1.
Buryats
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The Buryats, numbering approximately 500,000, are the largest indigenous group in Siberia, mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia. They are the northern subgroup of the Mongols. Buryats share many customs with other Mongols, including nomadic herding, today, the majority of Buryats live in and around Ulan-Ude, the capital of the republic, although many live more traditionally in the countryside. They speak a central Mongolic language called Buryat, according to UNESCOs 2010 edition of the Atlas of the Worlds Languages in Danger, the Buryat language is classified as severely endangered. The Buryat people are descended from various Siberian and Mongol peoples that inhabited the Lake Baikal Region, then in the 13th century the Mongolians came up and subjugated the various Buryat tribes around Lake Baikal. The name Buriyad is mentioned as one of the forest people for the first time in The Secret History of the Mongols and it says Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, marched north to subjugate the Buryats in 1207. The Buryats lived along the Angara River and its tributaries at this time, meanwhile, their component, Barga, appeared both west of Baikal and in northern Buryatias Barguzin valley. Linked also to the Bargas were the Khori-Tumed along the Arig River in eastern Khövsgöl Province, a Tumad rebellion broke out in 1217, when Genghis Khan allowed his viceroy to seize 30 Tumad maidens. Genghis Khans commander Dorbei the Fierce of the Dörbeds smashed them in response, the Buryats joined the Oirats challenging the imperial rule of the Eastern Mongols during the Northern Yuan period in the late 14th century. Historically, the territories around Lake Baikal belonged to Mongolia, Buryats were subject to Tusheet Khan, when the Russians expanded into Transbaikalia in 1609, the Cossacks found only a small core of tribal groups speaking a Mongol dialect called Buryat and paying tribute to the Khalkha. However, they were enough to compel the Ket and Samoyed peoples on the Kan. The ancestors of most modern Buryats were speaking a variety of Turkic-Tungusic dialects at that time, in addition to genuine Buryat-Mongol tribes that merged with the Buryats, the Buryats also assimilated other groups, including some Oirats, the Khalkha, Tungus and others. The Khori-Barga had migrated out of the Barguzin eastward to the lands between the Greater Khingan and the Argun, around 1594 most of them fled back to the Aga and Nerchinsk in order to escape subjection by the Daurs. The territory and people were annexed to the Russian state by treaties in 1689 and 1727. Consolidation of modern Buryat tribes and groups took place under the conditions of the Russian state, from the middle of the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the Buryat population increased from 77,000 to 300,000. Another estimate of the growth in people referring to themselves as Buryat is based on the clan list names paying tribute in the form of a sable-skin tax. This indicates a population of about 77,000 in 1640 rising to 157,000 in 1823, the historical roots of the Buryat culture are related to the Mongolic peoples. After Buryatia was incorporated into Russia, it was exposed to two traditions – Buddhist and Christian, in 1741, the Tibetan branch of Buddhism was recognized as one of the official religions in Russia, and the first Buryat datsan was built
2.
Ovoo
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Ovoo or obo are sacred stone heaps used as altars or shrines in Mongolian folk religious practice and in the religion of other Mongolic peoples. They are usually made from rocks with wood, ovoos are often found at the top of mountains and in high places, like mountain passes. In modern times, especially in China, some of them have developed into large, in many of these aobaoes of China, a trident symbol is put on top of the structure. They serve mainly as sites for the worship of Heaven and lesser gods led by shamans and kins elders, when travelling, it is custom to stop and circle an ovoo three times in clockwise direction, in order to have a safer journey. Usually, rocks are picked up from the ground and added to the pile, also, one may leave offerings in the form of sweets, money, milk, or vodka. If one is in a hurry while travelling and does not have time to stop at an ovoo, ovoos are the site for Heaven worship ceremonies that typically take place at the end of summer. Worshippers place a branch or stick in the ovoo and tie a blue khadag, a ceremonial silk scarf symbolic of the open sky. They then light a fire and make offerings, followed by a ceremonial dance and prayers. During Mongolias Communist period, ovoo worship was prohibited along with other forms of religion. Ovoos may have influenced or given birth to the Korean seonangdang
3.
North Asia
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North Asia or Northern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of Siberia, and Russian Far East in the Asian portion of Russia – the area east of the Ural Mountains. A large part of the region is known as Asian Russia. Most estimates are that there are around 38 million Russians living east of the Ural Mountains, the Indigenous Siberians now are a minority in Siberia/North Asia due to the European-oriented Russification process during the last three centuries. Russian census records indicate they make up only an estimated 10% of the population with the Buryats numbering at 445,175. There are 443,852 Yakuts living in Siberia, according to the 2002 census there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization. Other ethnic groups live in the region and make a significant portion are ethnic Germans. In 1875, Chambers reported the population of Northern Asia to be 8 million, between 1801 and 1914 an estimated 7 million settlers moved from European Russia to Siberia, 85% during the quarter-century before World War I. For geographic and statistical reasons, the UN geoscheme and various classification schemes will not subdivide countries. There are no mountain chains in Northern Asia to prevent air currents from the Arctic flowing down over the plains of Siberia, the geomorphology of Asia in general is imperfectly known, although the deposits and mountain ranges are well known. The Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate meet across the neck of Alaska, following the line of the Aleutian Trench, Northern Asia is built around the Angara Shield, which lies between the Yenisey River and the Lena River. It developed from fragments of Laurasia, whose rocks were mainly Precambrian crystalline rocks, gneisses, and schists and these rocks can be found in the Angara Shield, the Inner Mongolian-Korean Shield, the Ordes Shield and the Southeast Asia Shield. The fragments have been subject to orogenesis around their margins, giving a complex of plateaux, one can find outcrops of these rocks in unfolded sections of the Shields. Their presence has been confirmed below Mesozoic and later sediments, there are three main periods of mountain building in Northern Asia, although it has occurred many times. The Alpine orogeny caused extensive folding and faulting of Mesozoic and early Tertiary sediments from the Tethys geosyncline. Northern Asia was glaciated in the Pleistocene, but this played a significant part in the geology of the area compared to the part that it played in North America. The Scandinavian ice sheet extended to the east of the Urals, North Asia itself has permafrost, ranging in depths from 30 to 600 metres and covering an area of 9.6 million km². Several of the regions are volcanic, with both the Koryak Mountains and the Kamchatka Peninsula having active volcanoes. The Anadyr Plateau is formed from igneous rocks, the Mongolian Plateau has an area of basaltic lavas and volcanic cones
4.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
5.
Shamanism
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The word shaman probably originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia. The term was introduced to the west after Russian forces conquered the shamanistic Khanate of Kazan in 1552, Mircea Eliade writes, A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be, shamanism = technique of religious ecstasy. Shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul, alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community, Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment, hundreds of books and academic papers on the subject have been produced, with a peer-reviewed academic journal being devoted to the study of shamanism. The word shaman probably originates from the Evenki word šamán, most likely from the dialect spoken by the Sym Evenki peoples. The Tungusic term was adopted by Russians interacting with the indigenous peoples in Siberia. It is found in the memoirs of the exiled Russian churchman Avvakum, adam Brand, a merchant from Lübeck, published in 1698 his account of a Russian embassy to China, a translation of his book, published the same year, introduced the word shaman to English speakers. The etymology of the Evenki word is sometimes connected to a Tungus root ša- to know, other scholars assert that the word comes directly from the Manchu language, and as such would be the only commonly used English word that is a loan from this language. This proposal has been thoroughly critiqued since 1917, ethnolinguist Juha Janhunen regards it as an anachronism and an impossibility that is nothing more than a far-fetched etymology. Ethnolinguists did not develop as a discipline nor achieve contact with these communities until the late 19th century, there is no single agreed-upon definition for the word shamanism among anthropologists. The English historian Ronald Hutton noted that by the dawn of the 21st century, the first of these uses the term to refer to anybody who contacts a spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness. The second definition limits the term to refer to those who contact a spirit world while in a state of consciousness at the behest of others. Problematically, scholars advocating the third view have failed to agree on what the defining technique should be, the fourth definition identified by Hutton uses shamanism to refer to the indigenous religions of Siberia and neighboring parts of Asia. According to the Golomt Center for Shamanic Studies, a Mongolian organisation of shamans, Shamans are normally called by dreams or signs which require lengthy training. However, shamanic powers may be inherited, turner and colleagues mention a phenomenon called shamanistic initiatory crisis, a rite of passage for shamans-to-be, commonly involving physical illness and/or psychological crisis
6.
