Concepts of culture in the Middle Ages. Chinese linguistic tradition

The following features of medieval culture can be distinguished:

1) the ideas about the eternity of the Cosmos and the subordination of the Gods to it were replaced by the idea of ​​a single God. God is considered the creator of the world, the only true reality that stands above nature, which he himself created;

2) one more characteristic feature medieval culture is symbolism. All objects, phenomena, objects of the surrounding world are symbols, writings in the divine book of nature. In other words, the ancient unity of nature and Gods is a thing of the past. So, for example, the Moon is a symbol of the divine Church, the wind is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, etc. In the Middle Ages, the idea of ​​objects and phenomena of the world as texts first appeared, which developed in the 20th century. to the symbolic theory of culture;

3) asceticism (an element of asceticism, renunciation of the world). Directly in culture, this was expressed in the emergence of the aesthetics of asceticism. The aesthetics of asceticism has developed as an aesthetics of personal, spiritual development. Its goal was salvation and full participation in God. The main themes of this aesthetics are the complete rejection of sensual pleasures (as opposed to ancient hedonism), the ideal of a beggarly life, a system of special spiritual and psychophysical exercises (including prayer). Ascetic lifestyle is a monastic way of life, which consists in striving for a state of complete peace of mind and rest;

4) a constituent layer of medieval culture (and later a feature of Russian national culture) is contemplation. Russian people were inclined to think not about the practical issues of their existence, but about the spiritual, great questions of human existence, about suffering, etc. This gives the entire culture a religious character. The fact is that Orthodoxy suppressed the social activity of a person. Instead, they offered appeasement. Along with this, a spiritual movement was proposed - self-deepening, internal self-improvement;

5) there is a rethinking of ancient ideas about beauty. In Antiquity, beauty was evaluative. Already Homer calls "beautiful" the physical beauty of people, the perfection of objects, and the moral beauty of actions.

Socrates introduced the concept of "colocatus" - beautiful and kind, which served as a characteristic of an ideal person.

Some results of the ancient idea of ​​"beautiful" summed up Plotinus in his works: “On the beautiful”, “On the conceivable beauty”. Beauty, according to Plotinus, consists of three stages:

1) the highest - intelligible beauty that flows from God;

2) the second step is the ideal natural beauty, the beauty of the human soul and the beauty of the virtues;

3) an insignificant step - the beauty of the material world, works of art.

As for medieval ideas about beauty, he quite fully outlined them Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologia. The specificity of the beautiful, according to F. Aquinas, is that when contemplating or comprehending it, desire calms down. F. Aquinas distinguished between sensual pleasures (from a thing), aesthetic (visual and auditory) and sensual-aesthetic (for example, from women's jewelry, perfumes). The beautiful, according to him, differs from the good in that it is an object of pleasure, and the good is the goal and meaning. human life.

At present, compared with the Middle Ages, the goals of culture have changed. Man's goal was not to know himself, but to know God. Culture is no longer the upbringing of measure, harmony and order, but overcoming the limitations of a person, the constant spiritual improvement of the individual. Culture has become a cult.

The following features of medieval culture can be distinguished:

1) the ideas about the eternity of the Cosmos and the subordination of the Gods to it were replaced by the idea of ​​a single God. God is considered the creator of the world, the only true reality that stands above nature, which he himself created;

2) another characteristic feature of medieval culture is symbolism. All objects, phenomena, objects of the surrounding world are symbols, writings in the divine book of nature. In other words, the ancient unity of nature and Gods is a thing of the past. So, for example, the Moon is a symbol of the divine Church, the wind is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, etc. In the Middle Ages, the idea of ​​objects and phenomena of the world as texts first appeared, which developed in the 20th century. to the symbolic theory of culture;

3) asceticism(an element of asceticism, renunciation of the world). Directly in culture, this was expressed in the emergence of the aesthetics of asceticism. The aesthetics of asceticism has developed as an aesthetics of personal, spiritual development. Its goal was salvation and full participation in God. The main themes of this aesthetics are the complete rejection of sensual pleasures (as opposed to ancient hedonism), the ideal of a beggarly life, a system of special spiritual and psychophysical exercises (including prayer). Ascetic lifestyle- this is a monastic way of life, which consists in striving for a state of complete peace of mind and peace;

4) a constituent layer of medieval culture (and later a feature of Russian national culture) is contemplation. Russian people were inclined to think not about the practical issues of their existence, but about the spiritual, great questions of human existence, about suffering, etc. This gives the entire culture a religious character. The fact is that Orthodoxy suppressed the social activity of a person. Instead, they offered appeasement. Along with this, a spiritual movement was proposed - self-deepening, internal self-improvement;

5) there is a rethinking of ancient ideas about beauty. In Antiquity, beauty was evaluative. Already Homer calls "beautiful" the physical beauty of people, the perfection of objects, and the moral beauty of actions.

Judeo-Christian views on history and culture .

Jewish-Christian teleology of history in the Bible. A peculiar understanding of the cultural-historical process is presented in the Bible. Old Testament traditions tell that the God Yahweh (Yahweh, Jehovah, Sabaoth) concluded with Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews, an agreement ("covenant"), according to which the chosen people should serve only him, and not other gods for this promising their patronage. By virtue of such an agreement, history became a meaningful process, suggesting the final fate of the world and man.

In Judaism, messianism is developing, i.e. faith in the coming of the Messiah-savior. According to the covenant, people assume the obligation to follow a certain way of life, strictly and strictly follow the instructions (the Pentateuch, in Judaism called the Torah, contains 613 instructions, of which 365 are prohibitive, and 248 are permissive).

With the advent of Jesus Christ, not any nation becomes God's chosen one, but a person who believes in its divine nature and follows its teachings. Biblical ideas are eschatological in nature, i.e. proceed from the postulate about the finiteness of this world, the earthly world. All people are sinners, therefore the highest culture of a person consists in getting rid of sin and drawing closer to God. Completion earth history associated with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, who will come as judge of the living and the dead.

"Earthly city" and "heavenly city" in the historiosophy of Augustine the Blessed. The religious understanding of culture is providentialism , i.e. recognition of history as a manifestation of the will of God in the affairs of man, the implementation of the previously foreseen divine plan for the "salvation" of man. The providential understanding of history was developed by the Christian thinker, father of the church Augustine the Blessed (354–430).

In his historiosophical work “On the City of God”, written under the impression of the capture of Rome by the hordes of Alaric in 410, AB considers human history through the prism of choosing one of the two extreme metaphysical assumptions embodied in historiosophical constructions – the city of God and the city of the earth. According to Augustine, people who "live according to man" make up the earthly city, and people who live according to God make up the city of God. When a person lives according to a person and not according to God, "he is like the devil." Thus, one city is God's, and the other is the devil's. For Augustine, the city of God is Earthly Jerusalem, “the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in his midst; he will not hesitate." Thus, the earthly Jerusalem should embody the ideal features of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The path to the “city of heaven” is the path to the truth. Love for the truth is inherent in a person from the very beginning, people love the truth so much that they accept everything that they love as the truth. Hence the passions and strife: elevating the objects of their love to the rank of truth, people understand the truth in different ways. However, there is only one truth - God. Accordingly, the structure of the power sphere should be combined as much as possible with the religious vision of the world.

Medieval performances about the beautiful also outlined Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologia. The specificity of the beautiful, according to F. Aquinas, is that when contemplating or comprehending it, desire calms down. F. Aquinas distinguished between sensual pleasures (from a thing), aesthetic (visual and auditory) and sensual-aesthetic (for example, from women's jewelry, perfumes). The beautiful, according to him, differs from the good in that it is an object of enjoyment, and the good is the goal and meaning of human life.

At present, in comparison with antiquity, the goals of culture have changed. Man's goal was not to know himself, but to know God. Culture is no longer the upbringing of measure, harmony and order, but the overcoming of the limitations of man, the constant spiritual improvement of the individual. Culture has become a cult.

