Who inhabited the South Ural region in the distant past? What do we know about the nomads of the early Iron Age? Is it true that the ancestors of modern Hungarians lived in the Urals? Did the Amazons really exist? Why did a Saka warrior need a mirror in battle? We are talking about the past of the South Ural region before the advent of a new era with the Director of the Eurasian Studies Research and Education Centre of South Ural State University, Doctor of Sciences (History) Aleksandr Tairov.
Stone Age, Bronze Age...
There are few monuments of the Old Stone Age or the Paleolithic Age in the South Ural region. It is difficult to find the places of living of people of that time, because, as a rule, those are covered with many meters of sedimentary deposits. The opening of deposits sometimes happens by accident: for example, the river washed away the shore, as was the case near the village of Bogdanovka on the Ural River, or animal bones and stone tools were found during construction work − this is how a man site was discovered within the precincts of the city of Troitsk. Some caves were used as habitats, or sanctuaries were located in them (Ignatievka Cave).
The Stone Age in our country is represented mainly by later epochs − the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic period (post-glacial time) and the new Stone Age or Neolithic Age. The latest excavations were carried out in the mountain-forest part of the South Ural region, in the area of Bolshoye Miassovoe and Irtyash Lakes, led by Vadim Mosin. Currently, his student Ekaterina Iakovleva is actively engaged in the study of the Stone Age in the Chelyabinsk Region. Our colleagues from Chelyabinsk State University have been studying the Stone Age site on the territory of the Mikheevsky Mining and Processing Plant, on the border of the Varna and Kartalinsky Districts, for the second year in a row.
Bronze Age in the South Ural region is the period from 22nd and 21st to 9th and 8th centuries BC. This era is being studied by Doctor of Sciences (History) Andrey Epimakhov. His last works are excavations at the fortified settlement of Kamenny Ambar and the burial grounds adjacent to it. In addition, he explored the burial ground associated with the fortified settlement of Sintashta-2 in the Bredinsky District. The Sintashta, Alakul, Fedorov and other archaeological cultures belong to the Bronze Age. The famous Arkaim is also among the Bronze Age monuments. At the end of the Bronze Age, the South Ural region become empty − the monuments of the final stage of the Bronze Age are rare. There is a gap between the cultures of the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age in the South Ural region. But there is no such gap in Inner Asia (Mongolia, Northern China), and one can trace the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
New men of the Iron Age
When does the early Iron Age begin? Now this date is considered closer to the end of the 9th and beginning of the 8th century BC, although this issue is debatable. But the second half of the 8th century BC is indisputably the early Iron Age. One of the brightest finds: we investigated a children's burial in a barrow near the village of Shatmantamak in Bashkiria, in the Miyakinsky District in 2015. An interesting clay vessel was found in it, dated by radiocarbon method to the end of the 9th century BC. It depicts some kind of animal in black paint. The shape of the vessel is typical for the 6th to 5th centuries BC, however, carved ornaments are more common on the vessels of this time. Here the drawing is made with paint, which is more typical for the east of the Eurasian steppe, for example, for Altai. We attributed this burial to the transitional time from the Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, and our Ufa colleagues, after analysing the funeral rite, came to the conclusion that this was the very beginning of the Early Iron Age.
At the beginning of the Iron Age, a completely new people came to the South Ural region. This can be seen, among other things, from the funeral rite: a person of the Bronze Age was buried on his side, and a person of the Iron Age was buried on his back. The newcomers have a different material culture, and they are different in anthropological point of view, not similar to the population of the Bronze Age.
We cannot say much about the culture and religion of the people of this era. According to the funeral rite, it is possible to establish where, according to their beliefs, the other world was located, with what accompaniment they went there. And they went to the other world with the same things that they used during their lifetime: a warrior with weapons, a priestess with cult objects. They also manifested the cult of ancestors quite clearly, especially warlike ancestors. Some ideas about the peoples of that time are given by the data cited by the "Father of History", Herodotus, who visited the Northern Black Sea region in the 5th century BC and left a description of the Scythians who lived there. And the Scythians were close to the South Ural nomads in origin and language, therefore, to some extent, the ideas of the Scythians can be transferred to the inhabitants of our steppes. Herodotus describes the worship of the Scythians to the sword and names the Scythian deities.
