unique strength of Marr's unique personality." And then Abaev noted: "Marr was at the zenith of his glory" 4 . Marr's name is widely known, and the ideas of Japhetidology penetrate even into poetry. Valery Bryusov, who was friends with Marr, wrote the poem “ZSFSR” in 1924: “... And how many legends! From the days of Atlantis The Japhetids bring revelations for us! Vladimir Zakharov
This is what Alans looked like
It was not the Huns who were to blame for the collapse of the Roman Empire, as was believed. She owes her fall to the eastern people, who had an unusual elongated skull, called the Alans.
It was the Alans who brought the cult of war to Europe. And the foundations of medieval chivalry were laid by them.
The history of the Great City remembers many invasions of nomads, but its collapse began under the hooves of the Sarmatian and Hun horses. Despite the fact that the ancient world was shaking long before the Alans appeared there, the latter became the cause of its collapse.
This "non-Germanic" people differed from their predecessors in that they were able to establish vast settlements in Western Europe.
The Alans existed for many years in the neighborhood of the empire, making "neighborly" visits to it from time to time. They were invincible warriors, as the Roman generals recalled more than once.
Where did the warlike people live?
They lived on both banks of the Don, because, as the great geographer of those years Claudius Ptolemy believed, the border passed along the river.
He called the Scythian Alans who lived on the western coast, and the lands occupied by them - European Sarmatia. The inhabitants of the eastern shore were called Scythians, or Alans (according to the sources of Suetonius), according to the sources of Ptolemy.
Accession to the Roman Empire
Thanks to Constantine the Great, the Alans became part of the Roman Empire as federates. This happened in 337. Their place of settlement was Central Europe (formerly Pannonia). Thus, it was possible to turn a dangerous enemy into a defender of the imperial borders for a worthy reward.
It did not last long though, as the soldiers were dissatisfied with their lives.
Association with the Vandals
Alans symbolism
A hundred years later, the Alans entered into an alliance with the German tribe of the Vandals. These two peoples deserved the title of cruel robbers of Rome, which they ruined for two weeks.
The Eternal City could not recover from such an “invasion”. More than 20 years passed until the German leader Odoacrom managed to formalize his fall. He also forced the last emperor of Rome to abdicate.
Therefore, today the name "Vandal" remains a household name.
In the fifth century AD, the Romans began to imitate the barbarians. Strange as it may seem, they dressed in wide trousers sewn in the Samara fashion, grew beards and sat on short, but extremely hardy and fast horses. Everything "Alanian" was in vogue and simply overwhelmed the Eternal City.
But in special honor were horses, which, as already mentioned, did not differ in growth and beauty, but were famous for almost supernatural endurance, and dogs.
The patricians of Rome, satiated with material goods, preferred everything primitive, natural and simple, bringing them closer to the people, as it seemed to them. Tired of the noisy ancient metropolis, they contrasted it with a quiet barbarian village. The barbarian tribes themselves were so idealized that legends and traditions were composed about courtly knights.
Reincarnation
Video: History of the invincible Alans
In the books of that time, the Romans sang of virtues, both moral and physical. The opposite process took place with the Alans. They did not hesitate to use the achievements of the largest civilization, which were absent on the periphery, which gradually led to the romanticization of the Alans, in contrast to the Romans, who "alanized".
However, some Alanian customs were not to the liking of the Romans. They did not accept the fashion for an elongated skull and its artificial deformation common among the Alans. Although for modern historians it is this feature that facilitates the work of determining the territories of the Alans.
- Scientists find graves with long skulls, which make it easier to assess the habitats of militant people.
- According to the head of the local history museum of Pyatigorsk, in that ancient era, up to 70% of the Alans had long skulls.
How did they achieve the unusual shape of the skull?
To change the shape of the head, immediately after birth, until the cranial bones were strong, the heads were bandaged very tightly using a bandage made of leather and decorated with beads, multi-colored threads, and pendants.
They were removed only after the bones were strengthened.
Why was the elongated skull needed?
One version claims that the deformation of the skull affected the capabilities of the brain. Priests due to this quickly plunged into a trance. This tradition was adopted later by the local aristocracy. It soon became a fashion.
According to Flavius Arrin, the cavalry tribes of the Sarmatians and Alans attacked the enemy with lightning speed, not letting him come to his senses. The most effective means used against the attacks of the Alans were the infantry flanks, which had metal shells.
But, the "steppes" often used the tactics of a false retreat, which was often caught by the enemy, thus achieving victory. When the ranks of the Alans fleeing from the advancing infantry broke up and the victory of the attackers was so close, the Alans suddenly turned their horses 180 degrees, crushing the pursuing foot soldiers.
This tactic was later adopted by the Romans. This is understandable, since the Alans had great combat capabilities, which they could not ignore in the west. The Alans elevated the fighting spirit into a kind of cult.
Ancient writers explained that at that time it was honorable for the Alans to die in battle, even joyfully, because they believed that the dead served God. Those Alans who lived to old age and died in their homes were despised, considered cowards who dishonored their families.
The importance of the Alans in the development of European military art
The influence of the Alans is very strong on the development of military art in Europe, since they provided spiritual-ethnic and military-technical developments, which became the beginning of the chivalry of the Middle Ages. In addition, the culture of fighting influenced the creation of the legend of the exploits of Arthur.
Witnesses of this are the ancient authors, who say that during the time of Howard Reid, more than eight thousand of the most experienced Alanian and Sarmatian horsemen were hired for military service. Most of the warriors in Britain fought on Hadrian's Wall under banners resembling the famous dragon.
Legends of Arthur
It is different for different researchers. Researchers Malkon with Littleton see her in the sacred chalice and the Grail from the Ossetian epic (Nart) - Nartamonga.
Path to Independence
Two militant tribes - Alans and Vandals, united, posed a great threat. The savagery of these peoples and great aggressiveness did not allow concluding an agreement with the empire. They live a quiet life in a certain territory, preferring to engage in robbery in new territories.
In the end, the Alans reached the borders of Eastern Spain by 425. Here they seized the ships, and went on them to North Africa. Geiserin was the leader of the Alans. They landed in the Roman colonies, which suffered at that time from internal uprisings against the current government, and from frequent raids by the Berbers, so they were weakened. The Alans captured significant territories in a matter of days.
- The lands, including Carthage, were a tasty morsel for the Alans.
- Having seized a strong fleet, the Alanian warriors often visited Sicily and the shores of southern Italy.
- Rome had no other choice, and in 442 he recognized the independence of the Alans, and even 30 years later, his defeat.
During the period of existence on a vast territory, militant people left a rather “long” trail - from the foothills of the Caucasus to Africa through Europe. Today, the peoples living in these places are fighting for the right to be related to the famous tribe. But, according to scientists, Ossetians are their descendants. In modern Ossetia, there is even a movement demanding the return of the historical name to the country.
Ossetians have every reason for this:
linguistic community;
territorial;
folk epic.
This is opposed by the inhabitants of Ingushetia, who also consider themselves descendants of a militant tribe.
In some ancient sources, it is stated that the Alans are a collective image of nomads and hunters who lived north of the Caucasus and the Caspian. Most likely, the Ossetians represent only a small proportion of the followers of the Alans.
And most of them merged with other ethnic groups, including:
Berbers and even Celts.
One version says that the common Celtic male name Alan originates from "Alans". They have lived in the Luares since the beginning of the fifth century, mixing with the British.
The Huns did not put an end to the Roman Empire. She fell under the hooves of the Alanian cavalry. An Eastern people with long skulls brought a new cult of war to Europe, laying the foundations for medieval chivalry.
"On guard" of Rome
The Roman Empire throughout its history has repeatedly faced the invasion of nomadic tribes. Long before the Alans, the borders of the ancient world shook under the hooves of the Sarmatians and Huns. But, unlike their predecessors, the Alans became the first and last non-Germanic people who managed to establish significant settlements in Western Europe. For a long time they existed next to the empire, periodically making neighborly “visits” to them. Many Roman generals spoke about them in their memoirs, describing them as almost invincible warriors.
