A new old hypothesis of the origin of the Yakuts (on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of A.A. Savvin, a specialist in folklore, ethnographer, and local historian)

A.A. Savvin (1896–1951) was one of the first Yakut ethnographers and folklore specialists who left huge scientific heritage of which only a small article was published during his lifetime. The Manuscript collection of IHRISN of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science keeps his personal collection consisting of about 100 items with a total amount of more than 500 printed pages. The guiding idea of his works was the question of the origin of the Yakuts. A.A. Savvin didn't have time to arrange his views into a well-knit system during his lifetime, but nevertheless, his notes and reflections based on a wide use of folklore, ethnographic, linguistic, archeological and historical sources have stood the test of time. The aim of this article is to select, order and systematize his random notes and essays and to reconstruct thereby the author's vision of the problem of the origin of the Yakuts. Many ideas stated by A.A. Savvin in his manuscripts find scientific support nowadays, confirming thereby his deep understanding of the scientific problem under consideration, for example, periodization of the ethnogenesis of the Yakuts in three main stages, distinguishing of the layer of Yakut-Hun parallels, personification of ancient and medieval clans which made up the central core of the Sakha people and their culture, early (prior to Russian) occupation of Northeast outlying areas by nomadic herders, etc. Hence, this article considers the modern conceptual ideas of the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Yakuts, basing on cross-disciplinary analysis of the latest paleoethnographic data and archaeological artifacts of the last several years

Tribes «which became wind»: autochthonous substrate in ethnocultural genesis of the Yakuts revisited

The study of the origin of the Yakuts focuses on the ethnic history of their alien Turkic-Mongolian ancestors. Issues of mutual ethnocultural influence of local and alien ethnic groups and identification of autochthonous tribes who took part in formation of the Yakut people are not fully researched. Yakut legends mention the tribes «which became wind», Khara-Sagyly, the mysterious «long-headed» Sakha, the bellicose Tumats/Jirikinei, etc. The question of their ethnic identification is one of the most complex and not fully developed within the issue of ethnocultural genesis of the Yakuts. Some researchers (A.P. Okladnikov, S.I. Tokarev, I.V. Konstantinov, I.E. Zykov and A.I. Gogolev) consider these autochthonous tribes as the Tungusic peoples. According to a hypothesis by A.N. Alekseev and S.I. Nikolaev-Somogotto, an aboriginal layer in the Yakut culture was probably represented by paleo-Siberian and pre-Samoyedic tribes. A successful study of this issue was largely impeded by the lack of informative and sufficiently reliable sources. This problem has been partly solved due to new archaeological discoveries in the last decade, especially to that of a multi-layered man site in Ulakhan Segelenneekh on the Olekma river and thanks to the data of modern molecular-genetic researches. An attempt of a paleoethnic reconstruction of the original culture of the autochthonous tribes of Yakutia and of a comparative historical analysis of ancient traditions and cultures of indigenous peoples of Northern Asia was made in the article combining the data on folklore, toponymics, ethnography, archaeology and ethnic genetics. Integrated research data tell about the presence of ancient ethnocultural links between ancestors of the Yakuts and modern Ural peoples of Western Siberia. The tribes from historical lore and Yakutian legends are said to be aboriginal population of the north-western border of Yakutia, successors of the local archaeological cultures of the Late Neolithic and the Paleometal Age. The material given describes ethnocultural complex processes that took place in ancient Yakutia, which contributed to the formation of the Yakut ethnos and its culture

The ritually disturbed burials of Yakuts (XVII–XVIII сenturies)

Basing on the analysis of the archaeological data on medieval burials of Yakuts we raise the problems of interpretation of graves with traces of an ancient ritual penetration and violation of burial structures and of anatomical integrity of the skeletons of the buried, using ethnographic and folklore data. We give a generalized description of the main types of disturbed graves of the late Middle Ages of Yakutia: secondary burial, embalming, rendering a dangerous dead harmless, desecration, robbery, etc. We provide historical and comparative data from the ancient and medieval cultures of Central Asia, Southern Siberia and the Far East. We examine philosophical ideas about the afterlife, ritual actions of Yakuts against «dangerous» dead and sacred people

Comprehensive study of the early Yakut Sergelyakh burial of the XV — beginning of the XVI centuries

The paper presents a comprehensive study of graves which relate to rare burial sites of the early stage of ethnic history of the Yakuts. The burial belongs to an equestrian warrior. It is confirmed by the findings of the horse harness and fragments of weapons, including a part of a Central Asian composite bow which is unique to the Yakuts, arrowheads and a blade of palma (Siberian pole weapon). The vertebral pathologies and morphological features of femurs also point at riding as a usual way of transportation. Multiple injuries of bones indicate to an aggressive lifestyle. The death of the man was caused by a penetrating injury of the head with a bladed weapon. Craniological characteristics of the man correspond to the South Siberian populations characterized by a combination of Caucasoid and Mongoloid features. In this case, the latter prevails. The ritual funerary complexes correspond to the Ust-Talkin culture, which alongside with cranial features of the man enable us to associate Sergelyakh burial with Turkic part of the Sakha people, which is epically correlated with the legendary Elley Bootur

The woman’s burial of Atlasovskoe-2 of the xvii century in Central Yakutia: results of a complex research

This article presents a complex study of the female burial of the XVII century in Central Yakutia. The burial rite (traces of ritual roasting of the coffin, orientation to the North) and composition of the accompanying inventory (a knife of the non-Yakut origin, a sphero-conical top part of a headdress with a support for a plume, twin overlaid decorative details of the headdress’s crown, a composite pectoral panel picture of sewn-on patches, an earring in the form of a question mark with a biconical bead) determine the peculiarity of the burial, and their nearest parallels can be traced to the Medieval cultures of the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe nomads, as well as to the population of the Siberian forest and tundra zones of the XVI–XIX centuries. Craniological characteristics of the buried woman draw her closer to the populations of Central Asian and Baikal anthropological types of the North Asian formation