Noaidi
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A noaidi is a shaman of the Sami people in the Nordic countries representing an indigenous nature religion. Most noaidi practices died out during the 17th century, most likely because they resisted christianisation and their actions were referred to in courts as magic or sorcery. Several Sámi shamanistic beliefs and practices were similar to those of some Siberian cultures, noaidis, Sámi shaman, were traditionally the healers and protectors. Noaidis are said to have the role of mediator between humans and the spirits, sacrifices were designed by the noaidi to reestablish the balance between the mortal and immortal worlds. A noaidi could engage in any kind of affair that demanded wisdom, the activities included healing people, helping children, making decisions and protecting reindeer, which represented the most important source of food and were also used as tribute payment. The sources from which we learn about noaidi are court protocols, tales, excavated tools and that noaidis were punished and in some cases sentenced to death for their sorcery should perhaps rather be interpreted as an attempt to obliterate opposition to the crown. There was by law no freedom of religion during most of the 19th century and before, Swedish priests supported conviction of noaidis for sorcery. In the Sami shamanistic form of drumming and traditional chanting were of singular importance. Some of joiks were sung on shamanistic rites, this memory is conserved also in a folklore text, recently, joiks have been sung in two different styles, one of which is sung only by young people. The other joik may be identified with the “mumbling” joik, resembling chants or magic spells, several surprising characteristics of joiks can be explained by comparing the music ideals, as observed in joiks and contrasted to music ideals of other cultures. In some instances, joiks mimic natural sounds and this can be contrasted to other goals, namely overtone singing and bel canto, both of which exploit human speech organs to achieve “superhuman” sounds. Overtone singing and the imitation of sounds in shamanism are present in other cultures as well. Sound imitation may serve purposes such as games and other entertainment as well as important practical purposes such as luring animals during hunts. Sami shamanism Seiðr Gonagas Tietäjä Deschênes, Bruno, the Magazine for Traditional Music Throughout the World. The book has been translated to English, Diószegi, Vilmos, the story of an ethnographical research expedition. Translated from Hungarian by Anita Rajkay Babó, the title means “Shamans in Eurasia”, the book is published also in German, Estonian and Finnish. Site of publisher with short description on the book, musik als Glück und Nutzen für das Leben. Inuit Games and Songs • Chants et Jeux des Inuit, musiques & musiciens du monde • Musics & musicians of the world
7.
Maria Czaplicka
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Maria Antonina Czaplicka, also referred to as Marya Antonina Czaplicka and Marie Antoinette Czaplicka, was a Polish cultural anthropologist who is best known for her ethnography of Siberian shamanism. Czaplickas research survives in three works, her studies in Aboriginal Siberia, a travelogue published as My Siberian Year. Curzon Press republished all three volumes, plus a fourth volume of articles and letters, in 1999, Czaplicka was born in the Stara Praga district of Warsaw in 1884, into an impoverished Polish nobility family. She started her studies with the so-called Flying University, an institution of higher education in Russian-held Poland. She supported herself with a number of paid jobs, as a teacher, secretary. She also wrote poetry, and a novel for children called Olek Niedziela, in 1910 she became the first woman to receive a Mianowski Scholarship, and was therefore able to continue her studies in the United Kingdom. She left Poland in 1910 and continued her studies at the Faculty of Anthropology of the London School of Economics under Charles G. Seligman, and at Somerville College, Oxford under R. R. Marett. Marett encouraged her to use her Russian language skills in a review of literature on native tribes in Siberia, at this stage she had never visited Siberia, but the quality of her writing led to Aboriginal Siberia becoming the major reference work in its field. Marett had intended the work reported in Czaplickas Aboriginal Siberia to be the basis for fieldwork in Siberia, in May 1914, she began such fieldwork, leading a joint expedition of Oxford University and University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology staff. Together with English ornithologist Maud Doria Haviland, English painter Dora Curtis, after the war started Czaplicka and Hall decided to continue their expedition while the others decided to go back to the United Kingdom. Czaplicka and Hall spent the entire winter travelling along the shores of the Yenisei River, Czaplicka prepared several hundreds of photographs of people of Siberia, as well as countless notes on anthropometry and their customs. In addition, she collected specimens for the Fielding-Druce Herbarium. Czaplicka returned to England in 1915 and she wrote a diary of her travel entitled My Siberian Year, which was published in 1916 by Mills & Boon, the book became very popular. In 1916, she became the first female lecturer in anthropology at Oxford University. She gave lectures on the nations of Central and Eastern Europe as well as on the habits of the Siberian tribes and she also spoke on Polish issues, including Danzigs post-war disposition. In 1920, her work was honoured with a Murchison Grant from the Royal Geographical Society, in spite of this triumph, her financial future was still insecure. Her three-year fellowship at Oxford having expired in 1919, she obtained a teaching position in anthropology in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Bristol. In 1921, she failed to obtain the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship which she had hoped for, the Universitys Senate expressed its regret and appreciation of the loss to the University of so distinguished a member of its staff
8.
Shamanic music
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Shamanic music is music played either by actual shamans as part of their rituals, or by people who, whilst not themselves shamans, wish to evoke the cultural background of shamanism in some way. So Shamanic music includes both music used as part of rituals and music that refers to, or draws on. In shamanism the shaman has an active musical role than the medium in spirit-possession. But a shamans ritual is a performance and not a musical performance. A shaman uses various ways of making sounds to which different ritual purposes are ascribed, of particular importance are the shamans song and shamans drumming. Recently in Siberia, music groups drawing on a knowledge of culture have emerged. In the West shamanism has served as a background to musics meant to alter a listeners state of mind. Korea and Tibet are two cultures where the music of shamanic ritual has interacted closely with other traditions, first, a shamanic ritual performance is, above all, a series of actions and not a series of musical sounds. Second, the attention is directed inwards towards her or his visualisation of the spirit world and communication with the spirits. Third, it is important for the success of the ritual that it be given its own clearly defined context that is different from any kind of entertainment. Fourth, any elements that are added to impress an audience are of a type to make the contact with the spirits seem more real. From a musical perspective shamanic ritual performances have the feature of discontinuity. Breaks may happen because a spirit is proving difficult to communicate with, typically, phases of the performance are broken off abruptly, perhaps to be restarted after a gap, perhaps not. The rhythmic dimension of the music of shamans rituals has been connected to the idea of incorporating the rhythms of nature and magically re-articulating them. It has been argued that shamanism and spirit possession involve contrasting kinds of states of mind. The shaman actively enters the world, negotiates with her or his own helper spirit and then with other spirits as necessary. The possessed medium, on the hand, is the passive recipient of a powerful spirit or god. This reflects on the different uses of music involved, in both cases the connection between music and an altered state of mind depends on both psychoacoustic and cultural factors, and the music cannot be said to cause trance-states
9.
Libation
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A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a god or spirit, or in memory of those who have passed on. It was common in many religions of antiquity and continues to be offered in various cultures today, various substances have been used for libations, most commonly wine or olive oil, and in India, ghee. The vessels used in the ritual, including the patera, often had a significant form which differentiated them from secular vessels, the libation could be poured onto something of religious significance, such as an altar, or into the earth. In East Asia, pouring an offering of rice into a stream, symbolises the unattachment from karma. Libation was part of ancient Egyptian society where it was an offering to honor and please the various divinities, sacred ancestors, humans present and not present. It is suggested that libation originated somewhere in the upper Nile Valley and spread out to other regions of Africa, isaiah uses libation as a metaphor when describing the end of the Suffering Servant figure who poured out his life unto death. Libation was a central and vital aspect of ancient Greek religion and it is one of the basic religious acts that define piety in ancient Greece, dating back to the Bronze Age and even prehistoric Greece. Libations were a part of life, and the pious might perform them every day in the morning and evening. A libation most often consisted of mixed wine and water, but could also be unmixed wine, honey, oil, water, the form of libation called spondē is typically the ritualized pouring of wine from a jug or bowl held in the hand. The most common ritual was to pour the liquid from an oinochoē into a phiale, after wine was poured from the phiale, the remainder of the contents was drunk by the celebrant. A libation is poured any time wine is to be drunk, the etiquette of the symposium required that when the first bowl of wine was served, a libation was made to Zeus and the Olympian gods. Heroes received a libation from the second krater served, and Zeus the Finisher from the third, an alternative was to offer a libation from the first bowl to the Agathos Daimon and from the third bowl to Hermes. An individual at the symposium could also make an invocation of, the Greeks stood when they prayed, either with their arms uplifted, or in the act of libation with the right arm extended to hold the phiale. In conducting animal sacrifice, wine is poured onto the victim as part of its ritual slaughter and preparation and this scene is commonly depicted in Greek art, which also often shows sacrificers or the gods themselves holding the phiale. The Greek verb spendō, pour a libation, also conclude a pact, derives from the Indo-European root *spend-, make an offering, perform a rite, the noun is spondē or spondai, libation. In the middle voice, the verb means enter into an agreement, blood sacrifice was performed to begin a war, spondai marked the conclusion of hostilities, and is often thus used in the sense of armistice, treaty. Libations poured onto the earth are meant for the dead and for the chthonic gods, in the Book of the Dead in the Odyssey, Odysseus digs an offering pit around which he pours in order honey, wine and water. For the form of libation called choē, a vessel is tipped over and emptied onto the ground for the chthonic gods
10.