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Operates with the richest factual material in the field of history and theory of culture, accumulated over many centuries European tradition cultural studies. Thinkers of the past have always sought to understand and evaluate the phenomena of culture, and modern cultural studies not only bring these ideas together, but also analyze and develop them based on previous theories and hypotheses. The periodization of the stages of the formation of cultural studies can be carried out according to different grounds. So, using the general course of the development of science as a basis, the following periods of development of cultural studies are distinguished: pre-classical (antiquity. Middle Ages), classical (Renaissance, Modern times, XIX century), non-classical (late XIX - first half of the XX century), post-non-classical ( second half of the 20th century).

Preclassical period of development of cultural studies

In the period of antiquity and the Middle Ages, no special works were created on the problems of culture, but we can talk about the formation of the concept itself and its comprehension in the theoretical works of philosophers and thinkers devoted to common problems development of society and history.

Ancient ideas about culture

Even in the early stages of the existence of civilization, people guessed that they were somehow different from animals, that there was a clear line separating the natural world from the human world. Homer and Hesiod, the famous systematizers of ancient myths, saw this line in morality. Greek sophist philosophers later talked about the opposition of natural and moral principles, understanding morality initially as what distinguishes people from animals. Later this difference will be called "culture".

The word "" appeared in Roman antiquity and came from the verb "colere" - to cultivate, process, care. Initially, this term was used, denoting "tillage, soil". In this sense, it was used by the famous Roman politician Mark Porcius Cato (234-149 BC), who wrote the treatise De agri cultura (160 BC) that has survived to this day. We talk about cultivating certain varieties of plants, we use terms like "potato culture", we use agricultural machines called "cultivators".

The starting point in the formation of scientific ideas about culture is considered to be the book of the outstanding Roman orator and philosopher Mark Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) "Tusculan Conversations" (45 BC). In this book, Cicero used the word "culture" in a figurative sense. Emphasizing the difference between human life activity and biological forms of life, he used this word to designate everything created by man, in contrast to the world created by nature. Thus, he contrasted the concepts of "culture" and "nature" (nature). Since then, the world of culture has been perceived as the result of people's activities aimed at processing and transforming what was created directly by nature.

At the same time, culture was still understood as cultivation and care. From now on, it was believed that the object of such processing could be not only land, as was believed until now. but also the man himself. Cicero said that the spirit. the mind of man must be cultivated in the same way as the peasant cultivates the land. It is the "processing of the mind", the development of the mental abilities of a person, that is the true vocation of a free citizen, in contrast to slaves and the lower classes, whose lot is physical labor - the cultivation of the land. We can say that culture was understood as the improvement of the soul with the help of philosophy and eloquence, upbringing and education of a person.

Ancient understanding of culture humanistically, it is based on the ideal of a person, i.e. a citizen who obeyed the laws of his policy and performed all civic duties, a warrior who defended him from the enemy, a man who was able to enjoy the beautiful (the latter is true only for Greek antiquity). Achieving this ideal was the goal of culture. Therefore, culture was understood as certain moral standards, as well as the nature of the assimilation of these norms. Due to such ideas, the first meaning of the term "culture" began to be identified with upbringing and education, which are capable of developing in a person a reasonable ability of judgment and an aesthetic sense of beauty, which allowed him to gain a sense of proportion and justice in civil and private matters. Such a system of upbringing and education - paideia - existed in Ancient Greece. Its result was not the formation of a professional in some field, but the improvement of a person as a person. At the same time, man did not lose unity with nature, which was understood as the cosmos - the universal world order. This order is based on the law that exists both in nature and in society. Thus, man of culture perceived his life as a natural extension of this natural order.

These ideas corresponded to the cyclic experience of time, characteristic of antiquity. The Greeks were close to the concept of eternity, in history they saw constant repetition, reproduction of general laws, independent of the specifics of society. This led to a cyclical pattern of development of history and culture, according to which the development of society represents a cycle passing from the golden age to silver, copper and, finally, iron. In such a model, the golden age was in the past, so the ancient worldview is characterized by an orientation to the past, which is considered an ideal. The present state of culture is only a certain degree of deviation from it. The maximum deviation of the Iron Age should lead to a crisis of culture, which, through upheavals and cataclysms, will return society to a golden age, after which a new cycle of development will begin.

Middle Ages about culture

If in basis of ancient culture was the recognition of the eternity of the cosmos, existing on the basis of a universal cosmic law, which ensured the stability of the world order, which stood above the gods, who also obeyed it, then Middle Ages lost all that confidence turned to God. From now on, God is considered the creator of the world, the only true reality that stands above nature, which he himself created. The meaning of the world lies only in God, and the world itself is seen as a huge repository of symbols, all objects and phenomena of the material world are considered only letters in the divine book of nature. Thus, the moon is a symbol of the divine church, the wind is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and so on. Knowledgeable person could "read" the whole world around. Thus, in the Middle Ages, for the first time, the idea of ​​objects and phenomena of the world as texts appeared, which developed in the 20th century. to symbolic theories of culture and ideas about culture as a text.

Under these conditions, culture begins to be perceived in a new way - not as the upbringing of proportion, harmony and order, but as overcoming the limitations of a person, cultivating the inexhaustibility, bottomlessness of the personality, its constant spiritual improvement. The culture became a cult, and the term "culture" was no longer used.

The Middle Ages brings a new understanding of happiness to the culture. Antiquity approved the thesis "man is the measure of all things", so the oracle commands Socrates: "man - know yourself." For man is himself a microcosm. Knowing the microcosm, we know the macrocosm. The Middle Ages approached this problem differently. Happiness is in the knowledge of God (the Absolute, the macrocosm). Since God is everything, there is also a divine particle in man, and what is not divine in man is from Satan, this is sinful, bodily, which must be expelled, overcome in order to rise to the divine.

In antiquity, culture was understood as a measure, a norm, a "golden mean", harmony, and in the Middle Ages, culture was an eternal elevation, an ascent to the ideal, the absolute, the boundless. Therefore, for antiquity, culture is something absolutely achievable, existing in man and society, while in the Middle Ages, culture for man is always something relative, receiving its justification only in God. Culture is a process of overcoming sinfulness and affirming sacredness, divinity, and this process is endless.

It also abandoned the cyclic idea of ​​time, based on the idea of ​​eternity. Augustine the Blessed (354-430), the greatest medieval thinker, introduced the concept of the "arrow of time" - the movement of history from beginning to end, which broke the time circle of antiquity. Henceforth, it was recognized that history and culture have a meaning given to them by God and accessible to human understanding. Augustine spoke of the development of culture as a gradual path to the kingdom of God through the inner revelation of God in man. At the same time, the concept of historical progress appeared, the complication of culture, its development from lower to higher forms. The criterion of progress was the correspondence of culture to the highest moral values. The culture of any nation was also evaluated from the standpoint of its correspondence to Christian moral values, which were considered universal. This led to the birth of Eurocentrism, which declared Europe the center of world civilization, preached the superiority of its culture over all others and the need for its spread to all regions of the globe.

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Ancient languages ​​and cultures

International Consortium "Electronic University"

Moscow State University economy,

statistics and informatics

Eurasian Open Institute

V.M. Zabolotny

ANCIENT LANGUAGES

AND CULTURE

Training and metodology complex

Moscow, 2009

1 Ancient languages ​​and cultures UDC 81 LBC 81 Z 125 Scientific editor:

d.ph.s., prof. S.S. Khromov Zabolotny, V.M.

ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND CULTURES. – M.: Ed. Center Z 125 EAOI, 2009. - 308 p.

