Editor Алексей Германович Виноградов

Translator Алексей Германович Виноградов

Photograph Алексей Германович Виноградов

© S. V. Zharnikova, 2025

© Алексей Германович Виноградов, translation, 2025

© Алексей Германович Виноградов, photos, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0065-4517-5

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Book scientific articles outstanding scientist S. V. Zharnikova devoted to the study of culture and ethnography of the Indo-Europeanpeoples. The birth of their rites and traditions. Reveals the secrets of Vedic history.

Thread of knowledge

The Russian North is an amazing, fabulous land. He is sung in our ancient songs, epics, traditions and legends. And not only in them. The most ancient myths of Greece tell about the distant northern side of Hyperborea, which lies near the coast of the cold Cronian Ocean. They told us that it was here, behind the harsh northeastern wind of Boreas, that there is a land where a wonderful tree with golden apples of eternal youth grows. At the foot of this tree, feeding its roots, a spring of living water gushes – the water of immortality. Here, for the golden apples of the maiden-birds of the Hesperides, the hero Hercules once went. In the far north, in Hyperborea, at Tartess – «the city where the wonders of the whole world sleep until the time comes for them to be born and come out to mortals on earth», the golden boat of the Sun was waiting for Hercules. And this is not surprising, because Hyperborea is the birthplace of the solar Apollo and here, according to the ancient Greek myth, snow-white winged swan horses brought him here every summer.

But not only had the ancient Greeks glorified the distant northern land in their legends.

From the depths of millennia, this hymn sounds to the land lying at the northern border of the world, near the shores of the Milky (White) Sea: «That country rises above evil, and therefore it is called the Ascended! It is believed that it is in the middle between the east and west… This is the ascended Golden Bucket road… In this vast northern land, a cruel, insensitive and lawless man does not live… There is a murava and a wonderful tree of gods… Here the Great Ancestor strengthened the Pole Star… The northern land is known as „ascended“, for it rises in all relationship». With such heartfelt words, the ancient Indian epic «Mahabharata» tells about the far circumpolar north.

The Russian North – its forests and fields were not trampled by hordes of conquerors, its free and proud people, for the most part, did not know serfdom, and it is here that the most ancient songs, fairy tales, and epics of Russia have been preserved in purity and integrity. It is here, in the opinion of many researchers, that such archaic rituals, rituals, and traditions have been preserved, which are older than not only the ancient Greek ones, but even those recorded in the Vedas, the most ancient cultural monument of all Indo-European peoples.

Paleolithic. Golden Age of Matriarchy

Among the many unresolved problems of the history of the peoples of Eurasia, one of the most interesting is the problem of the ancient history of the European North of that distant time, in which we must look for the origins and roots of a peculiar and unique North Russian culture.

«The fairy tale of the North is deep and captivating,» wrote Nicholas Roerich about this land.

The northern winds are cheerful and cheerful. Northern lakes are brooding. Northern rivers are silvery. Darkened forests are wise. The green hills are seasoned. The gray stones in the circles are full of miracles. We are all looking for beautiful Ancient Russia.»

«The people do not remember that he ever invented his own mythology, his language, his laws, customs and rituals. All these national foundations have already deeply entered his moral being, like life itself, experienced by him during many prehistoric centuries, as the past, on which the present order of things and all future development of life firmly rest. Therefore, all moral ideas for the people of the primitive epoch constitute their sacred tradition, the great native antiquity, the sacred testament of the ancestors to the descendants "– and these words of the outstanding Russian folklorist of the 19th century. F. I. Buslaeva, pronounced by him at a solemn act at Moscow University in 1859, has not lost their relevance today. Turning today to the depths of folk memory, captured in legends and fairy tales, epics and blades, legends and conspiracies, in songs and dances, rituals and rituals, in the traditional art of embroidery, weaving, carving and painting, we willingly or unwillingly plunge into the darkness of centuries and millennia, we are leaving in that distant time when all these forms of folk culture were just emerging. When did this happen?

