5. Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere, Gumilev

VII. Ethnos as a system

[Hello, a few people are reading along with the upload schedule, as I can tell by the “Likes”. But surely most followers are not reading with the uploads, and may be reading something else, or not reading at all from our library, but planning to later. We know many people do not have time to read long books, and/or have their own reading list they are working on. Still, we have our plan on what needs to be included on our shelves. A couple people are dropping off and a few are subscribing, so our user level is stable. I know that long books equate to a lot of emails sent out, that’s how Substack works. This book still has a lot of chapters to go. Our next book will be a most comprehensive history of Russia and the Mongols, also a long book. Maybe history will be more of an interest to many, although this book on theory is just loaded with historical examples. THANKS.]

This part is a little more involved (complicated), but it is a very good understanding.

___________________________

"SYSTEM" IN A POPULAR EXPLANATION

A well-known example of a social system is a family living in one house. The elements of the system are: family members and their household items, including husband, wife, mother-in-law, son, daughter, house, well, cat. They make up the family until the spouses divorce, the children split off and start earning their own money, the mother-in-law has a falling out with her son-in-law, the well blossoms, and the cat has kittens in the in the attic. If after that they stay in the house, even if they have another water supply, it will not be a family, but an inhabited plot, i.e. all the elements of living and indwelling nature will remain in place, but the family system will disappear.

Conversely, if the mother-in-law dies, the house is rebuilt, the cat escapes, the loving son, the family will remain, despite the change in the number of elements. This means that the real existing and acting factor in the system is not the objects, but the connections, even though connections have no mass, no charge, and no temperature.  This internal connection between individuals, while mutually dissimilar, is the real manifestation of the systemic connection, and cannot be defined through any other indicators.

The links in the system can be both positive and negative, and some of the links in a subsystem can change sign during the life of an individual. Let us continue with our example. A newborn infant's bond with his elders has a certain orientation and "weight."[27] He is cared for, nurtured, and taught. When he becomes an adult and the father of his family, the sign of the connection is reversed: he takes care of his parents and teaches his children. Finally, when he becomes an old man, he again requires care and nurturing. This pattern shows that any system is not static, but it is either in dynamic equilibrium (homeostasis) or in motion from some push, the momentum of which is outside this system. Of course, it IS possible that this impulse is limited for a higher-ranking system, but the mechanism of influence does not change from this.

The family is a prime example of a system. However, more complex systems, such as ethnos, a social organism, species, biogeo-cenosis, are subject to the same law, even taking into account the fact that they are built according to the principle of hierarchy: subsystems form a systemic integrity - super-system; - hyper-system, etc. Thus, the presence of universal ties, which create dynamic stereotypes, are more or less stable, but never eternal.

So, the measure of stability of an ethnos as a system is determined not by its mass, i.e. the number of population and accuracy of ancestor copying, but by the average set of connections. The sudden exceeding of certain limits leads either to death of the system, or to rapid development. This creates elasticity of the ethnos, which allows it to cushion external influences and even regenerate sometimes, because the "multi-connected" system makes up for the damage of reconstructing connections.

After this popular explanation, let us move on to scientific definitions, i.e., cybernetics and systemology to the extent that we will need them.

"SYSTEM" IN ETHNOLOGY

Н. Wiener defined cybernetics as the science of control and communication in animals and machines[28]. "The merit of cybernetics lies in the method of studying complex systems, for in the study of simple systems cybernetics has no advantage."[29] The subject of the study of cybernetics-methods of object behavior - it asks not, "what is it?" but "what does it do?"[30] "Therefore the properties of an object are the names of its behavior."[31] "Cybernetics deals with all forms of behavior as they are regular, or deterministic, or reproducible”.

Materiality is irrelevant to it, as well as compliance or noncompliance with the ordinary laws of physics.[32]

The above theses show that an ethnologist interested in the essence of the phenomenon of ethnicity and forced to coordinate his own observations with the laws of nature known to him, is contrary to the absolute trust in Wiener's methods of cybernetics. The application of cybernetic research methods can serve as a corrective to extrapolate empirical generalizations, but no more. Therefore, it is advisable to base the methodology of systemic study of ethnicity not on N. Wiener's thoughts, but on the ideas of L. Bertalanffy, who combined physical chemistry and thermodynamics with cybernetics.

According to the systems approach of L. Bertalanffy,[33] "a system is a complex of elements in interaction"[34], i.e. the usual elements of information are not individual facts, but the connections between the facts. According to A. A. Malinovsky, "a system is constructed of units, groupings of which have an independent value, links, subsystems, each of which is a unit of a lower order, which provides a hierarchical principle that allows research to be conducted at a given level"[35].  Based on this principle, we have the right to consider ethnos as a system of social and natural units with their inherent elements. 

Ethnos is not just a collection of people who resemble each other in some way, but a system of different personalities, products of their activities, traditions, host geographical environment, ethnic environment, as well as certain tendencies prevailing in the development of the system.

The latter, which is the direction of development, is especially important because "common to all cases of sets is the property of elements to possess all kinds of activity, leading to the formation of static or dynamic structures"[36]. The application of this approach to the processes of ethnogenesis is also connected with the solution of the problem of historicism, since all the observed facts fit into the dynamic system of historical development, and we only have to analyze the part of World History that is directly related to our topic.

Thus, we can define the real ethnic integrity as a dynamic system that includes not only people, but also elements of the landscape, cultural tradition and interrelationships with neighbors[37]. In such a system, the initial energy charge is gradually expended and entropy is continuously increasing. Therefore, the system must constantly remove the accumulated entropy by exchanging energy and entropy with the environment. This exchange is regulated by control systems, which use the stock of information that is inherited[38]. In our case the role of control systems is played by tradition, which interacts equally with the social and natural forms of matter movement. Transmission of experience to offspring is observed in most warm-blooded animals. However, the presence of implements, speech, and writing sets humans apart from other mammals, and Ethnos is a form of collective being that is unique to humans.

LEVELS AND TYPES OF ETHNIC SYSTEMS

The approach we have adopted allows us to replace ethnic classification with ethnic systematics. The classification can be made by any arbitrary characteristic: by language, race, religion, occupation, belonging to this or that state. In any case it will be a very conventional division.

Systematics, on the other hand, reflects exactly what is inherent in the nature of things, allowing us to explore humanity with technology and domesticated animals and cultivated plants. The largest unit after humanity as a whole (as an amorphous anthroposphere - one of the Earth's shells) is the super-ethnos, i.e. a group of ethnoses which emerged simultaneously in a water region and which manifests itself in history as a mosaic of ethnoses. They are the ethnic taxa observed directly. Ethnoses, in turn, are divided into sub-ethnoses, i.e., units, existing only because they are part of the unity of the ethnos. Without ethnos, they fall apart and perish.

Belonging to one or another section of taxonomy is determined not by the absolute identity of individuals, which never happens in nature, but by the degree of similarity in a certain aspect at a given level. At the level of super-ethnos (let us take the Middle Ages as an example) Muslims - Arab, Persian, Turkmen, Berber were closer to each other than to the members of Western Christian ethnos - "Franks", as they called all Catholics of Western Europe. And the French, Castilian, Scottish, who were part of the common super-ethnos, were closer to each other than to members of other super-ethnoses - Muslim, Orthodox, etc. On the level of ethnicity, the French were closer to each other than they were to the English. This did not prevent the Burgundians from supporting Henry V and taking Joan of Arc prisoner, even though they knew they were going against their own. But by no means the diversity of visible history should not be reduced to an awareness of ethnic unity, which is only sometimes the main determinant of human behavior. But a sense of ethnic affinity is always present and can be attributed to human nature as an invariant. In other words, no matter how mosaic and diverse is the ethnos; at a given level it is an integrity.

And the most interesting thing is that historians have practically already fumbled for the possibility of such an approach. Involuntarily they group ethnoses into constructions, which they call either "cultures" or "civilizations" or "worlds". For example, for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we find meaning in such concepts, which at the time denoted really existing wholes. Thus, Western Europe, which was under the ideological supremacy of the pope, and formally never exercised in practice the sovereignty of the German Emperor, it called itself the "Christian World”. The West Europeans contrasted themselves not only with the Muslims with whom they had fought in Spain and Palestine, but also with the Orthodox Greeks and Russians and, surprisingly, with the Irish and Welsh Celts. It is clear that they did not mean a religious community, but a systemic integrity, which was named by an arbitrary indicator.  (Christian World)

Equally, the "World of Islam" opposed the Greeks, the French, and the pagan Turks, but it was not unified in terms of religion. The doctrines of the Shi'ites (theists), the Carmats (atheists) and the Sufis (pantheists) resembled each other, and the orthodox doctrine of Islam, the Sunnis, very little. But the Christian Europeans were by no means friends with each other. When they encountered Muslims or pagans, however, they immediately found common ground and ways to compromise with each other. This meant, for example, that a Venetian could fight a Genoese, but only as long as there were no Muslim Arabs or Berbers. Then the former enemies would throw themselves upon a common foe.