Onomatopoeia
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An onomatopoeia is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the sound that it describes. As an uncountable noun, onomatopoeia refers to the property of such words, common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises such as oink, miaow, roar or chirp. Although in the English language, the term means the imitation of a sound. For words that imitate sounds, the term Ηχομιμητικό is used, Ηχομιμητικό derives from Ηχώ, meaning echo or sound, and μιμητικό, meaning mimetic or imitation. Some other very common English-language examples include hiccup, zoom, bang, beep, moo, machines and their sounds are also often described with onomatopoeia, as in honk or beep-beep for the horn of an automobile, and vroom or brum for the engine. When someone speaks of an involving a audible arcing of electricity. Human sounds sometimes provide instances of onomatopoeia, as when mwah is used to represent a kiss, for animal sounds, words like quack, moo, bark or woof, roar, meow/miaow or purr, cluck and baa are typically used in English. Some of these words are used both as nouns and as verbs, some languages flexibly integrate onomatopoeic words into their structure. This may evolve into a new word, up to the point that it is no longer recognized as onomatopoeia, verba dicendi are a method of integrating onomatopoeia and ideophones into grammar. Sometimes things are named from the sounds they make, in English, for example, there is the universal fastener which is named for the onomatopoeic of the sound it makes, the zip or zipper. In Tamil and Malayalam, the word for crow is kaakaa and this practice is especially common in certain languages such as Māori and, therefore, in names of animals borrowed from these languages. Although a particular sound is heard similarly by people of different cultures, for example, the snip of a pair of scissors is cri-cri in Italian, riqui-riqui in Spanish, terre-terre or treque-treque in Portuguese, krits-krits in modern Greek and katr-katr in Hindi. Similarly, the honk of a horn is ba-ba in Mandarin, tut-tut in French, pu-pu in Japanese, bbang-bbang in Korean, bært-bært in Norwegian, fom-fom in Portuguese. Onomatopoeic effect can also be produced in a phrase or word string with the help of alliteration and consonance alone, the most famous example is the phrase furrow followed free in Samuel Taylor Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It may be noted that the words followed and free are not onomatopoeic in themselves, similarly, alliteration has been used in the line as the surf surged up the sun swept shore. To recreate the sound of breaking waves, in the poem I, She, comic strips and comic books made extensive use of onomatopoeia. Crane had fun with this, tossing in an occasional ker-splash or lickety-wop along with what would become the standard effects. Words as well as images became vehicles for carrying along his increasingly fast-paced storylines, in 2002, DC Comics introduced a villain named Onomatopoeia, an athlete, martial artist and weapons expert who often speaks sounds
11.
Sami people
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The Sami people are an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The Sami are the indigenous people of Scandinavia recognized and protected under the international conventions of indigenous peoples. Sami ancestral lands are not well-defined and their traditional languages are the Sami languages and are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family. Traditionally, the Sami have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including fishing, fur trapping. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding, currently about 10% of the Sami are connected to reindeer herding, providing them with meat, fur, and transportation. 2,800 Sami people are involved in herding on a full-time basis. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved only for Sami people in regions of the Nordic countries. The Sámi are often known in other languages by the exonyms Lap, Lapp, some Sami regard these as pejorative terms, while others do not. Finn was the originally used by Norse speakers to refer to the Sami, as attested in the Icelandic Eddas. As Old Norse gradually developed into the separate Scandinavian languages, Swedes apparently took to using Finn exclusively to refer to inhabitants of Finland, Finnish immigrants to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were referred to as Kvens to distinguish them from the Sami Finns. Ethnic Finns are a group from Sami. In fact, Saxo never explicitly connects the Sami with the two Laplands, there is another suggestion that it originally meant wilds. In Finland and Sweden, Lapp is common in names, such as Lappi, Lappeenranta and Lapinlahti in Finland. As already mentioned, Finn is an element in Norwegian place names. In the North Sámi language, láhppon olmmoš means a person who is lost, Sámi refer to themselves as Sámit or Sápmelaš, the word Sámi being inflected into various grammatical forms. It has been proposed that Sámi, Häme, and perhaps Suomi are of the origin and ultimately borrowed from the Baltic word *žēmē. The Baltic word is cognate with Slavic земля, which means land. The Sámi institutions—notably the parliaments, radio and TV stations, theatres, etc. —all use the term Sámi, including when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English
12.
Bel canto
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Bel canto, along with a number of similar constructions, is a term relating to Italian singing. It has several different meanings and is subject to a variety of interpretations. Nonetheless, neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt definition until after 1900, the term remains vague and ambiguous in the 21st century and is often used to evoke a lost singing tradition. As generally understood today, the bel canto refers to the Italian-originated vocal style that prevailed throughout most of Europe during the 18th century. Operas received the most dramatic use of the techniques, but the bel canto style applies equally to oratorio, the da capo arias these works contained provided challenges for singers, as the repeat of the opening section prevented the story line from progressing. Nonetheless, singers needed to keep the emotional drama moving forward, Singers regularly embellished both arias and recitatives, but did so by tailoring their embellishments to the prevailing sentiments of the piece. Two famous 18th-century teachers of the style were Antonio Bernacchi and Nicola Porpora, a number of these teachers were castrati. In another application, the bel canto is sometimes attached to Italian operas written by Vincenzo Bellini. These composers wrote works for the stage during what musicologists sometimes call the bel canto era. The last important opera role for a castrato was written in 1824 by Giacomo Meyerbeer, wagner decried the Italian singing model, alleging that it was concerned merely with whether that G or A will come out roundly. He advocated a new, Germanic school of singing which would draw the spiritually energetic, interestingly enough, French musicians and composers never embraced the more florid extremes of the 18th-century Italian bel canto style. They disliked the voice and because they placed a premium on the clear enunciation of the texts of their vocal music. The popularity of the bel canto style as espoused by Rossini, Donizetti and it was overtaken by a heavier, more ardent, less embroidered approach to singing that was necessary in order to perform the innovative works of Giuseppe Verdi with maximum dramatic impact. Sopranos and baritones reacted in a fashion to their tenor colleagues when confronted with Verdis drama-filled compositions. To others, however, bel canto became the art of elegant. Rossini lamented in a conversation took place in Paris in 1858 that, Alas for us. Similarly, the so-called German style was as derided as much as it was heralded, in the late-19th century and early-20th century, the term bel canto was resurrected by singing teachers in Italy, among whom the retired Verdi baritone Antonio Cotogni was a pre-eminent figure. During the 1890s, the directors of the Bayreuth Festival initiated a particularly forceful style of Wagnerian singing that was totally at odds with the Italian ideals of bel canto
13.
Soyot
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The Soyot people live mainly in the Oka region in the Okinsky District in the Republic of Buryatia, Russia. According to the 2010 census, there were 3,608 Soyots in Russia and their extinct language was of a Turkic type and basically similar to the Tuvans. Their language has been reconstructed and a textbook has been published, the language is currently taught in some schools in Oka. The Oka River, the largest river flowing down from the Western Sayans into the Angara is called the Ok-hem meaning an arrow-river by the Soyots of the Oka River basin and they live dispersed among the Buryats and now speak the Buryat language. According to Larisa R. Pavlinskaya, a Russian ethnographer based in St, in 1726 Tunka Valley Buryats spoke of a people who self-identified as Soyot but who the Buryats called Kosogol Urianghai. At that time the Soyot herded reindeer on the upper Irkut River, approximately 350–400 years ago, the Soyot people moved to Buryatia from the area of Khovsgol Lake. The traditional lifestyle of the Soyot people, like others in the Taiga group, was characterized by reindeer-breeding and hunting, in 1940 the Okinsky Region was designated as an aimag and officially recognized all residents of the Okinsky region as Buryat. Soyots lost their identity as an ethnic group until 2000. In 1926 Petri led the first anthropological expedition into the Soyot reindeer-herding region, Petri described a difficult period in Russian history claiming that Soyot reindeer herding was a dying branch of the economy. The Sayan ethnic groups still live almost exclusively in the area of the Eastern Sayan mountains, in 2000 reindeer peoples of Mongolia and Russia were working on collaborative efforts to rebuild reindeer-herding. The Soyots were moved to Sorok, Khurga, Bokson and Orlik, many were moved to cattle-breeding farms and they switched to Buryat-style husbandry. Oka River is a tributary of the Angara River, in 1920 Ossendowski narrowly escaped being arrested by the Red Army who surrounded his house in the Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk, on the shores of the River Yenisei. He fled into the forest and lived for a while in the taiga along the shores of the Yenisei River and he and his companions followed the Tuba and Amyl Rivers to the Sayan mountains, where Urianhai, the northern part of Mongolia, begins. Urianhai is on the waters of the Yenisei. After three days we crossed the ridge of the Sayan chain, passed the border river Algiak and. The Soyots helped Ossendowski and his companions escape, the inhabitants of Urianhai, the Soyots, are proud of being the genuine Buddhists and of retaining the pure doctrine of holy Rama and the deep wisdom of Sakkia-Mouni. They are the enemies of war and of the shedding of blood. Three times in their history they have thus trekked northward to avoid struggle, with their love of peace they struggled against the evils of war
14.