ISBN 978-5-374-00262-1 UDC BBK © Zabolotny V.M., © Design. Eurasian Open Institute ISBN 978-5-374-00262-1, Ancient languages ​​and cultures

About the author

Foreword

Introduction

Topic 1. Introductory lecture

1.1. Objectives and content of the course

1.2. Periodization issues

1.3. Chronology

1.4. source study

1.5. Historiography

1.6. "Culture" and "civilization"

Topic 2. Historiography of the subject

2.1. Antiquity

2.2. Middle Ages

2.3. new time

3.1. Freud's psychoanalysis and Jung's archetypes

3.2. Pedersen's Nostratic Theory

3.3. Traditionalist views

3.4. The concept of A. Toynbee

3.5. Structuralism

3.6. Postmodernism

3.7. The study of ancient languages ​​and cultures in the USSR and the Russian Federation

3.8. Neo-Eurasianism

3.9. "Alternative history"

Topic 4. The era of the first civilizations

4.1. The problem of anthropogenesis

4.2. Catastrophism theory

4.3. Revolutionary crises

4.4. global flood

4.5. The main signs of civilization

Topic 5. The origin and spread of Indo-European languages ​​and cultures

5.1. Proto-language problem

5.2. Indo-European family of languages.

Ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans

6.1. The origin of the state

6.2. spiritual culture

7.1. Settlement of the Celts

7.2. Mythology of the Celts

7.3. Ancient Germans

8.1. Cimmerians

8.2. Taurus, Meots and Sinds

8.3. Scythians

8.4. Anty

Topic 9. Ancient peoples of the Western Black Sea region and the Balkan Peninsula

9.1. Thracians

9.2. Illyrians

9.3. Veneta

Topic 10. Archaic Greece

10.1. Minoan civilization

10.2. Civilization of the Garamantes

10.3. Mycenaean civilization

10.4. Homeric period

10.5. Time for reforms

Theme 11. Classical Greece

11.1. The heyday of culture

11.2. Crisis of Hellenic society

11.3. Hellenistic world

12.3. Roman Republic

Theme 13. Roman Empire

13.1. "Golden Age" of Rome

13.2. Decline and fall of the empire

Topic 14. The Great Migration of Nations as a universal 14.1. Barbaricum

14.2. "Barbarian" revolution

Conclusion

Final questions

Final test

Chronological table

Sources and literature

Ancient languages ​​and cultures INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR Zabolotny Vasily Mitrofanovich (b. 1950), Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of General History of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, author of a number of works on the history of Great Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations, including the textbook “The Recent History of the Countries of Europe and North America. The end of the XX - the beginning of the XXI century»

(M.: AST, 2004. - 494 p. - (High School)). A professional translator from English and over 25 years of translation activity has translated about 50 books by British and American authors, including books on the history and culture of Great Britain and the USA: Hibbert K. Queen Victoria (M., 2005), Gibbins D. Atlantis (M., 2007), Hosking J. Russia and Russians (Book 2. M., 2003), Molz M. New psychocybernetics (M., 2003), Weigel J. John Paul II (In 2 books. M., 2001) and etc.

In December 2006, he was elected to the position of professor at the Department of Linguistics and Intercultural Communications at MESI, where he teaches the courses "History, geography and cultures of the countries of the studied language", "Ancient languages ​​and cultures", "The world of the British Commonwealth of Nations", and also teaches practical lessons on the translation of socio-political and literary texts.

FOREWORD

The study of ancient languages ​​and cultures plays an important role in the formation of a modern specialist in the field of linguistics, and given that many ancient languages ​​​​became the basis of the modern language space (for example, Romance, Germanic), it becomes clear that without a thorough study of this subject, the process of linguistic education may be incomplete.

The course "Ancient Cultures and Languages" is intended for 1st year students of the specialty "Linguistics" and aims to get the most complete acquaintance with the main historical events and cultural and linguistic processes, the formation of which belongs to the distant past. The course material includes a brief summary of the history of the formation and development of the first civilizations, an analysis of the main causes and prerequisites for the formation of the Indo-European cultural and linguistic community, and modern achievements in comparative historical linguistics in the field of Indo-European studies.

Particular attention is paid to the historiography of this problem, starting from ancient times, as well as to the study of the current state of ethnographic science and comparative historical linguistics, including the materials of the International Conference held in March 2008 at Moscow State University, dedicated to "Language Contacts in the Aspect of History".

This will help students get to know the nature of the subject being studied, understand the essence of ancient civilizations, study the basic principles of the formation of ancient languages ​​and trace the main routes of their spread across Eurasia. In addition, this manual will help students develop the appropriate skills to analyze the influence of ancient cultures on modern society, and seminars on Latin will contribute to the consolidation of the theoretical material covered.

Control questions, tests, reference materials, a lexical minimum and chronological tables, along with other methodological instructions, will undoubtedly help students master the proposed course more effectively and better understand the features of the historical and cultural development of these countries and peoples.

The structure of training sessions The course consists of lectures, seminars and independent work of students. Lectures are devoted to the most important topics of the formation and development of ancient languages ​​and cultures and contain detailed analysis the main patterns of historical, cultural and spiritual development of these peoples. The most theoretically complex topics are presented with a detailed explanation of specific concepts and terms, most of which are given in the "lexical minimum".

Successful assimilation of the lecture course requires regular attendance of classes, since due to the complexity of the subject and its saturation with a huge amount of factual material, self-preparation of students may be insufficient. For the most important and hot topics The course includes student reports prepared under the guidance of a teacher.

Monitoring student progress is carried out in the form oral questioning, run test items, as well as in the form of written tests, and preference is given to written papers that allow you to assess the knowledge of all students of the study group. Written work (including in the framework of e-learning) develops the skills of students to systematically present the acquired knowledge and the ability to correctly express their thoughts on paper. Particular attention is paid to the development of the ability to creatively comprehend the material being studied, which is reflected in the most complete form in the form of an essay.

Rules for writing written papers. A list of topics for written (control) and creative (essay) work is offered to students at the very beginning of the semester. The student has the right to choose any topic from the course offered by the program (except for current tests) or choose it independently in agreement with the teacher. Preference is given to the most important and relevant topics of the course being taught, which require knowledge of the material on foreign languages or performed in those languages. Questions and assignments for tests should be known to students in advance, and questions for intermediate and final certification are announced by the teacher a month before they are held. Quotations and footnotes in written works should be made in accordance with generally accepted requirements, and the text itself should be carefully verified and corrected.

Written creative work(report, essay) deserves the highest rating only if it is written on an original topic, using foreign literature, carefully argued and properly framed. At the same time, students must demonstrate not only knowledge of the minimum amount of vocabulary, but also the ability to correctly answer the questions posed. All unwitting or deliberate attempts at incorrect borrowing or outright plagiarism are punished by removing the work from discussion or lowering the rating. Cheating during written tests is equated to gross violations of the rules of study and is punishable by a reduction in half the number of points for the first comment and the removal of the work from discussion for the second.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures Successful assimilation of this course requires knowledge of the factual material presented in the lecture course, the ability to orally answer the questions posed, as well as to reveal certain problems in reports, abstracts and essays.

After listening to and reviewing a lecture, the content of which, as a rule, goes beyond the material set out in the textbook, students must independently prepare on a particular topic, and then perform a number of control and test work.

The course is designed in such a way that allows students to learn all the material without resorting to additional sources and literature. However, for the preparation of special reports, abstracts or essays, additional literature is indispensable, and its list is given at the end of this manual. At the same time, any attempt by students to independently find and work through the necessary literature on a particular topic will deserve every encouragement.

Testing of students is carried out on the topics of lectures and assumes not only a good knowledge of the factual material of a particular lecture, but also the ability to analyze and generalize the facts already known from previous lectures.

Tests on each topic are conducted with the aim of self-control of students over the assimilation of the material. Intermediate and final certification makes it possible to repeat the material covered and consolidate the knowledge gained earlier.

INTRODUCTION The modern era is characterized by unprecedented processes of globalization, as a result of which a single planetary civilization is gradually taking shape. However, for most of the currently existing countries and peoples, this process is uneven and ambiguous. Many of them are on the verge of extinction, along with languages ​​and cultures that have existed for more than one thousand years. According to the UN, of the 6.8 thousand languages ​​that exist today, 400 are on the verge of extinction, and this process is accelerating every year. The languages ​​and cultures of the small peoples of the planet cannot survive in the conditions of the irresistible cultural expansion of the more developed countries of the West and are actually doomed to extinction. That is why the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures not only remains relevant, but also becomes an important factor in preserving the historical heritage of past centuries.

