TITLE:
Paleoasians in the Ethnogenesis of the Yakuts (on Mythology Data of the Yakut Ethnical Community of the Khoro)
AUTHORS:
Bulat R. Zoriktuev
KEYWORDS:
Khorolors; Cults of the Raven and Eagle; Paleoasians; The Country of Khoro Sire; The Lower Amur; Yakutia
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.3 No.4,
November
22,
2013
ABSTRACT:
The article is devoted to the results of
the study of an old but not solved up to now problem in the Yakut ethnography
concerning the origin of a big ethnical group Khoro which is one of the main
units in the ethnical composition of the Yakuts living in the North of Siberia.
The problem is urgent for its being unsolved does not make it possible to
create an integral picture of the formation of the Yakut people. Most
researchers think that the original motherland of the Khorolors (the plural of
“Khoro”) was on the western side of the Baikal in Bargujin-Tokum1,
where they were a part of a Buryat tribal community of the Khori living now in
Transbaikalia. In 1207 during the conquest of Bargujin-Tokum by Chinggis-khan’s
troops a part of the Khori tribe escaping from the Mongols fled to the Middle
Lena and never came back to the Baikal. When identifying both the groups only
the resemblance of the names Khoro and Khori was taken into account
which could not provide an exact result. Meanwhile the Khorolors cults of the
Raven and the Eagle and associated with them “raven” and “eagle” myths and the
same, typologically similar myths about the totemic forefathers mentioned above
among the Paleoasians of the North-East Asia and North-American Indians make it
clear that the Khorolors of Yakutia are of paleoasian origin. The Khorolors belonged
to the southern branch of the Paleoasians and they resided in the lower Amur
where there was their motherland Khoro sire. In a number of early Chinese and
Korean chronicles this locality is called Kori. It is just there that one can
find the sources for the ethnogenesis of the Koreans in which the northern
Paleoasian component took a noticeable part. Supposedly at the end of the I
millennium A.D., the Khorolors from the Lower Amur migrated to the North and
permanently settled in the land of Yakutia. This is an
evidence of the fact that in the ethnogenesis of the Yakuts the Paleoasian
ethnical layer played a considerable part in addition to the ancient Tiurk
substratum.