Development of Indo-European Hypotheses in Europe of the 19th-20th Centuries: From Aryan Ideas to the Renaissance of the Trypillian Culture ()
1. Origin of Linguistic Hypotheses
In the European scientific community, Indo-European hypotheses were first formed by professional linguists. Thus, the French orientalist A. Anquetil-Duperron in 1771 made the first translation of Zendavesti, the holy book of the ancient Iranians, into French (Lubsky, 2020) .
In 1776, the sacred texts of the Aryans (arias from Vedic Sanskrit—luminous or noble), the so-called Brahmin Code belonging to the Vedas, were first published on behalf of the Anglo-Indian government (Vinokur & Trubchaninov, 1996: p. 36) .
The Englishman W. Jones was the first to thoroughly study Sanskrit, made a statement about the probable existence of an Indo-European language family and for the first time conducted a comparative comparison of the mythology of Indo-Europeans in the article “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India”. His scientific work helped to create a broad interest in the history, language and culture of the East, as well as created new directions in linguistic research (William Jones Biography) .
In 1813, the term “Indo-European languages” emerged and was introduced into scientific circulation by the English scientist T. Jung. He managed to linguistically compare Sanskrit with Greek, Latin and German, by comparing fundamental concepts such as “heaven”, “earth”, “day”, “father”, “mother” (Robinson, 2006: рp. 185-186) . At the same time, the term “Aryans” was emerging in Germany, which at that time was not a concept that characterized “race” or any anthropological feature, but defined native Aryan speakers—Iranians and Indians.
The English orientalist Sir H. T. Colebrooke, who after a long stay in India, began to study Sanskrit and translate “Digest of Hindu Laws”, gave the first scientific conclusion to the sacred texts of India in his “Essay on the Vedas” (1805).
The German philosophers F. Hegel, F. W. Schelling, and A. Schopenhauer were adherents of the “Aryan” genealogy, and following the geographer C. Ritter, they emphasized the similarity of Sanskrit with the German language.
In 1814-1818, a Danish linguist R. Rask included the Icelandic language in the Indo-European language family, thereby becoming one of the founders of Indo-European studies (Rasmus Rask) . In 1826 R. Rask proved the authenticity of the Avesta and determines its kinship with the Sanskrit language that had been previously questioned by the British.
The Swiss linguist A. Pictet in 1837, in his work “De l’affinité des Langues Celtiques Avec le Sanscrit” (On the Kinship of Celtic Languages with Sanskrit) established that the Celtic language belonged to the Indo-European language family, thereby gaining wide popularity for himself. And already in 1859 in his work “Les Origines Indo-Européennes, ou les Aryas Primitifs” (Indo-European origins, or Aryan tribes), he made the first attempt to reconstruct on the basis of language material the picture of the life and culture of the Indo-Europeans—the ancestor and determine the place of their living (Pictet, 1890-1907) . A. Pictet made a monumental attempt to reconstruct the whole world of Proto-Indo-Europeans (Gasparov, 2012: pp. 18-19) .
The German linguist F. Bopp in his main work of life “Comparative grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic and German languages” (1833-1852) finally justified the historical kinship of Indo-European languages. In 1836-1845, the German scholar F. Diez founded Romanesque philology. A powerful scientific direction of Indo-European linguistics was formed on this basis in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Along with the inception of Indo-European studies, points of view about the way of life, culture, spirituality and localization of the ancestral homeland of the ethnic group that became the object of research, were simultaneously originated and developed. Peoples-bearers of relics of Indo-European languages began to be studied from the point of view of culture, philosophy, religion and sociology. The problems of Indo-Europeanism/Aryanism at full pelt went beyond linguistic theories, gradually acquiring expanded forms.
2. Origin of Ideological Hypotheses
In 1777-1778, the French astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly shared his fantasies with Voltaire about the existence of an ancient civilization in Siberia, where its creators allegedly came from the Arctic (Bayi, 2003: pp. 43-45) . But the ideas of high culture from India admired by Voltaire, who became one of the first philosophers to see the source of religious wisdom not in the Middle East, but in South Asia, gained popularity. The Enlightenment philosopher believed that it was there that the oldest religion in the world (Vedic religion), being of a monotheistic type and having 5 thousand years of history, originated.
The German philosopher and writer J.-G. Herder also supported the idea of high Indian culture, but saw it not in religious texts, but in the poetry of that “noble people”. The thinker rejected the prospect of reviving primary religious texts, considering the existing texts rather distorted and inaccurate, and hidden in the mists of history (Figueira, 2002: pр. 19-22) .
At the beginning of the nineteenth century German Romantic intellectuals picked up the idea of an “Aryan center” in India, even reaching such extravagant theories as the origin of Judaism from Brahmanism. The beginning of such theories was laid by the German scientists J. Görres and F. Creuzer (Figueira, 2002: р. 32) . Later this theory was supported by O. Blavatska, who was the founder of the Theosophical Society.