According to Roman sources, the Alans lived on both sides of the Don, that is, in Asia and Europe, since, according to the geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the border passed along this river. Those that inhabited the western bank of the Don, Ptolemy called the Scythian Alans, and their territory "European Sarmatia". Those who lived in the East were called Scythians in some sources (according to Ptolemy) and Alans in others (according to Suetonius). In 337, Constantine the Great accepted the Alans into the Roman Empire as federates and settled them in Pannonia (Central Europe). From a threat, they at once turned into defenders of the empire's borders, for the right to settle and pay. True, not for long.
Almost a hundred years later, dissatisfied with the conditions of life in Pannonia, the Alans entered into an alliance with the German tribes of the Vandals. It was these two peoples, acting together, who found themselves the glory of the destroyers of Rome after having plundered the Eternal City for two weeks. The Roman Empire never recovered from this blow. Twenty-one years later, the German leader Odoacer formally "declared" the fall of Rome, forcing the last of the Roman emperors to abdicate. The name of the vandals, to this day, remains a household name.
Fashion for "Alanian"
Imagine the citizens of Rome who began to imitate the barbarians. It seems absurd to think that a Roman, dressed in Sarmatian trousers, has grown a beard and rides on a short but fast horse, trying to match the barbarian way of life. Oddly enough, for Rome in the 5th century AD, this was not uncommon. The Eternal City was literally “covered” by the fashion for everything “Alanian”. They adopted everything: military and equestrian equipment, weapons; Alanian dogs and horses were especially valued. The latter were not distinguished by either beauty or height, but were famous for their endurance, to which they attributed an almost supernatural character.
Satiated with material goods, entangled in the fetters of sophistry and scholasticism, the Roman intelligentsia sought an outlet in everything simple, natural, primitive and, as it seemed to them, close to nature. The barbarian village was opposed to noisy Rome, the ancient metropolis, and the representatives of the barbarian tribes themselves were idealized so much that, in part, traces of this “fashion” formed the basis of subsequent medieval legends about courtly knights. The moral and physical advantages of the barbarians were a favorite theme of novels and short stories of that time.
Thus, in the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the savage took the first place on the pedestal among idols, and the Germanic barbarian became the object of adoration among the readers of the Tacitus and Plinian "Germany". The next step was imitation - the Romans tried to look like barbarians, act like barbarians and, if possible, be barbarians. Thus, the great Rome, in the last period of its existence, plunged into the process of complete barbarization.
For the Alans, as well as for the rest of the federates in general, the opposite process was characteristic. The barbarians preferred to use the achievements of a large civilization, on the periphery of which they found themselves. During this period, there was a complete exchange of values - the Alans were Romanized, the Romans were "Alanized".
Deformed skulls
But not all the customs of the Alans were to the liking of the Romans. So, they ignored the fashion for an elongated head and artificial deformation of the skull, which was common among the Alans. In fairness, it should be noted that today a similar feature of the Alans and Sarmatians greatly facilitates the work of historians, making it possible to determine the distribution of the latter, thanks to the long skulls found in burials. So, it was possible to localize the habitat of the Alans on the Loire, in Western France. According to Sergei Savenko, director of the Pyatigorsk Museum of Local Lore, up to 70% of the skulls dating back to the Alans era have an elongated shape.
In order to achieve an unusual head shape, a newborn whose cranial bones had not yet grown strong was tightly bandaged with a ritual leather bandage decorated with beads, threads, and pendants. They wore it until the bones were strengthened, and then there was no need for it - the formed skull itself kept its shape. Historians believe that such a custom came from the tradition of the Turkic peoples to strictly swaddle a child. The head of a child lying motionless in a strong swaddling in a flat wooden cradle was formed longer in size.
The long head was often not so much fashionable as ritual. In the case of the priests, the deformation affected the brain and allowed the cultists to go into a trance. Subsequently, representatives of the local aristocracy intercepted the tradition, and then it came into wide use along with fashion.
First knights
This article has already mentioned that the Alans were thought to be invincible, brave to death and almost invulnerable warriors. The Roman generals, one after another, described all the difficulties of the fight against the warlike barbarian tribe.
According to Flavius Arrian, the Alans and Sarmatians were mounted spearmen powerfully and quickly attacking the enemy. He emphasizes that an infantry phalanx equipped with projectiles is the most effective means of repulsing the attack of the Alans. The main thing after this is not to "buy in" to the famous tactical move of all the steppe dwellers: the "false retreat", which they often turned into a victory. When the infantry, with whom they had just stood face to face, pursued the fleeing and disordered enemy, the latter turned his horses and overturned the foot soldiers. Obviously, their manner of fighting later influenced the Roman way of warfare. At least, later telling about the actions of his army, Arrian noted that "the Roman cavalry holds its spears and beats the enemy in the same manner as the Alans and Sarmatians." This, as well as Arrian's considerations regarding the combat capabilities of the Alans, confirms the prevailing opinion that in the West they seriously considered the military merits of the Alans.
Their fighting spirit was elevated to a cult. As ancient authors write, death in battle was considered not just honorable, but joyful: the Alans considered the “happy dead” to be the one who died in battle, serving the god of war; such a dead man was worthy of veneration. The same "unfortunates" who happened to live to old age and die in their bed were despised as cowards and became a shameful stain in the family.
The Alans had a significant influence on the development of military affairs in Europe. With their legacy, historians associate a whole range of both military-technical and spiritual-ethical achievements, which formed the basis of medieval chivalry. According to the research of Howard Reid, the military culture of the Alans played a significant role in the formation of the legend of King Arthur. It is based on the testimonies of ancient authors, according to which Emperor Marcus Aurelius recruited 8,000 experienced horsemen - Alans and Sarmatians. Most of them were sent to Hadrian's Wall in Britain. They fought under banners in the form of dragons, and worshiped the god of war - a naked sword stuck in the ground.
The idea of looking for an Alanian basis in the Arthurian legend is not new. So American researchers, Littleton and Malkor, draw a parallel between the Holy Grail and the sacred cup from the Nart (Ossetian) epic, Nartamonga.
Kingdom of Vandals and Alans
It is not surprising that the Alans, distinguished by such militancy, in alliance with the no less militant tribe of the Vandals, represented a terrible misfortune. Distinguished by their special savagery and aggressiveness, they did not enter into an agreement with the empire and did not settle in any area, preferring nomadic robbery and the seizure of more and more new territories. By 422-425, they approached Eastern Spain, took possession of the ships located there, and, under the leadership of the leader Gaiseric, landed in North Africa. At that time, the Roman colonies on the Black Continent were going through hard times: they suffered from Berber raids and internal rebellions against the central government, in general, they represented a tasty morsel for the united barbarian army of Vandals and Alans. In just a few years, they conquered the vast African territories that belonged to Rome, led by Carthage. A powerful fleet passed into their hands, with the help of which they repeatedly visited the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy. In 442, Rome was forced to recognize their complete independence, and thirteen years later, its complete defeat.
Alanian blood
Alans for all the time of their existence managed to visit many territories and leave their mark in many countries. Their migration stretched from Ciscaucasia, through most of Europe, and into Africa. It is not surprising that today many peoples living in these territories claim to be considered the descendants of this famous tribe.
Perhaps the most likely descendants of the Alans are modern Ossetians, who consider themselves the successors of the great Alania. Today, there are even movements among Ossetians who advocate the return of Ossetia to its supposedly historical name. In fairness, it should be noted that the Ossetians have good reason to claim the status of descendants of the Alans: the common territory, the common language, which is considered a direct descendant of the Alanian, the commonality of the folk epos (Nart epos), where the core is allegedly the ancient Alanian cycle. The main opponents of this position are the Ingush, who also stand up for their right to be called descendants of the great Alans. According to another version, the Alans in ancient sources were a collective name for all hunting and nomadic peoples located north of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.
According to the most common opinion, only a part of the Alans became the ancestors of the Ossetians, while other parts merged or dissolved into other ethnic groups. Among the latter are Berbers, Franks and even Celts. So, according to one version, the Celtic name Alan comes from the patronymic "Alans", who settled at the beginning of the 5th century in the Loire, where they mixed with the Bretons.
A. Ovchinnikov
Alans and Scythians. ANOTHER FANTASY.