Of particular interest to researchers were and continue to be the regularities of the formation and development of a large family of Indo-European peoples, which was formed in ancient times and determined the development of a specific Western culture for a long time.

The language of this or that people is the basis of its culture, the very basis without which the development of human society would be practically impossible. In a certain sense, it can be said that the history and culture of a particular people is the result of its ability to communicate and consolidate the already achieved skills of cultural life. It can hardly be considered accidental that the birth of civilization is associated with the emergence of writing, which allows not only to “shape up” the language of the people, but also to give it the status of “civilized” in ancient languages ​​and cultures, which in itself gives rise to huge advantages over many non-written peoples.

In the history of mankind there were many peoples who disappeared forever from the ethnographic map of the world, and all because they could not fix their language in one form or another in a timely manner, and without it it was impossible to fix real or imaginary achievements in the memory of peoples.

Knowledge of the past is like remembering the childhood of each individual person. If a society knows its history well and has the scientific skills to interpret it, regardless of the changing political situation, then it thereby gains a reliable footing and prepares for inevitable changes, based on the traditional values ​​and cultural characteristics of its system. Depriving people of the past, you can quickly turn it into a kind of social community, incapable of solving the tasks assigned to it.

Topic 1. The main content of the proposed course is the study of the main patterns of formation and development of the ancient languages ​​and cultures of the Indo-European family of peoples, formed in ancient times and in one form or another preserved to this day. At the same time, it is supposed to trace the mechanism of the origin of the so-called "Nostratic community" of the ancient peoples, the period of its formation and disintegration in the conditions of an acute ecological crisis and the corresponding mixing of ancient languages ​​and cultures. Particular attention is paid to the specific circumstances of the maturation of the Indo-European family of peoples, the most popular concepts of the "ancestral home" of the Indo-Europeans, as well as the nature of life and life of the most ancient communities, are analyzed.

Given the extraordinary complexity of the subject, the author of the manual considered it appropriate to focus only on the European branch of the Indo-European peoples, practically without affecting their eastern (Aryan) area of ​​​​settlement. The manual analyzes only those Indo-European peoples who had any significant impact on the formation and development of European civilization, although such a distinction is very conditional and largely forced.

Based on this, we can determine the main objectives of the course:

The study of the main patterns of formation and development of the Nostratic macrofamily of languages ​​and cultures.

Understanding the complex processes of anthropogenesis, sapientation, glottochronology and linguogenesis.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures Assimilation of the main characteristic features of ancient Indo-European cultures.

Acquaintance with the main concepts and theories of the Indo-European "homeland" and a comparative analysis of their argumentation.

The study of the main routes of settlement of the ancient Indo-European peoples and the specific causes and prerequisites for such mass movements.

Formation of the first civilizations in Europe and adjacent lands and understanding of their cultural identity.

Assimilation of general patterns and specific features of the origin of ancient society.

Understanding the specifics of ancient Greece and its vast cultural heritage in the classical period.

The study of the characteristic features of the formation of the Roman Republic and the general patterns of its development into an empire.

The idea of in general terms And specific features ancient world and its role in the development of European civilization.

It should also be borne in mind the enormous ideological significance of the proposed course. The study of ancient languages ​​and cultures helps students not only learn the factual material and get acquainted with the main scientific theories of the origin of ancient cultures, but also develop a completely modern idea of ​​the fundamental unity of all countries and peoples, which excludes any manifestations of racism, nationalism, the superiority of some peoples over others, inferiority of less developed peoples, etc. But it is precisely such views that are often used by unscrupulous scientists or gullible epigones to justify national hatred or racial hatred. History clearly shows that all peoples descended from a single ancestor, that they all went through the same stages historical development. It can hardly be considered accidental that in the second half of the twentieth century. the once-dominant theory of "Eurocentrism", which assumed the intellectual and cultural superiority of Europeans over other countries and peoples, ingloriously disappeared. The policy of multiculturalism, characteristic of the postmodern era, although it has serious shortcomings, nevertheless, on the whole, offers a fairer attitude towards those countries and peoples that have remained on the sidelines of modern life and cannot be compared with the countries of the West in the field of technical and social progress.

In the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures, understanding the chronological framework of the subject and reliable criteria for periodization is of particular importance, without which any historical knowledge will simply “spread” over the centuries and millennia, leaving no noticeable traces behind. The problem of periodization of certain historical phenomena is one of the most complex in historical science. This is primarily due to the very nature of historical knowledge, which cannot be verified empirically or reconstructed with the proper degree of accuracy. Additional complexity to this problem is added by the imperfection of even the most modern methods and ways of dating certain events, which often give a spread of several centuries, or even millennia.

Modern historical science proceeds from the fundamental assumption that any historical event has a beginning and an end. Everything between these two points lends itself to research and is filled with more or less concrete historical content. And the “beginnings” and the “ends” of ancient languages ​​and cultures are covered with the darkness of centuries and are often generally hidden from an outside observer. So, for example, it is known that any historical event goes through the so-called "incubation" period of formation, when the mechanisms of causing are either not expressed at all, or have not yet been reflected in various sources. Using physiological terminology, this period resembles the period of "conception", which, as a rule, is hidden from prying eyes. Only the most outstanding minds, prophets and soothsayers can discern in completely insignificant events the sprouts of a future social order or a new state of society.

The problem of the beginning of an event is further complicated by the circumstance that the origin or “conception” of an event does not occur all at once, but through a series of intermediate stages, each of which can rightfully be attributed to the beginning of the event. Thus, for example, the birth of one or another ancient state can be attributed with equal certainty to the construction of a city, the appearance of the first temple building, the birth of writing, the formation of a class of property owners, or the election of the first king, pharaoh, shah or emperor.

Even more difficulties arise when trying to determine the period of the emergence or collapse of such complex historical communities as the “Nostratic macrofamily”, or “ Indo-European family", peoples. Here, the spread of opinions can reach several millennia, and all researchers give quite convincing arguments in favor of their point of view, since there is no exact evidence in this regard.

Approximately the same is the definition of the end of an event, although at first glance it is quite simple. As a rule, the death of one or another state of antiquity is recorded by certain historical sources, but this is just a statement of a fait accompli, and the extinction of the state system, its crisis development and the accumulation of negative tendencies go unnoticed by both the people and its ruling circles.

And only the most insightful people, watching the heyday of their society, can draw far-reaching conclusions about the beginning of its end, but their prophetic judgments rarely find their way into the pages of annals or historical annals.

To most "normal" people, they just seem crazy. For example, the legendary Cassandra repeatedly predicted the death of Troy, but no one listened to her opinion.

Thus, the problem of periodization of this subject is explained primarily by the antiquity of events and the absence of any reliable fixation in written and other sources. That is why many dates in this manual are conditional and may be subject to well-founded criticism from representatives of other areas and schools in historiography.

Chronology is considered one of the most important auxiliary historical disciplines that studies various systems of chronology in a given period of time. The name of this science goes back to the ancient Greek word "chronos", which means "time". Historical chronology uses a variety of research methods that make it possible to more or less reliably establish the date of a particular historical event. At the same time, an integrated approach is used using data from paleography, diplomacy, linguistics, archeology, astronomy, mathematics, and many natural sciences.

Unfortunately, even modern methods of dating events do not make it possible to accurately establish certain events, giving rise to a huge amount of speculation in this regard. Suffice it to recall the “new chronology” of the famous Russian mathematician A. Fomenko and his followers, Ancient languages ​​and cultures, who found a lot of flaws in the existing system of calculating historical time, and even direct falsifications (more on this in § 3.9).

In ancient times, each country had its own methods of reckoning, which, as a rule, began counting time from a certain sacred event or the beginning of the reign of one or another reigning dynasty. So, for example, in ancient egypt time was recorded according to the years of the reign of the pharaohs, in Mesopotamia - according to the so-called "royal lists", in China - from legendary date creation of the world, in Greece - from the beginning Olympic Games, and in Rome - from the equally legendary date of the founding of the "Eternal City".