N. A. Krinichnaya believes that the prototypes of the characters depicted in the legends and the motives associated with them are formed already in the myth of the totemic ancestor, «the formation of which belongs to the period of early clan society (this is approximately the Middle Paleolithic), that is, 100,000 – 50,000 years ago.

What time was it and how is it remarkable for the territory of the north of Eastern Europe?

H. E. Bader, in his work From the Depths of the Paleolithic, writes that already in the Mousterian era, the settlement of human collectives covered vast areas in the north. He believed that it was at this time, during the so-called «Mikulinsky» or Ries-Wurm interglacial, characterized by a relatively warm climate, that people probably first met the Arctic Ocean in northeastern Europe.

«All the sites of the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian tools stretched along the Western Urals, along the banks of the ancient Pra-Kama River (now the Volga) from Volgograd to the mouths of the Chusovaya, Obva and Vishera, outlined the path along which the ancients traveled, settling in Eastern Europe.»

And this conclusion seems to be quite logical in the light of the latest paleogeographic data indicating that in the Mikulinskoe interglacial (130,000 – 70,000 years ago) there was no tundra at all in the European north of our country. Up to 65° N mixed spruce and birch forests with hornbeam included, and up to 60° N. there were broad-leaved forests of linden and oak. That is, a wide strip of birch and coniferous forests with the inclusion of oak and elm stretched to the far north along the western tip of the Northern and Subpolar Urals. The average winter temperatures in northern Europe were then much higher than modern ones: in Scandinavia by 7° C, and in the northeast of the Russian Plain by 7—8° and even 11° C.

Paleogeographers, soil scientists, paleoclimatologists came to the conclusion that «130,000 – 70,000 years ago, conditions typical of the western Atlantic regions of Europe were spread over Eastern Europe. The differences in the climate of Western Europe at present and the Mikulino interglacial, in contrast to Eastern Europe, were small. Moreover, in the Mediterranean-Black Sea zone at some points in winter the temperatures were 1—2° lower than in our time.

«The warm Artika of the Mikulino interglacial, when January temperatures were 4—8° C higher than modern ones, suggests that the influx of warm waters of the Gulf Stream at that time 3 was much more powerful than now (with a higher temperature),» the authors of the atlas believe – monograph «Palaeography of Europe over the last 100,000 years».

They note that pine forests were typical for the White Sea region (within the eastern part of the North European archipelago) in the interglacial period, and then mixed birch with spruce and broad-leaved species, and at the end of the interglacial the dominant position passed to birch forests. During the Mikulinsky interglacial period up to about 60° N, and in the basin of the upper reaches of the Northern Dvina and Vyatka up to 57° N. birch and spruce forests were widespread with more or less participation of oak, hornbeam and elm. Therefore, there is nothing unrealistic in the development of the north of Eastern Europe by ancient human communities already in the Mousterian time.

Archaeologists believe that people inhabited the Pechora River («Krutaya Gora» camp) 70 millennia ago. Moreover, «primitive archeology now possesses massive and indisputable materials proving a long prehistory of agriculture, which began at least at the end of the Middle Paleolithic era», i.e. archaeologists determine the time of the birth of primitive agriculture, 50 or 70 millennia from us.

For its emergence in the form of gathering, a necessary condition was the presence of herb and cereal steppes. And those were not only in the traditional zone – in the south of the Russian Plain, but also in the north, where, for the time 45210 +1430 years ago, pine-birch forests with a herb-grass cover are noted in the basin of the Vychegda and Pechora rivers. 44 millennium BC – the time of new, in comparison with the very warm Mikulinsky interglacial, climatic conditions – Molo-Shcheksninsky interglacial.

About 70 thousand years ago, the Mikulinsky or Ries-Wurms interglacial, which lasted about 60 thousand years, ended. The next Ice Age began, which was named Valdai in Eastern Europe. This name is very arbitrary, because this entire period is divided into two unequal parts: 70 – 24 thousand years ago – the glacial Valdai and 24 – 13 thousand years ago – glacial Valdai.