Alans
To begin with, a few quotes about the Alans from Wikipedia articles. 1) Alans - Iranian-speaking tribes of Scythian-Sarmatian origin; 2) in the 1st-2nd centuries AD the Alans occupied a dominant position among the Sarmatians of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov and Ciscaucasia, from where they raided the Crimea, Transcaucasia, Asia Minor, Media; 3) large tribal associations of the Alans were defeated by the Huns in the 4th century AD; 4) part of the Alans participated, starting from the end of the 4th century AD, in the Great Migration of Peoples, reaching North Africa together with the Vandals, forming a kingdom there in the 6th century that lasted more than a hundred years; 5) from the 7th to the 10th century, medieval Alania was part of the Khazar rope; 6) in the 4th-6th centuries AD. Alans formed independently and with their allies principalities and kingdoms on the territory of modern France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Romania, Hungary, leaving a memory in Europe in the form of about 300 toponyms - places with Alanian roots - (Catalonia, Alencon, etc.) ; 7) "through the Sarmatian-Alanian influence, the heritage of the Scythian civilization entered the culture of many peoples."
The tribal formation of the Eastern Alans fell only in the 13th century under the blows of the Tatar-Mongol Batu, and modern Ossetians are considered the last fragment of the great Alanian ethnos. These are the main provisions of official science, which, alas, again consists of inconsistencies and contradictions. We are interested in the Alans, first of all, in the context of their relationship with the Slavs of the Don region, and these relations were not always cloudless. What kind of Alans are these, “where did they go from”, how did they end up and where did they go. Our version differs in many ways from the commonly used one. So...
The first mention of the Alans appears at the very beginning of the 1st century AD. in Roman sources. That is, presumably, from the moment of the first contact of the Romans (at first, merchants, merchants, scouts) with the tribes of the Black Sea region unknown to them until now. Alani - this is the nickname of a people unfamiliar to the Romans - since then it has forever entered the designation of "nomadic tribes of Scythian-Sarmatian origin." Why exactly Scythian-Sarmatian? - Yes, simply because the Alans lived within the same boundaries as the Scythians known to the whole world until then and, then, the Sarmatians. At the same time, the same Iranian origin is attributed to the Alanian language as to the Scythian. How is it known that the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, and, therefore, the Alans were "Iranian-speaking"?
Scythians and their imaginary "Iranian-speaking"
Note that there are no written sources. True, there is a small study, which proves the Old Slavic origin of the indistinct and obscure, as it were, Scythian signs discovered by archaeologists. Further, we will see that such an assumption has a right to exist, and with a probability no less than that of generally accepted hypotheses. Although it is not clear how the highly developed Scythian civilization could not have written language, which reached unsurpassed heights in art, culture and military affairs in the Bronze Age, which is comparable in time to the appearance of the first creations of ancient Greek masters. The fact that this is really so easy to be convinced by looking at the samples of the Scythian works of art - see Fig. 1. An ethnic group that managed to create such masterpieces could not help but have its own writing. The writing of the Aryans, Scythians, Slavs, Slavic-Russians is a separate big topic, to which we will devote a separate chapter. Here, we note in advance that in addition to the loss of samples of material culture of the pre-Christian period during wars and invasions, the era of forced Christianization of Russia, which lasted two and a half centuries, played a role, during which almost all the cultural and historical heritage of our ancestors, the so-called pagans, was destroyed.
Today, in all sources, it is customary to consider the language of the Scythians (Sarmatians, Alans) as belonging to the Iranian group of Indo-European languages - and that's it! This was determined only by the names of the leaders and kings of these tribes recorded by the ancient Greeks and Romans. There are several dozen of them in total, for example (here it is necessary to take into account the Greek spelling, namely the predilection of the Greeks for the endings os-as): Olkas, Matasy, Skilur, Palak, Kolandak, Skivlias, Pardokas, Ditylas, Zariva-Tsareva (female), Skoloniy, Teutoma, Tevtar, Shpako, Orpata, Adanfirs, Skopas, Tapsakas, Atey (king) [2]. Let's try to clear these names from Greek sediments, we get: Olk, Mata, Skilur, Palak, Kolandak, Skivl, Pardak, Dit, Tsareva, Skol, Teut, Orpat, Azanfir, Tapsak, Atey. I will give a dozen of the most common non-Muslim names of modern Persia (there, for thousands of years, little has changed culturally, except that the nuclear reactor has started working): Ardashir, Baraz, Javed, Mihran, Parvaz, Sohrab, Shahriyar, Sher. And for comparison, a few old Russian names: Yaroslav, Velimir, Dobrogost, Dobrynya, Budimir, Vseslav, Dobran, Uslad, Svetomir, Radislav, Ratibor (and, what names, speaking, directly moral and military characteristics of our ancestors). For me, the latter is more consonant with the Scythian names than the Iranian names of the same, isn't it?
There is even a dictionary of the Scythian language for 200 words, where the author, a well-known historian, philologist, linguist and Iranian scholar V.I. Abaev - Ossetian by nationality - again from nothing, from the air, just for the sake of proving the involvement of modern Ossetians in those Alans, "pulls by the ears" some modern Ossetian words and concepts, as if consonant, no, rather, they could be similar to some Alanian (Scythian) counterparts. If one devotes one's life to such evidence, then one can compile a Scythian-Honduran dictionary. Such research is carried out on the erroneous assumption that the Russian Plain, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea were inhabited by migrants from the Iranian Highlands, for which there is practically no evidence. That is, it means that all the gigantic expanses of Eurasia from the Elbe to the Urals and from Valdai to the Caucasus and the Caspian were inhabited for thousands of years by some kind of proto-Iranian, while, of course, Iranian-speaking tribes. And this statement is stubborn, despite the latest discoveries in biology and genetics, continues to be present in almost all educational and popular publications, including Internet and Wikipedia.
At the same time, the entire "Iranian" nature of these millionth, it seems, the most numerous then (and now) tribes of Europe, in addition to references to several names of Scythian leaders, also rests on the consonance of the hydronyms Don-Dnepr-Dniester-Danube-Donets to the Ossetian
Genetics of the Alans and Scythians
Here it is impossible not to bring one more, but "lethal" argument. According to the latest research data of geneticists, Ossetians have nothing to do with the Scythians and Alans. The fact that the Scythians belonged to the haplogroup R1a on the male Y-chromosome is not disputed by anyone and is recognized by the entire scientific world community. But so far this circumstance has not yet imprinted much in the brain of an ordinary descendant of the Scythian tribe - and this is you and me, dear reader, Eastern Slavs. Two-thirds (in the territories south of Moscow) we belong to this "Scythian" haplogroup, but the Ossetians do not. Among Ossetians, the percentage of R1a is negligible. But more on this later.
Let's return to the Alans, consider their "Scythian-Sarmatian" origin, because other hypotheses today are unconvincing and are not seriously considered. To this day, for some reason, in school history textbooks, as well as in university ones, when considering the chain of peoples: Aryans-Cimmerians-Scythians-Sarmatians-Slavs - replacing each other in the vast expanses of Eastern and Central Europe - are completely overlooked, already mentioned above, the achievements of molecular genetics of the last twenty years. In the previous chapters, it was shown that the Aryan tribes that appeared about 4800-4500 years ago in this territory (the culture of battle axes, it is also pit, it is also log and catacomb, it is also the culture of corded ceramics) belonged to the male Y-chromosome, according to the first ancestor, to haplogroup R1a. The fact that these were precisely the arias is mentioned in academic publications, but is bashfully silent in more mass circulations. The very name of the tribe, the term "Aryan", Aryan, Aryans was unreasonably tainted by the ideologists of Nazi Germany and since then has been almost abusive and cursed for centuries. Restoring historical justice, we emphasize once again: in Germany itself, only up to 15% of those who can be attributed to the Aryans, to the haplogroup R1a, the rest of the Germans for the most part belong either to the Western European group R1b or Paleo-European groups I1 and I2. Without the rehabilitation of the concept itself, the term "Aryan" is indispensable in the further development and rethinking of the entire history of Europe, and indeed the world.