We know from history that often violent wars are fought between close relatives. They are, however, fundamentally different from wars at the level of large systems. In the latter, the enemy is seen as something foreign, interfering and to be eliminated. But personal emotions such as anger, hatred, envy, etc. do not become a motive for the harshness shown. The farther the systems are from each other, the more coldly mutual extermination takes place, turning into a kind of dangerous hunt. But is it possible to be angry with a tiger or a crocodile?

Conversely, the fight within the system is not about exterminating the enemy, but about defeating him. Since the enemy...is also part of the system, the system cannot exist without him. Thus, the leader of the Florentine Ghibellines, Farinata degli Uberti, helped the enemies of his homeland to victory, but did not allow Florence to be destroyed. He declared, "I fought this city in order to live in it." And he lived there to the death, after Arbia had turned black with the blood of his opponents, the Florentine Guelphs.

But that would have been nothing! Much worse was the Venetians' treatment of Alberigo, brother of the famous Ghibelline Ezzelino da Romana. When in 1260 he surrendered his castle near Treviso, six of his sons were beheaded in front of him, then he himself was beheaded and his wife and two daughters were burned alive in the square of Treviso. What was the purpose of such senseless atrocities?

To understand this situation one must learn that "the Guelphs and the Ghibellines are algebraic signs behind which all meaning can be concealed. The Ghibellines are supposed to have been feudal lords and the Guelphs to have been burghers, but the popolani of some cities were on the side of the Ghibellines, some Guelphs became Ghibellines, and vice versa, and sometimes both parties acted together against the Arabs or Greeks. Major urban republics like Genoa or Venice repeatedly switched from one camp to the other based only on political calculations[40]. So what was the reason for the bloodshed?

The way of maintaining the integrity of the system depends on the era, more precisely - on the phase of ethnogenesis. In young systems the elements come into contact very tensely, one might say, passionately, and cause clashes. Often bloody feuds do not carry any ideological or class meaning, occurring within the same social stratum, such as the war of the Scarlet and White Rose in England, the Armagnacs and Burgundians in France. But this strife maintains the integrity of the ethnic system and the state, better than when the population is apathetic - although then it is easy to live, ethnicities still disintegrate and disappear as wholes.

Often ethnic systems, as we have already mentioned, are not equivalent to state formations: one ethnos may live in different states or several in one. So in what sense can we treat them as systems?

A division into two ideal types of systems is accepted: rigid and corpuscular, or discrete. In rigid systems, all parts (elements) are fitted to each other so that their simultaneous existence is necessary for normal functioning. In corpuscular systems the elements interact freely, are easily replaced by similar ones, and the system does not stop functioning, and even the loss of some elements with the following restoration is possible. If this does not follow, then there is a simplification of the system, having in the limit its destruction.

Another division of systems is also possible: into open systems receiving energy constantly and exchanging positive and negative entropy with the environment, and closed systems only spending the initial charge until their potential is equalized with the potential of the environment. When comparing the two characteristics, four versions of systems are possible: 1) rigid open; 2) rigid closed; 3) corpuscular open; 4) corpuscular closed. This division is conditional, since any functioning system combines features of both types, but since it is closer to one or the other, such division is practically justified, because it allows to classify systems according to the degree of subordination of elements.

In the study of history, both state and ethnic, we encounter every gradation of systems of the types described, with the exception of the extremes, i.e. only rigid or only discrete, for both are unsustainable. Rigid systems cannot self-repair when broken, while discrete systems lack the ability to resist external shocks. In practice, therefore, we find systems with varying degrees of rigidity, the greater the more human effort is introduced into the system, the less the system's creation is initiated by the processes of nature, which are constantly transforming its constituent elements. At the limit, this is the opposition between the technosphere and the biosphere.

But where is the boundary between the biosphere and the technosphere if the human body itself is part of nature? Obviously, the boundary between the socio(techno)sphere and the biosphere passes not only outside human bodies, but also inside them. However, this does not make the distinction disappear. On the contrary, here we have found a real moment of interaction between the social and the biological. It is an independent phenomenon of nature, well known to all - ethnos.

Ideally, ethnos is a corpuscular system, but in order not to be annihilated by its neighbors, its constituents establish institutions, which are, in relation to ethnos auxiliary rigid systems. These are, for example, the authority of the elders in the clan, leadership in hunting or war, obligations to the family, and, finally, the formation of the state. Thus, the rigid systems are sociopolitical formations: states, tribal unions, clans, druzhiny, etc. The coincidence of the systems of both types, i.e. ethnos and state tribal alliance, is not necessary, although it seems natural. Consider the great empires of antiquity, which united diverse ethnic groups or the medieval feudal fragmentation of ethnic groups. Apparently, the quirkiness of the combination is as natural as the coincidence. The systems of both types are dynamic, i.e., they arise and disappear in historical time. The seeming exception is homeostatic ethnic systems, whose change is related only to external influences. But we should not forget that homeostasis emerges only after intense development, when the forces that created and moved the system have dried up. Therefore, statistics should be perceived as slowed inertial motion, having in its limit, practically unattainable, zero.

VIII. Sub-ethnoses THE STRUCTURE OF THE ETNOS

The structure of the ethnos is always more or less complicated, but it is this complexity that provides the ethnos with stability, thanks to which it is able to survive centuries of turmoil, turmoil and peaceful fading. The principle of ethnic structure can be called hierarchical subordination of subethnic groups, understanding the latter as taxonomic (classifications) units within the ethnos as a visible whole and not violating its unity. At first sight, the formulated thesis contradicts our position on the existence of ethnos as an elementary whole, but let's remember that even a molecule of a substance consists of atoms, and atoms consist of elementary particles, which does not remove the statement about integrity at this or that level: molecular, or atomic, or even subatomic. It is all about the nature of structural bonds. Let us explain this with an example.

In his village a Karelian from Tver province called himself a Karel, but after he came to study in Moscow he called himself a Russian, because in the village the opposition Karelians to Russians had significance, but in the city it did not, because the differences in everyday life and culture are so insignificant that they are hidden. But if it was not a Karelian, but a Tatar, he continued to call himself a Tatar, for the religious significance compounded the ethnographic dissimilarity with the Russians and was not so little as to sincerely declare himself a Russian. A Tatar who got to Western Europe or to China would be considered a Russian there and would himself agree with it, while in New Guinea he would be perceived as a European, only not from the "tribe" of the English or the Dutch. This example is very important for ethnic diagnostics and thus for demographic statistics and ethnographic maps. After all, when compiling the latter it is necessary to agree on the order and degree of approximation, otherwise it will be impossible to distinguish sub-ethnoses, existing as elements of the ethnic structure, from the current ethnic groups.

Now let us dwell on the subordination of ethnoses. For example, the French, a prime example of a monolithic ethnos. - includes, as already mentioned, the Breton Celts, the Gascon of Basque origin, the Lorraine descendants of Alemanns, and the Provençal, an independent people of the Romance group. In the mid-ninth century, when the ethnic name "French" was first documented, all of these peoples, as well as others-Burgundians, Normans, Aquitanians, Savoyards, did not yet constitute a single ethnos and only after a thousand years process of ethnogenesis formed the ethnos that we call the French. The process of amalgamation did not, however, cause the leveling of local customs, rituals, etc. They were preserved as local provincial peculiarities which did not violate the ethnic integrity of the French.

In France we see particularly clearly the results of the ethnic.

The course of events of the Reformation led to the fact that the French Huguenots were forced to leave their homeland in the seventeenth century. In saving their lives, they lost their former ethnicity and became German nobles, Dutch burghers, and in large numbers Boers who colonized South Africa. The French ethnos got rid of them as a superfluous element of an already diverse structure. As a sociopolitical entity, however, France was not weakened; on the contrary, it was strengthened. The fields and gardens abandoned by the zealous Huguenots were taken over by indifferent people who restored in the 18th century the economy which was no longer suffering from internal wars. The resulting ethnic monolithism allowed Napoleon to mobilize the population and create the largest and most obedient army, after whose defeat France did not disintegrate despite vestiges of provincial separatism.

SELF-REGULATION OF THE ETHNOS

It may seem strange that we attribute to ethnos the capacity for self-regulation. But the ethnos in its historical development is dynamic and therefore, like any long-lasting process, is realized with the least amount of energy to sustain its existence. The others are cut off by selection and fade away.

All living systems resist annihilation, i.e. they are anti-entropic and adapt to external conditions as much as possible. And since a certain complexity of the structure increases the ethnos' resistance to external shocks, it is not surprising that in Velikorossiya in the 14-15th cc, it started separating sub-ethnic formations, which sometimes took the form of estates[41]. The Cossacks stood out on the southern fringe and the Pomors on the northern fringe. Subsequently, they were joined by pioneers (at first glance, just representatives of certain occupations, and peasants following them, who mixed with the aborigines of Siberia and formed the sub-ethnos of Siberians, or "Cheldons". The split of the church led to the emergence of another subethnic group, the Old Believers, who ethnographically differed from the bulk of the Russians. In the course of history, these sub-ethnic groups dissolved into the main body of the ethnos, but at the same time new ones emerged. 

