1. Our new and very large project, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere, Gumilev
Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev has been a specialty of this Library. This is his principle work on Ethnogenesis, which I feel must be represented in our collection. It is translated on Amazon, for $200.
My first view of Gumilev was the overview from Yevtushenko, (here on the site). He had studied all of Gumilev’s books, and consolidated them. That saved me a lot of labor, and satisfied me for a couple of years. I had tried to translate this one, E&B back then, but I decided it was too long.
Then I found a Russian site with all of his books. While you could download for a price, they were offering free excerpts. That is the basis of all the condensed versions at the end of our index page. I translated all of those and at least two of them were very interesting. From Rus to Russia, and the End and Beginning (Again). So for those two I found the full version, and translate them also. Then the Khazars, etc. etc.
Gumilev is so knowledgeable and he writes in such a lively style that I was convinced. And here we are.
[On the Notes and References: I usually try to make them available while reading. In this section there are just 8 at the end. I thnink some uploads here will be too long to get to the Notes. In that case I may divide the notes, so each upload has its own. If you want to follow them, you can upload the same excerpt on two tabs, and set one on the notes.]
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Let’s get this one started.
FEAR OF DISAPPOINTMENT
When a reader of our time buys and opens a new book on history or ethnography, he is not sure he will read it even halfway through. He may find the book boring, meaningless, or simply not to his taste. But the reader is still good: he just lost two or three rubles, but what about the author? Gathering information. Formulation of the problem. Decades of searching for a solution. Years at my desk. Explanations with reviewers. Struggles with the editor. And suddenly all for nothing - the book is not interesting! It lies in libraries ... and no one takes it up. So life is wasted.
It's so scary that all measures must be taken to avoid such a result. But which ones? During university and graduate school, the future author is often inculcated with the idea that his task is to write out as many quotations from sources as possible, put them together in some order, and draw a conclusion: “in ancient times there were slave owners and slaves. Slave owners were bad, but they were also good; slaves were good, but they were also bad. And the peasants had it worse.”
All this, of course, is correct, but the trouble is that no one wants to read about it, not even the author himself. Firstly, because it is already known, and secondly, because it does not explain, for example, why some armies were victorious and others were defeated, and why some countries were stronger and others weaker. And, finally, why mighty ethnic groups arose and then where did they disappear, although their members did not die out completely.
All of these questions are entirely relevant to the topic we have chosen - the sudden strengthening of this or that nation and then its subsequent disappearance. A striking example of this is the Mongols of the 12th-17th centuries, but other peoples were subject to the same pattern. The late academician B. Y. Vladimircov clearly formulated the problem: "I want to understand how and why all this happened?
But he didn't give an answer, and neither did other researchers. Over and over again we return to this same story, firmly believing that the reader will not close the book on the second page.
It is quite clear that in order to solve the task at hand, we must first of all investigate the research methodology itself. Otherwise, this task would have been solved long ago, because the numbers of facts are so numerous that it is not a question of replenishing them, but of selecting those that are the relevant case. Even the contemporary chroniclers were drowning in a sea of information, which did not bring them any closer to understanding the problem. In recent centuries, archaeologists have obtained a lot of information, chronicles have been collected, published and accompanied with commentaries, and orientalists have further increased the stock of knowledge, codifying various sources: Chinese, Persian, Latin, Greek, Armenian and Arabic.
The quantity of information was growing, but it was not of a new quality. It remained unclear how a small tribe sometimes turned out to be the hegemon of half the world, increased in number, but then disappeared.
The author of this book posed the question of the extent of our knowledge, or rather the extent of our ignorance of the subject to which the study is devoted. What at first glance is simple and easy, when trying to master the subjects of interest to the reader, turns into a riddle. Therefore, a thorough book must be written.