It is not known exactly what was the composition of the pre-Aryan population of the territories under consideration - Eastern and Central Europe, the Russian Plain, the steppes of the Black Sea, the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, the Caspian Sea and the Southern Urals). Most likely, it was an autochthonous Paleo-European population of haplogroup I, preserved and survived after the Ice Age. Today, in the territory of northern Russia, they are clearly visible on the gene maps - see Fig. 2. - traces of these tribes: in the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions, up to 18% of the population belongs to haplogroup I1, Russian Pomors for the most part also belong to this group. It is obvious that the colonization of the Russian Plain by the Aryans had little effect on the Russian north in its time, otherwise these traces would not have been preserved. In southern Russia and Ukraine, the descendants of ancient European aborigines from the haplogroup I2a make up 12-15%. But it is still not known exactly, perhaps these are traces of migrations of the population of the Balkans already in later eras. With the accumulation of statistical data on DNA research, the picture of the world will become more and more clear, many secrets and mysteries will be revealed that were previously inaccessible.
The very term "Aryan" has been known since the 19th century, thanks to the decoding and translation of the ancient Iranian epic "Zend-Avesta". Modern studies of the remains of the Aryans of Iran, Transcaucasia, Mesopotamia, Arabia and the Aryans of the Russian Plain prove their complete identity in terms of the first ancestor, the male Y chromosome. Moreover, the primacy is clearly defined, we emphasize this circumstance once again, of the Aryans of Eastern Europe, some of which migrated to Western Asia, Iran, India 4000-3500 years ago after the colonization and settlement of the European part of Eurasia. Surprisingly, this fact, generally accepted and generally recognized by the scientific community, has not yet been reflected even in the “advanced” Wikipedia. Hence: the appearance of the “cart before the horse” is completely incomprehensible when it is asserted that the Iranian element prevails in the indicated territory, including the language.
Cimmerians - the forerunners of the Scythians
In modern historical science, it is generally accepted that the Aryans disappeared, almost without a trace, dissolving in the tribes that followed them, in particular in the Cimmerians and Scythians. We know about the Cimmerians from many sources, but the discoverer - not of the people, but only of its name - is the "father of history" Herodotus. With his light hand in the spaces of Eastern Europe from about 1300 BC. tribes named by Herodotus as Cimmerians are recorded. Where did they come from and where did the tribes that preceded them go - historians and archaeologists have no exact answer to this, only dozens of unintelligible hypotheses. It turns out that the Cimmerians owe their very name to the Greeks, of course, nothing is known about their self-name. It was determined, however, that they again belonged to the same “Iranian group of languages”, and they “guessed” this only and only by the three (!) names of the leaders mentioned in the ancient lists. Here they are: Tugdamme, Teushpa, Sandakshatru. And these three names were alternately attributed to the Celts, then to the Thracians and Caucasians, but, in the end, the linguists settled on the Iranian version. And here, for example, I propose to consider them Russian-Indian - and what ?! Those who wanted to see Iranian roots in these names saw it, but I did not. Here, and as we will see later, it must be assumed that a powerful layer of the scientific community of some Iranianists has formed, who have been bending and defending their line for decades. And it is already impossible for them to turn off this path - in this case, their entire universe will be destroyed! In historical science, it’s like this: whoever saddled what Temka will defend it to the last drop of ink, even realizing that he is wrong.
The Cimmerians imperceptibly disappear from the historical arena, and they are replaced in the 8th-7th centuries BC. Scythians. How they called themselves is unknown, since the “Scythians” are again from the Greeks. Further, two hundred years before the beginning of the New Era, the Sarmatians appear in the same territories, while the Scythians mysteriously disappear somewhere. And again, “in all the textbooks of the country”: the Scythians were partially destroyed, partially assimilated by the Sarmatians, and the latter are of the same Iranian root as the Scythians. No one thought: how can it be “partially destroyed and partially assimilated” (that is, to kill men and take women as slaves) a huge people known to the entire world of that time and still influencing this world through their cultural heritage! And the answer is on the surface: Scythians and Sarmatians are one and the same. What is confirmed by the conclusions of geneticists. And according to archaeologists, only the latter, if they want to see some differences in the culture of these two, as it were, different peoples, they find them. And it will become fashionable and relevant to consider them as one - there will immediately be irrefutable evidence of this. For hundreds of years, the culture and way of life of the same ethnic group has certainly changed, otherwise we would still be running after mammoths with sticks. Compare Russia in 1900 and 1800 - the people are the same, but the country is completely different. So are the Scythians, Cimmerians, Sarmatians and ... Slavs.
Sarmatians. Are the Alans Slavs?
At the turn of the 200-300 years of the New Era, the Sarmatians are less and less mentioned in the works of contemporaries and, on the contrary, under various names, more and more often, the Slavs. Herodotus called at one time some Cimmerians, others Scythians - and so it went. The Romans called the same people Sarmatians (Sauromates), the Byzantines caught on about the Slavs - Alans. I want to emphasize once again, to sew with a red thread: there was no chain of different peoples replacing each other on our land; namely: Aryans - Cimmerians - Scythians - Sarmatians - Slavs, it was and is one and the same people, descendants of the ancient Aryans. This conclusion, regardless of the achievements of modern science and archeology, relying only on cold logic and numerous testimonies of ancient authors, was also reached by the notorious Russian researcher of antiquities of the first half of the 19th century E. Klassen. Following Lomonosov, he was one of the first to draw attention to the discrepancy between the views of the then historical science (as we see, and today's) on the problem of the origin and disappearance of the Scythians regarding the true state of affairs, the correct placement of accents and the rethinking of primary sources. So, according to Klassen, the Alans are a Slavic tribe, whose name is derived from the Old Russian word “alan” (which was quite common even in his time), which means lowland, pasture. And today the map of Russia is replete with geographical names with a similar root "elan" (transformed from "alan"). That is, the Alans are shepherds, cattle breeders, or steppe Slavs, in contrast to the Slavs of the forest and forest-steppe zone. And we have no reason not to trust this conclusion of the famous Russian scientist. Moreover, almost everywhere and everywhere it is stated: the Alans are “an Iranian-speaking tribe of the Scythian-Sarmatian type”. Here, as we see, there are big problems with the first statement, and we will consider the second one to be true. Although, it must be admitted, there is no 100% evidence of conformity in genetics, in terms of the original genus, of the Alans and Scythians, but more on that later.
In the meantime, for today, it turns out like this: the southeastern, steppe part of the Scythian-Aryans is the Alans of the early Middle Ages. It was they who were involved in the whirlwind of the Asian-Hun invasion during the period of the Great Migration of Peoples, and they also walked throughout Europe and even Africa. It is believed that “the traditions of medieval European chivalry, including vestments and weapons, military equipment, the moral code and ideology of the military elite, go back to the Sarmatian-Alanian (military) culture. The Alanian basis is found in the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. A characteristic feature of the equipment of the Sarmatian, and then the Alanian knights, was a protective shell of a scaly type, which later transformed into its lighter modification - chain mail. It was these Alano-Scythians who, over the 200 years of their stay in Europe, left a memory in toponymy and, what is especially important for us, managed to leave clear imprints of their stay in these places on modern gene maps of Western Europe and North Africa in such a short historical period - see Fig. fig.3. Only they could leave traces of the haplogroup R1a from 2.5 to 5%. Before that and further on, there were no such long-term invasions of the descendants of the Aryans in the west of Europe.
"New Alans" 8-12 centuries.
The period from the end of the 4th to about the 7th-8th centuries is a dark spot in the history of the ancient, first Alans. But during the same period, there are numerous references by contemporary authors about the appearance of already Slavic tribes on these lands, in particular, Venets, Roxolans, Antes, Boruses, Sklavens. After the relocation of the Alans, along with the Goths and Huns to Europe, the vacant spaces of the Lower Don and Ciscaucasia gradually penetrate the tribes of Ants from the north and north-west, and from the east the Avars (Russian sources), then the Bulgars and Khazars (since 650). It turns out that about two hundred years pass from the time the Alans left to the west to their first clashes with the Avars - and almost nothing is known about this period in the history of the Alans. It turns out that in the period from the end of the 4th century onwards until the beginning of the 2nd millennium, several ethnic groups of different tribes lived in the steppe spaces between the Black, Azov and Caspian Seas, moreover, they did not have clear boundaries between themselves. These are, firstly, the Alans themselves, about whom it is said in the textbooks that they were part of a certain Khazar Khaganate (about him in the next chapter), secondly, the Slavs-Rus (Antes), and, thirdly, Avars, Bulgars , Khazars and even the Pechenegs who appeared here from the end of the 9th century.
