Wherever the discoverers wandered, everywhere they were met by the natives. Somewhere they were greeted with open arms, mistaken for gods, presented with gifts, and somewhere they opened heavy fire from arrows. Anything, in general, was. But the fact is that almost any territory before the arrival of the Europeans was already inhabited by someone. And Antarctica is no exception.
However, very little information about the peoples of Antarctica has survived. The thing is that polar explorers paid more attention to the mysterious nature of the continent, and not to the people who inhabited it. Very little information has come down to us about the aborigines of Antarctica, and this, as a rule, is only entries in diaries without a detailed examination of the natives from the point of view of ethnography. Nevertheless, the American linguist Robert John Brown managed to collect all such information together and publish the fundamental work "Ethnic groups of the Antarctic region" (1977). Our article will be based on the materials of this book.
WHO IS ROBERT BROWN?
Robert Brown is actually the only explorer in the world who has dedicated himself entirely to the indigenous peoples of Antarctica. Robert Brown was born in Alaska on January 28, 1916. His father was a hunter, his mother was a former teacher. He had three brothers and four sisters. In search of prey, Brown's father, along with his family, walked hundreds of kilometers through the snow-covered taiga on dog sleds or on foot, had to live in winter huts or in camps of local Indians. Even in early childhood, Robert got acquainted with the culture and life of the Indians, it was then that he woke up an interest in ethnography. Despite this lifestyle, thanks to his mother-teacher, Brown received his primary education. At the age of 12, along with his mother, brother and three sisters, the boy moved to Anchorage, where he went to school. After graduating from it, Brown decided to enter the University of Alaska at Fairbanks,however, he succeeded far from the first attempt - only in 1940. During his studies and subsequent years, Robert Brown was engaged in ethnographic research of the peoples of Alaska - Indians, Eskimos, Inuit, but his works (the most significant of them - "Folks of Alaska" (1953)) did not receive support in the scientific community - they were considered very ordinary. repeating the contents of already published works of other authors, and there were doubts about their reliability. Then Robert realized that everything in this area had already been studied before him, and he would not become the Columbus of the ethnography of Alaska. He began to actively study the peoples of other parts of the world in search of "white spots". In his autobiography ("About me" (1989)), he wrote about it this way: “I finally realized that the peoples of Alaska were sufficiently well studied, and decided to investigate what science had not yet reached. Thought about Africansaborigines of Australia, Indians of South America, but I will stop at a huge white spot on the map of our planet - Antarctica. " More than once Brown tried to organize expeditions to Antarctica, but due to insufficient funding he did not succeed, the state refused, probably considering the goals of the expeditions insane and unscientific. But the researcher did not lose heart: he sat for days in various kinds of archives, trying to unearth evidence of the peoples of Antarctica, their language and way of life. The materials on which, according to the author's testimony, his books and articles were based, are the diaries of participants in Antarctic expeditions of different periods, as well as whale poachers and even the Third Reich. In total, Robert Brown has published more than a hundred works on this topic, the most important of which are "Who lives in Antarctica" (1957), "Antarctic folks and explorers" (1961),Last Ice People (1965), Nazis in Antarctic Region (1972) and Ethnic Groups of Antarctic Region (1977), which summarizes all previous research. Separately, it is worth noting the unique work "Last ice people", which contains unique information about the people of West Antarctica aisakh (aizah), their language, traditions, way of life, religion, etc. The writing of this book will be discussed below. In 1989, Brown moved from Fairbanks to Anchorage, but did not abandon his academic career. On February 28, 1997, Brown was found hanged in his home. Conspiracy theorists claim that he was simply "removed", as his research turns the idea of Antarctica upside down. However, if they wanted to do this, they would have done it much earlier, and not when old man Brown practically retired from scientific affairs. Besides,no one banned his books and did not withdraw them from sale. According to the official version, Brown committed suicide.
WHO LIVED / LIVES IN ANTARCTIDA?