Moreover, during the ice-free Valdai, a slow increase in cooling alternated with periods of warming.

One of such warmings, very long, was the Mologo-Sheksna interglacial, which lasted with short periods of cooling from 50 millennia to 24 millennia to the present day, and the time from 32 to 24 millennia ago was the warmest.

So, broad-leaved forests spread on the Don, the so-called Kostenkovo-Streletskaya Paleolithic culture develops here, part of the population of which during the Mologo-Shcheksnin interglacial period advanced along the Russian plain to the Oka basin.

A number of archaeologists suggest that the tribes of the Strelets culture at this time inhabited the banks of the Pechora. Researchers note that: «In the north-east of Europe, which includes the vast areas of the Volga and Ural regions, outstanding monuments of the early Paleolithic period have been found in recent years, and a turning point has already been outlined towards intensifying work on their study. Certain areas of the Russian Plain (northwest) in the Molo-Sheksna time may not have been inhabited. It should be emphasized that from the south to the north of the Russian Plain, during the formation and development of the Upper Paleolithic, it was not wandering lipstick hunters who advanced, but the sedentary tribes who built long-term dwellings of various types, leading complex household activities based on hunting and gathering… The hunt for herds of horses and reindeer required the improvement of throwing weapons and, probably, led already at such an early time to the invention of the bow and arrow.

In the same period, spiritual culture was formed and developed.»

Monuments of the spiritual culture of the ancient Stone Age – Paleolithic have been preserved in places of long-term habitation, at the ancient sites of Paleolithic man.

Apparently, in the near future on the territory of the Russian Plain and, in particular, the Russian North, first-class monuments dating back to the Molo-Sheksninsky interstadial, the warmest time of the Valdai glacier, will be opened.

On the territory of Wormwood and Germany, all the monuments of the Ancient Stone Age are concentrated south of the 52nd parallel in the basin of the upper Vistula and in the Silesian Mountains. On the territory of Eastern Europe, they are distributed unevenly. In the western part, such monuments can be traced only up to the 52nd parallel.

In the central part of the Russian Plain, Mousterian sites are known up to the 54th parallel, and the Upper Paleolithic Byzovaya site (in the middle reaches of the Pechora River) is located north of 64° N, about 175 km from the Arctic Circle. Its age is 25450 ± 380 years ago, the Sungir site on Klyazma – just north of 56° N. – its age is 25500 ± 200 years ago. In addition, by the 24th millennium BC include such sites in the northeast of the Russian Plain as Bear Cave in the upper Pechora, Ostrovskaya site, Smirnovskaya and Buranovskaya caves. In the northwest, monuments of this time are unknown.

The cultural traditions of the population of the northern part of the Russian Plain of that distant time are very well represented by the burials of the Sungir site near the city of Vladimir, dating back to the end of the Mologo-Sheksna period. Here, observing a long-established ritual, people who lived in the 24 millennium BC, before burying their dead, sprinkled the bottom of the grave with hot coals, cleaning it, perhaps, with the remains of a funeral feast. Then chalk or other white substance, similar to lime, was poured onto the bottom, and then red ocher was thickly sprinkled over the white layer.

White and red are symbols of purity and blood, snow and fire, already at that distant time, was together, escorting a person to another world. The dead were placed in the grave in richly decorated clothes, with numerous stone and bone tools and weapons; they were covered with fur cloaks and abundantly covered with red ocher.

So in Sungir, in one of the graves, a tall, broad-shouldered man of 55 – 56 years old was buried, lying on his back with his hands folded on his stomach, his head turned to the northeast.

He wore a suede or fur shirt, leather pants and leather moccasin shoes. All the clothes of this man of the 24 millennium BC was embroidered with 3,500 beads carved from mammoth tusks.

On his hands he wore over 20 bracelets made of thin plates cut from mammoth tusks, as well as bracelets made of strung beads. The entire headdress was embroidered with beads and ended at the back of the head with arctic foxes. On the shoulders of the man lay a short fur cloak embroidered with larger beads.