The most reliable is the modern Muslim chronology, originating from the Hijra, that is, the very real date of the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina (622).

Most countries of the modern world adhere to the Christian chronology, leading from the Nativity of Christ. It should be remembered that this date is considered very arbitrary, since none of the canonical Gospels contains reliable indications of the day and year of the Savior's birth.

The appearance of the Christian chronology from the Nativity of Christ occurred much later and is associated with the activities of the learned monk Dionysius the Lesser, who lived in Rome in the 6th century.

It was to him that the Catholic Church, which had strengthened by that time, instructed him to compile Paschalia - a table by which it would be possible to calculate in advance the beginning of Easter for the next 95 years of the era of Emperor Diocletian.

The devout monk was the first to come up with the idea that it was useless to associate Easter with the name of the most ferocious and bloody persecutor of Christians. By this time, learned monks had long established that every 532 years all lunar phases occur on the same day of the week and on the same day of the month. Dionysius saw in the number "532" a certain divine sacrament and he marked the first year of his new Paschalia not 248 of the "era of Diocletian", but 532 from the Nativity of Christ.

However, it took more than 200 years until this discovery became widespread. The famous British monk Beda the Venerable unexpectedly stumbled upon the discovery of Dionysius and for the first time began to count the time from the birth of Christ in all his works on the history of the church. But this event did not become the beginning of the triumphal procession of the Christian chronology. The new account of time was finally established in Europe only in the 18th century, and after that the successful cultural and scientific-technical expansion of Europe spread it to the whole world.

At the same time, a new chronology comes to Russia. By the Decree of Peter the Great of December 15, 7208 from the Creation of the World, a new calendar and a new chronology were introduced in the country - from January 1, 1700. And yet it is worth remembering that the Christian chronology has been established throughout the world not because it is the most accurate or most reliable and above all thanks to scientific revolution in Europe and active colonial expansion.

The study of ancient languages ​​and cultures is entirely based on the study of the sources of that ancient era, which, due to its antiquity, did not leave us any reliable information about the nature of the peoples and cultures that existed then. Usually, a historical source is understood as "everything that gives us the opportunity to reconstruct the past and understand the life and way of life of the peoples living then." However, since such a definition allows too much room for interpretation, the nature of the sources inevitably begins to look significant and multifactorial.

In general, all historical sources on ancient languages ​​and cultures can be divided into two categories. large groups: material and written. The first group, both in terms of antiquity and objectivity, includes the so-called Ancient languages ​​and cultures artifacts, that is material objects life and way of life of ancient peoples, which have come down to our time thanks to archaeological research. These include household utensils, remains of ancient buildings and places of worship, handicrafts, ancient burials, bones of animals and people, remains of irrigation canals and systems, fortress walls, tools and ancient weapons. As a rule, such objects are found as a result of archaeological excavations, but they can provide important information about the life of ancient peoples only if they are asked the right questions. That is why the problem of "questioning" ancient sources has always been among the most important. "Silent" sources report only the information that archaeologists want to receive from them.

Material monuments of history play an important role in the study of those peoples and cultures that, for some reason, did not develop their own written language or did not have time to borrow it from more developed peoples. That is why we know so little about the ancient peoples of Eurasia, who left us material artifacts, but left no written evidence of their long history. Such sources make it possible to restore the level of material production of ancient peoples, the development of crafts and trade, the nature of the materials used, the property stratification of society, the formation of the ruling class, and even the presence of religious beliefs.

However, they leave little hope for elucidating the spiritual world of these peoples, their mythology and psychology, their attitude towards themselves, society and nature. Moreover, material artifacts in most cases do not make it possible to find out the nature of the language and its belonging to one or another group, without which our ideas about the ancient peoples will inevitably turn out to be not only incomplete, but also erroneous. Unfortunately, it is these sources that are the most numerous in the study of ancient peoples. That is why modern archeology is trying to use data from other sciences to solve its own problems. For example, the use of such natural sciences as metallurgy, chemistry, physics, biology, genetics and many others is now becoming more and more relevant.

Among the most important historical sources on this issue are ancient written sources. Unlike artefacts, this type of source can tell historians much more, but at the same time raises the problem of the reliability and reliability of the knowledge obtained. It is no secret that even the most ancient written sources contain information that can deliberately distort facts or interpret events in a way that is beneficial for the author. For example, cuneiform tablets of the Hittite state contain a lot of useful information about the internal structure of this state, but many of them were compiled under the strict control of government officials, which significantly reduces the level of trust in the information reported. That is why, when analyzing written sources, it is so important to observe the principles of a critical attitude so as not to become a victim of an ancient document. Source criticism has always been considered one of the most important aspects source analysis and is still one of the most difficult tasks of the historian of antiquity.

Another important problem when using ancient written sources is the knowledge of the languages ​​of that era, which often seems completely impossible.

Many unwritten languages ​​of antiquity have disappeared, leaving behind only short records (for example, tombstones), so the form and method of interpreting this source is an important task for a historian or linguist. Most often, the definition of the language of a particular people is made according to the secondary information of a more developed neighboring people, who left a description of the language with the culture of their neighbors. So, for example, many peoples of Europe and Asia Minor became known to us only because ancient Roman historians wrote about them. But even in this case, the analysis of the source requires a critical attitude towards itself. So, for example, the ancient Greeks at first called “barbarians” not backward peoples, but those who spoke a language they did not understand (for example, the Persians).

Such sources may include trade agreements and transactions, property registers, land registers, service records, lease agreements, lists of civil servants, list of slaves, list of trades, etc. Of course, state acts and resolutions, as well as legislative acts, which make it possible to reconstruct the nature of the social system and state power, are still considered the most valuable written sources. No less important are the so-called narrative sources (from Latin narro - I tell), but at the early stage of human history there are practically no such monuments. They are typical of later antiquity and are distinguished by their exceptional informativeness and completeness of information. The works of historians of ancient Greece and Rome represent a special group of sources on which a significant part of our ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures is based.

In general, we can say that the source base for the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures is still imperfect and allows for many mutually exclusive interpretations of certain events. And this, in turn, significantly increases the role and responsibility of the historian or linguist in interpreting ancient history.

Historiography is usually understood as a special historical discipline studying the development of historical thought, the accumulation of historical knowledge, methods and techniques of historical research, the activities of historical accounts. Theme 1. Introductory lecture of institutions and societies, as well as personnel training for professional historians. The word "historiography" itself comes from the Greek "history" (a story about past events) and "grapho" (I write).

At present, historiography is mainly understood as the history of historical science, including a number of auxiliary disciplines - archeology, ethnography, source studies, paleography (studies ancient writings), numismatics, diplomacy, chronology, metrology, genealogy, heraldry, sphragistics (studies seals ) and some others. Historiography analyzes the works of historians, their worldview and concrete contribution to science, reveals the struggle of various trends and schools, explains the emergence of certain views on specific historical problems and shows the attitude of certain social groups of society towards them.

In addition, historiography requires compliance with certain rules for conducting historical research, which characterize its general professional level. So, for example, when starting to study the relevant topic, the researcher must know in detail what has been done in this area before him, what are the specific achievements of the historiography of his topic, and what he personally can do to solve a particular scientific problem. From this we can conclude that without an appropriate historiographical analysis, the work of a historian will be inferior, if not completely unprofessional.

As the experience of the development of historical science shows, the main aspects of historiographic research are the following: 1. Analysis of the social conditions for the development of historical knowledge at different stages. 2. The study of specific problems and concepts of historical development.

3. The emergence of the first institutions or organizations involved in the study of the historical past. 4. Analysis of sources involved and their nature. 5. Clarification of the most important dates and determination of a common chronological sequence of events. Ancient languages ​​and cultures. 6. Problem setting historical research in one period or another. 7. Development of a methodology for using natural science data in the study of historical processes. 8. Development of methods for a scientific and critical attitude towards unprofessional works or outright falsifications.

