Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 50 (2) 2022   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2022.50.2.028-040

Annotation:  The Incipient Neolithic of the Kurile Islands: The Culture of Long Barrows An Early Neolithic Sanctuary in the Eastern Irtysh Basin The Cultural Continuum of the Eurasian Boreal Zone and the Eastern Siberian Wedge (Based on Comparat A Bronze Age Shaft-Hole Axe from the Northwestern Baraba Forest-Steppe Bioarchaeology of Childhood in the Yamnaya Culture, Based on Kurgan 1 at Boldyrevo-4, the Southern U A Functional Analysis of Lithics of the Early Iron Age Yankovsky Culture: New Findings Burial of the Pazyryk Elite Members at Khankarinsky Dol, Northwestern Altai Analysis and Museumization of a Wooden Burial Structure from Pazyryk Kurgan 5, the Altai Mountains: Decorative Belts of Xianbei Period Nomads from Karban I, Northern Altai Occupation Layer at the Kushman Cluster of Sites (9th–13th Centuries) According to Multispectral Ima Philip Johan Tabbert von Strahlenberg: An 18th Century Swedish Prisoner’s Research in Siberia Rocks in the Religious Beliefs and Rites of the Ob Ugrians The Kyrgyz Republic: Concept, Strategies, and Practices for the Preservation of the National Cultura Paleogenetic Studies of Migration Processes in Eurasia Porotic Hyperostosis Observed in the 16th to 19th Century Crania of Native Siberians, Russian Settle   

The Cultural Continuum
of the Eurasian Boreal Zone and the Eastern Siberian Wedge
(Based on Comparative Mythology and Paleogenetics)

Y.E. Berezkin

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 3, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

Over the recent decade, abstracts of many thousands of folktales recorded in Europe and Asia have been added to our Electronic Catalogue of World Mythology and Folklore. Their analysis reveals systematic parallels between the traditions of Western Eurasia and America, those of the Plains Indians in particular. Such motifs are especially apparent in Ancient Greek mythology (Phaethon’s fall, Pasiphae and the bull, cranes attacking dwarfs, etc.). Although they have been known since the 19th century, no explanation for them could be proposed for a long time. The situation changed thanks to recent advances in Siberian paleogenetics. Before the peak of the Last Glacial Maximum, Eastern Siberian populations (Yana RHS and Malta) exhibited European af finities. By the mid-Holocene, population replacement occurred. It was not abrupt, but eventually resulted in a breakup of the initial cultural continuum spanning the Eurasian boreal zone and later extending to the New World. Many of the Western Eurasian-American motifs are episodes from stories of adventures. On the other hand, parallels between traditions of the Indo-Pacific rim of Asia and America mostly relate to motifs that are mythological in the narrow sense (etiological and cosmological), including early ones, evidently stemming from Africa. From the Hunno-Sarmatian, if not Scythian age onward, Southern Siberian and Central Asian motifs had been transferred to Western Eurasia on a large scale. Classical sources mirror an earlier stage of European mythology, hence the difference between the Ancient Greek set of motifs and that peculiar to later European traditions.

Keywords: Peopling of America, prehistory of Siberia, comparative mythology, Eurasian folklore, Ancient Greek mythology, statistical methods in humanities