Nganasan people
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The Nganasans are an indigenous Samoyedic people inhabiting the Taymyr Peninsula in north Siberia. In the Russian Federation, they are recognized as being one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, the Nganasans are thought to be the descendants of Paleo-Siberian peoples who were culturally assimilated by various Samoyedic peoples. The Nganasans were traditionally a semi-nomadic people whose main form of subsistence was wild reindeer hunting, in contrast to the Nenets, beginning in the early 17th century, the Nganasans were subjected to the yasak system of Czarist Russia. They lived relatively independently, until the 1970s, when they were settled in the villages live in today. There is no certainty as to the number of Nganasans living in Russia today. The 2002 Russian census counted 862 Nganasans living in Russia,766 of whom lived in the former, however, those who study the Nganasan estimate their population to comprise approximately 1000 people. Some Nganasans live in villages with a Dolgan majority, such as Ust-Avam, the Nganasan language is considered seriously endangered and it is estimated that at most 500 Nganasan can speak the Nganasan language, with very limited profiency among those eighteen and younger. The Nganasans first referred to themselves in Russian as Samoyeds, but they would often use this term when referring to the Enets people and instead refer to themselves as “Avam people. ”For the Nganasans, the term signified ngano-nganasana, which means “real people” in the Nganasan language. The Nganasans were also formerly called Tavgi Samoyeds or Tavgis initially by the Russians, following the Russian Revolution, the Nganasans adopted their current appellation. The Nganasans are the northernmost ethnic group of the Eurasian continent, the hunting areas of the Nganasan often coincided with those of the Dolgans and Enets to their east and west respectively. Another group intermarried with the Paleo-Siberian inhabitants of the Pyasina River, subsequently, a group of Tungusic people migrated to the region near Lake Pyasino and the Avam River, where they were absorbed into Samoyed culture, forming a new group called the Tidiris. By the middle of the 17th century, Tungusic peoples began to push the Samoyedic peoples northward towards the tundra Taymyr Peninsula, where they merged into one tribe called “Avam Nganasans. ”As the Tavgs were the largest Samoyedic group at the time of this merger, their dialect formed the basis of the present-day Nganasan language. Tribute collectors established themselves at the “Avam Winter Quarters, ” at the confluence of the Avam River and Dudypta River rivers, the Nganasans often tried to avoid paying yasak by changing the names that they provided to the Russians. Relations between the Russians and Nganasans were not always peaceful, in 1666, the Nganasans ambushed and killed yasak collectors, soldiers, tradesmen, and their interpreters on three different occasions, stealing the sable furs and property belonging to them. Over the course of the year,35 men were killed in total, the Nganasan had little direct contact with merchants and, unlike most indigenous Siberians, they were never baptized or contacted by missionaries. Some Nganasans traded directly with the Russians, while others did so via the Dolgans and they usually exchanged sable furs for alcohol, tobacco, tea, and various tools, products which quickly integrated themselves into Nganasan culture. Another import from the Russians was disease, in the 1830s, and again from 1907 to 1908, the Nganasans were ravaged by smallpox outbreaks. The Nganasans first came into contact with the Soviets around in the 1930s, additionally, the Soviets took a greater interest in the Nganasans as a people, and starting in the 1930s, ethnographers began to study their customs
15.
Inuit throat singing
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Inuit throat singing, or katajjaq, is a form of musical performance uniquely found among the Inuit. Several groups, including Tudjaat, The Jerry Cans, Quantum Tangle and Silla + Rise, also blend traditional throat singing with musical genres such as pop, folk. Two women face each other usually in a position and holding each others arms. Sometimes they will do some kind of movements while singing. One singer leads by setting a short pattern, which she repeats leaving brief silent intervals between each repetition. The other singer fills in the gap with another rhythmic pattern, the sounds used include voiced sounds as well as unvoiced ones, both through inhalation or exhalation. The first to run out of breath or be unable to maintain the pace of the singer will start to laugh or simply stop. It generally lasts one and three minutes. The winner is the singer who beats the largest number of people, at one time, the lips of the two women almost touched, so that one singer used the mouth cavity of the other as a resonator, but this is less common in present day. Often, the singing is accompanied by a shuffling in rhythm from one foot to the other, the sounds may be actual words or nonsense syllables or created during exhalation. The old woman who teaches the children corrects sloppy intonation of contours, poorly meshed phase displacements, john Metcalfs 1990 opera Tornrak features throat singing by the Inuit characters. A scene of Inuit throat singing appears in the 1974 Timothy Bottoms film The White Dawn, the 2003 film The Snow Walker contains a scene of Inuit throat singing. The 2001 film Atanarjuat has a scene with Inuit throat singing, the 2007 film, Wristcutters, A Love Story, features a mute character named Nanuk who practices this style of throat singing. A rather imaginative variation on throat singing is featured in the 2007 Dan Simmons novel, in a scene of The Simpsons Movie, Homer Simpson is shown throat singing with an Inuit woman in order to have an epiphany. Rick Mercer, in an episode of his self-hosted show Rick Mercer Report, an August 2008 an AT&T radio commercial references kadajjat/throat singing in reference to the speakers roommate. In 2005, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra recorded The Four Seasons Mosaic CD, a reinvention of Vivaldis Four Seasons by Mychael Danna featuring Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Jeanne Lamon, violin, Aruna Narayan, sarangi, Wen Zhao, pipa and throat singers Aqsarniit. The electropop band Row of Cookies incorporated a sample of Inuit throat singing in their version of the song New Girl Now by Honeymoon Suite, the British ITV documentary Billy Connolly, Journey to the Edge of the World features Billy Connolly in the Canadian Arctic. In the second episode, he visits a pair of women demonstrating the points of throat singing
16.
Inuit music
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Traditional Inuit music, the music of the Inuit, has been based on drums used in dance music as far back as can be known, and a vocal style called katajjaq has become of interest in Canada and abroad. Yupik music is the music of the Yupik peoples, Iñupiat music is the music of the Iñupiat. The Copper Inuit living around Coppermine River flowing North to Coronation Gulf have generally two categories of music, a song is called pisik if the performer also plays drums and aton if he only dances. Each pisik functions as a song to a drummer and is accompanied by dancing and singing. Each drummer has his own style and are performed during gatherings, one drum is used in the performance of a pisik and often begins in a slow tempo, gradually building in intensity. The wooden frame drum, called a qilaut is played on the edge with a wooden beater called a qatuk, the performer tilts the drum from one side to another and dances in rhythm of the beats. The closest word, nipi, includes music, the sound of speech, traditionally, Eskimo songs seem to have been intended to be heard as parts of a whole--a series of auditory experiences. Until the advent of recording technology, Inuit music was usually used in spiritual ceremonies to ask the spirits for good luck in hunting or gambling. Inuit music has long noted for a stoic lack of work or love songs. These musical beginnings were modified with the arrival of European sailors, instruments like the accordion were popularized, and dances like the jig or reel became common. Scots-Irish derived American country music has been popular among Inuit in the 20th century. Katajjaq is a type of traditional song, considered a game. It is one of the few examples of overtone singing. The old woman who teaches the children corrects sloppy intonation of contours, poorly meshed phrase displacements, Inuit vocal games are usually played by two women facing each other in close proximity. They use the other oral cavity as resonators but may also play under a kitchen pot for the resonances to be more pronounced. The game consists of repeating words in tight rhythmic canon. The strong accent of one participant coincides with the weak of the other, the breathing of the players are thus also alternated. Vocal techniques include voiced and voiceless articulations and different articulations, and different placement of sound in the chest, throat, vocal games are unique to the Inuit
17.
