On the worldview of the ancient inhabitants of the "Country of Cities"

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

We talked about the worldview of the ancient inhabitants of the Land of Cities and modern archaeologists with the head of the Arkaim expedition, Professor Gennady Borisovich Zdanovich. Not without, of course, the Aryans, swastikas, mandalas, Eurasianism, geopolitics, but it turned out that such topics can be discussed from the standpoint of science and without falling into hysterics.

- You mentioned that your research in the Country of Cities - This is the development of a "huge Eurasian theme" of political significance. What is the meaning, what is the pathos of this topic?

- From the Carpathians to Northwest China a huge space stretches - the endless Eurasian steppe. The ancient culture of this steppe is geographically the largest culture in the world. All cultural worlds in these steppes have always been closely interconnected, despite all the ethnic diversity. Back in the early Bronze Age, in the third millennium BC, all this vast territory was connected by the so-called "Yamnaya archaeological" culture of the most ancient Indo-Europeans, engaged in cattle breeding and building barrows. The ancient "yamniks" are the progenitors of later cultures - the same ancient Greeks.

They say that the Russian Empire is an artificial formation that kept the peoples in check by force and exploited them. This is nonsense - always, in all eras, the earths from China to the Danube were together - it was dictated by geographical mechanisms. Tatar-Mongols, Huns, all created their empires within the same limits. It is useless here to set boundaries and elect presidents. No Chinese walls will help here, anyway geography and common spiritual culture will make us one.

And working in the Urals, we actually work in this entire Eurasian space. The Ural is a geopolitically key region of the connection between Europe and Asia, the meeting of civilizations, watershed of rivers flowing to the West and to the East.

- Why is there such a stir around the fact that the Aryans lived here?

- In the northeast of the Indo-European world, there were tribes who called themselves the Aryans, "noble". Later they came to Iran ("Iran" means - "Aryan") and India, and brought there the most ancient religious texts - Rigveda and Avesta. They were recorded much later, but originally exactly passed by word of mouth, it was a non-written culture. The word that “was in the beginning”, the revelation from which any religion begins, is always oral. These texts Rigveda and Avesta, who entered the European world through the East India Company, in the 19th century shook Europe, everyone was shocked by the depth of their philosophical content. But it is terrible that as a result the word "Aryans" was used for their own purposes by the nationalists, and it is still associated with the Nazis, and in science it is still dangerous to pronounce it. Both in science and in everyday life we must restore dignity to the word of the Aryans - after all, these were worthy people who left behind a colossal spiritual heritage. But ideology gets in the way - Europe is still afraid of the word "arias", afraid of the swastika. This is absurd - this is how they were afraid of Wagner's music, because Hitler loved Wagner.

What is a swastika?

- The oldest symbol of the universe, the movement of the sun. It was present in very many cultures - on carpets among the Central Asians, embroidered on towels among the Slavs, even in Mesoamerica. Man has always lived by symbols. In the Country of Cities, the swastika is found everywhere - it is lined with stones in grave pits, and on hills, painted on ceramic pots and in bronze ornaments, everywhere. There are societies with an emphasis on spiritual culture, and the Country of Cities was such a society.

- So, it turns out that the "true Aryans" did not live in Germany, but on our territory?

- We, archaeologists working in Arkaim, are deeply convinced that the inhabitants of the Country of Cities are the Aryans, before the division into two groups, one of which came to Northern India, and the other a little later - to Iran. But belief is one thing, and the system of scientific evidence is another. Until this is finally proven, it must be spoken of as a hypothesis.

- Here's what I don't understand: the traditional culture is changing very slowly, not so much time has passed between the common culture of the Country of Cities and the arrival of the Aryans in India and Iran, and the Vedas and the Avesta are still very different texts, although they are related to each other. Why did cultures disperse so quickly, how could sacred texts change so much?

- Rigveda and Avesta - multilayered texts. Something was brought into them, something left. But the oldest layers of texts that they have preserved are absolutely the same. Linguists know very well that Rigveda and Avesta as if written by one author. It describes one territory, one gods. But then they split up and as a result in India a group of gods called "devi" became good, and "asuras" became evil, and in Iran, on the contrary, "devas" - evil, and "ashura" - good.

- And how united were the Aryans in the Land of Cities - was it one tribe?

- In the Land of Cities, different tribes were in constant contact. Let's remember the Greeks - why did they give the world such unbridled mythology, fantasy and, ultimately, science? They were torn apart into policies, city-states, but philosophers visited each other, poets gathered for competitions, Olympic games and other holidays were held. It was a special information space. The same in the Country of Cities - here, on an area of about 400 square kilometers, there were about 20 fortified cities. They were independent, but there were roads and contacts between them.

But the cities were independent fortresses. To get to the city it was necessary overcome the maze, and in general, the defense here is crazy, beyond defense in those days.

- What were they so defending against? To defend well, you need to have experience in more than one war …

- Well, what are we afraid of the United States? In this sense, man is a bad creature … It is we who call ourselves rational, but in reality we are thinking beings, but ultimately irrational. All our election campaigns, advertising, the cult of making money, and in general, look from the outside at our life - this is the life of fools. This world is rushing into the abyss.