The deepest relics of religious culture began to be studied from ancient Indian and Zoroastrian sources, which at that time was a completely new phenomenon in European scientific circles. Thus, in 1810-1812 one of the famous German philologists and archaeologists F. Creuzer in the main work of his life “Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker” made a stunning conclusion for his time that all the ancient religions of the world had one primary basis (Dobrosotsky, 1998) . This was a revolutionary thought for European philosophy, and it looked like an unfounded theory that immediately fell on a lot of criticism. This Creuzer’s “revolutionary thought” shows the phase of development of romantic ideas, science and culture of Europe at that time, a kind of search for intellectual channels through which it was possible to awaken society.
In the middle of the nineteenth century the German philologist Jacob Grimm set the goal to revive a scientific interest in German folk culture and its folklore. He developed the concept “Aryan people” in his history books. At the same time he became one of the first scientists who determined the need to learn a language along with the culture of its native speakers. Thanks to the books published by the Brothers Grimm, the German people have found the term “Aryans” (Poliakov, 1996: pp. 212-214) .
3. Hypotheses about the Territorial Origin of Indo-Europeans
Theories of the territorial origin of ancient Indo-Europeans/Aryans were developing in parallel with the development of linguistic and ideological concepts. The question arose whether it was really worth seeing the origins of Indo-Europeans in the Indian subcontinent, since alternative hypotheses about the ancestral homeland of Indo-European languages in Europe itself were also developed.
In 1851, the hypotheses of the Asian ancestral homeland were criticized by the English scientist R. Latem, who believed that the Indo-Iranian peoples moved to their places of living as a result of late expansion, and the ancestral homeland of Indo-Europeans should be sought in Europe (Mallory & Adams, 1997: p. 291) . Subsequently, this idea was supported by the Professor of Archeology G. Kossina. He brought out the ancestral homeland of the “Aryans” from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany (Anthony, 2007: р. 10) .
For the first time the Baltic-German historian V. Genn combines the results of linguistic and archaeological research to try to determine the place of territorial origin of Proto-Indo-Europeans. He became the founder of the Kurgan hypothesis, which was finally formed almost 100 years after his studies. In the second half of the eighteenth century his ideas were supported by the German linguist O. Schrader. In 1886 the scientist sided with V. Genn and supported the theory of the origin of ancient Indo-Europeans from the Black Sea steppes. This hypothesis suggested that Proto-Indo-Europeans in the south of Modern Ukraine first domesticated wild horses as the driving force behind any migration. Since there are no words in the Proto-Indo-European language that would denote other animals capable of acting as a driving force for significant territorial movements (camel, donkey, tours, etc.), O. Schrader tended to believe that the ancestral homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans was located in the natural zone of existence of wild steppe horses.
At the same time European scientists continued to develop hypotheses about Indo-European centrism from the territory of Central Asia (works by F. M. Muller, F. Lenormon, Ch. Ujfalvy, A. de Gobineau).
4. Indo-European Problems in Racial Theories
In the middle of the nineteenth century ideas about “races”, “struggle of races”, “superiority” and the like began to be gradually developed in European Indo-European Studies. There was a gradual separation from the spiritual and moral ideals of Indo-Europeans with a transition to biological characteristics (racial characteristics) not related to either language or ideological categories. The philosophical principles of “soil and blood” appeared in the Hegel’s works and were designed to distract attention from the socio-economic nature of totalitarianism, during the formation of which community turned not into the unity of free individuals, but into the “natural” organism of the race. The final connection of Indo-Europeans with racial theory was laid by the French writer A. de Gobineau, who in his book “L’Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines” (Gobineau, 1853-1855) defines the Aryans as the “God’s chosen race”. The race theory was supported by many educated people of its time and even inspired certain concepts of revolutionaries.
The outstanding German philosopher F. Nietzsche also joined the development of the Aryan theory. He joined the dialectic of ancient peoples who were called the Aryans in the scriptures and had disputes with Sanskrit scholars about the very definition of Aryans. In his opinion, “Arius” is not “noble”, as was commonly believed among Sanskrit scholars, but meant “rich” or “owner”. This attached the very definition of Aryans (according to F. Nietzsche) to “people of invaders”, “conquerors”, thereby distancing them from the first-born hypotheses about the “people of kulturträger”. F. Nietzsche in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” praised war as the highest manifestation of the human spirit: “You shall love peace as a means to new wars… To you I advise not work but battle” (Melnikov & Chernaya, 1981: pp. 75-77) . But being an outstanding philosopher, he most likely called not for war in the literal sense of the word, but for war “for one’s own thoughts”. F. Nietzsche proposed to return to the hierarchy and caste system of the Indian Aryans, within this social structure he saw a person of the future (Figueira, 2002: pp. 50-57) . He tried to return to the Europeans their ancient heritage in the hope that this would help them solve a number of modern problems and restore order in their inner life (Figueira, 2002: pp. 50-57) .