A girl of 7—8 years old and a boy of 12—13 years old were buried next to the man. Their burials were also accompanied by a large number of mammoth bone artifacts. Spears made from split and straightened tusks are of particular interest: 2 m 42 cm for a boy and 1 m 66 cm for a girl. Today it is not yet clear how our distant ancestors straightened and split three-meter tusks, how long, straight; hard and sharp spears were cut out. The children’s clothes were embroidered with beads even richer than the clothes of the man. A total of about 7,500 beads were sewn on it, and the children wore bracelets and rings made of mammoth bones. In addition, the clothes were decorated with graceful ornamented slotted discs, hairpins, fasteners. Archaeologists suggest that the burial of children was not simultaneously the burial of a man and was done much earlier.

This testifies to the fact that before us is not an accidental rich burial, but a stable tradition that has evolved for a long time and has been preserved for thousands of years.

The abstract thinking of a man of the Upper Paleolithic of Eastern Europe was significantly developed, as evidenced not only by the burials of the Sungir, but also by the numerous ornamented articles of that distant time, which are highly perfect examples of Paleolithic art. So on the Don (Kostenki), on products made of bone and flint – female figurines – as a rule, mites-belts on the chest and waist are graphically depicted. Of the decorative elements, the most common is the oblique cross. M. D. Gvozdover writes: «Obviously, this ornament should be considered the most characteristic of the Kostenko culture, especially since rows of oblique crosses are almost unknown in other Paleolithic cultures… The choice of ornament and its location on the object is not caused by technological reasons or material… the placement of ornamental elements and their choice is not due to technological reasons, but to cultural tradition.»

M. D. Gvozdover believes that «the archaeological culture is characterized both by the elements of the ornament, and the type of their location on the ornamental field and the grouping of elements», another type of ornament appears – the meander and swastika motif.

Outstanding Russian researcher V. A. Gorodtsov wrote in 1926, analyzing the North Russian peasant weaving and embroidery: «Until recently it was believed that the meander and the ova are the fruits of the ancient art of Greece, and the swastika is the art of India, but all this turned out to be incorrect, since it was documented that the swastika, meander and oves were the favorite motives of the ornament of the ancient centuries of the Bronze Age, when, perhaps, there were no Greeks or Indians hiding in one Indo-European family, and when these motifs managed to spread not only to all continents of the Old World, but also to penetrate into the Middle America. And this is not surprising, because the swastika and meander were earlier and those remote from us: they were found in Russia on objects of art from the Mezin Paleolithic site, the time of which, as geologists believe, is many tens of millennia from us. And in what amazingly developed form they are there! And what is most surprising of all is the fact that even there they were associated with figurines of birds, undoubtedly having the same cult religious meaning as they have in our time, i.e. the meaning of the symbol of the spring sun and related ideas of happiness, well-being and joy. Thus, in the charming complex of swastika signs, in the patterns of the northern Russian skilled craftswomen, there is reminiscence (living memory) of the most ancient common human religious symbols. And what a fresh, what a solid memory!»

What was the initial model for the most complex rhombo-meander and swastika ornament of Mezin is still a mystery.

Paleontologist V. I. Bibikova in 1965 suggested that the meander spiral, broken meander stripes and rhombuses on objects from Mezin arose as a repetition of the natural dentin pattern of mammoth tusks.

From this, she concluded that such an ornament for the people of the Upper Paleolithic was a kind of magical symbol of the mammoth, which embodied (as the main object of hunting) their ideas of wealth, power and abundance.

I. G. Shovkoplyas, who published the materials of the Mezinskaya site, notes that the meander patterns characteristic of the monuments of this Upper Paleolithic culture have no direct analogies in the Paleolithic art of Europe and can be put «on a par with the perfect geometric ornament of later historical eras, for example, the Neolithic and copper-bronze». In the division of V. A. Gorodtsov of European Upper Paleolithic cultures of the 25—20 millennium BC into three separate regions – Western European, Central European and Eastern European in terms of the nature of art monuments, the unique ornament of Mezin served as the basis for distinguishing the Eastern European region.