Russia Page 2

  The territory of European Russia had been populated before the Ice Age. Among the earliest remains that have so far been discovered is a grave at Sungir, near Vladimir in central Russia. It dates from between 20,000 and 26,000 years ago, and contained the bones of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy and a girl of six or seven. The dead wore garments similar to modern anoraks and leather trousers that were sewn directly to their moccasin-like shoes — a device which Siberians still use to fight the cold. Their clothes had been decorated with thousands of shell beads. These and the variety of stone tools, pierced antler rods, ivory bracelets, and the two spears made from straightened mammoth tusks found with them suggest that the children were the offspring of a chief.1

  The Sungir remains mark an end rather than a beginning, of societies as well as of individuals, for the people of Sungir disappeared along with the mammoths and the population of almost all the rest of Europe. As the cold became more intense, they either died or moved to the warmer climes of the continent’s southern peripheries. However, the territory was resettled after the Ice Age, and so our story resumes after a lapse of several millennia about 10,000 to 16,000 years ago.

  One basic certainty is that the Russians are Europeans by descent. We know this from the work of the geneticist Dr O. Semino and his associates. In the year 2000 they published a major study which has extended knowledge of the genetic history of Europeans. They had analysed blood samples from over 1,000 men from all over Europe, and their findings, which focused on the Y chromosome, which is carried only by males, led them to conclude that when Europe was struck by the Ice Age, about 24,000 years ago, its Stone Age inhabitants withdrew in three directions, taking refuge in the warmer climes of southern Europe: Mediterranean France and Spain, the Balkans, and what is now Ukraine. The Russians are descended from this last group.

  The Ice Age ended very slowly, and the global warming was interrupted by phases when the great cold returned. Eventually, however, the glaciers retreated, and the earth warmed somewhat, although permafrost continued to hold the tundra of the far north and large tracts of Siberia in its deadening grip. It does so to this day. There are still immense tracts of tundra where the subsoil is permanently frozen, which makes for problems in maintaining rail beds for Siberia’s railways. But elsewhere, as temperatures became milder, the atmosphere became moister. As it did so, life gradually returned — at first in the form of plants, then of insects and animals. As larger areas became habitable once more, descendants of the three groups of refugees began to repopulate those regions of Europe which their ancestors had abandoned when they became ice-bound.

  By the time of the return, each group of humanoids carried a genetic specific that differed significantly from the others. We also know that most of them belonged to blood group B, and were predominately rhesus positive. But the blood of the Ukrainian group, to which the Russians owe their origins, was now distinguished by haplotype Eu 19. This genetic marker was to be bestowed on the generations of Slavs and other Europeans who were to follow. 2

  At first, these ancestors of the Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians and others (for scholars know of no characteristics which distinguished them from one another until very much later) were confined to a swathe of territory to the north and west of the Black Sea. Much of the country beyond, later known as Russia, was still covered with icy marsh, and conditions over large areas even further south did not allow life to flourish in any form. The atmosphere was as dry as the temperature was cold, and, since life depends on humidity, the vast terrain was bleak, forbidding. Before humans could survive there, an ecological system with the potential to sustain human life had to develop.

  The first need was for plant life. The earliest species to appear were those with the highest tolerance of cold. Tiny, rudimentary plants pioneered the taming of the wastelands, then successively larger plants, including trees — the aspen and the birch (still characteristic of northern Russia), the pine, the larch, the hazel and the willow. Where the warming produced excessive wetness, the spruce helped make the area more hospitable. As the climate became milder 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, the hornbeam and linden appeared, and, where conditions favoured them, deciduous oak and elm took root and flourished. The famous Russian forests were in the making.

  Towards the milder south, however, the forests gradually thinned out into the rolling steppe. The vegetation there was thick, but rainfall was less certain and the winds which blew across from Asia were so fierce that, except in deep ravines which afforded some protection, trees were comparatively rare.

  The moister conditions had already created an environment hospitable to insects, including the productive bee. As water temperatures rose, more and more species of fish appeared, eventually including pike, perch and salmon, and it became warm enough to accommodate the water chestnut too. Ducks and other water fowl arrived, and larger, more complex, animals moved into what had been wasteland — hares, beavers, red deer, roe deer, and a variety of predatory species including the fox, the wolf, the lynx, the glutton (similar to the American wolverine) and the lumbering, honey-loving brown bear. And, now a suitable environment had been created, human beings also entered the scene.

  They had begun to exploit certain wild creatures in the south country where they had sheltered during the Ice Age, and they followed them northward into their new habitats as the ice receded. They hunted deer and wild pigs and horses for food, and in time they were to domesticate some of them. Primitive man understood breeding. He also learned to cultivate certain grasses for their seeds, and to crush them into flour, which could be cooked and eaten. The descendants of the first practitioners of this systematic crop-raising and animal-rearing were to carry these techniques northward. However, the movement of humans from the southern lands into the virgin lands to the north was gradual and exploratory. People moved cautiously, edging little by little into the new environment, and the yields from farming were, as yet, sparse and unreliable. Hunting, fishing and gathering whatever edible plants nature provided in season remained essential to human sustenance.