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the “Aryan concept” was introduced into wide scientific circulation by the outstanding German Indologist F. M. Muller. As the editor of the 50-volume English-language edition “Sacred Books of the East”, the scientist insisted on the importance of studying the Indian Vedas, especially the mythology of the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Vedas. He equated Vedic mythology with Proto-Indo-European myth. M. Muller proposed using the comparative method in religious studies. “Who knows one religion—does not know any” (Müller, 2002b: p. 20) . Introduction to the science of religion. Higher school, KDU] as noted by the scientist, paraphrasing J. Goethe’s idea “Who knows only one language—does not know any”. The comparison of sacred texts of different religions revealed and made it possible to explore something in common that was inherent in the specifics of religion as a whole, as a socio-cultural phenomenon.
Basing his research on a broad layer of world history, M. Muller considered the development of religion similar to the development of language or thinking. It identified the three main religious poles: Aryan, Semitic and Turanian. He came to the conclusion that the religious beliefs of not only Indo-Europeans, but also other peoples were common. He assures: “People who study religion will do the right thing by following the example of linguists and will engage in a comparative study of Aryan and Semitic religions. If it can be proved that the religions of the Aryan peoples are united by the same ties of actual kinship that enable us to interpret their languages as many species of the same family, and if the same fact can be established in the study of the Semitic world, then a fairly wide field of research opens up before us” (Müller, 2002a: p. 90) , and at the same time he adds: “Let us begin with our own Aryan ancestors” (Müller, 2002a: p. 90) .
Like F. Nietzsche, M. Muller was a proponent of the theory of forceful seizure of the possessions of the indigenous population of Northern India, depicting how the Aryan community conquered the local dasyu. He was convinced that the Aryans were descended from Indian Brahmins, while he associated the indigenous population with the descendants of dasyu (Trautmann, 1997: pp. 196-197) , and in Hinduism he saw a distortion of the original Aryan religion (Thapar, 1996: pp. 5-6; Figueira, 2002: pp. 39-43) .
Aryan ideas of the second half of the nineteenth century influence the formation of the theosophical movement, the founder of which O. Blavatska praised Sanskrit. Her teachings included such provisions as the identification of Sanskrit with the Proto-Indo-European language, the rise of the Aryans to the “highest race”, and the origin of the Bible from ancient Brahmanism. O. Blavatska placed the homeland of the Aryans in Europe in her teaching. M. Muller himself criticized Blavatska for “scientific incompetence” (Müller, 1893: pp. 767-788) .
At the end of the nineteenth century, Aryan-Indo-European theories in Europe began to be simplified to a narrow political framework, finally sliding into the categories of “race and blood”. Now we were talking about a small group of the population that successfully spread its culture, assimilating weaker ethnic groups. Thus, the Aryan idea finally broke away from the idea of the Indo-European community and underwent racialization, preserving the image of cultural triggers (kulturträger) (Trautmann, 1997: pp. 186-187) . More precisely the entire Indo-European cultural logos, from which the Aryan idea originated, lost its fundamental position at the end of the nineteenth century. It was replaced by racial anthropology. Consequently, the peculiarities of the bodily nature of a person contradict the initial linguistic and ideological hypotheses of Indo-Europeans. India no longer looked so culturally attractive, and they tried to distance themselves from the sacred texts of the ancient Aryans. Moreover, India itself was no longer considered as the ancestral home of the “Indo-Europeans”.
Indo-European problems at the beginning of the nineteenth century came out with pseudo scientifically justified provisions of “inequality of races”. A number of European scientists justified the above. Among them are G. Gunther, H. Chamberlain, J. Gobineau, O. Rehe, G. Vacher de Lapouge, G. Le Bon. The whole core of world history was seen in the “struggle of races” and the deep racial conflict between the “Aryans” and the “Semites”. At the same time some scientists (for example, G. Lapouge, J. Gobineau) associated the “Aryans” with the North Pole, the North Germans and the “Nordic race”. The enemy of order was declared “racial chaos”, which occurred if people forgot about fundamental racial principles.
Even such exotic theories were formed as the “Aryan nature” of Jesus Christ and “Aryan Christianity”, which had nothing to do with Judaism (Field, 1981: p. 183, pp. 305-307; Chamberlain, 2012: р. 343) .
The concept of aryism began to abandon scientific libraries and spread to the masses. This ideology largely reflected the public mood of that time, which was associated with the rapid growth of its supporters. The German people especially liked the idea of “race” and superiority over others. This gave a practical result of unification of the nation, ideological consolidation, behind which no one saw the upcoming upheavals.
Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century the provisions of so-called “scientific racism” were finally formed among European intellectuals, and the Indo-European logos, from which this ideology originally developed, was no longer important. The main idea was evolution, division, the struggle of the higher races with the lower ones. The lowest were Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, Irish, peoples of Central Asia and Transcaucasia and others. On this wave in 1913 before the outbreak of the First World War the “German union” was organized in Germany, which set goals for the struggle against Jews and Slavs (Poliakov, 1996: pр. 310-318) .