Unfortunately, we cannot immediately offer precise definitions (which, generally speaking, greatly facilitate research), but at least we have the opportunity to make initial generalizations. Even if they do not exhaust the full complexity of the problem, but as a first approximation, they allow us to obtain results quite suitable for the interpretation of ethnic history, which is still yet to be written. Well, if there is a fastidious reviewer who demands a clear definition of "ethnos" at the beginning of the book, we can say so:
The concept of ethnicity is a phenomenon of the biosphere or a systematic whole of a discrete type, working with the geo-biochemical energy of living matter, in accordance with the principle of the second beginning of thermodynamics, which is confirmed by the diachronic sequence of historical events.
If this is enough for your understanding, then you do not need to read any further.
ETHNIC GROUPS AS A FORM OF EXISTENCE OF THE SPECIES HOMO SAPIENS
Much more than a hundred years are being discussed: is the biological species Homo sapiens changing or have social patterns completely superseded the mechanism of speciation factors? Common to man and all other living beings is the need to exchange matter and energy with the environment, but he differs from them by the fact that he has to obtain almost all the necessary means of existence by labor, interacting with nature not only as a biological, but primarily as a social being. Conditions and means, productive forces and their corresponding production relations are constantly developing. The regularities of this development are investigated by Marxist political economy and sociology.
However, the social laws of human development do not "cancel" the action of biological laws, in particular mutations,[1] and it is necessary to investigate them in order to avoid theoretical unilateralism and the practical harm we do to ourselves by ignoring or consciously denying our subordination not only to social, but also to more general laws of development.
Methodologically, it is possible to begin such a study from a deliberate abstraction from concrete modes of production. Such an abstraction seems justified, in particular because the nature of ethnogenesis differs significantly from the rhythms of the development of humanity's social history. In this way of considering, we hope, the contours of the mechanism of interaction of mankind with nature will become clearer.
No matter how advanced technology may become, humans derive everything they need to sustain life from nature. This means that they are part of the trophic chain as the upper, concluding link in the biocenosis of the region they inhabit. And if so, they are elements of structural-systemic wholes including, along with people, domesticated animals and cultivated plants, landscapes both transformed by man and virgin, resources of subsoil, relations with neighbors - either friendly or hostile, one or the other.
This multi - system can be called a dynamic system, which is a combination of languages (from one to several) and elements of material and spiritual culture. This dynamic system can be called an ethnocenosis. It emerges and disintegrates in historical time, leaving behind ethnic relics, which have reached the phase of homeostasis. But each process of ethnogenesis leaves indelible traces on the earth's surface, thanks to which it is possible to establish the general nature of the patterns of ethnic history. And now when the rescue of the nature from destructive anthropogenic impacts has become the main problem of science, it is necessary to understand what aspects of human activities have been detrimental to the landscapes hosting these ethnic groups. After all, the destruction of nature with disastrous consequences for people is not only the misfortune of our time, and it is not always associated with the development of culture, nor with population growth.
In posing the question of the interaction of the two forms of regular development, it is necessary to put the question of either the development of the biosphere in relation to human activity, or the development of mankind in connection with the formation of the natural environment: the biosphere and the bone matter composing the Earth's other envelopes: the lithosphere and the troposphere. The interaction of mankind with nature is constant, but extremely variable in space and time.
However, behind the apparent diversity there is a single principle characteristic of all observed phenomena. So let's put the question this way!
The nature of the Earth is very diverse; mankind, unlike other mammalian species, is also diverse, because man has no natural range, but has been distributed, since the Upper Paleolithic, over the entire landmass of the planet. The adaptive capacity of humans is an order of magnitude greater than that of other animals. So, in different geographical regions and epochs, humans and natural complexes (landscapes and geo/bio-cenoses) interact differently. By itself, this conclusion is unpromising, as the kaleidoscope is not amenable to study, but let's try to introduce a classification into the problem, and things will be different. There is a constant correlation between the laws of nature and the social form of motion of matter. But what is its mechanism and where is the point of contact between nature and society? And this is the point, otherwise there would be no question of nature's protection from man.
