Paleoanthropology is the part of anthropological science that studies the physical characteristics of ancient populations. An idea of these features can be obtained by studying the bone remains of people from burials of different eras, looking at realistic anthropomorphic images that have come down to us, reading written sources containing reports about the physical type of ancient peoples. Only in the first of these cases is the extracted information sufficiently complete and diverse. Any image of a human face, whether it is a drawing on stone and ceramics or a bone and stone sculpture, carries an element of convention, sometimes deliberately distorts the characteristic typological features in accordance with the prevailing style and understanding of the content of art in a particular society. The Nganasans, for example, are among the most Mongoloid among the Siberian peoples, but the wooden dolls of ritual use that they made until recently are distinguished by their modeled protruding noses of a completely European type.

The author of any written source, reporting on the physical type of another nation, also had as a criterion for evaluating the physical appearance of his compatriots. People who were physically close to the authors of the descriptions were not included in the reports, as they did not pay attention to themselves, and the differences between carriers of a different set of physical characteristics were exaggerated. Thus, in particular, the legend of the ancient Caucasian fair-haired and light-eyed population of Central Asia, created by Chinese chroniclers, has taken root in the historical literature - a legend supported by some modern researchers .1
Paleoanthropological material is devoid of these drawbacks, since it provides not indirect, but direct information about the physical characteristics of ancient populations, their racial type and physical development, the nature of diseases common in a particular society, and finally about demographic indicators - the sex ratio, life expectancy, and child mortality. Of course, even when studying skeletons, it is necessary to resort in some cases to indirect extrapolations, for example, in relation to pigmentation, but in general, the measurement system used in paleoanthropology quite fully characterizes the main morphological and racial features. Thus, the information obtained is objective and reliable .2
The differences between peoples in hair, eye, and skin color are well known. Major racial divisions - Mongoloids, Negroids, and Caucasians

1 For a detailed review of reports from Chinese chronicles, see: Grum-Grzhimailo G. E. Why do the Chinese draw red-haired demons? (On the question of the peoples of the blond race in Central Asia). St. Petersburg, 1899; his own. Western Mongolia and the Uriankhai Region. Vol. 2. l. 1926.

2 A measurement system is described (see: Martin P., Sailer K. Lehrburh der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung. Bd. I-IV. Stuttgart. 1957 - 1966).

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they differ sharply from each other, and the differences between peoples belonging to the same racial community are quite obvious. In modern anthropology, these distinctions are given high priority, and they often serve to distinguish small racial categories. The peoples of Scandinavia, for example, representatives of the northern race or the northern branch of Caucasians, have light pigmentation, while the inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin, belonging to the Mediterranean race or the southern branch of Caucasians, are distinguished by light skin, but dark hair and eyes.

Remains of hair were found several times in ancient burials. They usually have a light or red color. This has repeatedly served as proof of the widespread distribution in ancient times of representatives of the northern race far from the places of their modern settlement. The well-known hypothesis of T. Heyerdahl about the admixture of the northern race among the ancient Peruvians and their spread across the Pacific Ocean from east to west is based precisely on the finds of light hair in ancient Peruvian burials of different chronological age. 3 Meanwhile, it has been repeatedly shown that during prolonged stay in the ground, hair loses its natural color, dark pigment turns into light 4 . Therefore, the anthropological foundations of Heyerdahl's hypothesis are illusory, and its negative assessment in the light of paleoanthropological data coincides with the opinion of representatives of other disciplines.

Hair color cannot be reconstructed, even if the remains are found during excavations. Judgments about the pigmentation of ancient people are entirely based on indirect data-analogies with modern populations, interpretation of written sources, etc. But in all other cases, paleoanthropological material provides reliable information about the physical type of the ancient population.

An elementary unit of paleoanthropological research is the skeleton of an individual. However, the information obtained is extremely limited. Even restoring the soft tissues of the face on the skull and getting an individual portrait does not change the case. The attempts made at the beginning of the century by English anthropologists to restore the individual appearance of Cromwell and Milton, the work of the Italian Fr. Frasetto's work on the reconstruction of Dante's portrait, and finally M. M. Gerasimov's work on the restoration of the appearance of famous historical figures are interesting and valuable in their results .5 But for history, strictly speaking, it does not matter what Dante's profile was, although it is sung by Blok in the poem "Ravenna" ("the shadow of Dante with the eagle profile sings to me about a new life"), or what Vladimir Monomakh looked like. Therefore, such reconstructions of individual portraits, with all the exceptional interest in them, give little historical knowledge.