For example, in the second half of the 18th century, part of the wealthy nobility began to hire French governesses for their children. After 1789, the influx of Frenchmen into Russia increased, and along with language, manners, and tastes, French attitudes spread, which created a new stereotype of behavior at the sub-ethnic level. The emigrants supported the Russians during the war with Napoleon. And later, the tradition of teaching European culture was created as inertia, for the main stream of life, i.e., ethnogenesis, returned in its former direction. The descendants of Europeanized Oneginians ended their days in Chekhov's "cherry orchards," giving way in life to other sub-ethnoses.

Distinguishing between sub-ethnoses is very easy, since late nineteenth-century ethnography worked at this very level. Ethnographers studied everyday life, i.e. a fixed stereotype of behavior in those groups of population which differed sharply from those in the capital, for example the life of Olonets peasants, but ignored the life of St. Petersburg professors. And in vain, because for our time such a description would have been very useful and interesting, and now we have to read A.P. Chekhov, and even with adjustments for his subjectivism.

In short, sub-ethnoses are directly observable, because, on the one hand, they are within an ethnos, and on the other hand, the bearers of sub-ethnic stereotypes of behavior differ from all the others in manners, mannerisms, ways of expressing feelings, etc.

Sub-ethnoses emerge as a result of different historical circumstances, sometimes coinciding with estates, but never with classes, and they dissolve relatively painlessly, being replaced by others, outwardly dissimilar, but with the same functions and destinies. The purpose of these sub-ethnic formations is to maintain ethnic unity through internal non-antagonistic rivalry. Obviously, this complexity is an organic part of the mechanism of the ethnic system and as such arises in the very process of ethnogenesis. The simplification of the ethnic system reduces the number of sub-ethnoses to one, this marks the persistent (surviving) state of the ethnos. But what is the mechanism of the emergence of sub-ethnoses? To answer that, we have to go down an order of magnitude, where there are taxonomic units divided into two divisions: consortia and convictia. These divisions include small tribes, clans, the already mentioned corporations, local groups and other associations of people of all epochs.

CONSORTIA AND CONVICTA.

Let us agree on the terms. Consortia we call groups of people united by one historical destiny. This category includes "circles", artels, sects, gangs, and similar unstable associations. Most often they disintegrate, but sometimes they persist for several generations. Then they become convicta, i.e. groups of people with a single characteristic household and family ties. Convixia are little resistant. They are corroded by exogamy and shuffled by succession, i.e. a dramatic change in their historical environment. The surviving Convixia grow into sub-ethnoses. Such are the aforementioned pioneer-consortia of desperate travelers, which spawned a generation of steadfast Siberians, and the Old Believers. The first colonies in America were created by consortia of Englishmen, which turned into convicta. New England was founded by the Puritans, Massachusetts by the Baptists, Pennsylvania by the Quakers, Maryland by the Catholics, Virginia by the Royalists, Georgia by the supporters of the House of Hanover. From England the consortia were leaving, not putting up with either Cromwell or the Stuarts, and on new ground, where former disputes were irrelevant, they became the Convicta, opposing their new neighbors, the Indians and the French.

The pioneers and the Old Believers remained as part of their ethnos, but the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors and the English Puritans formed distinctive ethnoses in America, so that this level can be considered the limit of ethnic divergence. And it should be noted that the most ancient tribes once, evidently formed in the same way. The original consortium of vigorous people in isolation turns into an ethnos, which for the earliest epochs we call a "tribe".

At the taxonomic level of the consortium, ethnology ends, but the principle of hierarchical subordination can continue to operate if necessary. An order of magnitude below, we will find one person related to the environment. This can be useful for the biography of great people. Going down another order of magnitude, we encounter not a complete biography of a person, but a single episode of his life, such as a crime committed that must be solved. And even lower is the occasional emotion that does not entail major consequences. But we must remember that this infinite fragmentation, which lies in the nature of things, does not remove the need to find wholeness at a given level essential to the task at hand.

IX. Superethnos

THE REALITY OF THE SUPER-ETHNOS - "THE FRANKS"

We call super-ethnos a group of ethnic groups which simultaneously emerged in a certain region, interconnected by economic, ideological and political communication, which by no means excludes military clashes between them. 

However, unlike clashes at the super-ethnic level, when wars lead to extermination or enslavement (for example, the contact between Europeans and the aborigines of America in the 16th-19th centuries), wars within a super-ethnos lead only to temporary domination (for example, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in medieval Europe or the strife of old Russian princes) while striving for compromise. Like ethnos, super-ethnos, represented by its representatives, opposes all other super-ethnoses, but, unlike ethnos, super-ethnos is not capable of divergence. Super-ethnos is defined not by its size, not by power, but solely by the degree of inter-ethnic closeness. I ask you to temporarily accept this thesis without proof, promising such proof before the end of the book.

At first glance, this seems strange, for it is not clear where do super-ethnoses come from? Obviously, the nature of their emergence is different from that of ethnic groups and even more so of subethnic units. But if so, we must assume that the mystery of the origin of ethnoses has not been solved. Hence the visible and perceptible phenomenon of ethnos, one or another, is only a variant of super-ethnos into which it enters as an element of mosaic systemic integrity, just as a column or caryatid enters into the integrity of a palace, though a caryatid (building column as a human form, a statue), can be seen standing with it, while a palace can be fully observed only from a great distance. Without one caryatid, however, the palace continues to function, and the statue becomes, at best, a museum piece, and at worst, into construction garbage. Let us explain this with examples from history.

Super-ethnic unity is as real as sub-ethnic unity. The French ethnos is already in the early Middle Ages part of an integrity called Chretiente and which included the Catholic countries of Europe, part of whose population was Arian (Burgundians) or pagan (Frisians). But no one cared about such details at the time. The territory united by the Carolingians was inhabited by two large ethnic groups: the Germanic-speaking Teutons (teutskes) and the Latin-speaking Wolochs (welskes). Under Charlemagne's grandsons, these ethnic groups forced their sovereigns to break the iron hoop of the empire and achieved their goal at the Battle of Fontana in 841: Charles the Bald and Ludwig the German swore in Strasbourg in 842 to uphold the division of the empire by nations.

But this was a split in the first approximation. Brittany, Aquitaine, and Provence separated from the kingdom of the Western Franks, and tiny France was located between the Meuse and the Loire. This "territorial revolution" [42] ended with the overthrow of the legitimate Teutonic dynasty of the Carolingians in Paris itself, where Count Ed, son of Robert of Anjou, reigned in 895. For a hundred years the Carolingians fought against the disintegration of their country, but the ethnicities that emerged from a wide range of dislocations stubbornly refused to submit to them. As a consequence of the "feudal revolution" that ended in the tenth century, Western Europe disintegrated politically, but continued to act as a super-ethnic entity, opposing the Muslims - the Arabs, the Orthodox - the Greeks and the Irish, as well as the pagans - the Slavs and the Normans. It subsequently expanded, absorbing through conversion to Catholicism the Anglo-Saxons, then the Western Slavs, the Scandinavians, and the Hungarians. Ethnic mosaicism did not hinder the development of the super-ethnos.

THE BIRTH OF THE SUPER-ETHNOS – BYZANTIUM

Second example. In ancient times there was a single Hellenistic culture in the Mediterranean, which in the process of development included Latium and the Phoenician cities. Ethnically it resembled Western European culture, because the basic Hellenistic core did not exhaust all the variants of the versatile Hellenistic culture. Of course, Rome, Carthage, and Pepla had their local peculiarities and represented independent ethnicities, but in a super-ethnic sense they were part of the broad circle of Hellenistic culture. This however is not new, but it is important for us as a starting point.

Roman domination contributed to ethnic leveling, and the equalization of Greek with Latin resulted in almost the entire population of the Mediterranean merging into a single ethnos.

But in the first century A.D. a new people, unlike any of its neighbors, appeared in the Roman Empire, forming a new unity in the next two centuries. Already at the beginning of their appearance they contrasted themselves with the "Gentiles," i.e., with everyone else, and indeed distinguished themselves from them, certainly not by anatomical or physiological features, but by the nature of their behavior. They treated each other differently, thought differently, and set for themselves goals in life that seemed meaningless to their contemporaries: they aspired to an afterlife.

The Hellenistic world was alien to asceticism, the new people created Thebaid; the Greeks and Syrians spent their evenings in theaters and admired the "dance of the wasp" (ancient striptease), while these gathered for conversation and quietly went home; for their gods, the Hellenes and the Romans had for several centuries considered their gods as literary images, preserving their cult as a state tradition, and in everyday life were guided by numerous omens; the new preachers and neophytes considered with full confidence the reality of otherness and prepared themselves for otherworldly life. Loyal to the Roman government, but they refused to acknowledge its divine nature and did not worship statues of emperors, although it often cost them their lives. The nuances of their behavior did not break the structure of society, but out of ethnic integrity the new people aroused the searing hatred of the urban grassroots, who demanded their destruction on the principle of denying the right to dissimilarity.