According to Brown, in the 19th century, Antarctica was inhabited by more than forty indigenous peoples. The most numerous of them were the Ais, whose number reached over 50 thousand people, but the number of most peoples did not exceed a thousand people and, as a rule, were much less (200-300 people). Here are just a few of the tribes: Aisy (Aitsy), Colas, Bardins, Mods, Enderbians, Otsy, Adelinians and many others. It is worth noting that the names of most of the peoples were given according to the lands of Antarctica, where they lived, or in the neighboring lands. The name ice comes from the English "ice people" - "ice people", that's what Brown called them in his book. And only in the case of the colas and some other peoples, their self-name became the official name. The anthropological type of most of the aborigines of Antarctica was difficult because of the clothes that covered part of the face, but,in general, Brown compares them to the South American Indians, but notes that some of them also have similarities with the natives of Australia and Oceania. In ice, this similarity was practically not observed. By the end of the 1950s, there was only one people of Antarctica - the ice, the rest were destroyed in clashes with poachers, died from infections brought from the mainland, or themselves became poachers, after which they were arrested.after which they were arrested.after which they were arrested.
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ICES
Ice people (English "ice people", self-name "colu") - residents of West Antarctica, mainly the Antarctic Peninsula, where the climate is not as severe as in East Antarctica, which led to the high number of this people. Ais led a semi-nomadic lifestyle, hunted penguins, seals and birds, and fished. As a rule, temporary ice settlements were located in areas of ice-free coastal areas. The Aits lived in shallow cellars dug in the snow; they sewed clothes from the skins of penguins and seals. The Ice had a primitive bow that shot rocks and chunks of ice, but they generally hunted with mines. They had peculiar fishing rods with hooks and bones and nets made of skins. The Ayes, independently of the rest of the world, invented skis, which were made from ice, skins and bones of animals they had captured. They made fires in their homesthey did this by hitting stone on stone, supported the fire thanks to the skins of the killed animals, which they carefully smeared with fat. This people also had their own music. Often they made some kind of sticks, cubes and dice out of ice, when they were struck, a pleasant ringing was heard. I had ice and a bone jew's harp - where can we do without it? Presumably, they also had throat singing, similar in sound to the throat singing of the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu peoples. Antarctica ice was inhabited by many spirits of nature, the main of which was considered the spirit of Cold or the spirit of Antarctica, living somewhere in the center of the continent. In addition, the ais worshiped Zima, brought her offerings and were afraid to anger her. Penguins for ice were sacred animals, they were always compared with people and killed only in the most extreme cases. Ais believedthat penguins can think and love. The Aizs also believed in huge giants covered with white wool, who live in the ice cracks and drag everyone who fell there into the underworld, as well as in luminous balls of fire that could burn him to the ground when they met a man. Aisy believed that Antarctica was once a green land, forests, flowers grew on it, and it was warm. Ais knew how to count. Their chronology was carried out by day and night, polar day and night were equal to the usual ones. Ais knew how to count. Their chronology was carried out by day and night, polar day and night were equal to the usual ones. Ais knew how to count. Their chronology was carried out by day and night, polar day and night were equal to the usual ones.
The Ice language belongs to the Antarctic language family, in which Brown included all the languages of the peoples of Antarctica. It is the most learned of all the Antarctic Aboriginal languages. About 500 words of this language are recorded, the system of declension of nouns, conjugation of the verb, change of verbs by tenses and some other details. Here are a few words from the Ai language:
* Colu - people, community
* Vin - person
* Ping - low
* Pingvin - penguin
* Kast - whale
* Koloto - glacier
* Ouu - wind
* Tschech - thaw
* Stoy - grass (individual dry blades of grass)
* Aptopan - moss
* Zdorga - bare rock
* Bushu - sea
Brown even managed to record one Ice song. How and from whom - we will find out below. Here are the lines from this song:
Pingvin, pingvin,
Debalaku laa kalj?
Pingvin, pingvin, Kalajaku ee lalj? …
uuiiiuuuiiiiuiuiuiiieeeeii …"
His translation:
"Penguin, penguin, Where are you going, Penguin, penguin, Who are you looking for?"
ABOUT THE LANGUAGE FAMILY
The Antarctic language family, according to Brown, includes all the languages of the peoples of Antarctica known to one degree or another. It is impossible to say that the languages of all the peoples inhabiting the continent were included, since most of the languages of the peoples of Antarctica were not written down by Europeans, and there is no information about them. In his early writings, Brown brought together the Antarctic languages and the bufi-boom language of the eponymous people who lived on Bouvet Island, but later considered the bufi-boom language as an isolate. Most Antarctic languages, according to Brown, were agglutinative, while formants could be attached to both the beginning and the end of a word, depending on the situation. Word order in known languages may differ, for example, in Aisian, two types of basic order prevail: SOV and OSV, but some others may also occur, for example, SVO. In terms of vocabulary, all Antarctic languages are more or less close to each other. In general, Brown divided the Antarctic language family into the following branches:
* Ayssian (Ayssian, Kola and, presumably, Berdin languages)
* Modish (modic and presumably Kotsky)
* Adeline (presumably Adelene, Uss and Wilk)
* Enderby (Enderby and presumably American).