That is why, paying tribute to the significance and heuristic potential of historiography, the author of this manual considered it appropriate to devote two chapters to it, which deal with the problems of studying ancient languages ​​and cultures from antiquity to the end of the 19th century, as well as modern ideas about this subject. This material will give students the opportunity to become more or less fully acquainted with the historiography of the subject being studied and to understand the basic patterns of the formation and development of historical thought. Taking into account the specifics of linguistic education, the author considered it necessary to include in the historiography of the subject a brief overview of the achievements of outstanding linguists and linguists of the past, as well as to outline the main trends in comparative historical linguistics as a special scientific discipline that combines certain features of history and linguistics.

Speaking of ancient cultures and civilizations, one should remember the significant differences that exist between these fundamental concepts. The ideas of the currently dominant postmodern have made significant adjustments to the traditional understanding of ancient cultures and civilizations. With the light hand of the outstanding British scientist A. Toynbee, all ancient cultures and civilizations gained an equal status and began to be perceived as equal and self-sufficient communities, in no way inferior to European cultures.

On the one hand, Toynbee's views dealt a crushing blow to the theory of Eurocentrism, which determined scientific thought over the past few centuries and almost completely outlived itself by the middle of the 20th century.

And on the other hand, they destroyed in many respects the correct and quite adequate ideas about ancient cultures, absolutizing their initial features. In other words, cannibal culture has become as worthy a culture as any other, at least in terms of food culture.

At present, the concept of “civilization”, which has become fashionable, is interpreted so broadly and meaningfully that it is actually equated with the concept of “developed culture”. In fact, ancient civilizations represent a certain qualitative milestone in the development of mankind, closely associated with a set of important essential characteristics. Even F. Engels noted in his works that any civilization is somehow connected with the emergence of class relations and the emergence of the state. This idea, no matter how one relates to the founder of Marxism, still has many supporters and will probably remain for a long time the most important sign of the civilization of this or that society.

These definitions can rightly be called "false classical". The roots of these words are Latin. Even in Cicero, the word "cultura" means cultivation and education, but its modern meaning has developed only in modern times and under new historical circumstances. For the first time it found wide application in such new sciences as ethnography, ethnology and anthropology and was recorded in the work of the English scientist E. Tylor “Primitive Culture” (“Primitive Culture”), published in London in 1871. “Culture, or civilization, understood in a broad ethnographic sense,” he wrote, “it is a complex whole that includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morality, laws, customs, and any other abilities and habits acquired by a person as a member of society.”

Ancient languages ​​and cultures From this we can conclude that for Tylor the words "culture" and "civilization" were almost synonymous, and this approach is still preserved in English Literature. Secondly, the concept of "culture", according to Tylor, is not just a list of some important features, but rather a "complex whole", that is, in modern terms, a certain system of interconnected elements that exists and should be understood precisely as integrity. inside yourself.

In fact, such a definition of culture is fully consistent with modern understanding“civilization”, and culture is usually understood as one or another archaeological set of features that characterize the same type of archaeological finds. In other words, civilization is a "frozen culture" of a particular community, the development of which has almost completely stopped and the foundations of legislation and the consolidation of cultural achievements have triumphed.

That is why this manual will use the traditional understanding of civilization as a social system characterized by the emergence of the state, writing, temple building, cities and social classes. We propose to call all other communities that have not reached this level of development simply cultures that are at one stage or another of development.

TASKS

Control questions 1. What are the main objectives of the course.

2. What is the content of the course?

3. What is a "historical source"?

4. The nature of historical sources.

5. Forms and methods of working with historical material.

6. What is the main task of historiography?

7. What aspects are included in the historiography of the subject?

8. What is "culture"?

9. What is "civilization"?

10. What are the modern differences between "culture" and "civilization".

11. What are the ideological foundations of the course?

12. Why should linguistic students know ancient languages ​​and cultures?

Topics of reports and abstracts 1. Analysis of sources on the history of ancient languages ​​and cultures.

2. Historiography as a specific form of historical knowledge.

3. The main differences between "sources" and "literature".

Practical exercises 1. Make a comparative analysis of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the course.

2. Give a brief description of the periodization criteria and explain the difficulty of dating ancient events.

3. Give significant differences between sources and historiography.

4. Explain on concrete examples how to work with historical sources should be different.

5. Explain the specifics of ancient sources and their difference from modern ones.

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SUBJECT

The first ideas about the origin and development of ancient cultures and languages ​​appeared in the ancient world and were directly related to the analysis of the survivals of the tribal system among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and other peoples. As a rule, this was due to the desire of certain peoples to study their neighbors and develop special treatment to their existence. A huge role in such studies was played by the desire to better understand their own society, to find more reasonable forms and ways of arranging it.

It should be frankly admitted that the first experiments in the study of less developed cultures and peoples were often openly hostile, justifying the need and expediency of conquering foreign lands and conquering neighboring peoples. And only in rare cases, interest in other cultures was dictated by scientific interest, devoid of any selfish coloring.

This is especially characteristic of the attitude of ancient and Hellenistic authors to those peoples whom they contemptuously called "barbarians". Moreover, not only less developed societies that were at the pre-state stage of development were often referred to as barbarians, but also quite mature states of the Middle East and Central Asia (for example, the Persian state).

Among the founders of the ancient science of ancient civilizations can rightly be attributed to the "father of history"

Herodotus (484-425 BC). For a long time he studied the manners and customs of the Libyans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Persians, Illyrian Enets, Phoenicians and many other peoples of the world known at that time. At the same time, he pays special attention to the description of their original culture, the beginnings of writing, tribal customs, the production of weapons and tools, etc. Herodotus does not lose sight of even such complex processes as the nature of the interaction of these peoples with the environment and the usual forms of coexistence of different types of cultures. He is interested in such features of the life of neighboring peoples as marriage relations, forms of family organization, the presence of special forms of ownership, communal practices, and much more. Unfortunately, Herodotus did not even try to apply the experience gained to the study of the past of the Hellenes themselves, which, however, does not detract from his enormous contribution to the formation and development of the science of ancient cultures and societies.

Much more success in the study of ancient cultures and peoples was achieved by the younger contemporary of Herodotus Thucydides (460-400 BC). In his famous History of the Peloponnesian War, he for the first time expresses the idea of ​​evolution, that is, the gradual development of ancient cultures, and also cites the method of comparison as one of the most important principles for studying them. Since then, the so-called comparative analysis has become the most important tool for the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures.

It should be noted that the ancient Hellenes were not limited to private descriptions of neighboring peoples, studying their social structure or various forms property.

For example, the great materialist philosopher Democritus first drew attention not only to the uniqueness of neighboring cultures and languages, but, most importantly, tried to trace their origin from more archaic forms of social life. It is to him that the honor of discovering a brilliant conjecture about the progressive development of mankind in the ancient languages ​​and cultures de continuous struggle for survival in the conditions of the incessant development of natural resources. In addition, he put forward the idea of ​​the genesis of ancient cultures, which also played an important role in the further development of science and ancient societies and cultures, which in subsequent centuries led to the creation of anthropogenesis - the science of the origin and development of human society.

No less valuable for the scientific study of ancient societies were the works of the outstanding thinker ancient Greece Aristotle (384-322 BC). It is true that he studied predominantly contemporary Hellenic society, but his main conclusions still retain lasting value for a wide variety of anthropological studies. Aristotle was the first to place man in a natural-historical series of phenomena, and then, with the help of very reasoned evidence, he came to the conclusion that it is the social organization of people and social institutions that distinguish them from a purely natural state and endow them with special social qualities that ensure a person's predominant position in the world around him.

Aristotle vigorously defended the idea of ​​the evolutionary development of ancient societies, which was based on his concept of the "patriarchal family", i.e. a family that constantly expanded and multiplied by the inclusion of domestic slaves. In his opinion, the patriarchal family constituted the main cell of the Hellenic society, from the combination of which the famous Hellenic policy subsequently arose.