The system of measurements of the human skeleton and skull used in paleoanthropology allows us to move to the group level of reconstruction, i.e., to obtain an average morphological characteristic of a population of people by many characteristics. This is achieved by applying variational statistical methods. More complex questions arise in connection with the allocation of aggregates of people who are subject to

3 Heyerdahl Т. American Indians in the Pacific. Lnd. - Stockholm - Oslo. 1952.

4 The literature on variations in hair pigment is extremely extensive. Partially it is given: Batsevich V. A. Photoelectrocolorimetric determination of the degree of pigmentation of Tuvinian hair in comparative lighting. In: Antropo-ekologicheskie issledovaniya v Tuva, Moscow, 1984.

5 Gerasimov M. M. Osnovy vosstanovleniya litsa po skul'pu [Fundamentals of facial reconstruction based on the skull]. Facial reconstruction based on the skull. - Proceedings of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, new series, 1955, vol. XXVIII; see review of previous works-ibid.

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research. As a result of cohabitation of a historically formed group and the conclusion of marriages within it for a number of generations, a certain degree of kinship is formed within such a group, which is peculiar to it and determines the nature of intra-group variability of characteristics. Such groups were named populations 6 . This concept is key in general population genetics, human population genetics, and anthropology, because populations are the elementary biological cells of a species, and at the population level, first of all, the dynamics of anthropological traits are manifested. When studying the modern population, populations are easily identified - these are territorial, ethnographic, or ethnic groups of people. In paleoanthropology, population identification is more difficult, but paleoanthropological research must also be population-based in order to be effective in historical terms.

Skeletons of people from ancient eras are extracted during archaeological excavations of burial grounds of different chronological ages. People buried in the same burial ground can be considered representatives of the same population for certain reasons. It would seem that if the burial ground is completely excavated, then you can get a complete morphological and demographic characteristic of the population that carried out burials in this burial ground. However, paleoanthropological populations differ from modern ones in that they seem to be extended over time, since burial grounds were most often used for several generations. Their exact number remains unknown, and therefore paleoanthropological material is still of little use for determining the number of a particular population in a chronological period of time falling on one generation. For the same reason, determining the population size of a given territory using paleoanthropological data is rather arbitrary. However, other morphological and demographic parameters at the population level are restored with a sufficient degree of reliability.

Very effective statistical methods for comparing populations by individual characteristics and by their sum have been developed. These methods provide a basis for judging the degree of morphological similarity or difference between two or more populations. Morphological features of the human skeleton and skull are hereditary, and from determining their similarity, we can move on to establishing a genetic relationship. It is this transition that makes it possible to use paleoanthropological data along with historical and cultural data to solve ethnogenetic problems.

All this remains true even when moving from the population level to a higher one. Burial grounds of the same cultural affiliation usually belong to a single archaeological culture or to a single cultural and historical community .7 If there are morphological similarities between groups that have left separate burial grounds, it is possible to summarize the data on burial grounds and get a generalized idea of the anthropological type of the population of an archaeological culture or cultural and historical community. Similarly, you can get a summary of the population of any territory, up to large geographical areas. When establishing morphological differences between people buried in separate burial sites

6 There is a large literature about them. Most complete summary: Savalli-Sforza L., Bodmer W. The genetics of human populations. San-Francisco. 1971.

7 In the Soviet archaeological literature, the first of these terms is most often used. A cultural and historical community is spoken of in the case of a wide range of similar monuments and identification of local variants, within this area-such are the Yamnaya, Abashevskaya and Andronovskaya cultural and historical communities.

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the conclusion about the anthropological heterogeneity of the population of a particular archaeological culture or cultural and historical community, about its composition on the basis of anthropological components that have different origins, is logical.

One can also speak of different origins in relation to people buried in the same burial ground, if individuals with different anthropological characteristics are found in it. Demonstrating the homogeneity or heterogeneity of a group originating from a single burial ground allows us to assess whether the population that left the burial ground contained an admixture of foreign components, or whether it is biologically homogeneous. In the first case, if it is possible to establish the origin of a foreign admixture, we receive indications of the direction of ethnogenetic search, in the second case, we have the right to speak about the formation of a population independent of extraneous influences .8
So, in the course of paleoanthropological research, the degree of biological kinship between groups of people belonging to different cultural and archaeological complexes is established, which means that they may also differ ethnically. This is the basis on which paleoanthropological material helps in solving ethnogenetic problems. Paleodemographic data indirectly allow us to judge the standard of living and the rate of generational change, and this latter demographic characteristic is directly related to the rate of change in many social phenomena. Thus, paleoanthropological material is an auxiliary historical source with a fairly high resolution, and its role is all the more important the further we move away from the present. Especially great is its role in the reconstruction of the events of the unwritten history of mankind.