OTHER ANTARCTIC PEOPLES
COLES
Colas (self-name "coolu") - a people close to the ice, who inhabited (possibly still inhabiting) the Victoria Land. The Colas lived in the dry valleys of McMurdo and on the seashore. Its number at the beginning of the 20th century was approximately 1000-2000 people. Almost nothing distinguished coastal stakes from ice, the only difference between them is the territory of residence. At the same time, in terms of language, they were closer to the dry-valley Kolas than the Aizim. The Colas, who lived in dry valleys, were practically sedentary people. They built dwellings of stone, reinforcing them with ice, sometimes dug cellars like dugouts. They hunted, as a rule, on the sea coast, where they visited once every few weeks. They also had skis, but in dry valleys they were not very efficient and were therefore rarely used. Colas also ate fish,which was caught in streams and lakes located in the Dry Valleys. According to Robert Brown, the names of Lakes Wanda, Vida, Bull, and other bodies of water and mountains in this region come from the Kolov language. At the same time, he does not provide decoding of many toponyms. He only writes that Wanda (va-n; da) - "deep lake", Bull (bull) - "pond", "small lake", Vida (vi; da) - "triangular lake", Webba (ve-b; ba) - "melt water", Frixell (fry-x; cell) - "ice island", Bonney (bonn: -i) - "long", Descondelado (de: s: con-de: la; do) - "lake between mountains", Vaskino (English Vashka) (va: sh; ka) - "rounded shape" (here it is more likely that from the Russian name Vaska), Tarr rocks (tarr) - "ice peak", "Nunatak", Cis (c: is) - "ledge". There are descriptions of other names in the book, but many of them are rather dubious (like Vaskin Lake). The Colas were hostile to the American and New Zealand explorers who appeared in this territory; at first there were small clashes between them, ending with the arrest of the aborigines, and sometimes their death, but later these clashes stopped, and many Colas got a job at McMurdo station. The further fate of the people is unknown.
BARDINS
Burdins (English "burdenes", self-name "kuula") - another people of Antarctica, who inhabited the Earth Mary Byrd. According to Brown, their number at the end of the 19th century could hardly have exceeded 3,000, although their area of residence was significant. Little is known about them; most likely, they led a semi-nomadic lifestyle and were engaged in hunting and fishing. Their dwelling is a dugout, dug in the snow; their clothes resembled ice clothes and were sewn from the skins of sea animals and penguins. The Bardins made fire not only by hitting stone on stone, but also with the help of a lens, which served as a transparent piece of ice. The Ais have no information about this method of making fire. Byrdintsev, according to Brown, was most detailed by polar explorers Richard Byrd during the 1929 expedition. He allegedly met a family of five. Communication between him and the Berdins was difficult - they did not understand English at all. However, he managed to record about 30 words from their language, which Brown later attributed to the Antarctic language family. Byrd also managed to learn a little about the beliefs of the Byrdines. According to them, there is a hole in the center of Antarctica leading to the heart of the Earth.
FASHION
Mods (English "maudians", self-name "tolu", "tolul") - Antarctic people who lived along the shores of the Land of Queen Maud, as well as the Land of Kaiser Wilhelm II. In the 1860s, their settlements were located along the entire coast of these lands, but their population numbered only 2000-5000 people. At the beginning of the 20th century, quite a lot of information about fashion was collected by the German expeditions to New Swabia in 1901-1903 and 1911-1912. However, the tasks before these expeditions were mainly natural-scientific, and no one deliberately studied the aborigines, records about them were preserved only in the diaries of the researchers. The mods lived in shallow cellars dug in the snow, no further than 3 kilometers from the coast. They lived off hunting and fishing. The number of mods, like all the peoples of Antarctica, was rapidly decreasing and already in 1937 did not exceed 300-500 people. It was not possible to find out the exact reason for the disappearance of the mods, probably, these are all the same infections introduced by the Europeans. In 1937, a German whaling ship moored to the coast of Antarctica. According to some reports, a battle took place between the whalers and the mods, the victims of which were 10-15 German sailors and several dozen mods. The German Antarctic expedition "New Swabia" (1938-1939) paid close attention to the mods. Mods were first recognized as true Aryans, and scientists of the Third Reich began to seriously consider Antarctica as the ancestral home of mankind. However, for some reason, the Germans abandoned this theory and began genocide. Some of the mods were destroyed, others were sent to concentration camps. By 1947, almost nothing reminded of the residence of this people in Antarctica. Probably,The Nazis collected a lot of data on mods and the modish language, but they, apparently, are in archives that have not yet been found. At the moment, there is little information about the culture of mods and the modish language.