С. V. Kalesnik proposed to divide geography into:
1) economic, which studies human creations, and
2) physical, which studies the Earth's natural envelopes, including the biosphere [2]. A very reasonable division. Nature creates things, mountains and rivers, forests and steppes, new species of animals and plants.
And humans build houses, build cars, sculpt statues, and write treatises. Nature can't do that.
Is there a fundamental difference between the creations of nature and of man? Yes! The elements of nature pass into each other. "This rock roared once, This ivy soared in the clouds." Nature lives forever, swelling with the energy it receives from the sun and the stars of our galaxy and the radio decay in the depths of our planet. Planet Earth's biosphere overcomes world entropy through biogenic migration of atoms seeking expansion [3].
Conversely, man-made objects can either be preserved or destroyed. The pyramids stand for a long time, the Eiffel Tower won't last that long. But neither is eternal. This is the fundamental difference between biosphere and technosphere, no matter how grandiose the latter may have become.
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
A review of the present state of the science of ethnicity should perplex the reader. All authors writing on this subject, including ethnographers, essentially substitute genuine ethnological characteristics for professional, class, etc., which, in fact, is tantamount to denying ethnos as a reality. The only thing that speaks of the existence of ethnos is that it is directly felt by people as a phenomenon, but this is not proof. The poet said: "Both day and night the sun walks before us", however, the obstinate Galileo is right. Indeed, the ethnologist has some grounds for pessimism, seemingly insurmountable at first glance.
Ethnology is an emerging science. The need for it arose only in the second half of the twentieth century, when it became clear that the mere accumulation of ethnographic collections and observations threatened that a science that did not pose problems would turn into a meaningless collector's shop. So, social science and ethnology appeared before our eyes - two disciplines that are interested in one and the same subject - mankind - but in absolutely different aspects. And it is quite logical. Every human being is simultaneously a member of society and a member of ethnos, and this is not the same thing. Likewise, ethnology as a science requires definition.
For now, let us say that ethnology is a science of the impulses of the behavior of ethnic groups, similar to ethology, the science of animal behavior. Impulses can be conscious and emotional, dictated by personal will of an individual, tradition, coercive influence of the collective, influence of external environment, geographical environment and even a spontaneous development, the progressive course of history. In order to understand such a complex issue, an appropriate methodology is needed. The methodology can be either traditional humanities methodology or natural science methodology. Which one should be chosen for successfully overcoming the difficulties faced by a scientist who has taken up a completely new field of science?
First of all, let us clarify the concept of "humanities”. In the Christian world in the Middle Ages, the only absolutely authoritative sources of scientific information were two books: the Bible and the writings of Aristotle. Science was reduced to commenting on quotations, which had to be cited accurately, because illiterate heresiarchs often invented supposedly quoted sayings of the prophets, Christ, and Aristotle. From here a system of textual citations arose that has held up to the present day. This level of scholarship was called scholasticism, and by the fifteenth century it was no longer satisfactory for the scholars. At that time the range of sources was widened - the works of other ancient authors whose texts needed verification were used. This is how the human (i.e. human, not divine) science of philology emerged. It was scholasticism with its critical approach to texts. But the source was still the same - other people's words. After the Renaissance, the major naturalists contrasted the humanitarian ways of obtaining information with the natural sciences, based on observation and experiment. The questioning changed: instead of "what did the ancient authors say?" the question changed to "what is real?" As we can see, what has changed is not the subject of study, but the approach and, accordingly, the methodology.
The new methodology gained acceptance slowly and unevenly. As early as 1633, Galileo had to deny that the Earth revolved around the Sun, with his opponents appealing to the fact that such information was not in the known literature that they knew of. In the 18th century, Lavoisier, at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, declared the report of a meteorite falling "anti-scientific": "Stones cannot fall from the sky, because there are no stones in the sky!"