What additional information does paleoanthropological material provide in comparison with all other types of historical sources? The choice of examples will be more convincing if we do not limit ourselves to one large area, but consider paleoanthropological materials from several areas with different ecological conditions. Thus, in the steppe regions of Khakassia along the middle course of the Yenisei and Abakan, there are a huge number of multi-time burial mounds covering a long period of time from the Eneolithic to the Late Middle Ages. Many of them have been excavated and yielded extensive paleoanthropological collections. The most numerous burial grounds are those of the Tagar culture dating back to the Scythian period9 . It is characterized by mounds of various sizes with huge menhirs (cult monuments) on them. The inventory of burials is represented by jar vessels, a large set of bronze weapons of late forms-daggers, battle axes, iron things are found. In general, this is a typical culture of the early Iron Age, when bronze was still widely used for making weapons and implements, and iron objects were rare and expensive.

Even K. I. Goroshchenko at the beginning of the century drew attention to the fact that the skulls from Tagar burial grounds are Europoid, and compared them with Slavic 10 . All subsequent studies of the Tagar culture are supported by-

8 There are many examples of this in the paleoanthropological literature, especially in relation to the zones of ancient mixing of Caucasoids and Mongoloids (see Ginzburg V. V., Trofimova T. A. Paleoanthropology of Central Asia, Moscow, 1972).

9 Recent reviews of monuments and analyses of archaeological inventory, see: Chlenova N. L. Origin and early history of Tagar culture tribes, Moscow, 1967; Martynov A. I. Forest-steppe Tatar culture. Novosibirsk, 1979.

10 Goroshchenko K. I. Kurgan skulls of the Minusinsk district. Minusinsk. 1900.

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they repeated his conclusion about the Caucasian type of the Tagar population 11 . The significance of this conclusion lies in the fact that a wide array of Caucasians was represented 2.5 thousand years before modern times in the territory that is now inhabited by the Khakass - people of a Mongoloid appearance. Various hypotheses were expressed about the origin of the Tatar population, the most common of which was reduced to the idea of its migration from somewhere in the west, from the areas of modern settlement of Caucasians, most likely from the steppe regions of Eastern Europe.

However, this idea had to be abandoned as soon as the skeletons of people of the Eneolithic Afanasiev culture from the same region were described .12 Sharp-bottomed vessels made of flat stone-lined mounds, very few bronze objects-these are the main characteristics that sharply distinguish it from the Tagar culture. There is no definite cultural continuity between the populations of these two cultures. At the same time, the Afanasiev population morphologically turned out to be so similar to the Tagar population that this automatically predicts a positive answer to the question of their relationship and the origin of the Tagar population from the Afanasiev population. Thus, in the absence of cultural continuity, there is a physical relationship that indicates the autochthonous development of the Tagar population on the basis of the Afanasiev population and the continuity of the population of Khakassia from the beginning of the II millennium BC to almost the turn of our era. This continuity is all the more surprising because at that time there were two other archaeological cultures - Andronovo and Karasuk, whose population differed in other anthropological features.

The following example takes us to the forest and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe and is related to the formation of the East Slavic population. The ethnogenesis of the East Slavic peoples, which is, as is well known, one of the most complex problems of the ethnic history of Europe, has given rise to a huge literature and many hypotheses that often contradict each other. And now disputes continue around the ancestral homeland of the Slavs. The most common idea in Soviet literature is the idea of the ancestral homeland of the Slavs as a whole in the Carpathian region, the settlement of the ancestors of the East Slavic peoples from there and the participation of local Baltic and Finnish tribes in their ethnogenesis. V. V. Sedov's book summarizing both Soviet and foreign research provides an overview of the archaeological facts related to this problem in comparison with historical, ethnographic and linguistic ones .13 The relationship between the pre-Slavic substrate and the Slavic superstratum remains unclear, and many specific works of specialists of various profiles are devoted to elucidating the role of the local substrate in the formation of the Eastern Slavs, although this role does not yet seem very significant.

Paleoanthropological material in this situation is of particular importance, because it allows us to trace the history of the physical ancestors of the East Slavic peoples to the Bronze Age. The summaries of paleoanthropological data on East Slavic peoples made by T. A. Trofimova and T. I. Alekseeva cover all East Slavic tribes 14 . Later published articles didn't add much

11 See Kozintsev A. G. Antropologicheskiy sostav i proiskhozhdenie naseleniya tagarskoy kul'tury [Anthropological composition and origin of the Tagar culture population].

12 Debets G. F. Anthropological types of the Minusinsk region in the era of the tribal system. - Anthropological Journal, 1932, N 1.

13 Sedov V. V. Vostochnye slavyane v VI-XIII vvakh [Eastern Slavs in the VI-XIII centuries]. Moscow, 1982.

14 Trofimova T. A. Krivichi, Vyatichi and Slavic tribes of the Dnieper region according to the data of anthropology. - Soviet Ethnography (SE), 1946, N 1; Alekseeva T. I. Etnogenez vostochnykh slavyan po dannym antropologii [Ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs according to anthropology]. Moscow, 1973.

