In the north of Pakistan, in the Hindu Kush region, bordering Afghanistan and Tajikistan, in several villages scattered across three mountain plateaus live Kalash - one of the most mysterious peoples on the planet. The Pakistanis call this area Kafiristan - the land of the infidels.
The Kalashs are completely different from their Muslim neighbors: they profess paganism, speak their own language, observe unique customs. Recently, the Kalashs have become widely known not only thanks to religion, but also to the usual light hair and eyes for this people, which in ancient times gave rise to legends among the lowland peoples about the Kalash as descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great.
Today, the similarity with the ancient Hellenes is sometimes interpreted in popular literature as the heritage of the "Nordic Aryans" and an indicator of the special closeness of the Kalash to European peoples. However, light skin is inherent in only a part of the population, most of the Kalash have dark hair and exhibit a characteristic Mediterranean type.
If the Kalash are the descendants of the ancient Hellenes, then how could they have wandered so far from their historical homeland? On the way to India, the great conqueror Alexander the Great left defensive detachments in the rear. Perhaps, without waiting for the great commander, they settled in these parts?
A more plausible hypothesis is that Alexander specially selected half a thousand of the healthiest and most beautiful Greek men and women, and then settled them in these hard-to-reach places to create a Greek colony on foreign territory.
Indeed, if you look at the faces of the Kalash, it seems as if they came from antique vases, so similar to the ancient Hellenes. The Kalash themselves firmly believe in this legend and pass it on from mouth to mouth. Still, the modern Greeks have already had their hand here.
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While the whole world is digging into the truth, the descendants of Homer and Socrates are actively helping their "brothers and sisters." In one of the villages they built a school and a hospital with their own money. And in the place where the Kalash celebrate the holidays, they installed painted columns - greetings from the historical homeland.
There are other, less common hypotheses. According to one of them, the Kalash are the descendants of a people who settled in the mountains of Tibet in the process of a large migration of peoples during the invasion of the Aryans into Hindustan.
Kalash believe in their pagan gods. According to them, there is a single creator god, who is called Dezu (among the ancient Greeks, Deos). The soul goes to him after death, and he is free to decide where it will move further - to hell or heaven. The Kalash's ideas about hell and heaven are rather vague, one thing is clear to them: heaven is something very good, hell is bad.
Relations with other deities among the ancient people are rather complicated and confusing. According to some sources, among their gods you can find Apollo, Aphrodite and Zeus, familiar to us from childhood, while other sources say that they have nothing like this. And all because the Kalash, despite all the efforts of specialists, the people are still poorly studied.
One thing is certain: these mountaineers are stubborn and self-sufficient. No matter how the Muslims tried to plant their own order here, the Kalash resisted to the last and paid great price for their stubbornness: in the 19th century there were 200 thousand Kalash, now - no more than 3 thousand. This is the result of the religious genocide.
Today nobody exterminates Kalash, relations between the two peoples are more than friendly. But willy-nilly, the Kalash are slowly mingling with the Punjabis, Pashtuns and other Pakistani populations.
Kalash girls are of rare beauty and are highly valued as brides, so parents often cannot resist the big kalym that Muslim grooms promise them. However, local beauties are also distinguished by a very freedom-loving disposition; taming such a girl is the same as taming a mountain stream.
In families, gender equality reigns. Kalash marries and marries for love. The girl is free to choose her own mate. This usually happens in the spring, during the holidays. Several villages gather on the "dance floor" at once, so there is a wide choice.
If both agree, the young man should kidnap the girl - purely symbolic. A couple of days later, the girl's relatives come to his house for a ransom. When both parties agree on a kalym, a wedding is celebrated.
A woman can leave her husband for another, but on one condition: the new spouse must pay the old one a large ransom. If the relationship between the spouses does not work out, the husband may also leave. In general, complete equality.
Kalash girls, unlike Muslim ladies, do not hide their faces behind Punjab. On the contrary, they emphasize their beauty. Each, starting almost from the cradle, wears beaded beads and does intricate hairstyles. the number of beads on their neck will tell every knowledgeable person everything about a lady's age, her social status, prosperity, and more.
From a very young age, Kalashki wear a special headdress, which is called a kupa and consists of a kind of skullcap without a top with a flowered tail attached. Married ladies wear a kupa with an additional part, which slightly in its design resembles a perak - a headdress for women in Ladakh (India).
The girls' dresses are real works of art, over which local craftsmen conjure. An obligatory item of women's clothing is thin pants, the pattern on which matches the pattern of the dress. If it's cold, kalashki cover the upper body with a wide scarf. Girls and women wear these outfits to a feast, to the world, and to good people.
But in the life of every Kalash lady there are periods when such beauty has to be hidden behind seven locks. During menstruation and childbirth, women are isolated in a specially designated house. It is forbidden to communicate with the isolated, food is passed to them through a special window. Even touching the walls of this house is not allowed, as it is considered unclean because of the ladies there.
According to the traditional ideas of the Kalash, the highest sacredness is possessed by mountains and mountain pastures, where the gods live and “their cattle” - wild goats - graze. The altars and goat barns are also holy. The lands of Muslims, chickens and women are impure.
Perhaps this is the only oppression that mountain steals experience. And this is not an exaggeration. Proof of this is the biography of the famous representative of this people, Lakshan Bibi. She made a breathtaking career for her people - she became an airplane pilot.
Can any woman in Pakistan, professing Islam, dream of something like this? Taking advantage of her fame, Lakshan created a fund to help the Kalash people. But, oddly enough, local residents suspected Bibi of embezzling funds and began to avoid her. House Lakshan differs from village buildings, and this is another reason for discord between the famous Kalashka and her fellow countrymen.
The attitude of the Kalash towards foreigners is also ambiguous. On the one hand, they bring money to the Kalash villages, on the other, they behave unceremoniously, take pictures without warning, break into homes. Therefore, not in every village the Kalash welcome guests with open arms.
Meanwhile, in the Kalash villages there is something to see, some holidays are worth something. Games are an essential part of any celebration, and the Gaul is a favorite pastime. This is a cross between our rounders, golf and baseball.
They play a game in winter, two people compete. They hit the ball with a club, then both are looking for this ball. Whoever finds it first is the winner. The score goes up to 12 points. Often battles take place between representatives of different villages
The Rat nat holiday is popular not only among Kalash, but also among tourists. It takes place at night, in the light of stars and camera flashes. To the beat of the drums, the girls sing a rhythmic song, and the dancers circle around 3-6 people, putting their hands on each other's shoulders.
When the dance ends, an old man enters the stage and begins to tell legends from the life of the Kalash people. The old man's tale is interrupted by dancing, and so on until the morning. Now guys, then girls, then all together. There are no prohibitions. In the spring, after the fields are sown, and the men have not yet gone to the mountains for pastures, the Joshi holiday is celebrated. Everyone rejoices in life and pray to their gods for a good harvest. In the summer, Uchao is celebrated - it is necessary to appease the higher powers so that they take care of the Kalash harvest.
The main winter holiday Chomus, during which animals are sacrificed, men go to the sacred mountain and ask for the bestowal of grace on the Kalash in the future. This small but proud mountain people really doesn’t get in the way. As a result of research on the genetic relationships of the world's population, conducted jointly by the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, the University of Southern California and Stanford University, it was found that the genes of the Kalash are truly unique and belong to to the European group, based on materials from Lyubov Sharova's article