To think that the reason for the animosity arose was a difference of convictions is wrong, for the uneducated pagans at this time had no firm and clear convictions, while the new breed had a variety of convictions. But somehow with Mithras, Isis, Cybele, Helios, the Hellenes and Romans did not quarrel, making an exception only for Christ. Obviously, it is not the ideological or political attribute that should be put out of the brackets, but the ethnological, i.e., behavioral one, which for Hellenistic culture was really new and unaccustomed.

As we know, the new integrity prevailed despite great losses. The Gnostics disappeared, the Manicheans scattered throughout the world, and the Markeonites (later Paulicians) closed themselves into a narrow community. Only the Christian Church proved to be viable and gave birth to an integrity that did not have a name for itself. Conventionally we shall call it Byzantine or orthodox Christian. On the basis of the early Christian community, which in the 5th century grew to the limits of the whole Roman empire and a number of neighboring countries, an ethnic group arose which called itself by the old word "Roman". From the fifth to the tenth century the Bulgarians, Serbs, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians, and Alans, and then a super-ethnic cultural integrity of the Orthodox world was created, broken in the 13th century. "Franks."[43] "Turks" and Mongols. In the XIV century the Orthodox tradition was resurrected in connection with the emergence of the Great Russian people.

But one cannot consider Moscow Rus' to be a cultural periphery of Byzantium, because the local tradition made Rus' an independent entity.

And here Nestorians and Monophysites, who broke away from the Universal Church in the 5th century, even though they were damned at the Ecumenical Councils, continued to feel their unity with the Orthodox, and a simple church schism in 1054 when the disputing sides declared their enemies heretics, formalized the break of a single super-ethnic unity: Catholicism became a new structure of "Christendom". The area of "Catholic" Europe differed from that of "Byzantine" Europe in the behavior of its inhabitants. Medieval Nations emerged in Western Europe, out of which grew modern nations, chivalry, urban communes and everything that distinguishes the European from the other super-ethnoses of the world.

But even after the 1054 schism, the dogma of Christianity remained the same, which means that it is not the case, and the history of religion only reflects, as a sensitive indicator, the underlying processes of both social and ethnic history.

THE FRACTURE OF THE SUPER-ETHNOS-ARABS IN THE VII-X CENTURIES.

The Arabs are such an ancient people that by the beginning of our era the former sense of ethnic unity had been lost. The most educated Arabs lived either in Byzantine Syria or in Iranian Iraq, participating in the political and cultural life of those empires.

The origins of the ancient Arabs are attested only by the legends in the book of Genesis, and it is historically recorded that for nearly a millennium there were scattered people.  Arabia was inhabited by disparate tribes of Bedouins and horticulturists, who were engaged in trade and did not even have a common self-name. Their way of life and tribal structure were mainly determined by subsistence economy and, consequently, by the landscape of the country they inhabited. No tendencies toward unification emerged, and the combat effectiveness of the Arabs was at its lowest level, and therefore, until the 7th century, Arabia was a country with a very small population.

In the 7th century Arabia was a field of rivalry between three neighboring countries: the Roman Empire, Parthian-Sanid Iran and Abyssinia (Askum). In Arabia itself, the most active were the Jewish communities of Hijaz and Yemen.

In the sixth century A.D. there is a sudden rise in poetry throughout Arabia, which should be regarded as a modus operandi of activism. Is it necessary to prove that it is impossible to compose good poetry without an impulse of passion? In the seventh century Muhammad preached strict monotheism and, forming around himself a small group of fanatical, strong-willed, insanely brave followers, the first thing he did was to destroy poets as his rivals.  The members of the Muslim community severed the former clan ties, forming a new, special collective, which, like the Byzantine one, had a confessional dominant and ethnogenetic nature, for Muhammad declared that a Muslim could not be a slave and accepted into his community those slaves who had uttered the formula of Islam. The propaganda of the new faith was also preceded by an incubation period of ethnic energy accumulation.

The consortium that was formed became a sub-ethnos during the lifetime of Muhammad and Abu-Bekr. Having grown from a few dozen people to several tens of thousands, the Muslim sub-ethnos conquered all of Arabia and imposed the dogma of monotheism on the Arabs. The indifferent merchants of Mecca and the Bedouins of the desert preferred death or slavery to hypocritical conversion to Islam. Thus a new ethnos was created with a changed stereotype of behavior, but with the self-same name "Arabs.

Using the forces of the conquered and outwardly converted to Islam, the second caliph, Omar, conquered Syria, Egypt and Persia, already under the third caliph. Ottomans, pseudo-converts infiltrated the highest positions in the new state and used the religious impulse of the original collective for personal enrichment. The zealots of the faith assassinated Othman, but this caused an explosion of resentment among those who were not fanatics, and an internecine struggle ensued between friends of the prophet - and the son of his enemy-Moabia, in which the "pseudo-Muslims" prevailed. However, they did not change their policy and official ideology, and continued their conquests under the slogan of Islam. The empire of the descendants of Moab, the Umayyads, absorbed not only Arab, but also Syrian, Iranian, Sogdian, Spanish, African, Caucasian and many other elements, spreading from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus.

The Arabs imposed their language and their spiritual culture (Islam) on the multi-ethnic population of the Caliphate. Most of the conquered peoples became Arabic-speaking, and in places where their language had survived, such as Persia, more than half of the words in the literary language were Arabic.

But already in the 10th century the Caliphate broke up into separate regions, which coincided with the tribal areas. The Idrisids (789-926), Rustamids (777-909), and Zirids (972-1152) were supported by the Berbers. The Bunds (932-1062) were supported by the Gilan and Deylem mountaineers, the Samanids (819-999) by the Tajiks, etc. Even the Arabs themselves were divided. The Spanish Arabs raised the green banner of the Abbas-Sids, the Egyptian Arabs raised the white banner of the Fatimids, and the Bahraini Bedouin tribes created first a community and then a Karmat state, and they all actually became separate ethnoses, hostile to each other.

In short, the same thing happened to the Caliphate in the ninth to tenth centuries as happened to the empire of Charlemagne's empire: the living forces of the ethnoses tore the iron hoop of the empire, both Christian and Muslim, just as the grass cracked the asphalt. But the political division neither here nor there broke the super-ethnic unity, reflected in a certain similarity of some elements of culture and literary language -- Arabic and Latin. The Muslim super-ethnos turned out to be much more viable than the Arabian ethnos that had generated it. Already in the XI-XII centuries, the idea of the Caliphate was defended by Seljuk Turkmens, and in the XIII century. - Cuman (Polovtsi) and Sudanese Negroes bought at slave markets and enlisted in the army. The inertia of the system created by Muhammad's companions was tremendous.

Now let us pose the question: can the religious concept be considered dominant in the process described? As an external manifestation, no doubt. But internally, in content, the matter is more complicated. Karmatism differs from Islam in its philosophical concepts much more than Christianity or even Judaism[44], and yet it lies not only within a super-ethnic construct - Muslim culture - but even within the Arab ethnos itself.

Turkish mercenaries and Moroccan thugs thought the least of religion, and yet they were the only ones who supported Sunni orthodoxy with their sabers in the eleventh century. Recall that Muhammad was preceded by a pleiad of Arab poets - pagans, Christians, Jews - so that the flowering of poetry, (activism) was the initial link in the process described, as was the development of intermediary trade, the hunting of blacks to sell them into slavery, and the condottierie of tribal chiefs.

However, the dominant feature of the whole process of the formation of the Arab ethnos (and, in the super-ethnic sense, of all Muslim culture) was nevertheless Muhammad's conception of Islam, for which the preceding era of flourishing Arab poetry had proved a suitable ground. Islam as a symbol became an object of fanatical self-assertion and a way of introducing uniformity. The usual appearance (as a kind of inevitable antithesis) of various heresies and modifications of religious and ideological content during the stormy onset of the new religious system only stimulated the tumultuous course of the main process. Further, both within the Arab ethnos itself and within the super-ethnic culture, a diverse intellectual life developed, leading to the flowering of science, art, and peculiar forms of life. 

The described process is an example of the formation of a super-ethnos, outwardly characterized by religious and ideological dominance. Such wholenesses have long been known to science: sometimes they are called "cultural types," sometimes "civilizations”.

By the 10th century, the energy of the Arab-Muslim ethnos had dried up, despite the fact that the economy had flourished, social relations had normalized, and philosophy, literature, geography, and medicine had produced the maximum number of masterpieces during this very epoch. The Arabs turned from warriors to poets, scientists, and diplomats. They created a brilliant style in architecture, built cities with bazaars and schools, established irrigation and grew beautiful gardens that provided food for the growing population. But the Arabs did not know how to defend themselves against their enemies. Instead of an era of conquest, it was a time of loss.