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to these works 15 . Unfortunately, the paleoanthropology of the population of the Eastern European Plain at the end of the first millennium BC-1 millennium AD is poorly known, but the paleoanthropology of the population of the Early Iron Age (Scythian time) and the Bronze Age has been studied quite fully.

Each of the medieval East Slavic tribes was distinguished by its originality, which was manifested within a well-defined morphological complex of features. It can be considered quite homogeneous at the level of the local race, and it was characteristic of the Eastern Slavs as a whole. There is a significant similarity of this type with the anthropological variant recorded in the Scythian burial grounds of the Black Sea region16 . This similarity, however, cannot be interpreted as an indication of a genetic relationship. Of course, we are not talking about the direct origin of the East Slavic tribes from the Scythians - such an interpretation would be too straightforward. But there is no doubt that most of the population that lived in the Southern Russian steppes in the middle of the 1st millennium BC is the physical ancestors of the East Slavic tribes of the Middle Ages. The local origins of ethnogenesis are therefore more than a thousand years old.

However, they can be deepened even further. The paleoanthropology of Bronze Age cultures in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the Eastern European Plain is well studied 17 . With minor modifications, the populations of these cultures show the same combination of morphological features as the Scythian populations. The formation of the anthropological features of the Scythians with a significant participation of the population of the Bronze Age, especially the late Bronze Age, seems quite indubitable. Thus, the origins of the formation of the anthropological type of East Slavic peoples can be traced back to the middle of the second millennium BC. This means that the autochthonous basis of the East Slavic ethnogenesis has been reconstructed using paleoanthropological data for at least two millennia.

In the vast majority of cases, mountainous regions were isolated zones that caused deep ethno-cultural and linguistic differentiation. The North Caucasus and Transcaucasia are a good example of such a zone with a large diversity of indigenous peoples, their linguistic and cultural diversity. The accumulated historical, cultural and linguistic data indicate that the ancestors of many modern peoples brought their own languages and a number of cultural elements when settling the territory of the Caucasus at different periods of their history. Such are Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Transcaucasia, Ossetians, Karachays and Balkars in the North Caucasus. But the overwhelming majority of the numerous Caucasian peoples speak local Caucasian languages that have no clear analogies outside the Caucasus, 18 and are characterized to a high degree by a specific, mountainous and largely similar culture .19
What is the role of paleoanthropological data in demonstrating the local foundations of the ethnogenesis of the Caucasian peoples? Degree

15 Sedov V. V. On paleoanthropology of the Eastern Slavs. In: Problemy arkheologii Evrazii i Severnoi Ameriki [Problems of Archeology of Eurasia and North America], Moscow, 1977. Results of studying skulls. In: Sedova M. V. Yaropolch Zalessky, Moscow, 1978.

16 Zinevich G. P. Ocherki paleoanthropologii Ukrainy [Essays on paleoanthropology of Ukraine]. Kyiv. 1972; Konduktorova T. S. Antropologiya drevnego naseleniya Ukrainy [Anthropology of the ancient population of Ukraine]. Moscow, 1972.

17 Unfortunately, the available information is not consolidated. For a selective bibliography, see: Vipak V. Rassengeschichte Osteurppas. In: Rassengesehichte der Menschheit. Lieferung 4. Munchen - Wien. 1976.

18 There are indications that the North Caucasian languages are related to Sino-Tibetan, but these assumptions remain hypothetical.

19 See Peoples of the Caucasus, vol. I, II, Moscow, I960, 1962.

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The extent to which the paleoanthropology of the Caucasus is studied does not correspond to the scale of the territory and its landscape diversity, so in this case, a comprehensive consideration of both the actual paleoanthropological materials and the results of an anthropological survey of the modern population is effective. The foothill and mountain regions of the central part of the Caucasus range are inhabited by peoples that are morphologically very similar and exhibit a peculiar complex of anthropological features, which has received the name Kavkasia (after the Georgian name for the Caucasus - Kavkasioni) 20 . This complex of features includes not only the peoples who speak Kartvelian, Dagestan and Nakh languages, but also Ossetians who speak one of the Iranian languages, Balkars and Karachays who speak Turkic. Thus, the Kavkasia complex, or, as it is often called in the anthropological literature, type, has an extensive range and is tied to the most typical and widespread Caucasian landscapes.

