Arkaim - Sintashta: axial time and axial space in the development of the Eurasian steppes

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Zdanovich G. B.

“… you do not know that in your country there was a most beautiful and perfect human tribe, from which you and all of you and your city originated … After all, once, Solon, before the great catastrophe of the flood, the present Athenians had a city that was the strongest in military affairs, but especially strong legislation excellent in all parts"

Plato "Timaeus"

Opening of unique settlements and burial grounds in the Chelyabinsk Trans-Urals and adjacent regions of the Orenburg region, Bashkiria and Kazakhstan III - IIthousand BC posed a number of fundamentally new problems for researchers. Today we are ready to consider the phenomenon of steppe bronze in the Ural-Kazakh region as a systemic factor in the development of civilizational processes in the entire space of northern Eurasia.

Let us dwell briefly on some of the highlights of the culture, technological and social achievements of society in the Bronze Age.

For the first time at the turn III - IIthousand BC in the steppe, an integrated production type economy was established, which determined the development of the steppe-forest-steppe for almost one and a half thousand years. This farm is characterized by sedentary pastoralism with elements of agriculture, developed metallurgy, urbanized living areas with monumental architecture and fortifications. This is the era of the affirmation of the general role of the horse in the main spheres of life of human collectives - in the economy, in the implementation of communication ties, in military affairs and trade events, as well as in ritual activities and, in general, in the spiritual sphere.

The unusually developed ritual sphere, the traces of which literally fill the Arkaim living and burial space, testifies to the realized need of the Arkaim-Sintashta society in fixing information flows and their transmission to subsequent generations.

Hypertrophied ritual and ceremonial activities, in their ability to accumulate and transmit information at the early stages of the formation of civilizations, may exceed the capabilities of written societies.

I intend to argue that all of the above-mentioned significant civilizational characteristics took place in the societies of the Southern Trans-Urals at the turn of the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC.

In the civilizational process of that time, I see a super-unity of cultural phenomena. This super-unity gives rise to a trans-system of technological and socio-cultural interactions. In other words, the explosion of culture that took place in the Southern Trans-Urals captured vast territories of Eurasia and various human collectives into its orbit, and acquired the character of the main path of history. A phenomenon that has grown up as a local one becomes globally significant.

I think you understand me correctly. The elements of the production type economy in its steppe version were ripe in all corners of the steppe, starting from the Neolithic-Eneolithic era. The steppe peoples had their own experience of domestication of the horse, and in the west of the region, possibly also the pig. Constant contacts between mobile catacomb breeders of the Yamno-Catacomb circle with southern and southwestern agricultural cultures inevitably led to the experience of establishing agricultural skills in the steppe.

The accumulation of new knowledge in metallurgy and the formation of elements of the future Eurasian metallurgical province also took place gradually, but its birth as system-forming technologies should be associated with the Trans-Urals and the Ural-Kazakh steppes of the end of the III-II millennium BC.

The same can be said about urbanism as a special form of concentration of people in a limited area.

So, various elements of socio-cultural and technological achievements have long been present in the steppe. However, they were carried out in a narrow space of the Trans-Urals - here everything just came together, starting with the geographical factor.

The steppe-forest-steppe belt was the only road that connected the worlds of Europe and Asia through open spaces. Opened from west to east and from east to west, it stretches for 8 thousand km from the Black Sea coast to Altai, Mongolia and China¹… The core of the knot is the Trans-Ural peneplain, the south of the Chelyabinsk region is the oldest now almost leveled mountain ridge, which was once located east of the modern Urals. This mountain system, destroyed by time, today can only be guessed by the variety of exposed minerals and the numerous outcrops of deep springs that give rise to the easternmost waters of Europe and the westernmost waters of Asian Siberia.

It is here, on the Chelyabinsk peneplain, that the Great Divide of European and Asian rivers lies. This is the only place on the geographical map of the Eurasian continent where the sources of the waters of the Siberian rivers and the Arctic with the waters of the Caspian and the Mediterranean are closely intertwined. (Throughout the anthropogenous period, the Caspian Sea was repeatedly connected to the Black Sea.) It can be figuratively said that waters from the Chelyabinsk peneplain flow in all directions of the world: to the west and east, to the north and south. Perhaps, it is to this road that we owe the conceptual birth of Eurasia as a “place of connection”, “place of development”, a “place of unity” between Europe and Asia, as a single natural and anthropogenic landscape.

Looking back from the height of our time at the historical "through the looking glass" - the era of Arkaim and Sintashta - and evaluating human experience, it is hard not to notice that the Southern Trans-Urals was an ideal place for the birth of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. Historical and geographical research (L. I. Mechnikov, A. D. Toynbee, L. N. Gumilev, etc.) unequivocally convinces that the emergence and development of outstanding centers of culture took place in areas that were distinguished by contrasting landscapes. Only at the junctions of natural zones - mountains and plains, sea and land, large river valleys and interfluves - were born new forms of social life and new technologies. Bright breakthroughs of the spirit and the first "seeds" of the noosphere, which V. I. Vernadsky and P. Teilhard de Chardin were associated with the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age.

Detailed research in the field of historical and geographical interrelationships belongs to L. N. Gumilyov²… He compiled a "Map of the territories where new ethnic groups arose". At the same time, he used the term “local development”: “Not every territory can be a local development. So, in the space of Eurasia, in the entire strip of continuous forests, not a single people, not a single culture arose. Everything that is there is brought from the south or from the north. A clean continuous steppe also does not provide an opportunity for development. … A true place of development is the territory of a combination of two or more landscapes. This position is true not only for Eurasia, but also for the entire globe. "Modern researchers call the natural environment capable of giving birth to new cultures and civilizations," landscape ecotone "³.

L. N. Gumilev identified only 16 regions of active ethnogenesis throughout the world. The opening of Arkaim and the "Country of cities" makes it possible to mark another 17th region of "place of development", or "landscape ecotone". In the history of mankind, such places acted not only as the nucleus of socio.-and-cultural genesis, but from here proceeded an active cultural expansion into neighboring near and distant territories.

In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the special cultural and aesthetic value of the Trans-Ural landscape. The nature of the Trans-Urals is captivating in its diversity - harsh and unbridled, at the same time gracious, open to all earthly and heavenly limits. Such a habitat gave birth to powerful human characters. There is no place for relaxed contemplation and sluggish being. Nature compelled and inspired to action, led to unprecedented spiritual and creative impulses.

Posted in collection of abstracts of the round table “Culture of Eurasianism. Historical and contemporary problems . Chelyabinsk. September 18, 2012, p. 9-12.

Photo by Konovalov A. N., drawings by Gurevich L. L., Boyko N. N.

1 The total length of the Eurasia continent is 16 thousand km

2 Gumilev A. N. Ethnogenesis and biosphere of the earth. SPb.: Azbuka-klassika, 2002, pp. 219 - 220