Despite the crushing defeat in the First World War, faith in the special mission of the German people does not fade. In the 20s of the twentieth century racial theory was gaining strength again. In those years “racial theory” was part of the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. At that time racial thought was reinforced by the German scientist G. Gunther, the author of the work “Racial Studies of the German People”, as well as L. Glages, in his work “Nordic Soul”. These and other works prepared the necessary foundation, on which the Third Reich was later built.
Today there are many theories of racial divisions, but due to scientific research, almost all of them are recognized as untenable, including for moral and ethical reasons. Thus, a group of American researchers conducted large-scale studies, in which scientists analyzed more than fifty textbooks on anthropology published during the period from 1932 to 1979. It turns out that since the 70s two trends have begun to prevail: either race studies are considered an outdated science, or this section of anthropology is generally ignored in the works. However, before coming to this humanity had to go through many social upheavals, wars, interracial and interethnic conflicts, persecution, genocide in order to realize the failure of racial concepts and their destructive influence (Zubov & Khaldeeva, 1991: p. 10) .
5. Origin of Indo-European Studies in the Studies of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia
The Professor M. Drahomanov was at the forefront of Ukrainian Indo-European studies. M. Drahomanov studied the archaic Indo-European background of Ukrainian folklore texts, using the method of comparative comparison. The scientist identified a category of ritual songs with a clear context of an ancient naturalistic cult or worldview, which was obviously formed from the ancient religious beliefs of the Ukrainian ethnic group. Here folk poetry about the sun, the star, the wind, the moon, the hero who “created the sky” became a witness.
Being an outstanding philosopher, M. Drahomanov was ahead of his colleagues in predicting future cultural development. He paid special attention to archaeological science as a driving force for future transformations. Speaking at the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology (1871), he noted: “The monuments of the most ancient human life in Europe force us, in the most obvious way, to abandon the grouping of material that makes up historical science, according to crudely chronological frames based on observations of the life of not all mankind, not even the peoples of any part of the world, but the lives of dozen or two privileged peoples” (Zubov & Khaldeeva, 1991: p. 70) . It was a kind of intellectual protest against the origin of oneself from the circle of “uncultured peoples”. The scientist himself has not lived several years before the discovery of the Trypillian civilization by an archaeologist V. Khvoika, which has become a special feature of the Ukrainian cultural nation and the whole of ancient Europe.
The niece of M. Drahomanov, the Ukrainian writer L. Ukrainka, was fascinated by new ideas in the field of Indo-European science, which was the reason for seeking advice and methodological sources to her uncle, after which she received comprehensive instructions and a huge scientific material. This was the starting point for writing the book “Ancient History of Eastern Peoples”. In it L. Ukrainka draws some Sanskrit-Ukrainian parallels. The issue of Trypillian culture again remained was not covered, because it was the beginning of 1890.
6. Trypillian Culture in Indo-European Studies
The beginning of the Trypillian cultural era was laid by its discoverer V. Khvoiko, who in 1893-1894 opened the first settlement on Kyrylivska Street in Kyiv (Ukraine). In 1897 V. Khvoika found a settlement with artifacts similar to those of Kyiv’s ones in the vicinity of the town of Trypillia in Kyiv uyezd (now—the village of Trypillia, Obukhiv District, Kyiv Region). In Soviet publications the culture from the territory of Ukraine spread under the name “Trypillian”. Over time it became clear that the archaeological culture of Cucuteni on the territory of Romania and the culture of Trypillia on the territory of Ukraine belonged to the same cultural complex. The commonality of cultural forms gave rise to discussions about the “community” of Trypillia-Cucuteni (or Cucuteni-Trypillia), both in linguistic and religious categories. They gradually began to be considered rather assimilated carriers of the Indo-European cultural field than Proto-Indo-Europeans.
One of the founders of the “theory of cultural circles” A. Menhin tended to identify the bearers of the Trypillian culture with the common ancestors of the Indo-European peoples—the Hittites and Tocharians, who first migrated to Asia Minor and China (Menghin, 1928: рp. 3-25) . V. Khvoiko as the discoverer of the Trypillian civilization himself saw in the “Trypillians” a tribe of Aryan origin, which was directly related to our ancestors—the proto-Slavs (The Cucuteni-Trypillia, 2015: p. 28) . It remains to be wondered what path the then development of Indo-European science would have taken in the light of the discovery of the Trypillian culture, if not for the persecution and ideological prohibitions of the Soviet era. As M. Videiko, a researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, noted in one of his interviews: “Soviet science classified all studies of the Trypillian culture taking place before 1937, in addition, research scientists were shot. The Soviet government, like the Tsarist government in the nineteenth century, could not allow the Ukrainian people to have such an eloquent page in their historical achievements as the Trypillian culture. Before the October Revolution, more than 300 private collections of Trypillian culture were collected on the territory of Ukraine and then “preserved” and “hidden somewhere” (Videyko, 2008) .