What is the origin of the Caucasian type? Is it local in the Caucasus or was it brought along with the arrival of a foreign population in the central regions of the Main Caucasian Ridge? In this regard, several hypotheses are expressed, which are based on the lack of tangible analogies in the paleoanthropological material throughout the Caucasus to the anthropological features of the modern population. On this basis, it has been suggested that the Caucasian feature complex is a late formation that was formed almost in the late Middle Ages, 21 which means that data about it cannot be used to judge the anthropological dynamics in ancient times. This is contradicted, however, by the indisputable fact that morphologically similar to the Caucasian complex of characters was recorded in certain areas of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia in the Bronze Age .22
Another idea was also expressed - about the transformation of anthropological features over time on the territory of the Caucasus, which nevertheless recognizes the genetic continuity of modern and ancient populations .23 However, this approach is difficult to combine with objective morphological observations: genetic succession is postulated, but it cannot be proved if morphological features undergo significant changes over time. Much more likely is another view that takes into account paleoanthropological analogies to modern populations in the Bronze Age. It is also important that the representatives of the Caucasian type are extremely similar to the Upper Paleolithic population of Europe and Near Asia. Thus, the carriers of the Caucasian complex of anthropological features can be seen as descendants of the oldest population that settled the territory of the Caucasus in the Paleolithic era. No other types of historical sources can bring the local origins of the ethnogenesis of the Caucasian peoples to such a deep antiquity.

These examples show that paleoanthropological material is extremely important in order to restore the local origins of the formation of certain peoples and trace their ethnogenesis

20 Natishvili A. I., Abdushelishvili M., G. Preliminary data on anthropological studies of the Georgian people. - Brief reports of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1955, issue XXII.

21 Gadzhiev A. G. Drevneye naselenie Dagestana [The ancient population of Dagestan]. Moscow, 1975.

22 Alekseev V. P. the origin of the peoples of the Caucasus (craniological study). M. 1974.

23 Abdushelishvili M. G. Anthropology of the ancient and modern population of Georgia. Tbilisi. 1964.

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until ancient times. When going beyond the chronological framework of the written period of human history, the importance of paleoanthropological material is no less than archaeological, they mutually enrich each other.

Let us now trace the possibilities of paleoanthropological data in reconstructing migration processes, using examples that are geographically close to the above. But first we must emphasize the difference between phenomena that are extremely important for further discussion, but are not clearly differentiated in the historical and ethnographic and anthropological literature. We are talking about the need to distinguish between migration flow as the migration of large masses of people to a new territory, which can be both simultaneous and quite long in time, and anthropological diffusion, in which there is a slow and sometimes lasting many generations infiltration of people with certain anthropological characteristics into a different anthropological environment. Due to a certain percentage of marriages concluded in this case between carriers of different anthropological characteristics, the severity of these characteristics slowly increases within those territories where they were not represented before. If the diffusion is unidirectional, then eventually the severity of the foreign complex of anthropological features will reach such an extent that it is easily fixed in the course of paleoanthropological research.

It was noted above that in the chronological interval between the Afanasiev and Tatar populations in the Minusinsk basin along the banks of the Yenisei and its tributaries, people of two more Bronze Age cultures lived - Andronovo and Karasuk. With regard to the Andronovo culture, the results of studying archaeological and paleoanthropological materials coincide. The most likely area of its formation is the western and central regions of Kazakhstan, as well as the southern Urals 24 . The anthropological features of the Andronovo population of these areas are close to the anthropological type of the Andronovo populations of the Minusinsk basin, but the Andronovo burial grounds of Kazakhstan and the Urals belong to an earlier time than those located along the banks of the Yenisei. Thus, the alien origin of the Andronovites of the Minusinsk basin is more than likely. There was certainly some contact between the Afanasyevsky and Andronovsky populations, as indicated by the presence of Afanasyevsky skulls in their morphological type in the Andronovsky craniological series, noted by G. F. Debets25 . The Afanasiev population, on the basis of which the Tagar population was formed, continued to live in some areas of the Minusinsk basin even during the era of the Andronovo culture. But paleoanthropology, in addition to archaeological observations, provides evidence that the Minusinsk steppes during the advanced Bronze Age developed a significant mass of new population that came along the steppe strip from the west.

The population of the Late Bronze Age, called Karasuk, is also an alien, but the problem of its origin is complex and has not been clearly solved in the archaeological and paleoanthropological literature. S. V. Kiselev cited a large number of analogies of the Karasuk culture in the Bronze Age cultures of northern China and postulated its alien south-eastern origin for the Minusinsk basin .26 Convinced by his arguments, G. F. Debetz also

24 See Smirnov K. F., Kuzmina E. E. The origin of Indo-Iranians in the light of new archaeological discoveries, Moscow, 1977.

25 Debets G. F. U. K. Op.

26 Kiselev S. V. Drevnyaya istoriya Yuzhnoy Sibiri [Ancient History of Southern Siberia]. Moscow, 1951.

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He associated the origin of the Karasuk population with the populations of the northern regions of China and their relocation to the Minusinsk basin .27 However, although there was a small Mongoloid admixture among the Karasuk people, in general they can be attributed to clearly defined Caucasians. On this basis, as well as after comparing the entire complex of morphological features, it was suggested that the Karasuk population of the Minusinsk basin was not of south-eastern, but of south-western origin and goes back in its genesis to the ancient population of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Paleoanthropological evidence was found for this, and this hypothesis was supported in the latest report on the paleoanthropology of the Karasuk culture 28 .