LATEST ICES
According to Robert Brown, in the 1950s, of the indigenous peoples of Antarctica, only the Aians existed, the rest disappeared or were assimilated by polar explorers and as a result of arrests. The natives of Antarctica were arrested, as a rule, for poaching. Many of them did indeed join the whalers, while others simply continued the traditional lifestyle of hunters and fishermen. This fate did not escape the ice, who were massively arrested for poaching by the Argentine government. After being released from prison, the Aits, as a rule, completely assimilated, drank themselves into drinking and never returned to their homeland. Already in the 1950s, only 500 of them remained. In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty was adopted, according to which Antarctica became a nature reserve, and any economic activity was prohibited. There were no exceptions for the indigenous people,which no one officially recognized. According to this treaty, all Aitsy were forcibly resettled in Argentina, on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
This was learned by Robert Brown, who in 1963 visited Tierra del Fuego and talked with the last Aiz. At that time, there were no more than 5-10 people left who knew their native language. The former ice drank heavily and, as a rule, did not work anywhere. They turned out to be taciturn and reluctant to share the details of their previous lives. Despite this, Brown managed to record unique information about this people from one of the ice - Francisco Colu. It is worth noting that he took the name Francisco after moving to Argentina, before that he was called Koldogologjedolololntsh'yaaa (Koldo: golog-jedololn-tshc; 'ajaa - "got out of a transparent ice crack in the sun"). This name turned out to be unpronounceable for Europeans, so Colu chose the name Francisco. The surname Colu was taken from the self-name of the people. Kolu did not remember his date of birth,approximately he was about 60 years old. Francisco told a lot about the way of life of his people, about its history, thanks to this man unique recordings of the Aisian language were made, including several audio recordings. Colu himself considered the Ai language to be his native language, while the younger generation of Ais already spoke Spanish. How long Kolu himself lived after Brown's expedition is unknown (there is information that he died a few years later from poisoning with low-quality alcohol), but in 1977, as Brown wrote, not a single person who knew the Aissian language was alive. How long Kolu himself lived after Brown's expedition is unknown (there is information that he died a few years later from poisoning with low-quality alcohol), but in 1977, as Brown wrote, not a single person who knew the Aissian language was alive. How long Kolu himself lived after Brown's expedition is unknown (there is information that he died a few years later from poisoning with low-quality alcohol), but in 1977, as Brown wrote, not a single person who knew the Aissian language was alive.
ENDERBIANS
Enderbians (self-named "tulak", "tulaki"). Robert Brown wrote comparatively little about this people. They lived, according to the materials of his book, on Enderby Land, in small settlements of 10-20 people. In the 1830s, the population reached 800-1000 people. Unlike many other peoples of Antarctica, there were practically no armed clashes between Enderbians and Europeans, however, cases of attacks on them by poachers are known (by the way, most often poachers were the instigators of clashes with the Antarctic aborigines, polar explorers, as a rule, have always been good-natured). The Enderbians, like almost all the peoples of Antarctica, led a semi-nomadic lifestyle. The main activity was hunting for penguins and seals, as well as fishing. Their dwelling was a shallow dugout, dug in the snow,but they also built igloo-like dwellings. As Brown wrote, the last mentions of the people date back to the 1940s, but in 2006 Evgeny Borisovich Petrov's book “The Enderbians. The Last Inhabitants of Antarctica”, where it was written that this people had survived to this day. According to Petrov, the Enderbians were spared the fate of the ice, who were relocated to Argentina under the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, since no one really knew about the existence of the Enderbians. In the 1960s, their number was about 400 - less than in the 1830s, but, nevertheless … In 1962, the Soviet polar station Molodezhnaya was opened on Enderby Land. After that, the way of life of the Enderbians began to change - polar explorers began to supply local aborigines with food and provide them with living quarters. Many Enderbians began to abandon the lifestyle of nomads and hunters and began to move to villages for 10-15 people, consisting of residential modules provided by Soviet polar explorers and heated by diesel generators. At the time of this writing of Petrov's book, the Enderbians lived at Molodezhnaya station and in its vicinity and ate only food provided by polar explorers, because hunting in Antarctica is prohibited. Their total number reached 300-500 people. Many of them worked at various polar stations in different parts of Antarctica. At the same time, about 50 Enderbians continued to wander along the sea coast and live in snow dugouts and igloos. It is curious that the Enderbians are not citizens of any state, officially they do not exist. Consequently, there is no exact statistics on their number.
