On the Origin of the Cattle Breeding among Buryats

A. D. Tsibiktarov

List of issues > «Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series». 2017. Vol. 20

On the Origin of the Cattle Breeding among Buryats

Full text (russian)

Author(s)

A. D. Tsibiktarov

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of forming a traditional Buryats' economy in Transbaikalia from 17^th – till the beginning of 20^th centuries. The nomad and semi nomadic cattle’s breeding has determined features way of life, specificity of material and spiritual culture of the Buryat people. The author, using a retrospective method shows the cattle breeding availability in the different ethnical communities of the Baikal region from 16–17^th centuries till the middle of the 2^nd millennium AD – population of the early Mongolian culture (7–15^th centuries AD), Kurumcha culture (6–14^th centuries AD), Burkhotui culture (6–10^th centuries A), Xiongnu (3^rd century BC – 2^nd century AD), Slab Grave culture (15^th–3^rd centuries BC). The author submits adjustment into definition of the date of formation of conducting cattle breeding in the region of Buryatia around three thousand years ago according to the expert ethnographers. In the article is proposed a new chronological dating of nomad cattle breeding origins in Transbaikalia and Mongolia, which is defined by the middle of the 2^nd millennium AD, i.e. on the half of the millennium earlier than it was accepted before. The deduction is based on the correlation of archaeological and paleogeographical research materials in the territory of southern Transbaikalia and Mongolia. The formation of nomad and semi nomadic cattle breeding in Transbaikalia and Mongolia occurred as a result of paleoeconomy’s adaptation of the population of Selenga-Dauria culture in the end of the 3^rd millennium till the first half of the 2^nd millennium AD to the extreme continental climate which was forming during the first half of the 2^nd millennium AD. Climate’s aridification was accompanied with increasing of cattle breeding in the conditions of steppe and forest-steppe expansion in the landscape of southern Transbaikalia and Mongolia. The establishment of the extreme continental climate in the middle of the 2^nd millennium AD has determined the transformation of the settled tillers and breeders economy into nomadic economy of nomad and semi-nomadic people. As a result of these processes in the middle of the 2^nd millennium AD it has occurred the replacement of the Selenga-Dauria culture to the slab grave culture, and the population of the latter was engaged in the nomad and semi-nomadic cattle breeding.

Keywords

Buryats, nomadic cattle breeding, genesis, retrospective method, Middle Age, antiquity, paleogeography, climate change, aridification, adaptation

UDC

УДК 397(=512.31)

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