The Russian chronicles of the 11th century describe in some detail the relationship between the Rus and the Khazars, which have never been cloudless. If in the first period of this confrontation, the Russians were forced to pay tribute to the Khazars, then in the end, the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav forever “closed” this problem, destroying the Khazar Khaganate itself as a state. Further, the Russians had to deal with the Pechenegs, then with the Polovtsians. But back to the Alans. The authors of the Nikon Chronicle, who are quite aware of the confrontation between the Russians and the Khazars, starting from about the 7th century, do not tell us anything about the Alans, who, by the way, lived, according to the legends, on the same lands at the same time.
Nevertheless, in all other, not Old Russian, sources, the presence at the same time in these territories of the Alans and their, for some reason, peaceful coexistence with both the Bulgars and the Khazars, and often in the same settlement, are stubbornly pointed out. A classic, but hardly the only example is the Mayatskoye settlement on the Quiet Pine (100 km south of Voronezh). The settlement itself served as one of the symbols for designating the whole "Saltano-Mayatskaya" culture, in which archaeologists and historians lump together the heritage of the Khazars, Bulgars and Alans. Unprecedented for that era tolerance and a model of peaceful coexistence of various ethnic groups. Moreover, everything that cannot be identified as belonging to the Bulgar or Khazar culture is automatically considered Alan.
The territories of the North Caucasus, the Lower Don, the Caspian Sea, starting from the end of the 7th century, attracted the attention of the Arab conquerors. The Arab expansion, which by that time had captured Transcaucasia, was spreading to the North Caucasus and the steppes of the Kuban region. The settled tribes that lived here are forced to retreat either to the impregnable gorges of the Caucasus, or to the north, to the Don. Well, since, in that era, in Ciscaucasia, according to the then ideas of the Byzantines, Persians and Arabs, the Alans lived, then on the Don, of course, the tribes that migrated from the south are also recorded by historians as Alans. But, at the same time, it is not said anywhere how related the Western Alans, lost in Europe and North Africa as early as the 5th-6th centuries, are related to these Alans, who remained in the steppes between the Azov and Caspian Seas. Here lies another of the main and unresolved mysteries of the early Middle Ages: why are the tribes that lived north of the Caucasus Mountains up to the Volga-Don interfluve considered Alans? Based on what, what research, what excavations? The written testimonies of the Romans (including Josephus Flavius) break off at the beginning of the New Era, and this is by no means the 7th-8th centuries ... It turns out that contemporaries continued to call these tribes "Alans" out of habit, out of inertia, in order to at least somehow designate heterogeneous, multi-tribal ethnic groups that had gathered by that time in the territories previously occupied by the Western Alans. It turns out that the Alans of the early Middle Ages, the Alans who left for Europe at the end of the 4th century and disappeared among the local population, gave their name to all subsequent "forced migrants" from the Caucasus to the north.
The facts and evidence cited by researchers about the "Alanian" nature of the later Alans are unconvincing and seem to be attracted to a predetermined answer. These Alans, who migrated to the north, to the Don, in the 7th-8th centuries, become one of the bearers of the mentioned Saltan-Mayak culture. Once again: the first Alans, the Western Alans of the early Middle Ages, leave around 400, together with the Goths and Huns, on a campaign against Rome and further to Western Europe; the remaining, eastern Alans, according to most historians, continue to remain in the previously occupied territories between Azov and the Caspian, but, at the same time, until the invasion of the Avars in 555, nothing is known about them. Almost immediately after the subjugation of these Alans by the Khazars in the middle of the 7th century and the occupation by the latter of these lands, the Arabs around 670 already pushed the Khazars (and Alans) from the Caucasus to the north. Note that by that time Kyiv had already been founded in Russia and Slavic tribes were coming to the forefront of history, for the first time Russians-Russians are mentioned, who become neighbors of just these eastern Alans in the middle and lower Don region.
Eastern Alans are attributed by historians to almost peaceful coexistence with the Khazars, or at least vassalage. And so on until the defeat of the Khazar Khaganate by the Russian prince Svyatoslav in 929. Further, these accommodating Alans also quietly coexist with the Pechenegs, then with the Polovtsy. But they were not lucky with the Mongol-Tatars, it was too cruel that they turned out to be and had to fight with them, and, having been defeated, take refuge in the impregnable Caucasian gorges. So, according to the legend, modern North Ossetia was born. However, any textbook will tell you the same thing.
"Don Alans" of the 10th century.
But such an incident occurred not so long ago during a comprehensive study of the remains of the so-called "Don Alans" from the Saltovsky and Dmitrovsky burial grounds (middle Don region). 6 male and 6 female skeletons were studied, presumably from the burials of the Alans and tentatively by date no later than the 10th century. Further I quote: "... the craniological features of the skull, ... osteometric studies, ... odontological sources [and so on] ... allow us to associate the studied remains with the Alanian ethnic community." That is, the task of matching the discovered burials to the Alan ones seems to have been completed, but ... DNA analysis unexpectedly revealed that the remains of men, according to the haplotype, belong to the Central Caucasian, almost autochthonous, group G2a. On the gene map for this haplogroup - see fig. 2 - the "epicenter" of the distribution of this haplogroup is clearly visible - this is the Central Caucasus. Here are the Alans for you, here are the heirs of the Scythians! Modern Ossetians, by the way, have the following ratio of haplogroups: G2a - up to 70%, J2 - 14% (this is the Middle Eastern group), R1b - 7% (Western European), while the Scythian-Aryan haplogroup R1a is negligible.
As already mentioned, the following definition of the Alans, which has become canonical, is generally accepted: "Alans are Iranian-speaking nomadic tribes of Scythian-Sarmatian origin." But, the Scythians, which are South Siberian, which are Ural, which are Eastern European, belonged according to the male Y-chromosome, according to the first ancestor, to the Aryan haplogroup R1a, and no one doubts this. This means that the Alans, if they are of Scythian-Sarmatian origin, must also physically and biologically belong to R1a. By the way, female samples were assigned to group I according to mitochondrial DNA (Asian, by the way, but Scythian women, for the most part, belonged to group H according to this label). In general, female genetic marks allow us to determine only belonging to a certain group (by the first mother), as well as the closest ancestors in the female line - mother, grandmother ... But some kind of localization of the ethnic group according to the female type is difficult, if not impossible. The same applies to the direction of migrations of tribes, since during the interpenetration, assimilation or even subjugation of one tribe by another, the female element is shuffled like the queen of spades in a deck of cards. While the mark on the male chromosome (a certain set of nucleotides in the DNA molecule) remains unchanged and constant.
Thus, the whole construction is crumbling: either the Alans (but it is these “eastern” ones who remained in the Ciscaucasia after the departure of the Western Alans to Europe in the 5th century) have nothing to do with the Scythians and Sarmatians, or the Scythians (and you and I, like them descendants) are also natives of the Caucasus. As the ancients said: tercium non datum (there is no third) - choose what you like. There is, however, an option that the ancient Alans, the real Alans of the early Middle Ages, like the "quasi-Alans", also belonged to the G2a haplogroup, but then again, one has to put a bold cross on their Scythian-Sarmatian origin.
I propose the following way out of this logical impasse and vicious circle. The Alans of the early Middle Ages, who dissolved in the expanses of Europe and Africa in the 5th-7th centuries, were precisely those “heirs of the Scythian-Sarmatian civilization”, or the same Scythians, who only lived “beyond the Don”, to the east of the Don. Slavs-cattle breeders, or Alano-Aryans - inhabitants of the Zadonsk steppes. And it is not for nothing that Alanian historiography has a gap of 200 years from 400 to 600 years. In the territories between the Sea of Azov, the Caspian and the Caucasus during this period, there is no material evidence (archaeological data) of any stable tribal formations, and so on until the appearance of the Avars (557) and the Khazars (650). But later, in clashes with the Khazars, historians again mention some Alans. But, if these “new Alans” belonged to the Caucasian haplogroup G2a, then it is logical to assume some kind of migration during this period of the Central Caucasian tribes to the north, to the practically empty, but fertile steppes of the Kuban, Azov and Don regions. This migration continued for centuries, but at the same time, the share of representatives of these tribes in the population of the Khazar Khaganate (about the Khazars - in the next chapter) was insignificant. Thus, out of 350 burial sites of the Khazars (possibly Bulgars) discovered and studied by archaeologists, there are only 10, attributed to the Alans, the late Alans, or the Caucasian Alans. Moreover, there are not unfounded versions, according to which the appearance of G2a marks on the Don is associated with even earlier migrations of representatives of this genus from the Balkans and Asia Minor. But let's not delve into this jungle.