Another source is the Ossetian Nart epic. The fact is that the Ossetians, according to researchers, are the direct descendants of the Sarmatians, who lived, among other things, in the territory of the South Ural region, but then left for the Volga-Don steppes. Part of the Sarmatians, Alans, as is known from Roman sources, settled in the North Caucasus. To this day, North Ossetia is also called Alania. The Ossetian language belongs to the north-eastern subgroup of the Iranian group of languages. It is believed that the early Iron Age nomads of the western part of the Eurasian steppes spoke the languages of this subgroup. The Nart epic helps to reconstruct the religious ideas of the nomads of the early Iron Age, their social structure, and individual elements of culture.
Nomads, metallurgists, hunters
The South Ural nomads had close ties with the population of the forest-steppe zone of the South Ural region. In the Urals, different geographical zones join: steppe and forest-steppe, the border between which runs approximately along the width of the Uy River. The forest-steppe is divided into southern and northern, the border between them is the Miass River. The steppe and southern forest-steppe zone in the Early Iron Age was inhabited by typical nomads who did not have permanent dwellings and moved with their herds from the South Ural region to the Aral Sea region and back throughout the year. A semi-nomadic population lived in the northern forest-steppe. They left settlements and fortified sites of towns secured by fortifications. In the mountain-forest part of the South Ural region, the situation was somewhat different. Carriers of the Itkul archaeological culture, metallurgists (partly semi-nomads), lived in the foothills, from Miass to Nyazepetrovsk, along the shores of lakes (Itkul, Irtyash, Nanoga, Kasli, etc.) and along the banks of the rivers. They had both fortified and unfortified settlements. The mountain part itself was inhabited by representatives of the Gamayun culture − hunters, gatherers, a settled population that had both stationary settlements and hunting camps (Ufa-2 settlement, Serny Klyuch).
What can be said about the contacts between them? There are features of Gamayun ceramics in the ornament of Itkul ceramics, artefacts of both cultures are found in the same layers. Probably, there were not only economic, but also marriage ties.
An interesting feature of the Gamayun culture is that almost all of its household equipment was made of stone. It turned out that the population sort of "slowed down" at the level of the Stone Age. They only had metal in jewellery. Tools of labour and hunting (knives, arrowheads, tools for processing wood and animal skins) were made of stone, although they were neighboured upon the Itkul people. And the Itkul people were the main suppliers of copper and products made of it for the population of the steppe and forest-steppe of the South Ural region. They exported copper tools, metal utensils, arrowheads, moulds for casting them, and ingot metal.
What the Itkul people imported is a mystery, because no burials were found among the Itkul people. Apparently, their obsequies did not leave traces, in contrast to the nomads of the forest-steppe, who buried the dead in grave pits and burial mounds. The only burial ground that we can associate with the Itkul culture is Kurtuguz, where many fragments of human bones, barely covered with soil, were found. It is possible that the Itkul people left the dead on the surface of the earth or hung them on trees. This makes them related to the Ugric language speaking tribes (modern Khanty). The excavations of the Itkul settlements give a large number of traces of metallurgy, but no traces of borrowings from the nomads were found in them − neither in art, in animal style, nor in the obsequies. And this gives reason to believe that the Itkul population was in tributary dependence on the steppe nomads. Tributaries do not perceive the cultural traditions of their conquerors. That is why the Itkul people built settlements, otherwise, who knows, perhaps the tribute would have been much greater.
Where to look for the roots of the Hungarians?
The bearers of the Gorokhovets archaeological culture lived to the east of the Itkul people, on the territory of the modern Kurgan Region. The top of their society was made up of Iranian-speaking nomads, who for one reason or another found themselves in the forest-steppe. Therefore, the Gorokhovets people adopted the traditions of the obsequies of the steppe nomads: grave pits, mounds, including huge ones (for example, Babiy Bugor). In material culture, in the art of the animal style, the influence of nomads can also be noted. It can be assumed that the Gorokhovets people were no longer tributaries, but allies of the steppe nomads. There is an assumption that the Gorokhovets tribes, and then the Sargat people who replaced them, spoke a mixture of Ugric and Iranian languages, later with the addition of Turkic. Perhaps they stood at the origins of the process that eventually led to the formation of proto-Hungarians, who later migrated to Europe.