A in the world of the Aryans of the Country of cities, we, archaeologists, are struck by the spiritual side, which in many respects subordinates to itself the material, is relegated to the background. In the same building of fortresses, this ingenious layout of nested circles and squares, like a model of the universe. In India it became known as mandala. Even surprisingly thoughtful everyday life - warm floors, pits, refrigerators, metallurgy, plumbing - all this is closely related to the spiritual dimension, and it is very easy to read, no need to think out anything.

- A lot of things look like a mandala - for example, the shell of a turtle, but this does not mean that a turtle is a highly spiritual being …

- Of course, everything that we create is done on some natural basis - we are an integral part of the world and we cannot leave nature, no matter what we invent. Nevertheless, our mind creates from this material a huge cultural space, material and spiritual culture. The main thing is that Arkaim was created and comprehended by the human mind …

- And how do we know how they thought it? How do we know that for them it was not just an engineering structure, but had a spiritual meaning?

- You know, you probably need to dig to understand this. Understanding thinking is the hardest part. But also the main thing in the work of an archaeologist is the history of human thinking, an attempt to understand the worldview of another culture. When you work, you are constantly confronted with this worldview, and you see that many things are not accidental. Certainly, the circle of walls is important for defense, but, for example, it is consecrated in a special way - at the base there are traces of sacrifices, or the burial of children.

You know, it is difficult to talk about what we feel and understand when we dig, it needs a good writer. Archeology is a very time consuming science. In every field season we find several thousand items - only in your hands you won't be able to hold them all for a year, and each of them needs to be processed, described, classified, spectral analysis done, linked to chronology, perhaps, radiocarbon analysis done, placed in a museum. With such a small team like ours, it is very difficult. Sometimes our hands are discouraged, because it begins to seem that we do not have enough time to process the material. And how many monuments are being destroyed! We are now working only on those monuments that are being destroyed. If, for example, there is a good mound, we do not touch it.

- Aren't you afraid to invent something of your own, reconstructing the worldview of the ancients?

- Until I ran into Arkaim, it seemed to me that all this Indo-European mythology was our handiwork, the cleverness of our time, our philosophers such as Toporov and Losev. It seemed to me that all this is the delight of the modern mind, and the ancient man is simple and primitive. He survived, fought with nature, was purely practically oriented. And now I understand that ancient man from the very beginning lived a rich symbolic and spiritual life, primitive thinkers were no less intelligent than modern thinkers.

- And the texts of the Rig Veda and the Avesta themselves somehow help you in your work, as the Iliad once helped Schliemann?

- Yes, although we are archaeologists, we also work with texts that, it would seem, have nothing to do with the excavation. I can give you many examples, well, let's talk about Agni, the god of fire. Here we are digging wells on Arkaim there is a well in every dwelling. And the Institute of Mineralogy works with us, we give them materials for analysis. And now it turns out that in each well there are traces of metallurgical production, furnaces, copper dust. We are perplexed - it was not deliberately dropped there. Why was the metallurgical furnace next to the well? And then one day I see that a hole from the well to the furnace has been preserved, they were built as a single complex … A in the Rigveda and other mythological sources the god of fire Agni is born from dark, mysterious water. This contradiction was completely incomprehensible to the philologists and historians of myths who studied these texts - after all, this is absurd! I was dumbfounded looking at this well, and we decided to dig to the bottom by all means, usually we don't get to the bottom - it's deep. At the bottom of the well lay animal skulls, burnt bones - they were obviously put there on purpose. We immediately built the same stove on this place, brought the ore and for the first time in the world got copper from ore in an ancient furnace. Getting copper from ore is a very difficult process, and it managed to be carried out thanks to the strong draft, the blowing arising from the temperature difference in the well and in the furnace. See what logic - simple fire cannot melt ore, but only the fire god, who is born from dark water, from a well, can.

Or here in Rig Veda has the word "pur" - a fortress, describing the mythical heavenly cities. It was believed that the Aryans did not have fortresses, they thought that this was a figment of the imagination. And even now, many still think so, a very long time must pass for the discovery to be comprehended and recognized, even to simply publish the materials. And most of our materials on Arkaim have not yet been published. The 20 years of research that have passed since the discovery of Arkaim is not much.

- 20 years of research - a little ?!

- After all, archeology has existed for a very short time - 200 years., and the Eurasian space began to be truly explored only in the post-war period. These decades of research are nothing for archeology. People have been living here for 100 thousand years, and we have been studying them for 20 years, and how we study - by primitive means, without money, with enthusiastic students. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, for example, the Himalayas and Tibet were not even really on our geographical maps, they were completely unknown territories. Even the geography of Siberia was created by the generation of my grandfathers. But what about archeology? We learned about the greatest civilizations, such as the Sumerians, quite recently.

- What can this knowledge give us?

Archeology is history and it should become the property of a wide range of people, be present in the consciousness of every person living here.

The only difference between a man and a ram, from a cow is history. Sheep are also in their own way, beautiful, good, intelligent creatures, but without history they are just a herd of sheep. Historical illiteracy is a terrible disease of our society, according to the head of the Arkaim expedition, Professor Gennady Borisovich Zdanovich.

Published in Russian Reporter. Andrey Konstantinov.

Here you can financially support a group of enthusiasts who set out to record a series of lectures on the "Country of Cities".

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