Ossetians - descendants of Alans and Scythians?
So, what do we have for the Alans. If you believe the official historical science, especially the Soviet and Russian parts of it, then the following sequence of successive tribes, originally belonging to the same ethnic group, has been determined: Scythians - Sarmatians - Alans - modern Ossetians. And all of them are “Iranian-speaking”. Hence, since the majority of Ossetians (70%) have the genetic mark of the “Caucasian” haplogroup in the male line, we can draw a logical inverse conclusion: the Alans of the early Middle Ages, as well as the Sarmatians and Scythians, should also be assigned to the G2a group on the male Y chromosome. Again a dead end. Again, the same conclusion: either declare that the Alans, who conquered Europe in the 5th century AD. - these are people from the Caucasus, not related to the Sarmatians and Scythians; or admit that the Ossetians have nothing to do with either the first Alans, or, of course, with the Scythians, and all the evidence for this has been drawn, since 1944, by the father of the "Alan" Ossetians V.I. Abaev. Both of these are a revolution in historical science, and it is unlikely that any of the greats will go for it. Personally, I would recommend the second option. This implies the following assumption about the origin of the late, secondary Alans: the tribes that descended from the mountains of the Caucasus to the liberated territories after the departure of the original Alans to Europe, and not immediately, but after 150-200 years, contemporaries (Byzantines, Persians, Arabs) called Alans out of habit , according to the habitat of the former authentic Alans. The Ossetians themselves never considered themselves Alans until the discoveries of the aforementioned Abaev. I think if this respected scientist (he lived, by the way, 100 years) knew about the insoluble contradiction according to genetics, he would have devoted his life to other sciences.
Now with regard to the Iranian language, or rather, the Iranian-speaking of the Scythians, Alans and Ossetians. It is on this that the main arguments of the "Alanists and Scythians" are built, producing these peoples from the Iranian root. Although language as a means of communication is a very plastic, flexible thing, easily transforming and adapting to new circumstances. In the history of the Earth, there are hundreds and thousands of examples when, in two or three generations, conquered peoples switched to the language of the conqueror, introducing, of course, elements of their own into the new language substratum. The situation is the same in the relations of neighboring more and less developed civilizations, actively penetrating and diffusing into each other: the language is changing, especially “on the borders of the spheres”. If we lost the war to Nazi Germany, the survivors today would communicate with the gentlemen in German, and among themselves in a Russian-German cocktail.
We have already learned about the "Iranian" language of the Scythians, now about the Ossetians. The self-name of Ossetians is Iron, Iron, and “Ossetians” came into the Russian language through the Georgian “ossa, ovsy”. Iron, of course, is practically Iran and this is not just a coincidence. But let's not rush. As already mentioned, any researcher of antiquity sees in artifacts, archaeological finds, written sources only what he needs for publication, scientific career, fame, money, after all. And I'm afraid that the Iranian roots of the Ossetian language are also attracted by biased linguists, as well as the "Iranian" language of the Scythian-Aryans - examples of the intersection of words are given at the beginning of the article. It is very difficult to imagine how the language of the Aryans (ancestors of the Scythians) can be Iranian, if in Iran, on the Iranian Highlands, Iranian-Aryans appeared later than on the Russian Plain by 500-800 years, and they came to their new homeland from here. In one of the previous chapters, the direction of ancient migrations in time and space was shown with appropriate references to sources.
Briefly recall. 15-12 thousand years ago, the Caucasoid peoples of modern southern Siberia, or Central Asia, began a gradual movement to the west, having reached Europe for millennia. From here, about 5 thousand years ago, they begin a reverse reverse movement towards the Urals, as well as through the Caucasus to Iran and Asia Minor, reaching Arabia, and also inhabit the north of Hindustan. In Iran and India, the Aryans of the Russian Plain appear about 3800-3500 years ago. That is, in history and linguistics everything is still turned upside down. As the cartoon character said, “Yes, on the contrary!” The language of the Persian-Iranians, both modern and ancient, is a branch of the common Aryan proto-language, but not vice versa. Also Scythian. And this will have to be recognized, not immediately, I understand: it’s impossible right away, not everyone’s heart can withstand it, but over time.
An unbiased, honest analysis-research on the correspondence of the modern Ossetian language to some Iranian roots is required. True, there is still a variant of perception of the language of the conqueror, or of a more culturally and economically developed neighboring dominating people. But from the side of really Iranian-speaking Persia-Iran, for the entire period under review in the Caucasus, only Iran of the era of the Sassanid Empire could be such - this is the 3-7th century AD. But even in this case, the influence of Iran did not extend north of the Main Caucasian Range - so this option does not work either. There was also a campaign of the Persians Darius in the 6th century BC. through these places, but it was rather short-lived.
Now, as for the seemingly undoubted correspondence of the hydronyms of Ossetian rivers such as Ar-don, Karma-don, Fiag-don with a well-defined root "don" - water (river) to the same set of great European rivers Don, Danube in meaning and sound , Dnipro, Dniester. There is a corresponding Iranian-Avestan root da-nu (river, flow) and also in Sanskrit danu- flow, oozing liquid. The argument, of course, is weighty, but it turns out that the “water” roots dn - d-n are similar in meaning in the dictionaries of other languages, including Slavic, Semitic, and even the Hittites. Some experts are generally inclined to believe that the names of the mentioned large rivers of Europe belong to some pre-Indo-European languages, that is, the names of the rivers were given by the tribes that lived in this territory even before the invasion of the Aryans. And the Aryans, as conquerors-colonizers, adopted the names of the largest rivers (mountains, lakes) from the local population, and the less significant ones were already renamed to their liking, in honor of themselves, loved ones. Here, by the way, the origin of the hydronym "Voronezh" is also unsolved. There are many hypotheses and assumptions, but they are all probabilistic. And it is also quite likely that the very word Voronezh goes back to pre-Indo-European, to pre-Aryan times. The principle of accepting geographical names of dominant objects by the colonialists from the local population and renaming less significant ones is also seen in modern times when Europeans conquered other continents.
To date, the exact ethnic composition of the pre-Indo-European (pre-Aryan) population of Eastern Europe has not been determined - from 5000 years ago and earlier. As already mentioned, peculiar “tails” of traces of the stay in the north and south of this zone of the Paleo-European population of haplogroups I1 and I2a, respectively, have been established. In the Don, Kuban and Terek basins, representatives of the haplogroups E, G, J, immigrants from the Caucasus, Asia Minor, Western Asia, and the Middle East, could live - and still live to this day. Who exactly gave names and in what language to the rivers of Europe and the North Caucasus remains unknown. Perhaps we will never know who first on Earth had the idea to name the river (water) by the name Don and by what strange ways, thanks to what vicissitudes of fate, small rivers, practically streams of the Central Caucasus, became consonant with the greatest European rivers. This is another mystery for posterity. If the Aryans on the way from Europe to Western Asia, to the notorious Iran - through the Darial Gorge and the Cross Pass (one of the three main routes when crossing the Main Caucasian Range) - would have lingered here for a long time, sufficient to rename local water flows in their own way , so much so that these names then survived for millennia, then they should have left, of course, traces of their stay here in the genetics of the modern population, namely among the Ossetians. But this is not. Genetically, these are different ethnic groups, according to the genetics of Ossetians, they are autochthonous of the Central Caucasus, but their language is defined as Indo-European, and in this regard, “don is a river” is a lethal argument. Well, what if it's just a banal consonance of unrelated words of different origin languages?