Yukaghir people
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The Yukaghir, or Yukagir are a people in East Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic, by the time of Russian colonization in the 17th century, the Yukaghir tribal groups occupied territories from the Lena River to the mouth of the Anadyr River. The number of the Yukaghirs decreased between the 17th and 19th centuries due to epidemics, internecine wars and Tsarist colonial policy, some of the Yukaghirs have assimilated with the Yakuts, Evens, and Russians. Currently, Yukaghirs live in the Sakha Republic and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, according to the 2002 Census, their total number was 1,509 people, up from 1,112 recorded in the 1989 Census. According to the latest 2001 all Ukrainian census,12 Yukaghirs are living in Ukraine, only 2 of them indicated Yukaghir as their native language. For the remaining others it is Russian and for 1 it is some other tongue, genetically, Yukaghirs have 31% of parental Haplogroup C-M217, which is dominant among Mongolian and Evenk-Tungusic peoples. Of the extinct groups, the most important were the Khodynts, the Anaoul, sometimes the Chuvan are considered a separate tribe. The Chuvantsy language has been extinct since the early 20th century, in 2002,1,087 identified themselves as Chuvan compared to more than 1,300 in 1989. The Vadul are mainly involved in reindeer herding while the Odul are mostly hunter-gatherers, the Vadul are also known as Tundra Yukaghir. The Odul are also known as Taiga Yukaghir or Kolyma Yukaghir, the Vadul and Odul languages are as different as German is from Dutch. Both are nearing extinction, and Odul is in a weaker state compared to Vadul. In the 1989 census, more than 700 of the Yukaghirs identified as Vadul while fewer than 400 were Odul, the Yukaghir are one of the oldest peoples in North-Eastern Asia. Originally they lived over a territory from Lake Baikal to the Arctic Ocean. By the time of the first encounter with Russians, Yukaghir were divided into twelve tribes with around 9,000 people, the Yukagir ethnonym is “Odul” or “Vadul”, which means “mighty”. Tribal divisions among the Yukaghir are fading now, although in every census from 1926, significant number of tribesmen identified themselves with tribal divisions like Anaoul, Odul and Vadul rather than describing themselves as Yukaghir. The Soviet government actively discouraged this tendency and now only the most elderly identify this way. In the 2002 census, out of the 1,509 Yukaghirs,51 identified themselves as Omok,40 as Alais,21 as Odul,17 as Vadul,6 as Khangait and 4 as Detkil, the head of every clan was an elder or “Ligey Shomorokh”. His was the word in all aspects of life
18.
Turkic languages
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The Turkic languages are a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China. Turkic languages are spoken as a language by some 170 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages. Turkic languages are languages, have vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of grammatical articles, noun classes. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family, the geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia ranges from the North-East of Siberia to Turkey in the West, since the Ottoman era. The two groups shared a religion, Tengrism, and there exists a multitude of evident loanwords between Turkic languages and Mongolic languages, although the loans were bidirectional, today Turkic loanwords constitute the largest foreign component in Mongolian vocabulary. The most famous of these loanwords include lion, gold, the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, written during the 11th century AD by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and it mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to todays Chuvash language, are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD. With the Turkic expansion during the Early Middle Ages, Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, various terminologies from the Turkic languages have passed into Persian, Hindustani, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Arabic. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, the modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich. It is not clear when two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged. With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages, Rhoticisation, e. g. in the last consonant of the word for nine *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, in this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/, *-/k/, *-/kh/ in this branch. See Antonov and Jacques on the debate concerning rhotacism and lambdacism in Turkic and this separates Khalaj as a peripheral language. The following table is based upon the classification presented by Lars Johanson The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, in some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language, or a loanword is much more common
19.
Yakuts
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Yakuts are Turkic people who mainly inhabit the Sakha Republic. The Yakut language belongs to the Siberian branch of the Turkic languages, Yakuts mainly live in the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenk Autonomous Districts. The Yakuts are divided into two groups based on geography and economics. Yakuts in the north are historically semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen, reindeer breeders, while southern Yakuts engage in animal husbandry focusing on horses, the ancestors of Yakuts were Kurykans who migrated from Yenisey river to Baikal Lake. The Yakuts originally lived around Olkhon and the region of Lake Baikal, beginning in the 13th century they migrated to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers under the pressure of the rising Mongols. The northern Yakuts were largely hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, while the southern Yakuts raised cattle and horses. In the 1620s the Tsardom of Muscovy began to move into their territory and annexed or settled down on it, imposed a fur tax and managed to suppress several Yakut rebellions between 1634 and 1642. Russian brutality in collection of the pelt tax sparked a rebellion and aggression among the Yakuts, the Yakut population alone is estimated to have fallen by 70 percent between 1642 and 1682 because of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy expeditions. The discovery of gold and, later, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, by the 1820s almost all the Yakuts had been converted to the Russian Orthodox church, although they retained, and still retain, a number of Shamanist practices. Yakut literature began to rise in the late 19th century, a national revival occurred in the early 20th century. In 1922, the new Soviet government named the area the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The last conflict of the Russian Civil War, known as the Yakut Revolt, occurred here when Cornet Mikhail Korobeinikov, a White Russian officer, led an uprising and a last stand against the Red Army. In the late 1920s through the late 1930s, Yakut people were systematically persecuted and its possible that hunger and malnutrition resulting from the period resulted in a decline in the Yakut total population from 240,500 in 1926 to 236,700 in 1959. By 1972, the population began to recover, Yakut males belong to Haplogroup N3a. Currently, Yakuts form a plurality of the total population within the vast Sakha Republic. According to the 2010 Russian census, there were a total of 466,492 Yakuts residing in the Sakha Republic during that year, or 49. 9% of the total population of the Republic. According to the 2010 census, some 87% of the Yakuts in the Sakha Republic are fluent in the Yakut language, the Sakha/Yakut language belongs to the Northern branch of the Siberian group of Turkic languages. It is most closely related to the Dolgan language, slightly less closely related languages include Tuvan and Shor
20.
Dolgans
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Dolgans are a Turkic people, who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The 2010 Census counted 7,885 Dolgans and this number includes 5,517 in former Taymyr Autonomous Okrug. There are 26 Dolgans in Ukraine, four of whom speak Dolgan, some believe that it is a dialect of Yakut language. Originally, the Dolgans were nomadic hunters and reindeer herders, in 1983, the anthropologist Shirin Akiner claimed, Dolgans enjoy full Soviet citizenship. They are found in all occupations, though the majority are peasants and their standard of housing is comparable to that of other national groups in the Soviet Union. Most Dolgans practice old shamanistic beliefs, however, some are influenced with Orthodox Christianity, ogdo Yegorovna Aksenov - poet, founder of Dolgan literature Dolgan language
21.
Eskimo language
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Eskimo–Aleut or Eskaleut is a language family native to Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, Greenland, and the Chukchi Peninsula on the eastern tip of Siberia. It is also known as Eskaleutian, Eskaleutic, or Inuit–Yupik-Unangan, the Eskimo–Aleut language family is divided into two branches, the Eskimo languages and the Aleut language. The Aleut language family consists of a language, Aleut, spoken in the Aleutian Islands. Aleut is divided into several dialects, Inuit, which covers a huge range of territory, is divided into several varieties. Neighbouring varieties are similar, although those at the farthest distances from the centre in the Diomede Islands. The proper place of one language, Sirenik, within the Eskimo family has not been settled, while some linguists list it as a branch of Yupik, others list it as a separate branch of the Eskimo family, alongside Yupik and Inuit. The Alaska Native Language Center believes that the ancestral language of the Eskimo languages and of Aleut divided into the Eskimo. The Eskimo language family divided into the Yupik and Inuit branches around 1000 years ago, the Eskimo–Aleut languages are among the native languages of the Americas. This is a category, not a genealogical one. There is general agreement that it is not closely related to the language families of North America. The more credible proposals on the relations of Eskimo–Aleut all concern one or more of the language families of northern Eurasia. One of the first such proposals was made by the pioneering Danish linguist Rasmus Rask in 1818, perhaps the most fully developed such proposal to date is Michael Fortescues Uralo-Siberian hypothesis, published in 1998. More recently Joseph Greenberg suggested grouping Eskimo–Aleut with all of the families of northern Eurasia, with the exception of Yeniseian. Such proposals are not generally accepted, criticisms have been made stating that Greenbergs hypothesis is ahistorical, meaning that it lacks and sacrifices known historical elements of language in favour of external similarities. Greenberg explicitly states that his developments were based on the previous work done by Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Bombard. By providing evidence of lexical comparison, Greenberg hoped that it would strengthen his hypothesis, despite all these efforts, the Eurasiatic language theory was overruled on the basis that mass comparison is not accurate enough an approach. In the 1960s Swadesh suggested a connection with the Wakashan languages and this was picked up and expanded by Holst. The Eskimo–Aleut languages are polysynthetic and exclusively suffixing
22.