The French Normans took Sicily from the Muslims. The Highlanders of Asturias seized central Spain and turned it into a "land of castles" - Castile. The Byzantines took back Syria (except Damascus). The Georgians liberated Tiflis from the Arab garrison. The Turks, Berbers and Tuaregs had to turn to them for salvation. These bailed them out. In the 11th century. Al-Morraids drove the Spaniards north, and the Seljuks conquered Armenia and Asia Minor. However, the newcomers did not defend the Arab ethnos,[45] which they did not give a damn about, but the super-ethnos - "the world of Islam", for the latter became for them the ethno-cultural dominant. The Central Asian Turks, the Sudanese Negroes and the wild Kurds, entering the structure of the disintegrating Caliphate, assimilated the mores, customs, attitudes, etc., adopted there, becoming the successors of the community created by Muhammad. It was these peoples who stopped the onslaught of the Crusaders. For all that, culture remained, works of human hands that had no self-development and were capable of destruction. But the destruction proceeded slowly, and the allure of this culture covered more and more areas in Africa, India, the Malay Archipelago and China. There this culture, which for a thousand years survived the rise of the ethnos that gave birth to it, exists to this day.

This culture, which in the tenth and twelfth centuries was taken over by so many elements foreign to it, elements introduced and incorporated by ethnic groups, it changed its appearance and gave birth to new forms, bizarre to the point of monstrosity. Muslims ethnically alien to the Arabs became Shi'a, Ismaili, Sufi, or confessors of doctrines outwardly orthodox, but in fact original and far removed from the original worldview of Muhammad's companions and the first caliphs. And since in this era ethnic differences were clothed in confessional forms, it is possible to uncover and characterize the ethnic contacts of any super-ethnos, for example of Central Asia and the Far East, by following the reverse course, from culture to ethnogenesis. This complex problem will be the subject of a special excursus, when the author and the reader will have mastered a few more techniques of ethnological methodology.

X. The algorithm of ethnogenesis

ETHNIC RELICTS

Ethnic history can count more than twenty super-ethnoses that have disappeared in historical time and been replaced by presently existing ones. For the time being, the task is to describe the mechanism of disappearance of super-ethnoses, and we will speak separately about their emergence and spread. Let us note as an important detail that often in the place of a grandiose super-ethnos, eroded by historical processes, there remain islands that have survived the epoch of their prosperity and decay. Examples of such small ethnic groups are the Basques, the Albanians, a number of Caucasian ethnic groups and the curious, very stable Iroquois ethnic group in North America. In contrast to the majority of the extinct or assimilated tribes of North and Central America, the Iroquois retained their numbers (20 thousand people), their language and their opposition to all non-Iroquois. True, they changed their way of life and, from warriors turned into "museum exhibits".

There are quite a lot of relict ethnic groups, and some of them die out, some are assimilated by other ethnic groups, and some, like the Iroquois, preserve their identity, more or less stable numbers and the territory they occupy. We call these ethnic groups persistent, i.e. surviving themselves and in the phase of homeostasis. Ethnography knows a very large number of Isopian ethnoses, who due to their geographical position have not been involved with other ethnic groups or have been involved with them only in the last 100 years. Such were many tribes of Canada before the fur companies appeared there; the Indians of the interior of Brazil before the rubber rush; the Australians until the Europeans appeared there; some highlanders of the Caucasus (even after the capture of Gunib by Russian troops).

There are many other peoples and tribes with greater or lesser degrees of isolation in India, Africa, and even Europe. But, most importantly, isolates emerge before the eyes of the historian. Such are the Icelanders, descendants of the Vikings, who settled the island in the ninth century and lost the warlike spirit of their ancestors in three hundred years. The descendants of the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish Vikings and slaves captured in Ireland formed a small but independent ethnos already in the ninth century, preserving some of the traditions of the old days and marrying within their own island[46].

The absence of frequent contact with foreign tribesmen inevitably leads to the stabilization of relations within the ethnos. A structure emerges, which we call "stagnant," and there is a "simplification of the system" within the ethnos. Let me explain with the help of an illustrative example. In ancient Egypt, the united Hamitic tribes formed a powerful ethnos and created an extensive social system. There was a pharaoh and advisers, princes of nomes and warriors, priests and scribes, merchants, farmers and poor peasants. The system became more complex as encounters with foreigners arose. Conquests in Nubia and Syria were made by professional warriors, treaties with Babylon were made by experienced diplomats, and canals and palaces were built by specialists - engineers trained from childhood. The ramified system survived the Hyksos invasion and revived, as if infused with renewed power. But from the 11th century B.C. onward a process of simplification began and the resilience of the system declined. From 950 B.C. power over Egypt fell into the hands of the Libyans.

In 715 BC domination passed to the Ethiopians, who had lost the war with Assyria, and the Asiatics occupied Egypt, which itself had already stopped defending itself. The Saisan dynasty liberated the country, but held on to the spears of the Libyans and Hellenes. It too fell in 550 BC, after which Egypt was successively dominated by Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Berbers, Mamluks and Turks. Of all the social groups, only the Fellahi farmers and a small handful of Hellenized Coptic townspeople survived by the first century AD. The Phellachians became an isolate. Although around them was an active historical life, they did not care about it. They lived in a society that was ethnically alien to them, but remained for thousands of years by themselves. This we can call ethnic statistics or rest. It means that development has slowed down so much that it may not be taken into account when describing it.

STATICS AND DYNAMICS

Let us condition the terms. "Static" or "persistent" we conventionally refer to those peoples whose life cycle repeats in each generation without change. This does not mean, of course, that such peoples do not experience external influences. Often they even perish when their environment changes, as, for example, the Tasmanians were exterminated or the Araucans in Patagonia were knocked out. Sometimes stable ethnic groups, tribes or peoples shy away from borrowing from their civilized neighbors, but more often they easily adopt what suits them without changing their habitual rhythm of life.

For example, the Algonquik tribes in the 17th century adopted muskets and learned to shoot no worse than the French and English colonists; Patagonians in one generation in the 19th century transformed from foot hunters into mounted ones; Tunguses mastered matches and iron stoves, very convenient in chums. But the ethnic appearance of these peoples remained the same until the 20th century.  Neither the Algonquin nor the Araucan became French and Spanish.

With "dynamic" peoples there is always the problem of "fathers and children. The younger generation is not like the previous one. Ideals, tastes, customs change, the category of "fashion" appears. Along with the appearance of the new, the old is forgotten, and these changes are called the development of culture.

Dynamic nations are not eternal either. They either disappear without a trace, or, after a certain cycle of development, they turn into static ones, which, in turn, after various transformations become dynamic, but already different. Disappearance is sometimes associated with the death of the people that make up the ethnic group, and more often - with the fragmentation of the ethnic community, and the survivors are assimilated by neighboring ethnic communities, people remain, but the ethnos as a systemic integrity disappears. If part of the ethnos is preserved as a relic, it will be an isolate.

These examples are vivid, but there are any number of gradations of traditionalism, and if we arrange all known ethnic groups according to the degree of decreasing conservatism, it appears that not a single ethnic group has reached the "zero level", i.e. the absence of tradition, because then it would simply cease to exist, having dissolved among neighbors. This latter, although observed from time to time, is never the fruit of the deliberate efforts of the ethnic collective itself. Nevertheless, ethnic groups die, so there are destructive factors that make this happen. And since there are no ethnic groups that are completely isolated from external influences, we must assume that all ethnic groups are mortal. And the most curious thing is that ethnic groups sometimes prefer death to an unacceptable existence. Why?

Perhaps it is this right to death that distinguishes an ethnos in a phase of homeostatic equilibrium with its environment from a population of one or another animal species. The death of an ethnos is the disintegration of a systemic integrity, not the extermination of all of its members. Although history has preserved the shameful pages of the extermination of individual Indian tribes by the Americans and of small Hukns by the Chinese, it is much more common for members of a dead ethnic group to join new, neighboring ethnic groups. Therefore, ethnic extermination is a social rather than biological phenomenon.

According to dialectical materialism, death is a necessary moment and a natural result of the life of the organism. "The negation of life, F. Engels wrote, is essentially contained in life itself, so that life is always thought in relation to its necessary result, which consists in it constantly in embryo - death"[47]. This universal law of dialectics also works in the processes of ethnogenesis.

Just as a person can be killed at any age, so the ethnogenetic process can be aborted at any phase. However, it is easier to cut off a beginning ethnogenesis before the ethnos has gained strength and an ending ethnogenesis when this strength has already been expended. The level of technology and culture does not matter much, nor does the number of the population. The Iroquois in the fifteenth century created an original, developing form of dwelling - a union of five tribes, a kind of republic. The Nahua gave rise to the Aztecs, and Montezuma's state could hardly be considered a non-developing one from the 14th to the 16th centuries (or more precisely from 1325, when Tenochtitlan was founded, to 1521, when it was conquered by Cortés). These are examples of the processes of ethnogenesis, cut off by external blows at the beginning of their development.