"Yasy - Asy - Yazi" of the first Russian chronicles
In the first Russian chronicles, there are often references to the people of yazi, yasi, aze, even wasps, who were the neighbors of the Russians precisely along the Don steppe. Scientists unequivocally connect these Yas-Ases with the Ossetians of our time and, therefore, with the Alans. That is, it is argued that the Asy-Yasi-Az of the Russian chronicles are the Alans. Let's see how true this is. We are talking about the 9th-11th centuries, that is, starting from pre-Christian Russia. At that time, the steppes of the Sea of Azov, the interfluve of the Don and Volga, and the Kuban were simultaneously occupied by several tribes: the Khazars, the Pechenegs, the Bulgars, and the first detachments of the Polovtsy. What kind of peoples we will consider in the following chapters, but for now we note that among them, in the neighborhood of the growing strength of Russia, some yases also lived. The Russians of that time were mainly at enmity with these peoples, sometimes, however, entering into short-term alliances with them against others. So it was with the yasas. The leaders and princes of all the tribes of the steppe often performed dynastic and allied intertribal marriages. So, the wife of Prince Yaropolk (1116), captured by him in a campaign against yas, was called Yasynya (“daughter of the Yassky prince”). The wife of Andrei Bogolyubsky (1176) was also named Yasynya, but it is said about her: “because she is a Bulgarian by birth” - here the chronicler classifies the Yasses as Bulgars. We emphasize: to the Bulgars, and not to the Alans-Ossetians, as the majority of researchers would like to see. I want to the point that unconditionally and, most importantly, completely unproven, having no written sources and audio recordings, it is stated: “... the steppe Alans of the Don region of the 8th-10th centuries spoke the same language that was spoken in the Middle Ages and is still spoken by Ossetians , Irons and Digors in the Caucasus Mountains".
Perhaps, but not so categorically. The appearance of Yasses-Asses-Osses in the neighborhood of Russia in the 8th century can indeed be associated with the forced migration of some foothill Caucasian tribes under the pressure of Arab expansion. And they are similar in haplogroups - (see above). The “Alans” of the Saltovo-Mayak culture, like modern Ossetians, are assigned to the G2a group. But, as stated in the same work, these are different substrates of one people, separated by time. In other words, these "Don Alans" - (yases?), who have the same G2a genomet, nevertheless, are not related to modern Ossetians. The appearance of the first Ossetians (ancestors of modern Ossetians in these territories - the region of the Darial Gorge) is determined in the work at 1450 years ago, or approximately 550 AD, and the "alleles" of the Don Alans are much older. Ossetians, their origin, language continue to be one of the unsolved mysteries of history and ethnography. Approximately the same riddles were left to posterity by those who disappeared at the end of the 1st millennium BC. the Etruscans and the Basques still living in the Pyrenean mountains. The people are a mystery. The only one among the numerous peoples of the Caucasus (except Armenians) is a native speaker of the Indo-European language, who, moreover, adopted Christianity at about the same time as Russia and remains Orthodox surrounded by Islam. As an assumption: some elements of the language of the Aryans, Scythian-Aryan (Indo-European) could penetrate the Ossetian through the centuries-old border contacts of the ancestors of the Ossetians with the Slavs-Rus, with Russia precisely in the pre-Mongolian period in the 7th-12th centuries. The interpenetration of neighboring languages in border environments is a common phenomenon today. It is enough to visit the south of the Voronezh region to make sure that there is a special mixed Russian-Ukrainian dialect that has its own name - surzhik.
Today, unfortunately, we have a completely insufficient amount of data on the genetics of the peoples of southeastern Europe of the period under review. Ancient burials are not systematized and practically not investigated in terms of studying the DNA of the discovered remains. Much has to be determined from insignificant, fragmentary data. In particular, this chapter provides links to a genetic study of the remains of the alleged "Don Alans" from only six samples. Of course, this is completely insufficient. But molecular biology, or DNA biology (there is no official name yet) is developing rapidly and I would like to believe that already during the lifetime of our generation, sufficient data will be accumulated for more unambiguous conclusions, including on the Alans and Scythians.
FINDINGS:
1. The Alans of the early Middle Ages and the Alans of the North Caucasus of the 7th-11th centuries are different peoples, not related to each other (except for the name);
2. The tribes that lived in this period in this territory were called Alans by contemporaries by analogy with the tribe that lived here earlier;
3. Yasy-Asy-Osy of Russian chronicles is one of the minor tribes neighboring Russia on the border with the Wild Field (Zadonye), and their relationship with modern Ossetians has not been proven;
4. The Iranian-linguality of the Scythians-Sarmatians-Alans is one of the accustomed stereotypes of world history. The true chain of "Indo-European" languages looks like this: Aryans - Scythians - Iranians (and Sanskrit). Moreover, the spread of the Proto-Indo-European language (aka Aryan) went from the territory of Eastern Europe in divergent directions to Central, Western and Southern Europe, as well as to Iran (Anterior Asia) and Hindustan, along with migrations of speakers of this language - the ancient Aryans in the period from 5000 to 2000 years ago.
SOURCES:
1. Chudinov V.A. Scythian and Antian writing was discovered. – www.runitsa.ru/publications/publication-8.php;
2. www.academia.edu/7304760/Scythian names;
3. 4. History of the North Ossetian ASSR, ed. Dzugaeva E.Kh., v.1, Ordzhonikidze, "Ir", 1987, 529 p.;
5.haplogroup.narod.ru>celeb.html;
6. ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan migrations;
7. Zolin P. Haplogroup R1a and Proto-Indo-Europeanism - www.site/2009/12/07/544;
8. Klassen E. New materials for the further history of the Slavs ... Rusograd. Rusograd Library at http://rusograd.da.ru;
9.
Reviews
I fully admit the theory that the Alans have nothing to do with the Ossetians (especially in the Caucasus, no one except the Ossetians themselves classifies them as Alans).
But I must note that all fabrications about the ancient Slavs and Russians are also taken from the finger, and not only in your work.
One thing is certain:
The Arabs reached the center of France 1300 years ago and they were in heavy armor and chain mail (the famous heavy Arab cavalry) and Europe was forced to urgently arm itself in the same way, and no one except the Arabs could claim to introduce chain mail and armor in Europe, because only a terrible fear forced the Europeans to urgently produce all this.
Now about the arias.
So what?
An adult is not ashamed to rush about with ideas ... oh, did we come from the stinkers of such and such a haplogroup?
And with foam at the mouth discuss it.
I find it funny.
But the fact that the Russians until 1861 gave themselves as slaves to keep the Germans-Romanovs is not funny.
And explains a lot about modernity.
"in the Caucasus, no one except the Ossetians themselves ranks them among the Alans).
Only "in the Caucasus" has the right to judge whether the Ossetians are the descendants of the Sarmatian tribal union, known as the "Alans"?
One thing is certain:
The Arabs reached the center of France 1300 years ago and they were in heavy armor and chain mail (the famous heavy Arab cavalry) and Europe was forced to urgently arm itself in the same way, and no one except the Arabs could claim to introduce chain mail and armor in Europe, because only a terrible fear forced the Europeans to urgently produce all this."
This is your speculation, nonsense, except for indicating that the Arabs invaded the territory of modern France from Spain in the 8th century and gradually took over about half of the country. They did not have any heavy cavalry. The defeated feudal lords of Aquitaine lamented that shame had fallen on their Christian heads, for they allowed "the Arabs, lightly armed and mostly devoid of military vehicles, to triumph over warriors dressed in armor and armed with the most terrible weapons." To this Karl Martell replied: "... they are at the height of courage and like a stream that overturns everything in its path. Inspiration replaces their shells, courage strength. But when their hands are busy with the loot, when they feel the taste of a good, easy life, when ambition takes hold of the leaders and strife begins between them, then we will go against them, confident in victory.
Now about the arias.
Yes, thousands of years ago, smelly, grimy nomads roamed all over Eurasia, wild, thieving and stupid, including carriers of the haplogroup RA1.
And now there is a people (gypsies) who roam the world.
So what?"
And the fact that this is also speculation, or, to put it in Russian, an attempt to manipulate the facts. In India, the haplogroup R1a1 is found mainly among representatives of the upper castes. The gypsies, who came out of India (Rajahstan) about 10 centuries ago, belonged to the "untouchables", and are carriers of the H1 haplogroup. Only a small part of the gypsy camps in Central Europe has the haplogroup R1a, in particular, in Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia. Either they were representatives of the higher castes, expelled for some sins 525-+120 years ago from India (the common smelly and grimy ancestor of these "Aryans" appeared in Hungary or Slovakia just then, and not two thousand years ago), or we are talking about about people who received their haplogroup R1a-M576 in an "unordered" way.
