Article
Article name Images of the Universe, Deities and Shamans on the Petroglyphs of the Middle Lena
Authors Vasiliev V.E.Candidate of History valera305@mail.ru
Bibliographic description Vasiliev V. E. Images of the Universe, Deities and Shamans on the Petroglyphs of the Middle Lena // Humanitarian Vector. 2019. Vol. 14, No. 3. PP. 80–88. DOI: 10.21209/1996-7853-2019-14-3-80-88.
Section
DOI 10.21209/1996-7853-2019-14-3-80-88
UDK 902.2(571.56)
Article type
Annotation This article discusses the rock paintings of the Middle Lena, which are witnesses of the centuries-old life activity of people, ranging from the Neolithic and Paleometal to the late Middle Ages. A. P. Okladnikov, who studied the writings on the banks of the Lena River and its tributaries, came to very remarkable and substantiated conclusions about the evolution of the development of ideological views of ancient hunters and herdsmen. According to him, moose, hunters, priests and deities are depicted on the rocks. These petroglyphs were imbued with the idea of honoring the forces of nature, totems and sorcerers shamans. Developing the thoughts of A. P. Okladnikov, the author of the article comes to the hypothesis that not only objects of culture in the form of images of ancestors, spirits and deities were endowed with supernatural properties, but the rocks themselves acted as protectors of the clan and tribe. This tradition was also deeply inherent in the southern ancestors of the Sakha, who inherited the horse-breeding culture of the nomads of Central Asia. Adaptive processes in the Far North led to the addition of a peculiar symbiosis of religious beliefs of the Yakut people, in which the southern and autochthonous elements were closely intertwined. These features played a big role in the addition of two layers of shamanism Sakha: Tungus (northern, “alien”) and proper Türkic-Mongolian (southern, “native”). The archaic idea of the pairing of the forces of nature and man (patrons and society) lies at the heart of the system of Siberian shamanism. Therefore, the symbolic codes of the Petroglyphs of Lena are easy to “read” on the ethnographic materials of the Sakha people.
Key words Yakutia, Lena, Central Asia, petroglyphs, deer stones, balbals, serge, shamanism
Article information
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