Thus, Aristotle's "patriarchal theory" laid the foundation for further study of ancient cultures, and in Europe Aristotle until the 18th century. remained the most important unquestioned authority on patriarchal relations and the history of ancient languages ​​and cultures. And only the latest research by Morgan in the 70s. nineteenth century shook the foundations of this ancient theory.

The further development of the science of ancient languages ​​and cultures took place under the conditions of the colonial expansion of the Greeks and ended with the formation of the huge Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great. Greek colonization covered vast areas in the coastal lands of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, North Africa, Southern Europe, the Balkans and Asia Minor. Creating their numerous trading posts and trading settlements (Olvia, Chersonesos, Panticapaeum, Phanagoria and many others), the Greeks were forced to enter into constant contacts with local tribes and peoples, studied their language and way of life and tried to use their patriarchal way of life not only for selfish purposes, but and to expand trade and economic cooperation and establish closer contacts with neighboring peoples. It was at this moment that the Greek colonists began to most directly come into contact with the numerous peoples of the east of Europe and Eurasia. And it is precisely thanks to these constant contacts that we now have the opportunity to obtain at least some information about the life and way of life of the unliterate peoples of this region, who left no other traces of their existence.

Further studies of ancient cultures and peoples are connected with the decline of the Hellenic world and the strengthening of the Roman state. Julius Caesar in the "Notes on the Gallic War", Strabo in the "Geography", and also Tacitus in his "Germany"

gave contemporaries a huge amount of interesting information about the life and way of life of the so-called "barbarian" peoples, including until then unknown ancient cultures of Central and Eastern Europe.

Very interesting thoughts on this subject were expressed by the Roman poet and thinker Titus Lucretius Car (I century BC). He paid special attention to the material factors in the development of ancient societies and more convincingly confirmed Democritus' previous guess about the progressive development of mankind from a savage state to a civilized one.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures The Roman Empire, having gathered under its control a huge number of conquered countries and peoples, actually for the first time in the world created a certain type of relationship, which is now called multiculturalism. It included hundreds of peoples of Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East and North Africa, who went through the crucible of the Roman "melting pot" and eventually inherited from Rome many of the achievements of ancient civilization.

Despite a significant decline in the humanities in early period In the Middle Ages, ideas about ancient cultures and languages ​​continued to develop, enriching European science with new information. In Europe, among the famous researchers of the XIII-XV centuries. famous travelers Plano Carpini, Guillaume Rubruk, Marco Polo, as well as the Tver merchant Athanasius Nikitin, who described his trip to India. And shortly before them, valuable information about ancient peoples and cultures was provided to Europeans by Arab scientists and travelers (for example, Ibn Khaldun). However, the main center for the study of other countries and peoples in the Middle Ages was Byzantium, which turned into a world power and gathered under its wing almost all the peoples of the former Roman Empire. Here we can note the fundamental works of such Byzantine historians as Anna Komnena, George Acropolitan, George Pachymer, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Michael Psellos, Nikita Choniates, Procopius of Kessaria, Theophylact Simocatta and many others.

In general, the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures in the Middle Ages did not differ in variety and was entirely dictated by the rigid boundaries of Christian ideology and is numerous. As a rule, the ancient peoples were described by merchants, often performing intelligence functions for the Vatican in order to conquer the “barbarian” peoples of the East and introduce them to the bosom of the Catholic Church. At the same time, in Europe, the Inquisition ruthlessly destroyed the priceless literary and philosophical heritage of pagan antiquity, considering it harmful to the Christian peoples of Europe. Now we can say with confidence that in the field of studying ancient languages ​​and peoples Christian church did more harm than good, although it left us some evidence of their existence.

A new stage in the study of ancient cultures and peoples begins with the Great geographical discoveries of the second half of the 15th century. In a short period of time, a huge ethnographic material was accumulated, which required rational comprehension and systematization in the spirit of the emerging ideology of the New Age. The world has become not only open and accessible, but also extremely holistic. Europeans were surprised to learn that the earth is round and that in addition to Europe there are a huge number of countries and peoples that have preserved patriarchal traditions and tribal ways of life. Portuguese, Spanish, and then Dutch, French and British navigators explored vast expanses of previously unknown lands in Africa, Asia and America and in the most detailed way described them in their works. This is how the famous studies of J. de Barros, D. Lopes, F. Pigafetta, J. de Acosta, R. Hakluit, O. Dapper, J. Cook and many others appeared. A significant contribution to the study of ancient cultures and peoples was made by Russian discoverers - Ancient languages ​​and cultures S.P. Krasheninnikov, G.F. Miller, I. Gmelin, L.Ya. Zagoskin, I.E. Veniaminov and others.

It was during this period that the so-called modernist concept of ancient cultures and peoples was formed, a characteristic feature of which was the clear desire of Europeans to separate their “civilized” world from the world of savages and barbarians. This, in particular, is evidenced by the title of the work of the famous French researcher J.F. Lafiteau (1670-1740) "The customs of the American savages in comparison with the customs of primitive times." However, Lafito for the first time makes a very fruitful comparison of less developed peoples with the distant past of the peoples of Europe, which laid the foundation for a more scientific and objective comparative studies. In fact, he became the founder of the comparative method in European ethnography, although in the most primitive form.

Even more significant discoveries in this area were made by European researchers in the 18th century. the British T. Pennyman, T. Hobbes, J. Locke, M. Harris, A. Ferguson, J. Millar, the French D. Diderot, J.-J. Rousseau, A.-R. Turgot, J.-A. Condorcet, Sh.L. Montesquieu continue to actively develop the theory of the evolutionary development of ancient cultures, noting in passing the most important role of material factors in the formation social structures and development of ancient languages. It was at this time that the well-known three-term classification of all ancient cultures was born - "savagery" - "barbarism" - "civilization", first proposed by Scottish philosopher A. Ferguson. The idea of ​​the inseparable integrity of human history, containing the most diverse countries, cultures, peoples and civilizations, begins to prevail.

The Age of Enlightenment gave the world a huge number of talented researchers of ancient societies and languages, and among them the outstanding German philosopher and culturologist I.G. Herder. Having experienced the influence of French encyclopedists and English sensualists, he created a romantic concept of the origin of ancient languages ​​and cultures and actually predicted the emergence of ethnopsychology in the future. In his famous works On the Origin of Language (1772) and Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784-1791), he put forward the concept of the "natural origin of language", in no way connected with divine providence. Later, his ideas inspired many European researchers of ancient cultures, including Humboldt.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century. such a huge array of archaeological and ethnographic information about ancient peoples and cultures was accumulated that there was a need for its more accurate and scrupulous systematization in order to more effectively generalize and conceptually comprehend. The first such attempt was made by the Danish scientist K.Yu. Thomsen (1778–1865). As head of the National Museum of Antiquities in Copenhagen, he studied a large number of artifacts and developed a new classification of antiquity based on the dominant material for the production of tools - Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age. And his followers created a scientific basis for dating the monuments of the past and determining the migration routes of ancient tribes and peoples. Among them are the outstanding studies of the Dane J. Vorso, the Swede S. Nilsson, the Frenchman Boucher de Perth, the Englishmen C. Lyell, G. Daniel, J. McEnery, J. Evans, and others.

Archaeological evidence of the deep antiquity of man was most directly related to the revolution in science that was made by the British explorer C. Darwin (1809-1882). In his famous book The Origin of Species natural selection"He expressed a whole complex of accumulated data that under the Ancient languages ​​and cultures lived the beginning of modern ethnography and anthropology. Moreover, the works of Darwin undermined the former boundless faith in divine origin man and ideas about the religious picture of the world.

Since then, evolutionary theory has become the main paradigm of the humanities and has fundamentally changed previous ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures. Its main conclusion is the fundamental unity of all mankind, regardless of racial, geographical and spiritual differences. From this followed another revolutionary idea about the fundamental identity of all human communities and the possibility of studying more developed societies on the basis of the study of less developed ones.