The Ukrainian historian M. Hrushevskyi in his fundamental work “History of Ukraine-Rus” (1898) for the first time referred to the Trypillian culture. It was in this work that he briefly highlighted the “Trypillya outskirts” (the outskirts of the village of Trypillia, Kyiv uyezd) with rich remains of pottery. This work has, almost for the first time, a brief but meaningful analysis of the state of Indo-European studies in the entire eastern European historiography. It became obvious for M. Hrushevskyi that there was a direct connection between prehistoric Ukraine and ethnohistorical processes in ancient Europe, because even the first professional studies of the origin of Indo-Europeans deduced the territory of Ukraine as a transit migration zone, or as part of the Eurasian-steppe line, where the foundations of the Indo-European language were actually laid (Anthony, 2010) . Touching upon the concept of the Asian ancestral homeland of Indo-Europeans, M. Hrushevskyi stated that its fundamental principles were outdated, but its search in Europe looked quite appropriate. Making concrete conclusions, the scientist deduced the fundamental wording: “I consider the conclusions (accepted by a number of outstanding scientists) to be such plausibility; firstly, because the original center of Indo-European tribes was Eastern Europe and secondly, because these tribes began to be divided in Neolithic culture” (Hrushevskyi, 1991: р. 62) . However, it is worth noting that M. Hrushevskyi’s conclusions are not entirely original in this field of research, since P. Kretschmer, O. Schrader and others have deduced the same foundations before him. At the same time M. Hrushevskyi became one of the outstanding Ukrainian scientists who launched the study of Indo-European problems in Ukraine and connected it with the Trypillian culture.
Ukrainian scientific thought, which began to develop in the paradigm of identifying Indo-Europeans with trypillians in the early 30s, was brutally suppressed by comprehensive repression. Most of the humanitarians were arrested (including the historian M. Hrushevskyi), punished with exile, and part of them was physically exterminated. In this state of affairs scientists generally abandoned their activities, and young people did not see themselves in such a field of research. The very concept of “linguistic kinship” and “Indo-Europeans” was classified by the Soviet authorities for many years as “ideologically hostile” (Alpatov, 1991: pр. 32-33) .
With the relative resumption of research in the field of historical linguistics in the early 1950s, Indo-European studies began its gradual awakening in the Soviet Union. In Ukraine this process is practically not developing. Here special ideological control from the capital of the USSR was given as a sign. It was only with the thawing in the 1960s that scientific research on the Indo-European issue emerged. It is significant that these questions immediately move from purely philological studies to issues of an ethnological nature. These issues are raised in the works of Ukrainian archaeologists D. Telehin, V. Danylenko, M. Braichevska.
V. Danylenko deals most thoroughly with Indo-European issues. Since the 50s, he has been accumulating evidence that steppe mounds and Corded Ware culture are signs inherent in early Indo-Europeans, which first appear in the archaeological cultures of the Ukrainian Dnieper region. Later Danylenko in his monographs “Neolithic of Ukraine” (1969) and “Eneolithic of Ukraine” (1974) connected the archaeological, mythological and linguistic aspects of Indo-Euro-pean problems and presented a deeply reasoned picture of the formation of the Indo-European community from the “circulation forest-steppe zone of Ukraine” to the Altai and the coast of Britain. According to his conclusions: “in the Ceramic Neolithic—the end of the 7th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC—the Indo-European ecumene covered the southern regions of Eastern Europe, the Caspian-Caucasian borderlands of Asia and in the form of marginal regions—Central and even Northern Europe” (Danylenko, 1969: pр. 237-238) .
V. Danylenko introduced carriers of the Bug-Dniester, Trypillian and related cultures to the circle of Indo-European peoples. In “Cosmogony of Primitive Society” (1965; 1997), V. Danylenko proved that Trypillians belonged to Indo-Europeans. The Soviet scientist B. Rybakov later stood on this in his monograph “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” (1981), tracing the traditions of the Trypillian archaeological culture to Kyivan Rus.