Uralic languages
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The Uralic languages /jʊˈrælᵻk/ constitute a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25 million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, which are languages of Hungary, Finland, and Estonia, respectively. Other Uralic languages with significant numbers of speakers are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, and Komi, the name Uralic derives from the fact that areas where the languages are spoken spread on both sides of the Ural Mountains. Also, the homeland is commonly hypothesized to lie in the vicinity of the Urals. Finno-Ugric is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though Finno-Ugric is widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages. Scholars who do not accept the notion that Samoyedic split first from the rest of the Uralic family, such as Tapani Salminen. Gyula László places its origin in the forest zone between the Oka River and central Poland, E. N. Setälä and M. Zsirai place it between the Volga and Kama Rivers. According to E. Itkonen, the area extended to the Baltic Sea. P. Hajdu has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern Siberia, the first plausible mention of a Uralic people is in Tacituss Germania, mentioning the Fenni and two other possibly Uralic tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. In the late 15th century, European scholars noted the resemblance of the names Hungaria and Yugria and they assumed a connection but did not seek linguistic evidence. The affinity of Hungarian and Finnish was first proposed in the late 17th century and these two authors were thus the first to outline what was to become the classification of the Finno-Ugric, and later Uralic family. In 1717, Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish and Hungarian, in the same year, the German scholar Johann Georg von Eckhart, in an essay published in Leibnizs Collectanea Etymologica, proposed for the first time a relation to the Samoyedic languages. Philip Johan von Strahlenberg in 1730 published his book Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia, surveying the geography, all the main groups of the Uralic languages were already identified here. Nonetheless, these relationships were not widely accepted, still, in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit János Sajnovics travelled with Maximilian Hell to survey the alleged relationship between Hungarian and Sami. Sajnovics published his results in 1770, arguing for a relationship based on several grammatical features, in 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date. At the beginning of the 19th century, research on this family was more advanced than Indo-European research. Progress resumed after a number of decades with the first major field research expeditions on the Uralic languages spoken in the eastern parts of Russia. These were made in the 1840s by Matthias Castrén and Antal Reguly, who focused especially on the Samoyedic, regulys materials were worked on by the Hungarian linguist Pál Hunfalvy and German Josef Budenz, who both supported the Uralic affinity of Hungarian
23.
Uralic peoples
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The Uralic peoples or Uralic speaking peoples are the peoples speaking Uralic languages, divided into two large groups, Finno-Ugric peoples and Samoyedic peoples. The Samoyeds consists of Northern Samoyed, Nenets, Enets and Nganasan, the Finno-Ugric group contains two branches, Ugric including Ob-Ugric peoples i. e. the Mansi and Khanty and the Hungarians. The Finnic group has four sub-divisions, The Sami, considered to have been not a Finno-Ugric people who adopted a Finnic language. The Baltic Finns, Finns proper, Karelians, Ingrians, Vepsians, Votians, Estonians and Livonians, and the Volga Finns, the Mordvins subdivided into Moksha and Erza and the Mari, and the Permians. According to the recent understanding of Uralic studies, the establishment of Proto-Uralic peoples goes back to the Stone Age in the 5th millennium BC, then, Proto-Ural divided into Proto-Samoyed and Proto-Finno-Ugric. The latter is the carrier of Pit–Comb Ware culture, Samoyed, Khanty and Mansi have bred reindeer around the tundra between the Ob River and the Yenisei and made it available as various tools of life, from food sources to the means of transportation. Komi has been engaged in the life and reindeer breeding. Sami, by contacting with the Scandinavian agrarian society from ancient times, has been conducting high-intensive animal husbandry by trade, in Finland, Estonia and Hungary, they worked as a remarkable bearer of modern states based on agriculture and industry. The genetics characterizing Uralic peoples is haprogroup N1c, 97% of Nenets, 92% of Nganasans, 63% of Finns, 47% of saami and 41% of Estonians belong to this haplogroup. Haplogroup N originated in the part of China in 20,000 -25,000 years BP and spread to the north Eurasia. A subgroup N1c1 is frequently seen in Finno-Ugric people, N1c2 in Samoyedic peoples, in addition, haprogroup Z, found with low frequency in saami, Finns and Siberia, is related to Uralic peoples’ migration. The Urheimat, the location of the most ancient habitat of the Uralic peoples, is considered by various theories, laszlo has placed the origin in the forest zone between the Oka river and Central Poland. The writings of E. N. Setala and M. Zsirai place the homeland in the Middle of the Volga. According to E. Itkonen, the area extended to the Baltic sea, P. Hajdu has suggested the Uralic homeland being in Western and North-western Siberia. In recent genetic analysis of ancient human bones excavated from the remains of Liao civilization, haplogroup N1 was found with high frequency of 71%, so, a new possibility arose that the Urheimat of Uralic peoples is the Liao river region. The oldest Pit–Comb Ceramic, related to Finno-Ugric peoples, is found in Liao civilization, the Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia
24.
Hungarians
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Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are a nation and ethnic group who speak Hungarian and are primarily associated with Hungary. There are around 13. 1–14.7 million Hungarians, of whom 8. 5–9.8 million live in todays Hungary, the Hungarians own ethnonym to denote themselves in the Early Middle Ages is uncertain. The Magyars/Hungarians probably belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance, and it is possible that they became its ethnic majority, in the Early Middle Ages the Hungarians had many names, including Ungherese, Ungar, and Hungarus. The H- prefix is an addition of Medieval Latin, another possible explanation comes from the Old Russian Yugra. It may refer to the Hungarians during a time when they dwelt east of the Ural Mountains along the borders of Europe. The Hungarian people refer to themselves by the demonym Magyar rather than Hungarian, Magyar is Finno-Ugric from the Old Hungarian mogyër. Magyar possibly derived from the name of the most prominent Hungarian tribe, the tribal name Megyer became Magyar in reference to the Hungarian people as a whole. Magyar may also derive from the Hunnic Muageris or Mugel, the Greek cognate of Tourkia was used by the scholar and Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in his De Administrando Imperio of c. AD950, though in his use, Turks always referred to Magyars, the historical Latin phrase Natio Hungarica had a wider meaning because it once referred to all nobles of the Kingdom of Hungary, regardless of their ethnicity. During the 4th millennium BC, the Uralic-speaking peoples who were living in the central, some dispersed towards the west and northwest and came into contact with Iranian speakers who were spreading northwards. From at least 2000 BC onwards, the Ugrian speakers became distinguished from the rest of the Uralic community, judging by evidence from burial mounds and settlement sites, they interacted with the Indo-Iranian Andronovo culture. In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Hungarians moved from the west of the Ural Mountains to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the Volga River known as Bashkiria and Perm Krai. In the early 8th century, some of the Hungarians moved to the Don River to an area between the Volga, Don and the Seversky Donets rivers, meanwhile, the descendants of those Hungarians who stayed in Bashkiria remained there as late as 1241. The Hungarians around the Don River were subordinates of the Khazar khaganate and their neighbours were the archaeological Saltov Culture, i. e. Bulgars and the Alans, from whom they learned gardening, elements of cattle breeding and of agriculture. Tradition holds that the Hungarians were organized in a confederacy of seven tribes, the names of the seven tribes were, Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, Megyer, Nyék, and Tarján. Around 830, a rebellion broke out in the Khazar khaganate, as a result, three Kabar tribes of the Khazars joined the Hungarians and moved to what the Hungarians call the Etelköz, the territory between the Carpathians and the Dnieper River. The Hungarians faced their first attack by the Pechenegs around 854, the new neighbours of the Hungarians were the Varangians and the eastern Slavs. In 895/896, under the leadership of Árpád, some Hungarians crossed the Carpathians, the tribe called Magyar was the leading tribe of the Hungarian alliance that conquered the centre of the basin
25.