Only in the 19th century did geography get rid of legends about Amazons, hairy men, giant squids sinking ships, and other fiction, which readers, who were on a philistine level, took literally. The hardest part was for the historians, who could neither set up the experiment nor repeat the observation. But here the monistic approach came to the rescue, which allowed for a critique of the source, both comparative and internal. Through much painstaking research, they found codes of indisputable facts with chronological references, and some of the dubious information has been rejected. This vast wealth of knowledge can only be useful when applied to a particular object, be it social communities - classes, or the political entities - states, or the ethnicities that we are interested in. In the latter case, the facts of history become an "information archive" and serve the purposes of ethnology along with other information: geographical, biological, biophysical and biochemical, which, with a creative synthesis, makes it possible to treat ethnology as a natural science built on a sufficient number of reliable observations recorded during the accumulation of primary material.
And now let us return to the cardinal thesis: can we consider that ethnography, both descriptive and theoretical, has withdrawn from the field of geography and belongs entirely to the sphere of historical sciences? No, and again no. Such a position, in our opinion, is groundless and destructive. It leads science to impoverishment, i.e. simplification by reducing the erudition of the researcher. It is easier for him, of course, but his work loses perspective and ceases to be of interest to the reader. I am afraid that persistent disagreement with the thesis posited here will lead to a compromise not only of historical methodology, applied not for the purpose for which it was developed, but also to the science itself - ethnography. There is only one way for ethnography to develop - to become ethnology, which not only collects and describes the material, but also interprets it from the perspective dictated by the problem statement.
AN EXCURSUS TO PHILOSOPHY.
Here I must be very brief. Since we assume that ethnos in its formation is a natural phenomenon, the basis for its study can only be the philosophy of natural science, i.e. dialectical materialism. Historical materialism aims to reveal the laws of social development, i.e., according to K. Marx, it refers to the history of people, and not the history of nature, which is in the bodies of people. And although both these "histories" are closely intertwined and interrelated, scientific analysis requires clarification of the angle of view, i.e. the aspect. The historical material we use is our informational archive, nothing more. For the purposes of analysis this is necessary and sufficient. On this point, K. Marx expressed himself clearly: "History itself is a valid part of the history of nature, of the modification of nature by man. Subsequently, natural history will include the science of man in the same way as the science of man will include natural history: it will be one science"[4]. We are now on the threshold of creating such a science.
When it comes to synthesis, the approach to the problem will change accordingly. But, as we know, analysis precedes synthesis, and there is no need to jump ahead. Let us only say that even then, the foundations of scientific materialistic natural science will remain unshaken. Having agreed on the meaning of terms and the nature of methodology, let's move on to the formulation of the problem.
MANKIND AS A SPECIES HOMO SAPIENS
It is customary to say: "Man and Earth" or "Man and Nature", although even in high school it is explained that this is elementary, primitive anthropocentrism, inherited from the Middle Ages. Yes, of course, man created technology, which neither the dinosaur of the Mesozoic era nor the Machairodus of the Cenozoic era created. However, for all the achievements of the twentieth century, each of us carries within us nature, which constitutes the content of life, both individual and species. And no human being, other things being equal, would give up breathing and eating, avoiding death and protecting his offspring. Man remains within the species, within the biosphere, one of the envelopes of planet Earth. Man combines the inherent laws of life with specific phenomena of technology and culture, which, while enriching himself, have not deprived him of belonging to the element that gave birth to him.
Humanity as a biological form is a single species with a huge number of variations, spread in the post-glacial epoch over the entire surface of the globe. The density of the species varies, but with the exception of polar ice, the entire Earth is human habitat. And it should not be thought that there are "virgin" lands somewhere where man has not set foot on it. Today's deserts and wilds are filled with traces of Paleolithic sites; the forests of the Amazon grow on re-deposited soils, once destroyed by the agriculture of the ancient inhabitants: even on the cliffs of the Andes and the Himalayas traces of constructions we do not understand have been found. In other words, the species Homo sapiens has repeatedly and constantly modified its distribution on the Earth's surface over the course of its existence. He, like any other species, sought to master as much space as possible with the highest possible population density [5]. Something, however, hindered it and limited its possibilities. What was it?
