Arkaim
archeological site in Russia
Arkaim (Russian: Аркаим) is a fortified archaeological site, dated to c. 2150-1650 BCE, belonging to Sintashta culture, situated in the steppe of the Southern Urals, 8.2 km (5.10 mi) north-northwest of the village of Amursky and 2.3 km (1.43 mi) east-southeast of the village of Alexandrovsky in the Chelyabinsk Oblast of Russia, just north of the border with Kazakhstan. They are the remnants of an ancient fortified city of round shape, with two concentric circles of walls sheltering around sixty houses and workshops.
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- The Sintashta culture, revealed by excavations carried out over the past three decades, is quite spectacular with its circular fortified cities and its princely tombs, which contain some of the oldest known spoke-wheeled chariots. Its possible long-distance links with the Mycenaean world have already been mentioned. Apart from the eponymous Sintashta site, the most mediatized site is Arkaim, discovered in 1987 and excavated by controversial archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich. No doubt in a laudable attempt to save it from being submerged by an artificial lake (he was successful in his efforts), the latter identified the site as a sort of original capital of the “Aryans.” Soon baptized “Swastika City” or “Mandala City” and considered a Stonehenge-like astronomical observatory, the site has attracted the attention of a number of New Age gurus who preside over imagined pagan ceremonies every year on the occasion of the summer solstice; it has also fallen prey to certain far-right nationalist movements. Arkaim is now seen as the “City of the Aryan hierarchy and of racial purity,” the place where “the Old Russian high priest Zoroaster is buried.” As Russian archaeologist Viktor Shnirelman49 has pertinently pointed out, this discovery, which coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, allowed the “Slavity” of these territories (although they were only relatively recently conquered by the Tsars) to be reaffirmed through their “Aryan-ness.” Naturally, Russian president Vladimir Putin has made a point of visiting these sites. Zdanovich himself has claimed: “We, the Slavs, consider ourselves as newcomers. But this is not true. The Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians have lived here [in the South Urals] since the Stone Age and have incorporated and unified through common ties the Kazakhs, Bashkirs and the Slavs.”50 And the circle is completed when it is claimed that the Indo-Europeans indeed came from the Far North before settling in the Urals.
- Jean-Paul Demoule - The Indo-Europeans_ Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West-OUP USA (2023)
- We realize, therefore, that even in these faraway places, whose study requires a certain level of archaeological knowledge, issues that appear to be scientific are, in fact, anything but innocent. Thus, the identification of the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures with the original Indo-Iranians, before their southward migration, is biased from the very start. All the more so since proof of the “Indo-Iranian” character of these cultures is quite weak. The existence of hearths, even in graves, is reminiscent of the fire cult practiced by later Indo-Iranians. But, like sacrifices of horses, bulls, and sheep, it is a practice found in numerous parts of the world. Beyond the caricature of Arkaim, the affirmation of ancient cultural ties between Russia and present day Turkish-speaking Central Asia (part of the USSR until 1992) is clearly a major issue regardless of whether the archaeologists involved are aware of it or not.
- Jean-Paul Demoule - The Indo-Europeans_ Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West-OUP USA (2023)
- Today the site of Arkhaim has become a center for followers of the occult and super-nationalist Russians. It has become a theater of, and for, the absurd and dangerous. It is advocated by some that Arkhaim was planned to reproduce a model of the universe; it was built by the legendary King Yima, as described in the Avesta, the sacred book of the Persians and Zoroastrians (Medvedev 1999); it was a temple-observatory comparable to Stonehenge; it was the birthplace of the prophet Zoroaster who at death was buried at Sintashta; it is a model for contemporary society of harmonious relationships between culture and the natural environment; it is the homeland of the ancient Aryans; and the oldest example of a Slavic state. Arkhaim also is identified with Asgard, the secret homeland of the Germanic god Odin; it is the “city of the Aryan hierarchy and racial purity.” The swastika, which appears incised on pottery from Arkhaim, is proclaimed as the symbol of Aryanism by Russian ultranationalists. Russian astrologers have also been attracted to Arkhaim. In 1991 a prominent astrologer, Tamara Globa, during the summer solstice at Arkhaim, announced that the mem- ory of the site was preserved by the Indian Magi and its rediscovery was prophesied by the medieval astrologer Paracelsus. Arkhaim attracts up to 15,000 “tourists” during annual holidays, particularly in the spring and summer. They come to pray, tap energy from outer space, worship fire, be cured of dis- ease, dance, meditate, and sing. The thousands of visitors are a ready source of income supporting Dr Zdanovich’s research. “We Slavs,” he wrote, “consider ourselves to be new arrivals, but that is untrue. Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians had been living there [in the southern Urals] since the Stone Age and had been incorporated in the Kazaks, Bashkirs, and Slavs, such is the common thread linking us all” (quoted in Shnirelman 1998: 37, 1999). In a word, the Slavs have been in the southern Urals since time immemorial, they are as primordial as all other modern ethnicities inhabiting the region. Shnirelman (1995: 1) writes in “Alternative Prehistory” that nationalist concerns in the former USSR are creating “an explicitly ethnocentric vision of the past, a glorification of the great ances- tors of the given people, who are treated as if they made the most valuable contribution to the culture of all humanity.” The wave of nationalism in Russia has given birth to numerous publications of highly dubious merit. Thus, Kto Oni i Otkuda (Who are They and Where From 1998) is a publication of the Library of Ethnography and sanctioned by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this monograph one can read that the original homeland of the Vedas was in the Arctic and that the language with the closest affinity to Sanskrit is Russian. The dissolution of the Soviet empire has given rise to a heightened nationalism which, in turn, projects a mythical and majestic Slavic past. The archaeology of Arkhaim is playing an important role in the construction of nationalist myths. Today, wholly unwarranted claims are made for Slavs as the original Aryans, for the Slavic language as closest to Sanskrit, for a Slavic-Aryan origin in the Arctic, for the superiority of the Slavic-Aryans, etc.
- ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. 152-3