Finns
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Finns or Finnish people are a Finnic ethnic group native to Finland. Finns are traditionally divided into regional groups that span several countries adjacent to Finland. Also, some of these may be classified as ethnic groups. These include the Kvens and Forest Finns in Norway, the Tornedalians in Sweden, the most notable autochthonous group is the Finnish-speaking population of Sweden, who trace their origin to Second Swedish Crusade after which Finland came under Swedish rule. Finnish, the language spoken by most Finnic people, is related to other Finnic languages. The Finnic languages are a subgroup to the Uralic family of languages and these languages are markedly different from most other languages spoken in Europe, which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Native Finns can also be divided according to dialect into subgroups sometimes called heimo, the Population Register Centre maintains information on the birthplace, citizenship and mother tongue of the people living in Finland, but does not specifically categorize any as Finns by ethnicity. The majority of living in the Republic of Finland consider Finnish to be their first language. According to Statistics Finland, of the total population of 5,300,484 at the end of 2007,91. 2% considered Finnish to be their native language. It is not known how many of the ethnic Finns living outside Finland speak Finnish as their first language, Finns have been traditionally divided into sub-groups along regional, dialectical or ethnographical lines. These subgroups include the people of Finland Proper, Satakunta, Tavastia, Savo and these sub-groups express regional self-identity with varying frequency and significance. Historically, there were three dialects, the South-Western, Tavastian, and Karelian, the Sweden Finns are either native to Sweden or have emigrated from Finland to Sweden. An estimated 450,000 first- or second-generation immigrants from Finland live in Sweden, the majority moved from Finland to Sweden following the Second World War, taking advantage of the rapidly expanding Swedish economy. This emigration peaked in 1970 and has been declining since, there are also native Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, e. g. the Tornedalingar and the Finns of Dalecarlia. The Finnish language has official status as one of five minority languages in Sweden, the term Finns is also used for other Finnic peoples, including Izhorians in Ingria, Karelians in Karelia and Veps in the former Veps National Volost, all in Russia. Among these groups, the Karelians is the most populous one, according to a 2002 census, it was found that Ingrians also indetify with Finnish ethnic identity, referring to themselves as Ingrian Finns. The Finnish term for Finns is suomalaiset and it is a matter of debate how best to designate the Finnish-speakers of Sweden, all of whom have migrated to Sweden from Finland. Historical references to Northern Europe are scarce, and the given to its peoples and geographic regions are obscure, therefore
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Mari people
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The Mari are a Finno-Ugric ethnic group, who have traditionally lived along the Volga and Kama rivers in Russia. Almost half of Maris today live in the Mari El republic, in the past, the Mari have also been known as the Cheremis in Russian and the Çirmeş in Tatar. In the 2002 Russian census,604,298 people identified themselves as Mari, almost 60% of Mari lived in rural areas. The Mari have their own language, also called Mari, which is a member of the Uralic language family and it is written with a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet. In the 2002 census,451,033 people stated that spoke the Mari language. Maris have traditionally practiced a pagan faith that closely connected the individual with nature, according to their beliefs, nature exerts a magical influence over people. They relate to it as a sacred, powerful, and living being outside of man cannot exist. Nature serves as a source of absolute good who always helps man as long as he does not harm or oppose it, the Mari native religion also possesses a pantheon of gods who reside in the heavens, the most important of whom is known as the Great White God. Other lesser gods include the god of fire and the god of wind, the Mari also believe in a number of half-men, half-gods who live on earth. The most revered of these is Chumbulat, or Chumbylat, a renowned leader, christianity was adopted by the Mari in the 16th century after their territory was incorporated into the Russian Empire during the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible. Pagans constitute a significant minority of 25 to 40% of the Mari, most Mari are members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Osteopetrosis affects 1 newborn out of every 20,000 to 250,000 worldwide, during the Soviet Era, the Mari Section was set up under the auspices of Narkomnats, the Peoples Commissariat for nationalities. Its task was to facilitate the union of the Mari people with other people, to abolish anti-Russian mistrust. In practice this involved facilitating grain requisitions by the Soviet state, the recruitment of soldiers for the Red Army, Mari people were generally dis-empowered by these changes. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the situation in Mari El first improved, then declined to the point where the ethnic Mari people are undergoing forced Russification and cultural suppression. The ethnically Russian former Communist Head of State Leonid Markelov has led or allowed an attack on Mari culture. Under his leadership, the government ordered many Mari language newspapers to close, the Marla faith of the Mari people has encountered hostility as well. Vitaly Tanakov was charged with inciting religious, national, social, Mari people have responded to this pressure by organizing methods of cultural preservation and celebration, starting, for instance, a summer school to teach youth Mari language and culture
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Phytogeography
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Phytogeography or botanical geography is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution of plant species and their influence on the earths surface. Geobotany, by contrast, focuses on the geographic influence on plants. Phytogeography is part of a general science known as biogeography. Phytogeographers are concerned with patterns and process in plant distribution, most of the major questions and kinds of approaches taken to answer such questions are held in common between phyto- and zoogeographers. Phytogeography in wider sense encompasses four fields, according with the aspect, environment, flora, vegetation and origin, respectively, plant ecology, plant geography. Historical plant geography Phytogeography is often divided into two branches, ecological phytogeography and historical phytogeography. The basic data elements of phytogeography are occurrence records with operational units such as political units or geographical coordinates. These data are used to construct phytogeographic provinces and elements. The questions and approaches in phytogeography are largely shared with zoogeography, the term phytogeography itself suggests a broad meaning. How the term is applied by practicing scientists is apparent in the way periodicals use the term. The American Journal of Botany, a primary research journal, frequently publishes a section titled Systematics, Phytogeography. Biodiversity patterns are not heavily covered, one of the subjects earliest proponents was Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who is often referred to as the father of phytogeography. Von Humboldt advocated an approach to phytogeography that has characterized modern plant geography. Gross patterns of the distribution of plants became apparent early on in the study of plant geography, for example, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, discussed the Latitudinal gradients in species diversity, a pattern observed in other organisms as well. Much research effort in plant geography has since then devoted to understanding this pattern. In 1890, the United States Congress passed an act that appropriated funds to send expeditions to discover the geographic distributions of plants in the United States. The first of these was The Death Valley Expedition, including Frederick Vernon Coville, Frederick Funston, Clinton Hart Merriam, research in plant geography has also been directed to understanding the patterns of adaptation of species to the environment. This is done chiefly by describing geographical patterns of trait/environment relationships and these patterns termed ecogeographical rules when applied to plants represent another area of phytogeography
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Samoyedic peoples
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The Samoyedic peoples are those peoples that speak Samoyedic languages, which are part of the Uralic family. They are a linguistic, ethnic and cultural grouping, the name derives from the obsolete term Samoyed used in Russia for some indigenous peoples of Siberia. Part of the Nenets and most of the Enets and Nganasans used to live in Taymyria autonomous district, most of the Selkups live in Yamalo-Nenetsia, but there is also significant population in Tomsk Oblast. Media related to Samoyedic peoples at Wikimedia Commons
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Nenets people
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The Nenets, also known as Samoyeds, are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. According to the latest census in 2010, there are 44,857 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and they speak either the Tundra or Forest varieties of Nenets. 9th century, they were called Самоядь, Самодь, which was transliterated into English as Samodi. The literal morphs samo and yed in Russian convey the meaning self-eater, therefore, the name Samoyed quickly went out of usage in the 20th century, and the people bear the name of Nenets, which means man. Currently, the term Samoyedic peoples applies to the group of different peoples. It is the term which includes the Nenets, Enets, Selkup. The Nenets language is on the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family, between 26,500 and 27,000 people in Siberia speak the language. Ethnologue cites that in Siberia, Russian Federation, most young people are fluent in Nenets. Overall, the majority of speakers are from older generations, UNESCO classifies it as an endangered language. Some believe that the use of Russian and Komi is due to inter ethnic marriages, there are two distinct groups of Nenets stricto sensu based on their economy, the Tundra Nenets and the Khandeyar or Forest Nenets. A distinct third group of Nenets has emerged as a result of intermarriages between Nenets and Izhma Komi people, the Samoyedic languages form a branch of the Uralic language family. They moved from south in Siberia to the northernmost part of what later became Russia sometime before the 12th century. They ended up between the Kanin and Taymyr peninsulas, around the Ob and Yenisey rivers, with only a few of them settling into small communities like Kolva and their main subsistence comes from hunting and reindeer herding. Using reindeer as a draft animal throughout the year enables them to great distances. Large-scale reindeer herding emerged in the 18th century, Tundra wolves can be a source of considerable economic loss, as they prey on the reindeer herds which are the livelihood of some Nenets families. Along with reindeer meat, fish is a component in the Nenets diet. They have a shamanistic and animistic belief system which stresses respect for the land and they had a clan-based social structure. The Nenets shaman is called a Tadibya, after the Russian Revolution, their culture suffered due to Soviet collectivisation policy