The example of the ancient Jews is even more vivid. In the 15th century BC. wandering tribes of the Habiru invaded Palestine and seized a piece of territory near the Jordan. In the level of technology, economic methods, and military techniques, they did not differ from the other Semitic tribes of Syria and Arabia and were inferior to the peoples of Egypt and Babylonia. But it was a people intensively developing ethnically, and it outlived all its neighbors until it perished as an ethnic community,[48] under the short swords of the Roman infantry. However, this demise coincided, obviously not accidentally, with the ethnic divergence of the Jewish people themselves, when the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Yeshayites ceased to feel their commonality and began to see each other as either apostates and traitors (the attitude of the Pharisees and the Yeshayites toward the Sadducees) or savages (the attitude of the Sadducees toward the Essenes, the masses), or the priestly caste that had broken away from the people (the attitude of the Sadducees and the Essenes to the Pharisees). The Jews in the first century were not inferior to the Romans or the Greeks in terms of their level of culture.

On the basis of these examples, one might think that it is barbarism that harbors forces that dry up as culture develops. But even this view finds no confirmation in history. European peoples conquered Africa and Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century and created a system of colonial empires that covered almost the entire surface of the land in the early twentieth century. In some cases this can be explained by superior military technology, but not always. For example, in India the Sepoys were armed with English weapons and yet were defeated by the inferior British.   The Turkish army in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not inferior in quality to the Russian and Austrian armies, but Eugene of Savoy and Suvorov proved victorious despite the small numbers of their armies and remoteness from supply bases.

The French conquered Algeria and Annam not so much through better guns as through the glorious bravery of the Zouaves applied to the small (anti-guerrilla) war. Conversely, the Italians, who had the most advanced weapons, lost in 1896 the war with the Menelek, whose warriors were armed with lances and flintlocks and whose culture was as old as that of the Italians. So that was it!

All of these conquests were inseparable from the ethnogenetic process of Western Europe, which allowed the creation of nations and colonial empires, which began during feudalism. But the expansion of the ranges of European ethnic groups ended in the 20th century, and it became clear that in the history of not only the whole world, but even Western Europe itself, it was an important, bloody, heroic and controversial episode, but only an episode, not the peak of evolution. The collapse of the colonial empires that we are witnessing shows that the process of ethnogenesis has passed its flourishing phase and history has taken its former direction - Europe has again entered its geographical borders. Consequently, it is not a matter of the level of technology or culture, and the model of ethnic development should be built on different principles. "No nation, no race, remains unchanged. They are continually mingling with other peoples and races and constantly changing. They may seem almost to die out, and then rise again as a new people or as a variety of the old."[49]

However, it remains unclear why isolated ethnic groups lose the ability to resist a hostile environment. According to A. Toynbee's concept of "response" to "challenge", they would have to give a powerful response to the enemy's challenge, but they either surrender or scatter. Apparently, the transition to homeostasis, which allows the ethnos to exist in isolation, is connected with the loss of some attribute that stimulated the resistance of the ethnos in the early phases. They are firm only in one thing: they do not allow outsiders into their environment.

INCORPORATION

The observed and described peculiarity of the ethnic phenomenon explains the difficulties that constantly arise in the incorporation of aliens. In order to enter a foreign ethnic group, one's own desire or even the simple consent of the host collective is not enough. It is possible to get along fine in a foreign environment and still not become one's own. If, for example, a Scotsman becomes a citizen of Peru, he will not become a Peruvian, although the Peruvians are a complex ethnic group that appeared relatively recently, in the early 19th century. The explanation lies in the stereotype of behavior that we have noted.

The Scotsman did not go through initiation ceremonies like the descendants of the Incas, did not go to mass every week like the descendants of the conquistadors; his notions of good and bad, noble and low, beautiful and ugly are not those of the Peruvians, and if the good will of an alien is enough to become a citizen of another country, this will is not enough to change their ethnicity. And the Maori have been living next to the English for 100 years and have known how to act in English since childhood. School, play together, and business relationships influence even more than mixed marriages. In New Zealand it still makes sense to contrast Maoris with the English, but in Cambridge the contrast of New Zealanders with the inhabitants of "good, old England" becomes essential.

It is much more difficult to enter small and subsistence ethnicities, although there are exceptions: for example, the ethnographer Morgan was recognized as Iroquois, the French traveler and fur trader Etienne Brûlé was recognized as a Huron. Examples abound, but justice demands that we note that Morgan was still an American scholar, while Brule, whose activities ran from 1609 to 1633, was killed by tribal leaders for setting young people against the old customs. Moreover, V. G. Bogoraz describes a "Russian Chukcha," an orphan boy raised by Chukchi who did not know the Russian language. The Chukchi stubbornly considered him Russian, and he himself held the same opinion.

Thus, incorporation, which has been used for practical purposes since times immemorial, has always encountered resistance from a factor that lies outside the consciousness and self-consciousness, in the field of feelings, which are known to reflect natural phenomena not always correctly interpreted by the apparatus of consciousness. As complicated as the problem is, we can now conclude: the ethnic phenomenon is material, it exists outside and apart from our consciousness, although it is localized in the activity of our soma and higher nervous activity. It manifests itself in shades of people's character and activity and belongs to ethnopsychology.  The latter should not be confused with social psychology, which seeks to "explain what people do by examining... five functional units: action, meaning, the role of the individual, and the role of the group."[50] A social group is a group that "consists of people acting together as a unit," i.e., people are "seen as participants in some kind of action."[51] Such are, for example. participants in a soccer game or a "Lynch trial." Let it be so, but it is not an ethnos! And there it is noted that "European intellectuals who migrated to America ... often knew its history, laws, and customs better than Americans. However, these people had a 'knowledge' of American life, but no 'familiarity' with it. They were incapable of understanding much that any child growing up in the United States feels intuitively."[52] At the same time (and this is typical) some people were able to get accustomed to life in America, while others were eager to go back, despite the fact that they were making good money. This was beautifully described by V. G. Korolenko in his story "Without a Tongue”.

Apparently, there are different degrees of ethnic compatibility. With some, incorporation is easy; with others, it is difficult, and with others, it is impossible. What is the reason for this strange phenomenon?

Ethnoses have always existed, after the neoanthropes appeared on Earth. And the way of their existence, as human history shows, is the same: birth, expansion, reduction of the degree of activity and either disintegration or transition to equilibrium with the environment. This is a typical inertial process of a system exchanging information and entropy with the environment always in a special, unique way, we can say - in an original rhythm. It is this circumstance that limits incorporation. To become truly "one's own," one must incorporate into the process, that is, inherit tradition, and on the condition that the person being incorporated was not raised by his or her true parents. In all other cases, incorporation turns into ethnic contact.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EQUILIBRIUM AND DEVELOPMENT

Now let us pose the question: what is the difference between relic ethnoses and ethnoses that develop vigorously? In the systems of relic ethnoses there is no struggle between the members of the ethnos, and if there is a rivalry, it does not entail the death of the loser. Only innovations are pursued, which, as a rule, no one wants. But if so, natural selection, one factor of evolution, fades away. What is left is the ethno-landscape equilibrium, against which only social progress, or regress is possible. But under complicated and difficult conditions of re-adaptation and change of the stereotype of behavior, the natural arises again, and the population formed by it either perishes or becomes a new ethnos. Thus, the primary classification of ethnoses (in terms of their formation) is the division into two classes, sharply differing from each other in a number of features (see Table 1, just below).

The proposed division is based on a principle different from those used so far: anthropological, linguistic, social and historical-cultural. The 12 traits of difference noted in the table [53] are invariant for all epochs and territories. As in a class society there can exist persistent ethnic groups, so in a clan system there are regroupings of individuals, due to which new tribal unions or military-democratic associations arise. Examples of the first variant are the long-standing slave relations in Arabia among the Bedouin tribes, in West Africa: Benin, Dahomey, etc., among the Tlingit.

The Tlingit in Northwest America and the Highlanders of the Caucasus, who had Georgian slaves until the nineteenth century. The frozen feudal relations were observed in the 19th century in Tibet, western and northeastern; mountain Dagestan, the Yakuts, and the Malay, and vice versa, the Iroquois union, which arose in the 15th century, is a vivid example of creating a new ethnos in conditions of pre-class society The same process occurred in the tribal power of the Hunnu - 3rd century BC, and the military-democratic Turkic "Eternal Ele" - 6th-8th centuries AD. The Celts of the 1st millennium BC were undoubtedly an ethnic entity with a clan system of social relations.