The number of Karasuk burial grounds is such that they indicate that another powerful mass of new population appeared in the Minusinsk Basin in the Late Bronze Age, and, consequently, after the appearance of the Afanasyevites, the third extensive migration took place here. Paleoanthropological data allowed us to correctly determine the source areas and the direction of these migrations.

The ethnogenesis of the East Slavic peoples confronts us with a phenomenon that was previously called anthropological diffusion. We are talking about the origin of that component in the anthropological composition of the Eastern Slavs, which is not connected in succession with the anthropological features of the ancient autochthonous population and is an alien. In understanding the genesis of this component, craniological data on modern or near-modern populations play an important role. The study of the craniological type of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians showed that they generally differ from the East Slavic tribes of the Middle Ages in some morphological details, in which they are similar to medieval populations from the area of modern West Slavic peoples .29 These characteristics are more pronounced in the modern population than among the medieval East Slavic tribes.

How do I explain this? Apparently, in the formation of the East Slavic peoples, a significant role belonged to elements that came from the common Slavic ancestral homeland. Perhaps the greatest number of supporters is the hypothesis of the Carpathian ancestral homeland of the Slavs, understood in a broad sense, i.e. including neighboring regions. Specific features of the similarity of modern East Slavic peoples with the medieval population of the Carpathian area also indicate in favor of the Carpathian ancestral homeland of the Slavs. No written sources report the migration of large populations from the area of the Slavic ancestral homeland to the territory of Eastern Europe. The shift in the anthropological type of the modern population compared to the Middle Ages can only be explained by accepting the slow infiltration of the new population that came from the Carpathian regions during the first centuries of the second millennium AD and its mating contacts with local populations, whose anthropological composition, as shown above, dates back to the Bronze Age population. Such a slow penetration of new ethnic elements that are anthropologically different from the autochthonous ones, which has been taking place for many generations, without dramatically changing the morphological features of the local ethnic component, transforms them at the same time-

27 Debets G. F. Paleoanthropologiya SSSR [Paleoanthropology of the USSR]. - Proceedings of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, new series, Moscow-L., 1949, vol. IV.

28 Rykushina G. A. The population of the Middle Yenisei in the Karasuk era. In: Paleoanthropology of Siberia. Novosibirsk. 1980.

29 Alekseev V. P. the origin of the peoples of Eastern Europe (craniological study). M. 1969.

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mya in a certain direction. Thus, the ethnogenesis of the East Slavic peoples is, from an anthropological point of view, a process of autochthonous development starting from the Late Bronze Age, but accompanied by anthropological diffusion from the southwest, falling in the first centuries of the second millennium AD.

If, considering the history of the steppe tribes of the Minusinsk Basin in the Bronze Age, researchers encountered several mass migrations, and when considering the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs - with anthropological diffusion, then in the Caucasus there are several almost intermediate cases-quantitatively low-power migrations that did not affect the physical type of the local population, although they were deposited in the language and culture. The ethnogenesis of Ossetians, Balkars, and Karachays demonstrates particularly clear examples of such migrations. In the first case, we are talking about introducing an Iranian element into the autochthonous Caucasian world, in the second - a Turkic one.

V. F. Miller also showed the deep Iranian basis of Ossetian culture and the indisputable Iranian identity of the Ossetian language .30 And now it is considered as one of the members of the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian languages. However, further studies have demonstrated the insufficiency of the unambiguously Iranian hypothesis, revealing a significant autochthonous layer in the Ossetian culture and an equally significant substrate in the Ossetian language .31 The anthropological survey of modern Ossetians, as well as the study of their craniological type, gave results that allow us to support the conclusions from the study of Ossetian culture and language, with the only difference that the huge role of the local substrate is revealed by anthropological data with greater clarity. Ossetians are typical representatives of the autochthonous Caucasian type mentioned above, and its individual characteristics are even more pronounced than those of other peoples inhabiting the central regions of the Main Caucasian Ridge.

Is there any anthropological evidence of non-native admixture in the anthropological composition of the Ossetian people? Historical sources tell us about the Iranian-speaking medieval Alans, who apparently had a Central Asian origin and settled the gorges of the North Caucasus, including present-day Ossetia. Morphologically, they were significantly different from the carriers of the Caucasian complex of traits, and therefore their mating contacts with the local population, even if they were significant, could not but affect the change in the physical type of the local population. Meanwhile, such changes are not traceable 32 . The explanation for this can be twofold: either the Alan ethnic environment was small in number compared to the local one, which is very likely, or because of some social restrictions, the Alans did not marry with the local ancestors of modern Ossetians. At the same time, political domination gave them the opportunity to impose their own language on the local population, and with it to transmit many cultural elements. Modern Ossetians are not physically descendants of the alien Alans, but descendants of local tribes that previously spoke one of the Caucasian languages. The Alan superstratum in language and culture chronologically does not go deeper than the early Middle Ages. Anthropological data indicate that the Alan migration from Central Asia to the North Caucasus is relatively weak.