In B. Rybakov’s monograph “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs”, the archaeologist and historian determined that Slavic paganism itself should be considered according to the condition of a distant Indo-European (Proto-Indo-European) community, as well as with the relationship with neighboring peoples. According to his research, the proto-Slavs distinguished themselves from other Indo-European language groups not earlier than the 3rd-2nd millennium BC (Rybakov, 1981: р. 96) . He refers the monolith of Proto-Indo-Europeans to the 5th millennium BC, which was formed as the bright and interesting element for the culture of agricultural tribes. The academician recognized that the Trypillian culture largely blended in with the future ancestral homeland of the Slavs and belonged to the south-eastern zone of Indo-European community (Rybakov, 1981: pр. 147-148) . This was also supported by B. Hornung (Hornung, 1963) , to whom B. Rybakov referred. In the monograph “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs”, the ethnonym “trypillians” is often replaced or used as a synonym for “Indo-Europeans” or “Indo-Europeans farmers”. Here it is worth giving a vivid example: the famous clay models of Trypillian houses and temples in the Rybakov’s monograph are called “Indo-European models” (Rybakov, 1981: р. 162) . In the history of primitive Europe, the Trypillian culture was what the Renaissance era was for the Middle Ages, B. Rybakov believes, and a complete, versatile consideration of the Trypillian culture as a historical whole is the most important task of science in the near future. “There is every reason to assume that the Rig Veda originated on the banks of the Dnieper”, says B. Rybakov. Then we find: “In the Russian chronicle, the word “ostantsy” is mentioned. These are those who stayed to live [on the banks of the Dnieper (Ukraine)], although the tribes went to India. My appeal to Ukrainians is to study Sanskrit, find “outliers” among your tribes by language characteristics, and restore the connection of times” (Rybakov, 1981: р. 211) .
The monograph of B. Rybakov “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” demonstrates a high level of ideological beliefs and rituals of the Trypillians. The work draws a parallel between the ancient culture and up to the meeting of the Slavs with Christianity. The incredible depth of artistic ideas, the extraordinary variety of materials, Trypillian painting, ornaments and sculpture—all this makes Trypillian art the most important source for restoring the early stages of agricultural ideology, as the scientist believes. This was the stage, when a worldview was born and preserved for many thousands of years, and determined the forms of many religions (Rybakov, B. A. 2019) , states B. Rybakov.
Extremely important are the parallels established in the monograph between the Trypillian paintings and the hymns of the Rig Veda: the three-tiered system of the world, the image of the mother (progenitor) and the giant Purusha. The Trypillian painting is an extremely important illustration of later mythological subjects of Indo-Europeans. According to B. Rybakov, the region of Trypillian culture may not be excluded from consideration of the issue on the initial positions of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-Europeans, their migration process to the East. “Even if we assume the involvement of the Trypillians in the Indo-Iranian branch and their departing (or part of them) to the Punjab and Indus, we cannot think that the entire agricultural population of Transdnistria and the Middle Dnieper region was involved in the colonization process” (Rybakov, 1998: p. 212) . Here Rybakov hints at the “remnants”, who have passed on the traditions to the next archaeological cultures.
The monograph of B. Rybakov “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” became a significant reference point for the reconstruction of the spiritual life of the Trypillians and research related to Indo-European problems, but taking into account the time in which the scientist worked. The latest archaeological discoveries significantly complement and expand our understanding of the Trypillian worldview.
The Ukrainian historian and archaeologist Yu. Shylov in his works justifies that the Trypillian culture is essentially Indo-European. He believes that the Trypillians formed an ancient state on the territory of Modern Ukraine called Aratta, which was formed by the primitive intelligentsia—priests. In the scientist’s interpretation, the state of Aratta (the conventional name of the Trypillian archaeological culture) was known in India and Sumer, and remained in the mythology of many peoples of the world as the Golden Age of humanity. Like B. Rybakov, O. Trubachev, V. Safronov, Yu. Shylov refers the Trypillians to Indo-Europeans/Proto-Indo-Europeans, from whom the Slavic peoples were formed in their historical time. He states: “Considering Aratta, one should keep in mind the Proto-Indo-European affiliation, which was formed from the Asia Minor settlers and autochthons of the North-Western Black Sea region. During the 7th-5th thousand BC, Aratta was equally a common ancestor not only for the Slavs, but also for all other Indo-European peoples” (Shilov, 2004: p. 158) .
In 1995 Yu. Shilov published a fundamental work entitled “Ancestral Homeland of the Aryans”, which covers Aryan problems in the context of Indo-European scientific knowledge, taking into account the latest discoveries of Ukrainian archeology. The paper reconstructs Indo-European myths based on archaeological science (this method was first proposed by V. Danylenko). The research is based on the Aryan/Indo-European mounds of the territory of Modern Ukraine. Not only the places of burial mounds, but also sanctuaries and observatories of calendar purposes are taken into account.
Outlining the general context of research on the work of Yu. Shylov “Ancestral Homeland of the Aryans”, we can draw a generalizing conclusion that the Aryan community is an ethnic cluster formed on the territory of the steppe zone of Modern Ukraine (around the northern coast of the Black Sea) close and separated from the more ancient Indo-European Community. Aryans were preceded by almost 3 thousand years of history of the “state of farmers”—Aratta, which is now known as the Trypillian archaeological culture. “The ancestral homeland of the Aryans is about the past. But with concern for the future”, says archaeologist Shylov and urges: “and all descendants of Indo-Europeans—from England, the United States, Canada to Sweden, Iran and India—should protect and cherish their root together with Ukraine” (Shilov, Yu., 1995: р. 623) .