Unlike most mammals, Homo sapiens is neither a herd nor an individual animal. Man exists in a collective, which, depending on the angle of view, is seen either as a society or as an ethnos. It is more accurate to say that each person is both a member of society and a representative of a nation, but both of these concepts are incommensurable and lie on different planes, like length and weight, or degree of heat and electric charge.
The social development of mankind is well studied, and its regularities are formulated by historical materialism. The spontaneous development of social forms through socio-economic formations is inherent only in man, being in the collective, and has nothing to do with his biological structure.
This question is so clear that there is no point in dwelling on it. But, the question of nationalities, which we will call ethnos in order to avoid terminological confusion, is full of absurdities and extremely confusing. One thing is certain - living outside of an ethnos, there is not a single person on earth. Everyone answering the question, "Who are you?"... - will say, "Russian," "French," "Persian," "Maasai," etc., without thinking for a moment. Consequently, ethnicity in the mind is a universal phenomenon. But that is not all.
DEFINITIONS OF "ETHNOS"
What meaning, or more importantly, what meaning does each person among those listed put into his answer? What does he call his people, nation, tribe, and what does he see as his difference from his neighbors - this is the unresolved problem of ethnic diagnosis. It does not exist on a domestic level, just as the distinction between light and darkness, heat and cold, bitter and sweet does not need to be defined. In other words, the criterion is a sensation.
This is enough for daily life, but not enough for understanding. The need for definition arises. But here begins the controversy.
"Ethnos is a phenomenon defined by common origin";
"Ethnos is the generation of culture on the basis of a common language";
"Ethnos is a group of people similar to each other";
"Ethnos is an aggregate of people united by a common identity";
"Ethnos is a conventional classification, which generalizes people according to this or that formation" (meaning that the category of ethnos is abstract, unreal);
"Ethnos is a generation of nature";
"Ethnos is a social category".
Summarizing the views of Soviet scientists on the relationship between nature and social man, which vary in detail, three points of view can be distinguished:
1. "Unified" geography reduces all human activity to natural laws [6]
2. Some historians and ethnographers consider all phenomena related to humanity to be social, making an exception only for anatomy and partly physiology [7].
3. Anthropogenic processes distinguish between manifestations of social and complex natural, (mechanical, physical, chemical and biological) forms of motion of matter. The last concept seems to the author to be the only correct one.
A special place is occupied by the point of view of M.I. Artamonov, the famous archaeologist and historian of the Khazars. According to his thought, which was born as a result of long studies of archeological, i.e. studies of dead cultures and monuments devoid of self-development, but destroyed by the flow of time (about this see above), "ethnos, like class, is not a social organization, but a state, with the dependence of man on nature, less dependent, the higher his cultural level; it is a common truth"[8]. It is a little hard to agree.
Let us begin with the last thesis. The human body is a part of the Earth's biosphere and participates in the conversion of the biocenosis. Nobody can prove that the professor breathes differently than a bushman, or multiplies incompletely, or is insensitive to the influence of sulfuric acid on his skin, that he may not eat, or, conversely, that he eats dinner for 40 people, or that the Earth gravitation acts on him differently. And yet this is all a dependence on the nature of the very organism that acts and thinks, adapts to the changing environment and changes the environment, adapting it to its needs, unites into collectives and creates states within them.
The thinking individuality is one with the organism and thus does not go beyond living nature, which is one of the envelopes of planet Earth. But at the same time man differs from other animals in making tools, creating a qualitatively different layer, the technosphere. The products of man's hands, both from the cosmic and from living matter (tools, works of art, domestic animals, cultivated plants), fall out of the biocoenosis conversion cycle. They can only be preserved, or if not conserved, destroyed. In the latter case, they return to the bosom of nature. A sword abandoned in a field, rusted out, turns into iron oxide. A ruined castle becomes a mound. A feral dog becomes a wild dingo beast, and a horse becomes a mustang. This is the death of things (technosphere) and nature's take-back of the material stolen from it.