  Indeed, the hunters led the way into the virgin territories, penetrating to the edge of the northernmost areas that were free of ice in summer, tracking animals and birds to kill, not only for food, but also for their fur, feathers, horns and bones, from which all manner of useful things could be made. Others trekked upriver and explored lakes to find the points where fish could be found in abundance and caught most easily, and seasonal gatherers (mostly women and children, one imagines) came with the men, searching for edible grasses, berries, nuts and other forest fruits like mushrooms. Normally they would retreat to base at the onset of winter, carrying their spoils. But as populations grew, so did pressures to extend the areas of permanent settlement. Similar pressures affected the primitive societies of central Europe too, so that migrants from the west, including those who were subsequently to be identified as Baits and Finns, also moved into fringes of the north-land.

  The people who explored and eventually made homes in the Russian lands belonged to the species Homo sapiens sapiens. They were, as we have seen, genetically distinct, Caucasoid in anthropological type, and capable of speech and language. Their culture was of the Stone Age, but of the later, more sophisticated, palaeolithic kind. We can infer that they were by nature curious, venturesome, ingenious and adaptable.

  Their adaptation to their new homeland took two forms: conscious and unconscious. The conscious process involved learning from experience, collectively as well as individually, and the recording of experience through memory and storytelling down the generations. Unconscious adaptation took place over a much longer timescale, as it still does, and was genetic. The DNA of the Russians’ ancestors gradually changed in response to climate and environment. In more northerly areas, where they had less exposure to sunlight, their hair grew fairer and their skin lighter. In colder areas their noses tended to grow longer, allowing the air they breathed in a longer time to be warmed in its passage to the lungs; and,
thanks to the processes of natural selection, they developed resistance or immunity to some diseases. Their genetic structure was to change somewhat as they encountered other groups and mated with them, but their essential characteristics are broadly identifiable and have persisted into our own times.

  Although we can relate no personal stories from these earliest, formative, times, we can begin to picture representative Russian men and women. A huge research project mounted by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in its heyday was devoted to describing the Russians in terms of physical type and to investigating the historical origins of their physical characteristics. The work, carried out in the later 1950s by Dr V. Bunak and his team of ethnographers, examined no fewer than 17,000 adult men and women in over 100 regions of Russian settlement. The large sample made it statistically possible to map an anthropological type in all its variations. Whereas earlier research had concentrated on the geographical spread of head shapes and body height, this study also registered face size (breadth and height from the brow), complexion, hair colour, shape of nose, thickness of lip, body height, strength of beard growth, and other indicators including blood group. Variations in each characteristic were mapped, and combinations of them were grouped according to geographical area.

  It was found, for example, that in north-west Russia people were moderately brachycephalic, or short-headed with rather broad skulls, and had fairish hair, broad faces, comparatively weak beard growth and, often, a high base of nose, though all these characteristics varied in intensity within the region. To the west the Russians were found to have longer faces, darker hair (by contrast to their fair-complexioned Finnic, Balt and Mazurian Polish neighbours), lower nose-bases, and a higher incidence of folded eyelids. In the south-east, by contrast, people were mostly mesocephalic, with medium-shaped skulls and skull capacity. They had bright complexions and dark hair; and again these characteristics were more pronounced in some parts of the region than in others. 3

  Variations in build and appearance reflected intermarriage with neighbouring groups, but also natural selection in response to differences in diet and climatic conditions. The better nourished people are, the taller they tend to be; the greater their exposure to the sun, the darker their colouring; the greater the cold, the more Mongoloid their faces; the less their exposure to light, the fairer their hair. 4 To this extent the appearance of the Russians, as with all humanity, is partly a response to their environment, which continues to change.

  The northward movement of people from what is now Ukraine to colonize territory which is now known as Russia had not been even. Extensive marshlands made access to some areas difficult or impossible. Dense forests had a similar effect. On the other hand, rivers often provided convenient routes for the explorers. Similar factors account for linguistic development. Old Slavonic diversified into a variety of languages just as the physical characteristics of Russians varied in response to geography and ecological conditions. Interestingly, geneticists suggest that linguistic variations are roughly in line with genetic variations. The Russian language and the genes that make Russians what they are physically are evidently inseparable.

  Geographical barriers sometimes promoted differences in language. Areas of bog and marsh have tended to be as effective as mountains in keeping societies separate and distinct. The Carpathian Mountains separated the ancestors of the Czechs and Poles from those of the south-Slav Serbs and Croats; the Pripet Marshes constituted a no less effective a barrier between the west Slavs and the east Slavs whose descendants were to become Ukrainians, Belarusans and Russians. Such physical barriers facilitated separate linguistic development. It could even be said that the traditional enmity between Poles and Russians has its origins in geography.