The Gorokhovets people were driven out by the Sargat people − the carriers of the Sargat archaeological culture, who came from the banks of the Ob and Irtysh rivers. The paths of the Gorokhovets people diverged: some moved with the nomads of the steppe to the south (to the South Ural region and Central Asia), others settled in the forest-steppe of the Cis-Urals region, in the so-called Krasnoufimsko-Mesyagutovskaya forest-steppe, where they gradually disappeared into the mass of the local population.
From the beginning of the 4th century BC, the nomadic population of the South Ural region gradually migrated to the south and west, which was associated with sharp climatic changes at the turn of the 4th to 5th centuries BC. The Sarmatians conquered Scythia in the west in the Northern Black Sea region and then moved to Europe. In the south, they ended up in the region of Khorezm and Parthia, where they created great powers. And the South Ural region was empty again by the 2nd century BC.
Now SUSU students are conducting excavations at the Uelgi burial ground in the Kunashaksky District. This is an early medieval burial ground that is directly related to the origin of the Hungarians. The Chelyabinsk Region is the easternmost part of the territory where they were formed. Two children's burials were found, the inventory of which has close "analogues" in the territory of modern Hungary.
Last year, the Aktyuba burial ground was explored in the Krasnoarmeisky District, where things directly related to the Hungarians were also found. Representatives of Hungary visited the excavations at Uelgi. This monument is well known among European archaeologists.
The Amazons mystery
The myth of the Amazons is widespread: from ancient Greece to the countries of the Ancient East. Herodotus claimed that the Savromats descended from the marriage of the Amazons with the Scythians. Female warriors among the Savromats, who were related to the Scythians and Sarmatians, participated in hostilities on an equal basis with men. The study of Sarmatian and Scythian female burials confirms this. For example, the works of Natalia Berseneva, an employee of the SUSU Eurasian Studies Research and Education Centre, lead to the conclusion that the women were involved in military enterprises.
Three female burials were found in one of the mounds in the burial ground of Kichigino: one priestly and two military ones − with a typically female set of implements (torques, jewellery), next to which were quivers with arrows. Moreover, the number of arrows reached one and a half hundred, it is unlikely that such a number is necessary for hunters.
Herodotus wrote that among the Sauromatians, a woman could marry only if she killed two enemies, which sounds quite plausible. If male warriors participated in hostilities outside their territory, it was up to women and the elderly to defend the camp. So women had to at least master archery. Maybe, indeed, one of them was knocked out as the leaders of the tribes.
Not everyone was honoured with a mound
Could the weapon be in the burial site of a child? Only if he reached a certain age and passed the rite of initiation. Until that time, the child was not considered fully human. In some periods of ancient history, there are practically no children's burials. For example, in the Sauromatian time, in the 6th to 5th centuries BC, children's burials are still observed, but since the end of the 5th century BC, they have not been found in the South Trans-Urals region. And at the same time, a young man of 10-12 years old was buried with a complete set of a man: a quiver with arrows, an iron dagger, a bridle.
There is a problem of underrepresentation of burials in the study of the Early Iron nomads. Obviously, not everyone was buried in grave pits. Male burials belong to warriors, female burials belong to priestesses, but where the "ordinary" population is? Probably other funeral rites also took place. For example, like the Mongols: the body of the deceased was placed on a wagon and driven across the steppe, and where the body fell, there it remained. Numerous accidental finds of swords and daggers on the territory of the South Ural region, especially the Ural Bashkiria, can testify in favour of the existence of such a burial rite among the early nomads.
Why did a warrior need a mirror?
One of the latest works of Aleksandr Tairov is connected with the study of early Saka bronze mirrors. This mystery is associated with burials of the 7th to 6th centuries BC, including those in the Kichigino burial ground mentioned above.
Among the weapons, the usual inventory that accompanied the burial of a warrior of this time, there are unusual objects − mirrors with a long handle. It is generally accepted that the mirrors of the Early Iron nomads in the vast majority are associated with female burials.
However, mirrors from male military burials bear no resemblance to fashionmongers' accessories. It is a polished bronze disc with a handle in the form of a knife or a pointed pin, which, for example, can be stuck into the ground. These items were kept in the same leather scabbard with a bronze or iron dagger.
Aleksandr Tairov suggests that this object could serve as a means of signalling to a warrior. Perhaps it was a badge of distinction, like modern epaulettes, or a cult object − but one can only guess about this.