30 Miller V. F. Ossetian etudes. Hh. I-III. M. 1881-1887.

31 Abaev V. I. Osetinsky yazyk i fol'klor [Ossetian language and Folklore], vol. 1, Moscow, l. 1949

32 For more information, see: Alekseev V. P. Anthropological data on the origin of the Ossetian people. In: Proceedings of the scientific session devoted to the ethnogenesis of the Ossetians. Ordzhonikidze. 1967.

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Similar results are obtained in the paleoanthropology of Karachay and Balkaria. Both Karachays and Balkars are no less typical representatives of the Caucasian type than Ossetians, and therefore there is every reason to also consider them direct and direct descendants of the local ancient population. But the penetration of Turkic nomads, most likely Kipchaks, into the gorges of Karachay and Balkaria in the first centuries of our millennium led to the transition of a part of the local population to the Turkic language and a significant development of the Turkic component in its culture. Apparently , a part of the Svans 33, which formed the local basis of both the Karachay and Balkar ethnogenesis, switched to the Turkic language. The typical nature of the Balkars and Karachays as carriers of the Caucasian complex of features and the absence of any foreign admixture in their anthropological composition also indicate the small number of Turkic migrants who moved to the gorges from the steppe regions.

Thus, the paleoanthropological material makes it possible to reconstruct the scale and nature of migration flows and anthropological diffusion, as well as to determine their direction. Its use for these purposes is equally effective for both ancient eras and the Middle Ages.

In one of the earliest works on the use of anthropological data in historical reconstructions, the idea was formulated that new anthropological features cannot arise without the appearance of people-carriers of these features (there are, however, exceptions due to locally stepped marriages in contact zones), while language and culture spread without human migration 34 . This was the first time that attention was drawn to the specifics of anthropological, including paleoanthropological, material. Indeed, the discovery of certain anthropological components in the composition of a particular people indicates the predominant line of connections and the place where the ethnic groups that took part in the formation of a particular people were formed. People don't come without a language and culture. Connections identified through comparative cultural and linguistic research are therefore given a "residence permit".

However, the role of paleoanthropological data in determining the time of the ethnogenetic process is particularly important. Ethnographic and linguistic data do not have a direct chronological retrospective, and it is possible to judge the time of occurrence of an ethnographic phenomenon or linguistic feature (even if there is a written language that records only the literary norm and does not record dialect differences) only indirectly with a very large approximation. Archaeological research helps to determine the time of formation of cultural features, but direct comparison of ethnographic and archaeological observations is quite a difficult task, and much remains unclear here. Paleoanthropological material is equally effective as an ethnogenetic source at all chronological stages of human history, and with sufficient completeness provides information that cannot be extracted from other historical sources.

Thus, paleoanthropological materials from Southern Siberia help to solve problems that arise when considering the ethnogenesis of the Altai, Khakass and Tuvan peoples. Currently

33 Alekseev V. P. Some problems of the origin of Balkars and Karachays in the light of anthropological data. In: On the origin of the Balkars and Karachays. Nalchik 1960

34 Debets G. F., Levin M. G., Trofimova T. A. Anthropological material as a source for studying the issues of ethnogenesis. - SE, 1952, N 1.

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these peoples are more or less typical representatives of the Mongoloid race. But in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages (this was already discussed above in relation to the territory of Khakassia) The entire Altai-Sayan highlands were occupied by carriers of a Caucasian combination of traits. The available data indicate that the range of Caucasoids at that time also covered the western regions of Mongolia .35 The formation of the anthropological composition of the Turkic peoples of the Altai-Sayan Highlands and, consequently, the completion of their ethnogenesis fall on the first millennium BC-the first millennium AD.

In the Middle Ages, Khakassia had a population that was not inferior to the modern one in terms of the severity of its Mongoloid features. But at the turn of our era, the population of the Tashtyk culture following the Tatar one differed from the Tagar one only by a slight increase in the Mongoloid admixture. This means that the formation of the main features of the anthropological composition of the Khakass people took place during the first millennium AD in the process of merging local Caucasoid and alien Mongoloid elements. This merger could not but be accompanied by cultural consolidation and Turkization of the autochthonous pre-Turkic population. Thus, the most intensive process of ethnogenesis in the Minusinsk basin is at least a thousand and a half thousand years away from the present.