  The ancestors of the Russians were not conscious of their genetic makeup, of course, and were still less able to control it. But, though genetic adaptation is unconscious and slow, human intelligence and ingenuity make for a faster track of adaptation. That these people could make tools, use them, and domesticate some animals suggests that they were conscious actors, capable — collectively — of shaping their own culture. The Russians of the future, then, were to be the creation both of their ancestors and of the developing environment of the Russian land. Some characteristics we associate with Russians nowadays originated in the rigours of those prehistoric times: tolerance of cold, endurance of privation, and a readiness to adopt new technology from other peoples they were to encounter. This last we know from the work of archaeologists.

  By the year 4000 BCE conditions for civilization were fast being created. Tools had become more varied and sophisticated. People had learned to make nets, hooks and needles as well as awls and scrapers — bows and arrows too. Indeed, the remains in several grave digs of the period suggest arrows to have been a relatively common cause of death. Society was being organized on a larger scale than hitherto; exploitation of the wild was becoming more specialized. A new kind of economy was in the making. It was based largely on farming, of both crops and domesticated animals, including the horse (though wild horses were to survive into the eighteenth century). And, as farming and artisanal skills developed, settlements grew in size — a few of them considerably.

  One site, at Talyanky, east of the river Dnieper, is reckoned to have housed as many as 10,000 inhabitants. Yet, despite its size, it could hardly be called a town. Rather, it was an agglomeration of largely self-sufficient farmsteads. The buildings were oblong, timber-framed, clay-and-wattle structures with wooden floors reinforced with baked clay, and with low-pitched roofs. Most structures were divided into three or four rooms, each with a stove or hearth, which suggests what might be termed industrial use. Many of them were certainly used for baking clay objects. Settlements in Ukraine of the so-called Tripolye type, dating from approximately 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, belonged to people who grew wheat, barley, millet and fruit, and raised pigs, sheep, goats and cattle. 5

  The size of such settlements suggests that there had been something of a revolution in food production. This had led to a marked improvement in diet, and hence in female fecundity. If the consequent population increase made for larger settlements, it probably also created pressure on resources which, as we have noticed, encouraged migration northward. The hunting bands that had led the way, also pioneered settlement, at first by erecting seasonal encampments, for summer or winter depending on the prey sought: deer, fish or wildfowl or furry animals. Such temporary settlements had similar characteristics to those of Sredny Stog in northern Ukraine, a place associated with the domestication of wild horses, and permanent settlements of later date. They were usually sited on a raised shelf of land above a river, this being convenient for transportation and communication as well as for fresh water and for fishing, yet safe from flooding. 6

  One great advantage of the cold times had been the ease with which the meat of hunted creatures could be frozen. The popular Russian dish pelmeni is a reminder of this fact: at the onset of winter (a popular time for slaughtering animals), pasta shells filled with meat are thrown out of the kitchen window to freeze. Then, during the winter months, they are taken inside as needed, a shovelful at a time, to be boiled up for dinner. In warmer conditions, however, people learned to preserve meat, and fish, by air-drying or, more commonly, by salting.

  The need for large quantities of salt to preserve both meat and fish was to promote both trade and industry. It encouraged searches for saline lakes and marshes, and the development of evaporation techniques. Excavations of sites in Ukraine have demonstrated that the trade in salt became extensive and far-ranging, and this helped to develop culture contacts with other budding societies.

  While late Stone Age society had been developing in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, hunter-gatherers with stone technology had been developing to the north, towards Finland and the Baltic. A cemetery excavated by Soviet archaeologists in Karelia and dating from about 7,500 years ago tells us quite a lot about these people. Most were Europeoid, though a few had Mo
ngoloid features derived from the climate their ancestors had endured. That most of the buried bodies faced east and were sprinkled with red ochre has persuaded archaeologists that they may have venerated the sun. The knives, fish-hooks and harpoons found along with animal remains show that they lived by hunting elk, beaver and seals as well as red and roe deer and wild pigs. 7 Climate as well as the availability of materials dictated the form of clothing they wore.

  Human life, even in these early times, was more than a struggle for subsistence and self-preservation, however. The settlers had a taste for pretty things like ivories or amber brought from the Baltic. Archaeologists have found a range of decorative jewellery, some of which rings or rattles beguilingly when the wearer moves, and a variety of primitive musical instruments — pipes, drums and bells — that suggest that these people did not lack amusement, nor noisy means of conjuring up spirits. Other finds suggest a yearning for immortality: the remains of animal sacrifice, for example, and the care taken of the dead. In many cases the bodies of the deceased were ritually positioned and buried together with votive statuettes as well as objects that might be useful in an afterlife, or of which the dead had been fond.

  The prevalence of pregnant-woman sculptures - talismans of productivity and growing riches - may suggest a society in which women were valued more than men. Certainly, the women were productive in ways other than child-bearing. They gathered food, made yarns, and engaged in a variety of other handicrafts as well as providing care and comfort. However, any such superior valuation is unlikely to have lasted into times when the men’s brute strength and strategic sense were needed for defence — whether against the elements or against other men. It was this need that put men at a premium and precluded the development of matriarchy, and there is evidence that it coincided with the advent of metal technology. From this period on the idols are of men rather than women.