7. Swastika Symbolism as a Stereotypical Marker of the Indo-European/Aryan Logos and Its Ideological Inversion in the First Half of the 20th Century
Swastika symbolism or swastika (the name was brought to scientific circulation by the French scientist E. Burnou no later than 1852 (Bagdasarov, 2005) ), from the point of view of its manifestation in the ancient cultures of the world, is one of the most common sign systems. According to the studies of A. Klyosov and E. Mironova, neolithic cultures Trypillia-Cucuteni (Ukraine-Moldova-Romania), Ban-Chiang (Thailand), Yangshao (China) and Anasazi-Mogollon (Native American culture) equally used the swastika as a common symbol (Klyosov & Mironova, 2013: p. 164) .
The roots of swastika go back to the Stone Age of human history. Such a symbol can be found in the oldest ornamental motifs—meanders (
). The name comes from the winding river Menderes located in Asia-Minor. This type of ornament is recognized as the oldest on the territory of Modern Ukraine due to the discovery of a bracelet of mammoth bone in a Paleolithic site near the village of Mizin (Chernihiv region, Ukraine) in 1908 (Shovkoplyas, 1965) (Figure 1).
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Figure 1. Mezin bracelet of mammoth bone (approximately 18000 BC).
The mezin bracelet is a real masterpiece of Paleolithic art made of a solid plate of mammoth tusk with a thickness of no more than 3 mm. The Meander ornament, from which the prototype of the swastika symbol can be distinguished, has been originally decorated with red ochre. It is believed that the bracelet has been made for ritual purposes and contained an annual calendar cycle (Mizyn bracelets, 2017) .
Since the time of the Eneolithic already in the historical era of the Trypillian civilization the prototype of the swastika has been specifically separated into a separate symbol. According to the Encyclopedia of Trypillian Civilization, the swastika is one of the key elements of the sign system (Encyclopedia of Tripillian Civilization, 2004: р. 466) . The swastika on the vessels of the Trypillian culture is known from the settlements of Kudryntsi in the Transdnistria region, Maiaky on the Dniester, the second Usativ burial site, etc. (Encyclopedia of Tripillian Civilization, 2004: р. 467) . The author of the article in his book “Nebeliv Disk. Sacred Relic of the Trypillian Church (4000 BC)”, has published some of the discovered swastika symbols from the Trypillian ritual vessels (Zavalii, 2023: р. 22) , which is an important source of research on the development of this symbol (Figure 2).
In 2023 the religious denomination “Religion of Trypillia” (Ukraine) published a unique artifact of Trypillia culture, which was found in the interfluve of the Southern Bug and the Dniester River (Vinnytsia region, Ukraine) in which the prototype of the swastika symbol (Figure 3), (Figure 4) was recognized (Trypillia, 2023) .
This artifact found on the territory of Ukraine is an important link in the study of the swastika symbol, as it is an early material manifestation, both in the Trypillian culture itself (stage of B1-B2 4400/4300-4200/4100BC according to M. Videiko (Videiko, 2015: р. 449) ) and in general in the entire Indo-European complex. This has resulted in the appearance of a mechanism for identifying the primary values on which the symbol of this type developed in the Indo-European cultural complex.
It is worth noting that the presented item was most likely not used for domestic purposes, since a complex ornament with bright colors was applied from the inside of the “convex plate” in ancient times. This is an important argument that the “plate” did not serve to put food or household items in it. In addition a deep
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Figure 2. Trypillian swastikas from ritual vessels.
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Figure 3. Swastika plate of Trypillian culture. (a) Side view; (b) Top view (approximately 4400-4100 BC).
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Figure 4. (a) 3D model of the swastika plate of the Trypillian culture; (b) Unfolded pattern of the swastika plate of the Trypillian culture.
ornament in Trypillian religious art often means sacred items, as such an ornament is not overwritten over time, unlike hand-drawn subjects. Therefore, most likely we are looking at an archaic cult item of the ancient world.
The presented artifact (Figure 3, Figure 4), made in the form of a convex plate, can contain a double symbolic subtext. Such an artifact can transmit an image of a celestial sphere (the dome of the sky) along which three-part lines unfold. Such three-syllable lines in the course of study of other cult artifacts of the Trypillian civilization are now recognized as lines of “solar path”. For example, the Nebeliv disk, which was found during the excavations of the Nebelivka Temple of Trypillian culture (Ukraine) in 2012, and today it is recognized as a ritual calendar (Zavalii, 2021: p. 103) , in its structure it has three-syllable lines, which is almost the best visual content (symbolic code), which contributes to solving scientific problems of this type (Figure 5, Figure 6).
From the presented material, we can assume that the Trypillians in the symbol of the archaic swastika could put the visible process of the solar mystery, the change of seasons, the rotation of the “firmament” around the celestial axis, which was encoded by the corresponding three-syllable line (Figure 7).
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Figure 6. Ancient calendars with three-syllable linear symbols. (a) Aegean calendar disk (approximately 3000 BC). (b) Trypillian calendar disk or Nebeliv disk (4000-3900 BC).
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Figure 7. Visible path of the sun above the horizon for a year.
