How nomad reindeer herders from the Far North ended up in the center of Europe and became Hungarians

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Where did they come from? The answer to this question was obtained by chance, when the relationship of the languages of the Hungarians and a number of peoples of the Far North of Russia was discovered. It's hard to believe, but nomadic reindeer herders came to Europe, becoming one of the most distinctive peoples of the Old World.

The beginning of the 1st millennium AD in Eurasia was marked by the invasion of the Huns and a significant cooling, which was the beginning of the Great Migration of Peoples. The wave of movement also picked up the Ugric ethnos, inhabiting the territories on the border of the southern taiga and the forest-steppe of Western Siberia, from the Middle Urals to the Irtysh region - proto-Ugri. From those who went north, the Khanty and Mansi descended, and those who moved west, to the Danube, were the ancestors of the Hungarians, or Magyars, as they call themselves - the only representatives of the Finno-Ugric language family in Central Europe.

Relatives of the Magyar

The names of the Mansi and Magyar peoples themselves come from the common root "Manse". Some scholars believe that the words "Voguls" (the outdated name of the Mansi) and "Hungarians" are consonant variants of the same name. Gathering, hunting and fishing - this is what the ancestors of the Magyars, Mansi and Khanty were doing. The vocabulary associated with the last two activities has been preserved in the Hungarian language ever since. Basic verbs, words describing nature, family ties, tribal and community relations are also of Ugric origin. It is curious that the Hungarian language is more similar to Mansi than to Khanty. The first two languages turned out to be more resistant to borrowing from others and retained more from the ancestor language.

In the mythology of the Hungarians, Khanty and Mansi, there are also common features. All of them have an idea of dividing the world into three parts: in the Khanty-Mansi myths, these are the air, water and earthly spheres, and in the Hungarian ones - the upper (heavenly), middle (earthly) and lower (underground) worlds. According to Magyar beliefs, a person has two souls - a soul-breath and a free soul-shadow, which can leave a person and travel, the existence of the same is mentioned in the Mansi myths, with the difference that in total men can have 5 or 7 souls, and for women - 4 or 6.

Neighbors of Hungarians, their influence on culture

Moving along the Volga region, the ancestors of the Hungarians met on their way the Scythians and Sarmatians - peoples of Iranian origin, who taught them cattle breeding, agriculture and the processing of metals - copper, bronze and subsequently iron. It is very likely that the Proto-Hungarians in the second half of the 6th century were in the Western Türkic Kaganate and, together with the Türkuts, actively participated in Central Asian and Iranian politics. Iranian motifs and plots can be traced in Hungarian mythology and fine arts, and in Hungarian chronicles Persia is often referred to as the country where the "relatives of the Magyars" live. Arminius Vambery, a famous Hungarian traveler and orientalist, was engaged in their search, traveling in the second half of the 19th century in Central Asia and Iran.

Mastering cattle breeding in the steppes east of the Southern Urals, the ancestors of the Magyars lead a nomadic lifestyle, and hunting and farming begin to play an auxiliary role in the economy. Probably, after the revolt of a part of the Ugric tribes against the Türkic Kaganate, by the end of the 6th century, Proto-Hungarians appeared on the territory of modern Bashkortostan, in the basin of the Lower Kama, the Southern Cis-Urals, partly on the eastern slopes of the Urals. Presumably in this area was Great Hungary (Hungaria Magna) - the ancestral home of the Hungarians, which is mentioned in the report of the medieval monk-diplomat Giovanni Plano Carpini and in the Hungarian chronicle "Gesta Hungarorum". Some researchers locate Great Hungary in the North Caucasus, others believe that it did not really exist, because in the Middle Ages scientists were inclined to look for the ancestral home of all peoples. The opening of the Bayanovsky burial ground in the lower reaches of the Kama speaks in favor of the first, most widespread version.

Russian and Hungarian archaeologists investigated it, found in it a resemblance to the burials of the Hungarians of the 9th-10th centuries, as well as objects of clearly Hungarian origin and believe that the finds speak of the common ancestors of the population of the Cis-Urals and European Hungarians. Similar tribal names of the Bashkirs and Hungarians and the same geographical names in Bashkiria and Hungary confirm the former neighborhood of these peoples.

