Geneticists refute conventional theories about the impact of the Tatar-Mongol invasion on the "root" gene pool
There is a widespread opinion that there are simply no Russians as a people, and they all remained in the legends of deep antiquity, and now the country is inhabited by mestizos of a thousand and one blood. And, of course, they refer to the fact that Russia spent 250 years under the Mongol-Tatar yoke. In fact this is not true.
Who has inherited?
I must say that over the past ten years, the genetics of Russians from Smolensk to Vladivostok has been studied in great detail. Elena Balanovskaya, doctors of biological sciences, and her son Oleg Balanovskiy made a huge contribution to the study of the issue. Balanovskaya's monograph “The Russian Gene Pool on the Russian Plain” is considered one of the fundamental works on this issue.
Important research was carried out by the head of the laboratory of genetics of the Institute of Biological Problems of the North, Doctor of Biological Sciences Boris Malyarchuk.
Scientists note that in the Russian genome, when studying mitochondrial DNA inherited through the female line, only 2% of Mongolian characters are found. For comparison, the figure for Poles and Czechs is 1.5%. The study of heredity in the male line (the so-called Y-DNA) shows that the Mongoloid admixture is about 0.2-0.5% of the Russian genome.
The researchers directly argue that the Tatar-Mongol invasion did not leave noticeable traces in the Russian genome. “The Russian gene pool is not intermediate between a typical European and Asian gene pool. The Russian gene pool is the most eastern of the typically European ones,”Belanovskys say.
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Malyarchuk also agrees with them: "It has been established that structurally the mitochondrial gene pools of Czechs and other Slavic peoples (Russians, Poles, Slovenes) practically do not differ."
Geneticists noticed that the frequency of Mongolian markers in the European part of the country increases not from west to east, but from south to north. This prompted them to assume that even those eastern characters that are found in the genes of the Russians are by no means associated with the invasion of the 13th century, but with earlier processes of mixing of the Slavs with the Finno-Ugric tribes, which had characteristics similar to the Mongols. This assumption is also supported by the strong heterogeneity (heterogeneity) of the Russian genetic cluster.
The realities of medieval war
What happens: there has never been any Tatar-Mongol yoke? Is the great storyteller Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov right, and his opponents, all those boring archaeologists and specialists in chronicles devoid of imagination, screwed up?
No, alas. Unfortunately, there was a yoke, and Russia was really dependent on the Horde for a long time.
The problem is that those who talk about the genetic consequences of this conquest carry over to the Middle Ages the idea of modern-type wars. At the same time, “mixing” means two processes: mass rapes of women in captured cities and cross marriages between the conquerors and the conquered population in subsequent years.
It is difficult for a modern person to imagine the customs of that time. However, they are very clearly visible when studying the sanitary burials during the invasion of Khan Batu. In 2004-2005, an expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences led by Asya Engovatova investigated mass graves in the historical center of Yaroslavl.
Sanitary burial of Yaroslavl residents who died in the attack by Batu's troops. Source: rusproject.org
Scientists found that the male population was killed on the defensive ramparts and the outskirts of the city. But female and child skeletons were found en masse in pits in the center of the settlement. Forensic evidence showed that most of the men died from chopping and crushing wounds to the face, and most of the women were killed by arrows.
Many city dwellers were wounded in the back, which suggests that they were trying to escape. Most of the children died from blows to the head; many were shot with bows, some were lifted onto spears (characteristic injuries remained on the spines and ribs of several children's skeletons).
In 2011, a similar discovery was made in the city of Vladimir. During excavations in the city center, the same picture appeared before archaeologists. Remains of people, randomly dumped into wells and utility pits, male skeletons with traces of two or three severe wounds - Russian soldiers fought to the last, - female and children's skeletons with their heads pierced.
Skull of a resident of Vladimir of the XIII century, killed by a Tatar warrior. Source: rusproject.org
In the graves, scientists found not only fragments of winter clothes, but also a large number of women's jewelry: the conquerors were not interested in enrichment, and certainly not in sexual pleasures. Faithful to the precepts of Genghis Khan, Batu's warriors purposefully exterminated the population of rebellious cities.
Intolerant Muscovy
As for mixed marriages, here the conquerors did not succeed in "inheriting". The first decades after the conquest, the Golden Horde khans tried to exercise direct control over Russian cities.
To do this, tax collectors - Baskaks, who were accompanied by small detachments of the Horde, settled in them. However, this practice was unsuccessful. The Russians of Suzdal, Tver, Yaroslavl and Rostov systematically rebelled, massacring the occupation troops.
The Horde invariably responded with punitive campaigns, during which the population of the rebellious principalities was destroyed as mercilessly as under Batu. In general, the assimilation according to the Bulgarian scenario did not work in Russia.
Later, when the pendulum of history swung in the opposite direction, and the Muscovy already began to absorb the Horde that had split into separate khanates, the attitude towards the Tatars was very, very negative.
Unlike the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Commonwealth (the allied Polish-Lithuanian state), the Moscow rulers did not allow yesterday's enemies to settle on their territory in compact groups. Baptism and linguistic assimilation were demanded from Tatar defectors. A speaking fact: the first mosque in Minsk, which was then under the control of the Commonwealth, appeared in 1599, and in Moscow - only in 1744.
Kitab is a text written in Belarusian in Arabic letters. The legacy of the mass migration of Tatars to the Rzeczpospolita. Source: history-belarus.by
In general, the Russian rulers of the 15th - 16th centuries pursued a policy that made Muscovy a very unpleasant place for resettlement from the Horde. The Tatar clans, unable to stay in the steppe, preferred to move to the more hospitable Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. According to some estimates, up to 200 thousand steppe inhabitants moved there.
To Muscovy, on the other hand, relatively few representatives of the Tatar nobility passed on to the service, who, naturally, did not leave a noticeable trace in the Russian gene pool.
After the 16th century, there have been no significant movements of large ethnic groups. Russians and Tatars lived as neighbors, neither assimilating nor exterminating each other. Cross-marriages, of course, happened later, but this had nothing to do with the Horde or the yoke. And it did not have a big impact on the Russian gene pool.
BEVIN ALEXANDER