The number of examples could be increased, but the above examples are sufficient. Any division of material in the classification is conditional, but that is why it is constructed, because it is determined by the task set by the researcher. Our goal is to establish the place of ethnic formation in the diversity of observed phenomena. And what is it? It turns out that the emergence of ethnicity is a rare case against the background of the general ethno-landscape equilibrium, which cannot be regarded as "backwardness" or "stagnation," stemming allegedly from the inferiority of certain peoples. All contemporary "stagnant" ethnoses were not stagnant when they developed, and those that are developing now, if they don’t disappear, will become "stable" sometime later.

Table 1. Signs of the difference between the persistent and dynamic states of the ethnos

1. Signs of the State:

            Persistent                     Dynamic

2. Relations between generations

             New generation tends to repeat stereotypes of the previous one

                                                 New generation tends to be different from the previous one (the problem of fathers and children)

3. Relationship to time

              Cyclic time                  Linear time calculus of time

4. Attitude to Nature

              Household adapted to Landscape

                                                Adaptation of the landscape to the requirements of the farm

5. Relationship to neighbors

                Defense of borders, hospitality

                                                  Striving to enlarge the territory, wars of conquest

6. Attitudes to descendants

                 Striving to limit growth, infanticide

                                                    Striving for unlimited Reproduction

7. Relation to religion

               Genotheism, exclusion of foreigners to their cults

                                                     Proselytism and religious intolerance

8. Attitude towards societal institutions

                Authority of elders

                                                      Institute of power

9. Attitude to social life

                 Conservation of already established social groups

                                                       Formation of new social groups

10. Attitudes towards foreign cultures

                    Ignoring foreign ideas and borrowing techniques

                                                         Active assimilation of alien ideas; using or rejecting them

11. Ethnic Lifespan

                   Not more than 1200 (1500) years, cycle of exit from the dynamic state (until complete disappearance or transformation into a relic)

                                                          Not more than 1,200 (1,500) years counting from the moment of shock to the moment of exiting the dynamic state (until it has completely disappeared or become a relic)

ETHNOGENESIS AND NATURAL SELECTION

From the above descriptions of the phenomenon of ethnicity as a consequence, it follows that social processes are different in nature. The coincidence between social and ethnic rhythms is accidental, although it is precisely these rhythms that catch the eye during superficial observation, as interference when coinciding in phase enhances the effect. The problem that has arisen should be formulated as follows: where do the forces that create ethnicities come from?  Such forces must exist, for if they did not, the entropy of natural selection would have smoothed out all ethnic differences long ago, back in the Paleolithic era, and turned humanity's diversity into a single faceless anthroposphere.

It is accepted that natural selection should always lead to the survival of individuals more adapted to the struggle for existence. But J.B.S. Holden notes that this is right for a rare and scattered species, forced to defend itself against other species and inorganic nature. But as soon as populations become dense, individuals of the species enter into competition with each other. Even if individuals are victorious, the struggle itself is biologically harmful to the species. For example, the development of huge horns, needless in males, helps them to gain personal victories, but is often the beginning of the extinction of the species[54].

This consideration also applies to man, who is the dominant species, the upper, concluding link in the biocoenosis. The struggle of individuals within a species, noted by J. Holden, has nothing to do with the intraspecific struggle for food, and it is wrong to transfer its laws to human society. Here we find an entirely different situation: an aggravation of the struggle for dominance in a flock or herd, and, unexpected as it may seem, it is the winners that do not leave any offspring. Hence, we encounter not the Darwinian law of survival of the fittest individuals, but a kind of excesses that are not reflected in the evolution of the collective as a whole. The selection that takes place when adult males clash or young cubs are expelled from the herd does not lead to the formation of new populations. On the contrary, it is a powerful factor preserving the traits of most individuals, including the stereotype of behavior. And this is quite understandable: each species inhabiting a certain region is part of its biocenosis and is best adapted to it. This situation is broken only when either physical and geographical conditions change, for example, when a sustained drought or a powerful flood, when the soil layer is overlaped with sediments, or when other animals migrate to the region, which changes the balance in the biocenosis.

But the influence of any exogenous factors does not explain why, even in the absence of catastrophes, some ethnic groups are replaced by others, leaving only the ruins of architectural structures, fragments of sculpture, fragments of literature, broken dishes, and confused memories of the glory of the ancestors as a legacy to the descendants. Apparently, for humans, selection has a different meaning, something J. Holden devotes a great deal of attention to. "Biological selection is directed to such traits on which it depends that each member of an ethnos should have more children than the other. These are: resistance to disease and physical strength, but not those qualities which serve to multiply the ethnos (or species) as a whole and are therefore not especially valued by men." According to Holden, the genes of martyrs of idea and science, brave warriors, poets and artists are less and less common in subsequent generations. For our analysis it is important to consider something else - what is the result of this process in further destiny of an ethnos, of course, not in the social aspect, but in population-genetic one, which interests us at the moment. J. Holden formulates it this way: "Natural selection acts on changes of adaptive nature, and these changes do not go in any direction. Most of them lead to loss of complexity of structure or to reduction of organs – lead to degeneration."[55]

This thesis, proved by Holden, at first sight contradicts the school concept of evolution as progressive development. But once we apply the dialectical method, the contradiction disappears like smoke. Species either degenerate or stabilize and become persistent (relics that have survived their own development), but new species emerge, more perfect than those that preceded them. However, these too will give way under the sun to those who come after them, but in the meantime they are maturing for what is to come. Reptiles replaced giant amphibians, mammals replaced dinosaurs, and modern man replaced Neanderthal. And each rise was preceded by a deep fall.

Let us translate this into the language of ethnology and apply to our material as a model the simplest sample - a localized (territorially), closed (genetically), self-formed (socially) ethnic collective.

ALTRUISM, MORE PRECISELY-ANTI-EGOISM

A newborn ethnos, as soon as it declares its existence, is automatically included in the world's historical process. This means that it begins to interact with its neighbors, who are always hostile to it. And it cannot be otherwise, because the emergence of a new, active, and unusual, breaks the already established and loved way of life. The riches of the region in which the ethnos was born are always limited. First of all, this applies to food supplies. It is quite understandable that those who have quietly existed under the established order are by no means willing to constrain themselves or give up their place to other, alien, incomprehensible and unpleasant to them people. 

Resistance to the new arises as a natural reaction of self-defense and always takes acute forms, most often in a war of extermination. In order to win, or at least to defend oneself, an altruistic [56] ethic must emerge within the ethnos, in which the interests of the collective take precedence over personal interests. Such an ethic can also be observed among herd animals, but only in humans does it take on the significance of a single protective factor. It always coexists with egoistic ethics, in which the personal plus the family becomes superior to the social, but since the interests of the individual and the collective often coincide, acute conflicts rarely arise. In terms of preserving the human counterpart of the species taxon, i.e., the ethnos, the combination of both these ethical concepts creates an optimal situation. The functions are separated. "Altruists" defend the ethnos as a whole, "egoists" reproduce it in offspring. But natural selection leads to a decrease in the number of "altruists," which makes the ethnic collective defenseless, and as time passes, the ethnos, deprived of its defenders, is absorbed by its neighbors. And the descendants of the "egoists" continue to live, but already as part of other ethnic groups, remembering the "altruists" not as their defenders-heroes, but as stubborn and unfriendly people of bad character.

There is so much to test this formula in historical material, in one way, which should be mentioned in detail. Ethics deals with the relation of the proper to the proper, and what’s proper, like the being, changes in each epoch. These changes are very sensitively recorded by the authors of the sources, who in other respects do not hesitate to distort the facts. Here, however, they are sincere, because they do not describe reality, but an ideal; which they themselves each time seem unquestionable. We can therefore use historiography and even the fiction of past eras to record the change in behavioral imperative, taking them not as a source of information but as a fact to be critically examined, and using it to establish how this process occurs in reality.

Let us take as an example some complete segment of the history of a nation (not of a state, not of political institutions, not of social and economic relations, but of an ethnos), which is well known to the reader, and let us look briefly at its phases. A suitable example is the city-state of Ancient Rome. If we set aside its legendary period of kings, from the first secession (the departure of the plebeians to the Holy Mountain, followed by their compromise with the patricians), which determined the nature of the social system, to the edict of Caracalla (the recognition of provincial Roman subjects), that is, from 949 BC to 212 AD, one can easily trace the evolution of the ratio of "altruists" to "egoists". However, this was already done in antiquity by Roman historians, calling this process "the fall of morals.

