One of the most remarkable historical evidences associated with the legends about the dwarf Chud people who once inhabited the north of the European part of Russia and the Urals. and stories about the Sirtha people who lived in the tundra before the arrival of the Nenets can be found on the famous map of the Arctic by Gerard Mercator. This map is believed to depict the legendary mainland Hyperborea.
PIGMIES LIVE HERE
The North Pole on the Mercator map is surrounded by a vast continent divided into four parts by mighty rivers. The pole itself is crowned by a rock located in the center of the inland sea. From the signature corresponding to a large island north of Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard, it follows that "pygmies live here, their height is about four feet (122 cm - Ed.), And the inhabitants of Greenland call them Skrelingers." Based on the testimony of Mercator or his unknown informants, it can be assumed that the culture of the Sirtha (comparable in a number of signs with the Chudyu), who inhabited the Arctic coast and preceded the Samoyed tribes, was a fragment of the legendary civilization of Hyperborea or some separate nationality that was once part of it …
The habitat of the "dwarf people" could extend much further than the Arctic coast. A strong argument in favor of this assumption is the Celtic legends about the tribes of the goddess Danu. These tribes, who arrived from the mysterious northern islands, belonged to the penultimate wave of conquerors of Ireland, which established themselves on the island after defeating their demonic rivals the Fomorians. Subsequently, the tribes of the goddess Danu were forced to yield in battle to the sons of Mil, who were considered the ancestors of the historical Irish.
After the battle, the poet and seer Amargen divided the country into two parts: the underground, which went to the tribes of the goddess Danu, and the ground, where people ruled. The ten largest sid hills were distributed between the tribes of the goddess. Legends about these tribes formed the basis for subsequent ideas about the Sids - the inhabitants of the lower world, named after the hills in which they lived. In this regard, it is worth remembering the inhabitants of the Nenets hills-Sede (from the Nenets “gray” - “hillock”, “hill”, “dome-shaped elevation of the earth's surface”). These images are quite consistent with the Irish concept of the shi, whose Gaelic name means "people living in the hills." In England they are also called "the people of the hills".
The chain is closed by the idea of fairy - a magical people of small stature (fairies, elves), inhabiting the hills and often kidnapping human children. Such ideas are quite consistent with the Nenets legends about Sirta - outlandish "little people" who also abduct children, and the legends about the Chudi "exchanging" children - literally "transferring" them from this world to another.
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STRANGE FINDINGS
The fact that the above ideas have a real basis is supported, in particular, by the discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Skara Bray in the Orkney Islands (North Scotland). The Skara Bray settlement was discovered in 1850 when a strong hurricane exposed the bowels of one of the coastal hills. Excavation at Skara Brae was not started until the 1920s by Professor of Archeology Gordon Child. The settlement was founded in 3100 BC. e. and is believed to have flourished until at least 2500 BC. e.
The main incident was that literally everything, from the masonry of walls and beds to ceilings and doorways, was designed for people no more than one meter tall! On some stone objects, mysterious inscriptions in an unknown language were found.
Ancient language scholars have suggested that this is the oldest version of the runic alphabet, known as the Futhark. However, recent research has shown that signs on stone objects in Skara Bray have nothing to do with either the Futhark or the runes in general.
A similar discovery was made during excavations of burial mounds near the village of Vlasovka, Gribanovsky District, Voronezh Region, begun in 1985. There was discovered a "temple of dwarfs", consisting of a labyrinth (which is a branched system of underground passages with flat floors and straight walls) and the sanctuary itself. The artificial origin of the labyrinth was confirmed by the presence of vertical wells. The calculations showed that underground passages of this size could be laid by human beings no more than 80 centimeters tall and weighing no more than 25 kilograms.
REMAINS OF LITTLE PEOPLE
The key to this kind of finding may be a discovery that changes ideas about the process of human evolution. In 2003, during excavations on the Indonesian island of Flores, Professor Mike Morwood of the University of New England in the Australian city of Armidale and his colleagues discovered the remains of a previously unknown species of creatures, which were dubbed Homo floresiensis.
Skeleton fragments found in the Liang Bua limestone cave belonged to a small upright hominid. Analysis of the skull showed that it was a normal adult individual, not a diseased or mutated specimen. Despite the small volume of the brain, these creatures had a developed intellect - they made tools of labor from stone and used fire. Dwarfs do not belong to Homo sapiens, but at the same time, they are not a reduced species of modern pygmies, which have a brain of the same volume as today's people of normal height.
The age of the discovered remains varies from 95 to 12 thousand years, i.e. these creatures lived simultaneously with man! Some scientists believe that representatives of this kind of creatures could survive to this day. Local legends about a race of bloodthirsty little people, who are here called Ebu Gogo ("the grandmother who eats everything"), serve as proof of this. The discovery of Homo floresiensis makes it possible to rethink a whole layer of folklore information associated with the images of the dwarf people, which until recently were considered the fruit of folk fantasy.
THEY WERE EVERYWHERE
Belief in dwarf creatures that abduct small children and even adults (especially pregnant women or young mothers) is not limited to any one region. In addition to the European and Russian North, mentions of them are found in China and on the Pacific coast of America. Legends attribute the reason for these abductions to the preservation and improvement of the race of dwarf creatures.
In Mexico, these creatures are known as ikalas. Translated from the language of the Tzeltali Indians, "Ikhk" literally means "black creature." According to information collected by the American anthropologist Brian Strauss, ikals look like short (less than a meter) hairy black men. They live in caves, which the locals try to avoid. Ikals fly through the air, attack the Indians and kidnap them: “Sometimes they are seen flying with some kind of missile-like objects tied to their backs. With these rockets, they are said to sometimes kidnap people.” According to Indian beliefs, abducted women “become so fertile that they can give birth every month or even every day. Children are born black, and in their father's caves they are taught the art of flying."
Numerous examples of encounters with dwarf people on the territory of Europe in a relatively recent time were collected in 1909 by the American researcher Walter Evans-Wentz in his book "Views of faeries in Celtic countries". Sophia Morrison, in the introduction to The Maine Fairy Tales, succinctly formulates: “These little people are two or three feet tall, but otherwise very similar to people. They wear red hats and green jackets and love to hunt. " Particular militancy was a distinctive feature of the dwarf creatures that figure in Scottish folk legends under the name "lapanah". Legends describe them as short men, endowed with considerable strength. They were called na-khamguisgan, as well as tamgaisg or amguish.
It is known that back in 1850, black hairy men - in France they were called lutes or gnomes - were often seen in the Poitou area. Moreover, the location of their dwellings in nearby caves was considered well known. In the 50s of the XIX century, returning to their village on the Egre River, several women, crossing the bridge shortly before midnight, heard a loud noise and saw something from which, according to them, "the blood froze in their veins." A certain object - for lack of a suitable analogy, they called it "the chariot with squeaky wheels" - climbed the hill with amazing speed. Dwarfs were dragging him. A strange chariot jumped over the vineyard and was lost in the night.
Long before the discovery of Homo floresiensis, anthropologist McRitchie proposed a theory according to which the legends about elves are nothing more than memories of a real people who went into caves. The above facts allow us to conclude that this theory, most likely, corresponds to the actual state of affairs. Now we can talk about the dwarf people as a completely objective anthropological reality, which left its mark not only in the memory of neighboring historical peoples.
Alexey KOMOGORTSEV, Interdisciplinary Research Group "Origins of Civilizations"