A different situation took place on the territory of Tuva along the upper reaches of the Yenisei. Paleoanthropological materials from the Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, and Early Middle Ages are numerous enough to make a complete assessment of the dynamics of Tuva's anthropological types. 36 The overwhelming predominance of Caucasians is unquestionable, although a small Mongoloid admixture is recorded in some cases. The latter was expressed in the composition of the Turks no more than in the population of the Scythian and Hunno-Sarmatian times. It does not increase even in the first centuries of our millennium. Only in the post-Mongol period in paleoanthropological series can be traced the complex of features that is characteristic of modern Tuvans. From this it follows that it was formed in the Mongol period, and it is precisely at that time that the completion of the ethnogenesis of the Tuvan people should be attributed.

The paleoanthropology of Altai is much less studied than the paleoanthropology of Khakassia and Tuva. There are very few data on the population of the Scythian and Hunno-Sarmatian periods, and paleoanthropological collections of the Turkic and Mongolian periods are not numerous enough. Still, this limited material allows us to draw some conclusions. In the Scythian and Hunno-Sarmatian eras, typical Caucasoids and classical Mongoloids of Central Asian origin coexisted with each other. In the following centuries, an intensive process of mestizoization took place, which led to the homogenization of the physical type of the population and the formation of two complexes of morphological features: typically Mongoloid in the mountains and Mongoloid with a Caucasian admixture in the foothills. The formation of the anthropological features of the Altaians falls, therefore, approximately at the same time as the addition of the anthropological type of the Khakass. At the same time, specific distinctions of individual ethnographic groups were formed.

35 Mamonova N. N. Anthropological type of the ancient population of Western Mongolia according to paleoanthropology. In: Research on Paleoanthropology and Craniology of the USSR. Collection of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences T XXXVI L. 1980.

36. Gokhman I. I. The origin of the Central Asian race in the light of new paleoanthropological materials. - In the same place. Alekseev V. P. Summary of the paleoanthropology of Tuva in connection with historical issues. In: Antropo-ekologicheskie issledovaniya v Tuva, Moscow, 1984.

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groups that are part of the Altai people. The Ur-Bedari burial site, dating from the 8th-9th centuries AD, yielded a series of skulls closely resembling the physical type of Kumandins. In other words, the consolidation of the Altai people on the basis of the ethnographic groups forming it did not erase some anthropological differences between them, and the time of formation of these differences goes back to the first millennium AD. 37
The considered cases are examples of late ethnogenesis. In other cases, the paleoanthropological material indicates, on the contrary,the early formation of a particular people, for example, the Chinese. The anthropological composition of Chinese people has been studied repeatedly, and these studies have shown a small local differentiation of morphological features in the territory of East Asia. Paleoanthropological data on the ancient population of China are not very numerous, but several Neolithic time series are described from the Yellow River Bend area. The Neolithic age of this area is rightly regarded as the original cradle of ancient Chinese civilization. The Neolithic population of this area shows no morphological differences from the modern one, and therefore a thread of genetic continuity can be drawn between them for five thousand years. At the same time, it is the paleoanthropological material that provides decisive evidence of the autochthonous Chinese ethnogenesis, since the archaeological continuity from the Neolithic to the present is not easily restored 38 .

Long-term excavations of grave sites from different eras in the Nile Valley have accumulated huge collections of paleoanthropological materials covering the dynamics of anthropological types in Egypt from the Neolithic to the present .39 These materials demonstrate the exceptional stability of anthropological features in the Nile Valley and allow us to consider the local population of each historical epoch as descendants of the population of the previous time. Neither the invasion of the Hyksos nor the transition to Arabic during the Middle Ages caused any noticeable changes in the anthropological type of the local population. The modern Arab population of Egypt is linguistically and culturally related to the population of the Arabian Peninsula - the area of the Arab diaspora in the Middle Ages, but the physical ancestors of the Egyptian Arabs were people who lived in the Nile Valley in Neolithic times. In this case, the paleoanthropological material made it possible to postpone the beginning of the ethnogenesis of the Arabic-speaking population of Egypt by at least six thousand years from the present.

Thus, paleoanthropological material is equally effective in dating ethnogenetic processes from the Neolithic era to the late Middle Ages. Comparison of paleoanthropological data with data on the modern population makes it possible to reconstruct the lines of genetic succession. Finally, a territorial comparison helps to reconstruct the direction of migration flows and assess their scale.

37 For more information about these paleoanthropological materials, see: A1exeyev V. R., Gochman I. I. Physical anthropology of Soviet Asia. In: Rassengeschichte der Men-schheit, Lieferung 9. Munchen- Wien. 1983.

38 For more information, see: Cheboksary N. N. Etnicheskaia antropologiya Kitaia [Ethnic Anthropology of China], Moscow, 1982.

39 Morant G. A study of Egyptian craniology from prehistoric to roman Times. - Biometrica, 1925, Vol. XVII; pt. 1 - 2; Вatrawi A. The racial history of Egypt and Nubia. - Journal of anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1945 - 1946, vol's. LXXV, LXXVI; Nielsen O. The Nubian skeleton throngh 4000 years. København. 1970.

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