Expansion m migration of the Magyars

In the VI-VII centuries, the Magyars gradually migrated to the west, to the Don steppes and the northern coast of the Sea of Azov, where they lived next to the Bulgars, Khazars, Onogurs Turks. Partial confusion with the latter gave the Magyars another name for the ethnos - Hungarians, this is especially noticeable in the Latin Ungari, Ungri, English Hungarian (s) and other European languages, and the Russian language borrowed the Polish węgier. On the new land - Levedia (named after the outstanding leader of one of the Hungarian tribes), the Hungarians recognized the power of the Khazar Kaganate, participated in its wars. Under the influence of new neighbors, the structure of society, the rule of law and religion gradually became more complex. The Hungarian words "sin", "dignity", "reason" and "law" are of Turkic origin.

Under the pressure of the Khazars, the territory of the Magyars' residence shifted to the west, and already in the 820s they settled on the right bank of the Dnieper, where they used to be. After about 10 years, the Hungarians came out of the power of the Khazar Kaganate, and by the end of the 9th century they gradually settled in the steppes between the Dnieper and Dniester.

They called their new homeland Atelkuza - in Hungarian Etelköz means “interfluve”. The Magyar tribal union took part in the Byzantine wars. In 894, the Hungarians and Byzantines launched a crushing attack on the Bulgarian kingdom on the Lower Danube. A year later, when the Magyars went on a long campaign, the Bulgarians under the leadership of Tsar Simeon I, together with the Pechenegs, struck back - they ruined Atelkuza and captured or killed almost all young women. The Hungarian warriors returned and found their lands devastated, pastures occupied by the enemies, only a small part of the entire people remained. Then they decided to leave these lands and move to the Danube, where the Roman province of Pannonia used to be located, and later - the center of the Hunnic Empire.

The direction was not chosen by chance, because, according to Hungarian legend, the blood of the Huns flows in the Magyars. Perhaps there is some truth in it, because after the defeat of the troops that remained after the death of Attila, the remaining Huns, led by his son, settled in the Northern Black Sea region and lived there as a separate nationality for about two hundred years, until they completely assimilated with the local residents. It is likely that they could have intermarried with the ancestors of modern Hungarians.

As stated in the Hungarian chronicles of the Middle Ages, the Magyars went to the Danube to pick up the legacy of their leader Almos, descended from Attila. According to legend, Emeshe, the mother of Almos, dreamed that she was fertilized by the mythical bird Turul (from the Turkic "hawk") and predicted to the woman that her descendants would be great rulers. Thus, the name Almos was given, from the Hungarian word "àlom" - sleep. The exodus of the Hungarians took place during the reign of Prince Oleg and was noted in 898 in the Old Russian chronicles as a peaceful departure through the Kiev lands to the west.

In 895-896, under the command of Arpad, the son of Almos, seven Magyar tribes crossed the Carpathians, and their leaders concluded an agreement on the eternal alliance of the tribes and sealed it with blood. At that time, there were no major political players on the Middle Danube who could prevent the Hungarians from taking possession of these fertile lands. Hungarian historians call the 10th century the time of finding the homeland - Nonfoglalas. The Magyars became a sedentary people, subjugated the Slavs and Turks who lived there and mingled with them, because they had practically no women left.

Having adopted a lot from the language and culture of local residents, the Hungarians still did not lose their language, but, on the contrary, spread it. In the same X century, they created writing based on the Latin alphabet. Arpad began to rule in his new homeland and founded the Arpadovich dynasty. The seven tribes that came to the Danube lands numbered 400-500 thousand, and in the X-XI centuries 4-5 times more people began to be called Hungarians. This is how the Hungarian people appeared, who founded the Kingdom of Hungary in 1000. In the XI century they were joined by the Pechenegs, expelled by the Polovtsians, and in the XIII century by the Polovtsians themselves, who fled from the Mongol-Tatar invasion. The ethnic group of the palots of the Hungarian people are their descendants.

In the 90s of the XX century, genetic studies were carried out to search for the ancestors of the Hungarians, which showed that the Hungarians are a typical European nation, taking into account some of the distinctive features of the inhabitants of the north of Hungary, and the frequency of a group of genes characteristic of peoples speaking Finno-Ugric languages, among the Hungarians it is only 0.9%, which is not at all surprising, given how far from their Ugric ancestors fate took them.

Modern scientists are also interested in one more question - Are modern Romanians really descendants of ancient Romans and warlike Dacians?.