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Selkup people
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The Selkup, until the 1930s called Ostyak-Samoyeds, are a people in Siberia, Russia. They live in the parts of Tomsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Selkups speak the Selkup language, which belongs to the Samoyedic languages of the Uralic language family, in the 17th century, some of the Selkups relocated up north to live along the Taz River and Turukhan River. They were engaged mainly in hunting, fishing, and reindeer breeding, in the 18th century, Selkups participated in a massive baptism campaign. However, many returned to their ancient religious beliefs and customs, according to the 2002 Census, there were 4,249 Selkups in Russia. There were 62 Selkups in Ukraine, only one of whom is a speaker of the Selkup language. The southern Selkups of Tomsk Province before and after 1991, article on Selkups from the Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire A Selkup fisherman from Western Siberia
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Sayan Mountains
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The Sayan Mountains are a mountain range in southern Siberia, Russia and northern Mongolia. In the past, it served as the border between Mongolia and Russia, the Eastern Sayan extends 1,000 km from the Yenisei River at 92° E to the southwest end of Lake Baikal at 106° E. The Western Sayan forms the continuation of the Altay Mountains. This is a protected and isolated area, having been closed by the Soviet Union since 1944. While the general elevation is 2000 to 2,700 m, granites and metamorphic slates reach altitudes of over 3,000 m, with the highest being Mönkh Saridag at 3,492 m. The principal mountain passes lie 1800 to 2,300 m above the sea, for example Muztagh pass at 2,280 m, Mongol pass at 1,980 m, Tenghyz pass at 2,280 m and Obo-sarym pass at 1,860 m. At 92°E the system is pierced by the Ulug-Khem or Upper Yenisei River, the Usinsk, Oya, Tunka and Kitoi ranges. Between the breach of the Yenisei and Lake Khövsgöl at 100°30 E. the system also the name of Yerghik-taiga. The flora is on the poor, although the higher regions carry good forests of larch, pine, juniper, birch. Lichens and mosses clothe many of the boulders that are scattered over the upper slopes and its glacier tongue that flowed down to the east, to Lake Baikal, came to an end at 500 m asl. The Khamar Daban mountains were covered by an ice cap filling up the valley relief. From its valley heads, e. g. the upper Slujanka valley, the Snirsdaja-valley-outlet glacier has calved, among other outlet glaciers, at c.400 m asl into Lake Baikal. The glacial glacier snowline as altitude limit between glacier feeding area and ablation zone has run in these mountains between 1450 and 1250 m asl and this corresponds to a snowline depression of 1500 m against the current height of the snowline. Under the condition of a comparable precipitation ratio there might result from this a depression of the average annual temperature of 7.5 to 9 °C for the Last Ice Age against today. The Sayan region was apparently the origin of the economic and cultural complex of reindeer hunters-herdsmen that we now see among the various Evenki groups, the Sayan ethnic groups still live almost exclusively in the area of the Eastern Sayan mountains. The Sayan Solar Observatory is located in mountains at an altitude of 2,000 meters. Tuva -Sayan Mountains Photo of Sayan Mountains
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Language shift
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Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. Often, languages that are perceived to be higher status stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be lower-status. For prehistory, Forster et al. and Forster and Renfrew observe that there is a correlation of language shift with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not necessarily with intrusive female mtDNA. They conclude that technological innovation or military prowess causes immigration of at least some males, the process whereby a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language is called assimilation. When a linguistic community ceases to use their language, language death is said to occur. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a mother tongue who speak another language more often in the home. The data are used to measure the use of a language in the lifetime of a person. In the context of the Indo-European migrations, it has noted that small groups can change a larger cultural area. Michael Witzel refers to Ehret’s model which stresses the osmosis, or a ball, or Mallory’s Kulturkugel. According to Ehret, ethnicity and language can shift with relative ease in small societies, due to the cultural, economic, the group bringing new traits may initially be small, contributing features that can be fewer in number than those of the already local culture. The emerging combined group may then initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of ethnic, ethnohistorical cases demonstrate that small elite groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations. Anthony gives the example of the Luo-speaking Acholi in northern Uganda in the 17th and 18th century, anthony notes that elite recruitment may be a suitable term for this system. Historical examples for status shift are the early Welsh and Lutheran Bible translations, leading to the liturgical languages Welsh, in the course of the 19th century, this number dropped significantly. By 1920, already a third of the population of the area had shifted to German as their language of communication. After the Carinthian Plebiscite in the 1920s, and especially after World War II, in the same region, today only some 13% of the people still speaks Slovene, while more than 85% of the population speaks German. The figures for the region are equally telling, in 1818, around 35% of the population of Carinthia spoke Slovene, by 1910. These changes were almost entirely the result of a shift in the population, with emigration. Despite the withdrawal of Belarus from the USSR proclaimed in 1991, according to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, and Belarusian is used by only 11. 9% of Belarusians
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Polar night
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The polar night occurs when the night lasts for more than 24 hours. This occurs only inside the polar circles, the opposite phenomenon, the polar day, or midnight sun, occurs when the Sun stays above the horizon for more than 24 hours. Night is understood as the center of the Sun being below a free horizon. Since the atmosphere bends the rays of the Sun, the day is longer than the polar night. The polar circle is located at a latitude between two areas, at the latitude of approximately 66.5 degrees. In the most northern city of Sweden, Kiruna, at 67°51N, while it is day in the Arctic Circle it is night in the Antarctic Circle. The polar shortest day is not totally dark everywhere inside the circle, but only in places within about 5° of the poles. Regions located at the border of the polar circles experience polar twilight instead of polar night. In fact, polar regions typically get more twilight throughout the year than equatorial regions, however, not all this time is classified as polar night since sunlight may be visible because of refraction. Also, the time when the Sun is above the horizon at the poles is 186 days, the numerical asymmetry occurs because the time when the Sun is partially above the horizon is counted towards the daytime. Also, the numbers are average numbers, the ellipticity of the Earths orbit makes the South Pole receive a week more of Sun-below-horizon than the North Pole. As there are kinds of twilight, there also exist various kinds of polar night. Each kind of night is defined as when its darker than the corresponding kind of twilight. The descriptions below are based on relatively clear skies, so the sky will be darker in the presence of dense clouds. Polar twilight occurs in areas that are located at the border of the polar circles. There is then no true daylight at the culmination, only civil twilight. This means that the Sun is below the horizon, but by less than 6°, during civil twilight, there may still be enough light for normal outdoor activities because of light scattering by the upper atmosphere and refraction. Thus, polar twilight is limited to more than 66.5 degrees from the equator, in other words
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Sacrifice
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Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals to a higher purpose, in particular divine beings, as an act of propitiation or worship. While sacrifice often implies the ritual killing of an animal, the term offering can be used for bloodless sacrifices of food or artifacts, for offerings of liquids by pouring, the term libation is used. The Latin term sacrificium derived from Latin sacrificus, which combined the concepts sacra, the Latin word sacrificium came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a bloodless sacrifice to distinguish it from blood sacrifices. In individual non-Christian ethnic religions, terms translated as sacrifice include the Indic yajna, the Greek thusia, the Germanic blōtan, the term usually implies doing without something or giving something up. But the word also occurs in metaphorical use to describe doing good for others or taking a short-term loss in return for a greater power gain. Scholars such as René Girard have theorized that scapegoating may account for the origins of sacrifice, animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practiced by adherents of religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature. It also served a social or economic function in those cultures where the portions of the animal were distributed among those attending the sacrifice for consumption. Animal sacrifice has turned up in almost all cultures, from the Hebrews to the Greeks and Romans, Ancient Egyptians and it is against their religion for Egyptians to sacrifice animals, except for sheep, bulls, calves, male calves and geese. Animal sacrifice is practiced today by the followers of Santería and other lineages of Orisa as a means of curing the sick. However, in Santeria, such animal offerings constitute a small portion of what are termed ebos—ritual activities that include offerings, prayer. Christians from some villages in Greece also sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a known as kourbània. The practice, while publicly condemned, is often tolerated, according to Walter Burkert, a scholar of sacrifice, Greek sacrifices derived from hunting practices. Hunters, feeling guilty for having killed another living being so they could eat and survive, the primary evidence used to suggest this theory is the Dipolieia, which is an Athenian festival, in limited circulation, during which an ox was sacrificed. The protagonist of the ritual was an ox, which it had, at one point. According to his theory, the killer of the ox eased his conscience by suggesting that everybody should participate in the killing of the sacrificial victim. In the expansion of the Athenian state, numerous oxen were needed to feed the people at the banquets and were accompanied by state festivals, the hecatomb became the general designation for the great sacrifices offered by the state. These sacrificial processions of hundreds of oxen remove the original ties, Human sacrifice was practiced by many ancient cultures
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