CRITICISM OF BROWN AND PETROV
Despite the most important scientific value that follows from the content of Brown's works (well, what about? The last ice!), One cannot but mention their lack. Firstly, Brown did not have advanced degrees, although he was trained as a linguist. Secondly, the veracity and very existence of many of the sources mentioned in his books is in great doubt. Indeed, apart from his books, the peoples of Antarctica are not mentioned anywhere in the scientific literature. And even in pseudo-scientific publications, where sometimes you can read a lot of the unusual and unexpected, this, that is, exactly the information about these peoples and languages and everything related to them, which was published by Robert Brown, you will not find. That is, it is quite possible that the entire contents of Brown's books are nothing more than the flight of his imagination. It is worth saying that official science does not consider these books in any other way.
The same can be said about Petrov. In the case of Petrov, the question also arises of where did he get his data at all, because Brown at least referred to the diaries of the expedition participants, albeit nonexistent, while Petrov only referred to Brown. Today, up to 20 people work at the Molodezhnaya station in the Antarctic summer, in addition, there is the Belarusian Vechernyaya Mountain station nearby. That is, if the Enderbians really lived there, it would have been revealed long ago (and why hide it?). That is, Petrov, like Brown, cannot be trusted unquestioningly.
OTHER EVIDENCE
Even if all the works of Brown and Petrov are considered as a flight of fantasy, then there is absolutely real evidence that Antarctica was inhabited by people before the arrival of Europeans. For example, in 2014, archaeologist Damian Waters and his team discovered three elongated skulls in the La Pail region. Skulls of this shape have been found in large numbers in Peru. This was the first time a human remains was found in Antarctica.
But these people clearly lived on an icy (then, perhaps not yet icy) continent, probably thousands of years ago. However, there is also evidence that there are indigenous people in Antarctica today.
On the northern coast of Victoria Land (Ots coast) is the Russian Leningradskaya station, which was mothballed in March 1991. In February 2006, the head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition (RAE) Valery Lukin announced the need to resume the work of Molodezhnaya, Leningradskaya and Russkaya stations. Youth - once the largest Soviet station - resumed operation as a seasonal base, but when examining Leningradskaya it turned out that since 1991 someone had visited the station, broke down almost all the doors and left them open, so there was ice to the ceiling inside the buildings. Participants of the 53rd RAE managed to penetrate only two rooms. A similar situation was observed on Russkaya, however, there the reason for the state of the station was the forces of nature. So who visited the station? Americans? Let's admit. But,if they were Americans or someone else from the mainland, they would have entered the station unnoticed, hiding all traces behind them so that no one would know about their visit. The conclusion suggests itself: the doors to the premises were opened by those who did not really know what they were intended for and, in general, what all this was. They did not know, and that the doors must be closed behind them, otherwise the premises will be covered with snow, and it will be impossible to get there. This could only be done by backward half-savages living in a primitive communal system. However, this is only circumstantial evidence, there is still no direct evidence of the existence of the indigenous peoples of Antarctica. They did not know, and that the doors must be closed behind them, otherwise the premises will be covered with snow, and it will be impossible to get there. This could only be done by backward half-savages living in a primitive communal system. However, this is only circumstantial evidence, there is still no direct evidence of the existence of the indigenous peoples of Antarctica. They did not know, and that the doors must be closed behind them, otherwise the premises will be covered with snow, and it will be impossible to get there. This could only be done by backward half-savages living in a primitive communal system. However, this is only circumstantial evidence, there is still no direct evidence of the existence of the indigenous peoples of Antarctica.