The history of ancient civilizations shows that although nature suffers damage from technology, it eventually takes its own, except, of course, for those objects, that are so transformed that they have become irreversible. Such are the flint implements of Paleolithic times, the polished slabs at Baalbek, the concreted pads and plastic products. They are corpses, even mummies, which the biosphere cannot return to its bosom, but the processes of cosmic matter - chemical and thermal - can return them to their pristine state if our planet is struck by a cosmic catastrophe. Until then, they will be called monuments of civilization, for our technology will one day become a monument as well.
Taking the classification proposed by S.V. Kalesnik as a basis, we must find in it a place for the phenomenon of ethnicity. Running ahead, we will say that ethnoses is a phenomenon lying on the border between the biosphere and the sociosphere and having a very special purpose in the structure of the Earth's biosphere. Let it look like a declaration, but now the reader knows what this book was written for, the author of which did not just strive to give a formulation, but to show the whole way, by which it has been attained, and the grounds convincing that, at the present level of science, it meets all the requirements for scientific hypotheses. We can then proceed to the systems of evidence.
NOTES
[1] "In the person of modern man the process of biological evolution has created a possessor of such species properties, which led to attenuation of further evolution" (Roginsky J.Y., Levin M.G. Fundamentals of Anthropology. M., 1955. P. 314); "Absence of natural selection was equivalent to cessation of one of the evolutionary factors... and human biological evolution must have stopped" (Bystroe A. /7. Past, Present, Future of Man. L. 1957. P. 299); Debets G. F. On Some Directions of Changes in the Structure of Man of Modern Species //Soviet Ethnography. 1961. - 2. С. 16.
[2] Kalesnik S.V., 1) Some results of the new discussion of "unified" geography // Izvestiya VGO. 1965. - 3. P. 209-221; 2) Some words about geographical environment / / Ibid. 1966. - 3) Problems of Geographical Environment. 1968. - 12; 4) General geographical regularities of the Earth. М., 1970.
[3] Vernadsky V. I. Chemical structure of the Earth's biosphere and its environment. М., 1965. С. 283-285.
[4] Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. Vol. 42. С. 124.
[5] Vernadsky V. I. Vernadsky. Т. V.: Biosphere. M.; L., 1960. С- 24-31.
[6] Nature and Society: Collected Articles / Edited by I. P. Gerasimov et al. М., 1968, 1969. Anuchin V. A. Theoretical problems of geography. М., 1972.
[7] Tokarev S.A. The problem of types of ethnic communities // Voprosy philosofii. 1964. - 2; Agoev A. G. Narodnost as a social community //Voprosy philosofii. 1965. - 2; Koim V. I. On the concept of ethnic community // Soviet Ethnography. 1967. - Cheboksarov N. N. Problems of typology of ethnic communities.
Cheboksarov N. Problems of typology of ethnic communities in the works of Soviet scientists / / Soviet Ethnography. 1967. - 4; Andrianov G. V. Problems of the formation of nationalities and nations in Africa // Problems of History. 1967. - 9; Brooke S. I., Cheboksarov N. Y., Chesnov Y. V. Problems of ethnic development of the countries of foreign Asia // Problems of History. 1969. - 1; Bromley Y. V. 1) To the characteristic of the concept of "ethnos" // Races and Peoples. The modern ethnic and racial problems: Yearbook / Ed. by I. R. Grigulevich. R. Grigulevich. M., 1971; 2) Experience of typologizing ethnic entities // Soviet Ethnography. 1972. - 5; 3) Ethnos and Ethnography. Moscow, 1973; Kozlov. V. N. Pokshishevsky V. V. Ethnography and geography //Soviet Ethnography. 1973. - 1.
[8] Artamonov M.I. Again "hero" and "crowd" // Nature. 1971. - 2. С. 75-77.
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