In the first period, before the end of the Punic Wars, as the authors of the sources report, there was no shortage of heroes who wanted to die for the fatherland. Mucius Scevola, Attilius Regulus, Cincinnatus, Aemilius Paulus, and many others like them were probably largely created by patriotic legend, but it is important that such individuals served as ideal figures of behavior. In the Civil War era the situation changed dramatically. Party leaders became heroes: Marius or Sulla, Pompey, Crassus or Caesar and Sertorius, Junius Brutus or Octavian. They no longer gave their lives for the fatherland, but risked them in the interests of their party and with the sure benefit to themselves. In the age of the Principate there were also many brave and energetic figures, but all of them acted openly in their own interests, and this was taken for granted by public opinion and even as the only possible behavior. Emperors and generals are now praised for the conscientious performance of their duties, that is, for their lack of dishonesty and wanton cruelty, but this means that they are perceived as "reasonable egoists," for it benefits them as well. Gone are the parties of the Optimists and Populists, and the groups of this or that legion, such as the Syrian, Gallic, Pannonian, etc., who fight among themselves solely for power and money. Under the dynasty of Severus the ideal and benefits triumph, and it is no accident that at the same time the Roman ethnos, called Populus Romanus, dissolves among the peoples conquered by it.

We see a similar picture in the Middle Ages in Western Europe, when the most urgent occupation was war with the Muslims. The images of the first epic poems are Roland and Sid, paladins of Christianity. In fact, the former was the margrave of the Brand of Breton and was killed not by the Moors but by the Basques; the latter was simply an unprincipled adventurer. No need: the ideals are altruistic and heroic.

Later, in the second period, the hero does not forget himself. Such are Cortes and Pizarro, Vasco da Gama and Albuquerque, Francis Drake and Juan of Austria, the victor at Lepanto. That they were brave and openly self-serving is not blamed on them; on the contrary, it is admired and applauded.  Time passes, and the hero becomes a hired soldier, who only cares about his own skin, although he cannot be denied intelligence, composure and self-control.

As we can see, varying in a certain direction, the ideal is an indicator of the mood of the collective, for the author's attitude toward the hero is emotional, and, consequently, conscious lying is excluded. And these moods reflect a deeper essence - a change in the stereotype of behavior, which is the real basis of the ethnic nature of human collective existence.

But at the same time we should not refuse to take into account the sphere of consciousness, because only it makes it possible to find optimal solutions in a situation that cannot help but be acute. As long as the new ethnic system has not developed and gained inertia, the process can be interrupted by extraneous interference, and, therefore, there is no place for rigid determinism (fatalism).

EXTERMINATION OF RELIC ETHNIC GROUPS

With this formulation of the question, it is possible to answer why ethnoses are dying out, and so often that of those recorded at the beginning of written history in the 3rd millennium BC, not a single one remains, and of those that lived and acted at the beginning of the AD, a rare few are left. It is all the more necessary because the indirect descendants of the ancient Romans, Hellenes, Assyrians, having changed beyond recognition, live to this day, but are no longer Romans, Hellenes, or Assyrians, for they borrowed only the gene pool from their ancestors. Let us turn for analogues to paleontology, which, among other problems, also deals with the problem of extinction of populations. Here it does not matter what is the size of the object under study, because we can assume that the processes of extinction should have the same pattern.

The survivors were, oddly enough, the least evolved species, hence those least adapted to the natural environment of past eras. But the former tsars of life - dinosaurs, mastodons, mahirodons, cave bears and cave lions - have disappeared completely, although they had no worthy competitors. The extinction of species is accompanied by a gradual shrinking of the range and competition from neighboring species, pushing the doomed species out of the biochorus. But it remains unclear what this "doom" is? Without seeking to solve paleobiological problems, we can point out that in ethnology it lies in the structure of the ethnos. All other things being equal numbers, (the structure increases the resistance to hostile environment, while simplification decreases it). That is why physically and intellectually complete peoples, such as Indians or Polynesians, were powerless against colonizers who were not the best representatives of their peoples. Thus, the greatest danger to both ethnoses and to nature is posed by neighbors who have not lost the ability to adapt in the process of development and are therefore expanding their range. Without the appearance of such an enemy, a relic ethnos can exist indefinitely long[57]. But the destruction, up to total extermination, of developing ethnoses is not excluded if they encounter the irreversible resistance of their more predatory neighbors. Let us limit ourselves to one illustrative example, the Turks of the 6th-8th centuries (Turkuts).

From 550 to 581 years a small Altai ethnos, the Turkuts, established their domination over the whole Great Steppe from China to the Don, and from Siberia to Iran. The system, which was called "Eternal El", was flexible and ramified. The steppe and mountain tribes, the Sogdian oases and the vast lower reaches of the Volga, merchants and shepherds, Buddhists and fire worshipers, along with the warrior Turks themselves, who worshiped "the blue sky and the black earth", found their place in it.

But China, united by the Sui Dynasty (589-618) and the victorious Tang Empire (619-907) were stronger and more aggressive. The Chinese could not break the resistance of the Turks by military force, but by means of diplomacy they succeeded in dividing the united Kaganate into a Western and an Eastern one, then they isolated the steppe Turks from the oases of the Tarim basin, which they occupied, and Sogdiana, which was thus sacrificed to the Arabs. Then the Chinese restored against the Turks the Uigurs, Karluks, and Basmals, and achieved the defeat of the Türkic horde in 747, and the winners did not take prisoners. However the Chinese themselves have accepted Turkic fugitives, and enlisted them in the frontier forces. These "lucky" fugitives perished in 756-763, taking part in the rebellion of An Lushan against the arbitrariness of the Chinese bureaucracy. In addition to the Chinese, the rebels were opposed by steppe Uighurs and mountaineers from Tibet, so there was nowhere to flee. The isolated, and thus simplified, system perished. And wherever a similar collision is observed, the mechanism of the process remains unchanged.

NOTES

[27] Or the quotient at the fact of communication (in the cybernetic sense), such as the father's concern for his son.

[28] Ross Ashby W. Introduction to Cybernetics. М., 1959. С. 13.

[29] Ibid. С. 18.

[30] Ibid. С. 13.

[31] Ibid. С. 21.

[32] Ibid. С. 14.

[33] Bertalanffy L. General systems theory - a critical review // Studies in General Systems Theory? Ed. by V. Ed. by Sadovsky N. and Yudin E. G. М., 1969. С. 28.

[34] Sadovsky V. N. N., Yudin E. G. Tasks, methods and applications of the general theory of systems // Ibid. С. 12.

[35] Malinovsky A. A. General questions of the system structure and their significance for biology / / Problems of the methodology of systems research / Edited by I. V. Blauberg et al. М., 1970. С. 145-150.

[36] Rashevsky N. Organizmic sets. An Essay on the General Theory of Biological and Social Organisms / / Studies on the General Theory of Systems. М., 1969. С. 445.

[37] [It is neither a biological system, nor only a social system, since the analogy of the biological and social levels is not well grounded {Mashnovsky A. A. General Issues. С. 182).

[38] Sviridov M.N. At the forefront of space science // Nature, 1966. -8. С. 112.

[39] History of Italy: In 3 vol. Т. 1. / Ed. by V. D. Skazkin. М., 1970. С.233.

[40] Sokolov N.P. Venice between Guelphs and Ghibellines // Voprosy historii.1975. - 9. С. 142-153.

[41] Speaking about natural process in such a way, we do not admit anthropomorphism, we just use a usual turn in the form of "brook has made a channel and it forms a bend".

[42] Thierry O. Izbr. op. cit. p. 244-247.

[43] In the Middle East in the 13th century the "Franks" were called all the Western Europeans.

[44] Bertems A.E. Nasir-i Khusraw and Ismailism. М., 1959. С. 202-247.

[45] Nowadays, the Arabic-speaking people of the Middle East are called Arabs. This is incorrect. Most of the populations of Syria, Iran and North Africa are a mixture of ancient ethnicities in the contact zone. The descendants of the true Arabs are the Bedouins of Saudi Arabia.

[46] Steblin-Kamenskiy M.I. Culture of Iceland. Л., 1967.

[47] Marx K., Engels F. Opus, 2nd ed. Vol. 20 p. 610.

[48] The deserters, who had taken refuge in Parthia and on the Rhine frontier of the Roman empire, escaped.

[49] Nehru D. The discovery of India. М., 1955. С. 53.

[50] Shibutani T. Social psychology. М., 1969. С. 28.

[51] Ibid. С. 32.

[52] Ibid. С. 42.

[53] A special excursus is devoted to the most complex and important of them (cf: Gumilev L.N. Ethnos and the category of time // Reports of the Departments and Commissions of the VGO. Vol. 15. 1970.).

[54] Holden J.B.S. Factors of evolution. MOSCOW, L., 1935. С. 71 f.

[55] Ibid. С. 82. - A similar conclusion can be drawn using the methodology of cybernetics: "In a set subject to a single-valued transformation, diversity cannot increase, but will usually decrease" (Ross Ashby W. Introduction to Cybernetics. P. 193).

[56] By introducing the concepts of "altruism" and "egoism," we are by no means giving them a qualitative assessment. "Good" and "bad" have nothing to do with them, as is clear from what follows. The use of familiar words as scientific terms is justified only by the need to facilitate the reader's understanding of the construction of the concept as such. "Altruism" is more accurately called "anti-egoism."

[57] Rychkov Y.G. Anthropology and Genetics of Isolated Populations (Ancient Isolates of the Pamirs). М., 1969.

.