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The Huns did not put an end to the Roman Empire. She fell under the hooves of the Alanian cavalry. An Eastern people with long skulls brought a new cult of war to Europe, laying the foundations for medieval chivalry.
Invincible wars
The Roman Empire throughout its history has repeatedly faced the invasion of nomadic tribes. Long before the Alans, the borders of the ancient world shook under the hooves of the Sarmatians and Huns. But unlike their predecessors, the Alans became the first and last "non-German" people who managed to establish significant settlements in Western Europe. For a long time they existed next to the empire, periodically making "neighborly visits" to them. Many Roman commanders spoke about them in their memoirs, describing them as invincible warriors.
According to Roman sources, the Alans lived on both sides of the Don, that is, in Asia and Europe, since, according to the geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the border passed along this river.
Those that inhabited the western bank of the Don, Ptolemy called the Scythian Alans, and their territory "European Sarmatia". Those who lived in the East were called Scythians in some sources (according to Ptolemy) and Alans in others (according to Suetonius). In 337, Constantine the Great accepted the Alans into the Roman Empire as federates and settled them in Pannonia (Central Europe). From a threat, they at once turned into defenders of the empire's borders, for the right to settle and pay. True, not for long.
Almost a hundred years later, dissatisfied with the conditions of life in Pannonia, the Alans entered into an alliance with the German tribes of the Vandals. It was these two peoples, acting together, who found themselves the glory of the destroyers of Rome after having plundered the Eternal City for two weeks. The Roman Empire never recovered from this blow. Twenty-one years later, the German leader Odoacer formally "declared" the fall of Rome, forcing the last of the Roman emperors to abdicate. The name of the vandals, to this day, remains a household name.
Fashion for "Alanian"
Imagine the citizens of Rome who began to imitate the barbarians. It seems absurd to think that a Roman, dressed in Sarmatian trousers, has grown a beard and rides on a short but fast horse, trying to conform to the barbarian way of life. For Rome in the 5th century AD, this was not uncommon. The Eternal City was literally “covered” by the fashion for everything “Alanian”. They adopted everything: military and equestrian equipment, weapons; Alanian dogs and horses were especially valued. The latter were not distinguished by either beauty or height, but were famous for their endurance, to which they attributed an almost supernatural character.
Satiated with material goods, the Roman patricians sought an outlet in everything simple, natural, primitive and, as it seemed to them, close to nature. The barbarian village was opposed to noisy Rome, the ancient metropolis, and the representatives of the barbarian tribes themselves were idealized so much that traces of this “fashion” formed the basis of subsequent medieval legends about courtly knights. The moral and physical advantages of the barbarians were a favorite theme of novels and short stories of that time.
For the Alans, as well as for the rest of the federates in general, the opposite process was characteristic. The barbarians preferred to use the achievements of a large civilization, on the periphery of which they found themselves. During this period, there was a complete exchange of values - the Alans were Romanized, the Romans were "Alanized".
Deformed skulls
But not all the customs of the Alans were to the liking of the Romans. So, they ignored the fashion for an elongated head and artificial deformation of the skull, which was common among the Alans. Today, a similar feature of the Alans and Sarmatians greatly facilitates the work of historians, making it possible to determine the distribution of the latter, thanks to the long skulls found in burials. So, it was possible to localize the habitat of the Alans on the Loire, in Western France. According to Sergei Savenko, director of the Pyatigorsk Museum of Local Lore, up to 70% of the skulls dating back to the Alans era have an elongated shape.
In order to achieve an unusual head shape, a newborn whose cranial bones had not yet grown strong was tightly bandaged with a ritual leather bandage decorated with beads, threads, and pendants. They wore it until the bones were strengthened.
The elongation of the skull had a ritual character. There is a version that the deformation affected the brain and allowed the Alanian priests to go into a trance faster. Subsequently, representatives of the local aristocracy intercepted the tradition, and then it came into wide use along with fashion.
Ancestors of King Arthur
According to Flavius Arrian, the Alans and Sarmatians were mounted spearmen powerfully and quickly attacking the enemy. He emphasizes that an infantry phalanx equipped with projectiles is the most effective means of repulsing the attack of the Alans. The main thing after this is not to "buy in" to the famous tactical move of all the steppe dwellers: the "false retreat", which they often turned into a victory. When the infantry, with whom they had just stood face to face, pursued the fleeing and disordered enemy, the latter turned his horses and overturned the foot soldiers. Obviously, their manner of fighting later influenced the Roman way of warfare. At least, later telling about the actions of his army, Arrian noted that
"The Roman cavalry holds their spears and beats the enemy in the same manner as the Alans and Sarmatians."
This, as well as Arrian's considerations regarding the combat capabilities of the Alans, confirms the prevailing opinion that in the West they seriously considered the military merits of the Alans.
Their fighting spirit was elevated to a cult. As ancient authors write, death in battle was considered not only honorable, but joyful: the Alans considered the “happy dead” to be the one who died in battle while serving God. The same "unfortunates" who happened to live to old age and die in their bed were despised as cowards and became a shameful stain in the family.
The Alans had a significant influence on the development of military affairs in Europe. With their legacy, historians associate a whole range of both military-technical and spiritual-ethical achievements, which formed the basis of medieval chivalry. According to Howard Reid's research,
the military culture of the Alans played a significant role in the formation of the legend of King Arthur.
It is based on the testimonies of ancient authors, according to which Emperor Marcus Aurelius recruited 8,000 experienced horsemen - Alans and Sarmatians. Most of them were sent to Hadrian's Wall in Britain. They fought under banners in the form of dragons, and worshiped the god of war - a naked sword stuck in the ground.
The idea of looking for an Alanian basis in the Arthurian legend is not new. So American researchers, Littleton and Malkor, draw a parallel between the Holy Grail and the sacred cup from the Nart (Ossetian) epic, Nartamonga.
Kingdom of Vandals and Alans
It is not surprising that the Alans, distinguished by such militancy, in alliance with the no less militant tribe of the Vandals, represented a terrible misfortune. Distinguished by their special savagery and aggressiveness, they did not enter into an agreement with the empire and did not settle in any area, preferring nomadic robbery and the seizure of more and more new territories. By 422-425, they approached Eastern Spain, took possession of the ships located there, and, under the leadership of the leader Gaiseric, landed in North Africa. At that time, the African colonies of Rome were going through hard times: they suffered from Berber raids and internal rebellions against the central government, in general, they represented a tasty morsel for the united barbarian army of Vandals and Alans.
In just a few years, they conquered the vast African territories that belonged to Rome, led by Carthage. A powerful fleet passed into their hands, with the help of which they repeatedly visited the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy.
In 442, Rome was forced to recognize their complete independence, and thirteen years later, its complete defeat.
Alanian blood
Alans for all the time of their existence managed to visit many territories and leave their mark in many countries. Their migration stretched from Ciscaucasia, through most of Europe, and into Africa. It is not surprising that today many peoples living in these territories claim to be considered the descendants of this famous tribe.
Perhaps the most likely descendants of the Alans are modern Ossetians, who consider themselves the successors of the great Alania.
Today, there are even movements among Ossetians who advocate the return of Ossetia to its supposedly historical name. It is worth noting that the Ossetians have grounds to claim the status of the descendants of the Alans: the common territory, the common language, which is considered a direct descendant of the Alanian, the commonality of the folk epic (Nart epic), where the ancient Alanian cycle supposedly serves as the core. The main opponents of this position are the Ingush, who also stand up for their right to be called descendants of the great Alans. According to another version, the Alans in ancient sources were a collective name for all hunting and nomadic peoples located north of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.
According to the most common opinion, only a part of the Alans became the ancestors of the Ossetians, while other parts merged or dissolved into other ethnic groups. Among the latter are Berbers, Franks and even Celts. So, according to one version, the Celtic name Alan comes from the patronymic "Alans", who settled at the beginning of the 5th century in the Loire, where they mixed with the Bretons.