Already at the later stages of the cultural development of the Trypillian civilization such a sunny-summer symbol probably simplified to the well-recognized swastika symbol (Figure 2) in the modern world and entered the Indo-European cult complex in this form. It is important to note that in Eastern cultures (Hindus, Jains, Buddhists), the swastika continues to be a sacred symbol and is associated with the Sun. Among the Aztecs a hieroglyph in the form of a disk with a cross denoted a day, and a disk with swastika had the meaning of “year” (Golan, 1991: pр. 119-122) . In China and Japan, where the swastika entered from India, it symbolizes prosperity, well-being and longevity. In the Encyclopedia Britannica we find that the right-hand swastika is considered a solar symbol and imitates with its “branches” the rotation, along which the Sun passes daily, which in the Northern Hemisphere passes from the east, then from south to west (Swastika) . All this perfectly supports our hypothesis about the semantic load of the swastika prototype in Trypillian culture.
It is worth noting that this particular swastika symbol in analogies is not a unique phenomenon. The identical character depicted on the Trypillia bowl finds its analogy among the signs on the pottery of the Hradeshnytsia culture or the Vincha culture (approximately 5500-4500 BC) (Encyclopedia of Tripillian Civilization, 2004: р. 131) .
Therefore, the swastika symbol, as a stereotypical marker of the Indo-European/Aryan logos, is currently being studied from actual archaeological materials, and most importantly, these materials come from the territories where native speakers of Indo-European languages have lived and still live.
In the end it is worth briefly considering the specific role of the swastika, which developed in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. According to the author, the inversion of the symbol, which took place from 1933 to 1945 in National Socialist Germany, may not cross out the 20-thousand-year cultural history (taking into account the discovery of the mezin bracelet made of mammoth bone (Figure 1) of the development of the symbol in the meaning of the light-bearing, solar-annual symbol of Indo-European peoples. Twelve years of Hitler’s rule and twenty thousand years of historical development of the Indo-European ethnic group, carrying their holy symbol for generations, have an exorbitant scale of ideological comparison. In this case, the ideological inversion of the swastika of the first half of the 20th century acts not only as a counter-traditional phenomenon, but also as a counter-evolutionary one. The specific Hitler symbol should be considered as an indirect political deviation and an unacceptable transformation of the sacred, cosmogonic symbol—the image of ancient Indo-European cultures. It is also worth noting that the black cross that stands on the edge at 45˚ with the ends directed to the right side in a white circle on a red background should not be called “Swastika”, but “Hakenkreuz”, as the national socialists themselves had called it.
Having understood the original tradition and nature of the origin of Swastika symbols, it is possible that in the modern world there will also be a reverse inversion from the dark to the light side of this symbol. Then all Indo-European peoples (and not only Indo-European ones) will get back their original symbol “framed by the sun” and the ancestral spirit.
8. Conclusion
Therefore, Indo-European Aryan problems in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries were tested in linguistic, ideological, territorial, racial, philosophical and archaeological research. Today Indo-European studies are also considered from the point of view of genetic and anthropological science, which goes beyond the scope of the study of this article.
The search for the origins of evolutionary phenomena for European peoples has generated many scientific hypotheses, discussions and sometimes outright abuse and speculation. Thus, in the first half of the 20th century artificial Aryan theories were adapted to suit political doctrines, which led to the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. We can say that at that historical time, the ancient energy of the primitive tradition of the European ethnic group was used as a sign of death and cruelty. However, the reverse inversion of the symbol, which is now 20,000 years old, at a new historical stage of European civilization can spin the “time spiral” in the opposite direction. A symbol that has a huge primordial life-giving energy and the collective memory of thousands of generations can become a driving force for the sanctification of life and the cosmic process in the new time.
The hypotheses presented in this paper indicate that the Trypillian culture could be one of the driving forces of the Indo-European logos. A comparative analysis of the Trypillian monuments also shows their broad European context, the further study of which is also of great scientific interest.
The symbol of the summer solar mystery—the swastika, which early became sacred to the Trypillians, found its expression in various Neolithic cultures of Europe, Asia and later cultures of the indigenous population of America, and also became a stereotypical marker of the Indo-European or Aryan logos. The phenomenon of Trypillian culture lies in the possibility of studying this type of symbol in its “rudimentary States”, and the scientific definition of Trypillians— Proto-Indo-Europeans or Indo-Europeans-Aryans somewhat confirms the existing stereotypes formed in the 20th century, not least thanks to the swastika.
As a result of working on this article, I have come to the realization that in studying the spiritual world of the civilizations of Old Europe, it is necessary to further combine the efforts of the international scientific community and researchers from various fields of scientific research. Further research on the symbolic culture of ancient farmers may be of particular interest. The genesis of one symbolic spinning wheel can serve as a kind of “Rosetta Stone” to understanding other symbolic systems, as seen in the example of the initiated study on the Trypillian proto-swastika symbol.