In the second half of the nineteenth century. these ideas are more or less fully reflected in the works of T. Weitz, A. Bastian, G. Mortiller, J. Lebbock, J. Bachofen and many others. Of particular note is the famous work of the Englishman E. Tylor (1832-1917) "The Origin of Culture", in which all forms of development of ancient cultures and civilizations were studied in most detail on the basis of a very productive method of "typological series". And his compatriot G. Maine (1822–1888) was the first to speculate about the regularity of the transition from blood relations as the main type of social relations in ancient cultures to territorial ones, that is, to neighborhood community. This conclusion was already directly connected with the discovery of the political organization of ancient societies.

However, for the first time a completely holistic materialistic concept of ancient cultures was created by the American scientist L.G. Morgan (1818–1881). Having published in 1877 the book “ ancient society”, Morgan drew a line under the huge achievements of European science and laid the foundation for modern ethnology and ethnography. After analyzing the vast ethnographic material of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Polynesia and using the subject's historiography, calling the previously proposed idea of ​​a three-part division of ancient societies into "savagery, barbarism and civilization", he came to the conclusion that all ancient peoples went through quite definite stages in their historical development , but only in different time and under various circumstances. He was the first to define a genus as a specific form public organization, developing from matriarchy to patriarchy, and gave it a universal character.

Having defined the tribal system as the primary social organization of ancient societies, Morgan concluded that the second stage in the development of the tribal system is the political organization of society, based on territorial community And private property to the means of production. No less revolutionary was Morgan's conclusion about private property as a historically transient form of organizing social relations, after which a period of a more highly developed civilization of "freedom, equality and fraternity" based on public ownership of the means of production is possible. It was this idea that became for Marx the main argument in favor of the future communist organization of society.

He also owns the honor of a discovery that will be widely used only in the 20th century - the idea of ​​managing a civil society, which gets rid of the generic signs of patriarchy and gradually moves to the principle of separation of powers, including the right to remove unrighteous leaders. Morgan was the first to link together the idea of ​​social production and the evolution of forms of ownership and proved that the way of obtaining material wealth directly affects the political organization of society. Thus, Morgan, analyzing ancient cultures and societies, laid the foundations for the study of the future human civilization, far ahead of his time. He also owns the palm in the periodization of ancient societies, which Ancient languages ​​and cultures move in a progressive direction from savagery to barbarism, and then to civilization.

A significant contribution to the development of the science of ancient languages ​​and cultures was made by the outstanding German anthropologist, historian and linguist W. Humboldt, who is rightfully considered the founder of theoretical linguistics. In his "philosophical anthropology" (first half of the 19th century), he energetically defended the ideas of the originality of ancient peoples and their value for world history. According to him, three main factors determine historical process: the nature of things, the freedom of man and the dictates of chance. However, Humboldt's main achievement lies in the fact that he revealed the relationship between material production and culture, and also clarified the role and importance of the comparative study of languages ​​for characterizing the formation and development of ancient societies. “Due to their character,” he wrote, “languages ​​can influence not only all generations of peoples who speak them, but also other languages ​​with which they sooner or later come into contact.”

A significant contribution to the development of ideas about ancient cultures and societies was made by K. Marx and F. Engels. Based on the works of Morgan, the founders of Marxism specified many factors of the materialistic understanding of history and developed the ideas of the leading role of material production in the formation and development of ancient societies. At the same time, they paid the most important attention to the development of private property, classes and the state, to which they unconditionally attached a temporary, that is, historical character. Communism, wrote Marx, is the solution of the "mystery of history", it provides a real solution to the contradiction between man and nature.

The founders of Marxism did a lot to study ancient societies and determine the role of material production in the process of historical evolution, discovering a hidden form of alienation of human labor, but later they impermissibly absolutized the material factors of human life and treated with disdain various kinds of spiritual forms of life, which are far from everywhere. and are not always determined by material needs, although they can give rise to their initial forms. In the twentieth century this phenomenon was called "economic reductionism" and was subjected to fierce criticism from independent scientists. First of all, this concerns the work of F. Engels “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, published in 1884.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. in the science of ancient languages ​​and cultures, the concept of diffusionism was born and began to rapidly gain strength, associated with the activities of the German scientist F. Ratzel and the American F. Boas. They discovered a close connection between the life of ancient societies and the nature of their natural environment, emphasizing the mutual penetration of society and nature and the determining influence natural factors for social development. In the works of their followers, diffusion appears not only as a form intercultural interaction but also how main factor formation of an integral ecological complex of relations in the system "man - nature". At the same time, they were very skeptical about the idea of ​​general laws of development, believing that in each individual case certain laws come first.

At the same time in England came out famous book British religious scholar and ethnologist J. Fraser "The Golden Bough"

(1890), which outlines a very original concept of the origin of totemism, magic and other forms of primitive religion in ancient societies and the formation of the mythological consciousness of ancient peoples. His fundamental research made a significant contribution to the development general ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures Late 19th century was marked by the appearance of the first works of representatives of the so-called French sociological school, the most prominent representatives of which are E. Durkheim, M. Mauss and L. Levy-Bruhl. Their main idea can be expressed in Durkheim's words: "human progress does not exist ... there are only separate societies that are born, develop and die independently of one another." And Lévy-Bruhl stated quite frankly that the thinking of ancient man is "pralogical" and does not lend itself to any reasonable interpretation from the point of view of modern logic. Thus, French sociologists rejected the very possibility of the evolutionary development of ancient cultures and gave rise to long years moods of pessimism about their reasonable study.

At the end of the nineteenth century. in Europe, the first attempts to create the so-called racial theory of the origin of ancient peoples appear, with the principles of racism and ethnocentrism arising from it. The French anthropologist J.A. de Gobineau, author of the sensational book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853). Gobineau carefully analyzed the causes of the decline and death of ancient civilizations and came to the paradoxical conclusion that the process of destruction of ancient cultures is primarily due to the depressing mixture of different peoples belonging to different racial types.

Considering the "white race" as the main system-forming factor in world history, he endows it with mystical properties and calls to keep its purity in its original form, since the mixing of this race with others inevitably leads to the degradation and extinction of European culture. Subsequently, these ideas were used by the German Nazis to justify their racial policy and the destruction of "inferior" racial groups.

A significant contribution to the development of the science of ancient languages ​​and cultures was made by pre-revolutionary Russian specialists who studied the formation and development of the ancient peoples of Eurasia. Among them, N.Ya. Danilevsky, who proposed the concept of cultural-historical types (1871). Defending the idea of ​​the identity of the Slavic cultural-historical type, Danilevsky opposed it to the Western one and convincingly proved the existence of significant differences between the Eurasian peoples and Europe. This theory had a noticeable impact on Western philosophy of culture and actually predetermined the collapse of Eurocentric views on the place and role of ancient peoples in world history.

Thus, over the long period of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, historians, anthropologists and linguists laid a fairly solid foundation for the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures and practically ensured the rapid development of anthropology in the 20th century. Among the outstanding achievements of this period can be attributed the idea of ​​the unity of the world and mankind, of the stages of development of individual cultures and peoples, of the constant interaction and fundamental irreversibility of savagery, barbarism and civilization. A characteristic feature of this time was the idea of ​​the progressive progressive development of human society and the structural features of each of the stages.

At the same time, scientists of that time strictly adhered to traditional views on the development of ancient societies and denied them a fruitful influence on modern world.

That is why from ancient times the point of view about the fundamental superiority of European culture over other cultures of the world and about its uniqueness and uniqueness began to prevail. The collapse of colonial empires in the twentieth century. and claims of the young independent states to equal participation Ancient languages ​​and cultures in the global process of unification put an end to Eurocentric ideas, but gave rise to many other problems that require careful scientific analysis.

TASKS

Control questions 1. When and under what circumstances did the first ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures appear?

2. The world of "barbarians" in the eyes of ancient historians.

3. What did Democritus mean by "progressive development"

humanity?

4. What was the patriarchal theory of Aristotle?

5. Describe the role of Greek colonization in the development of ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures.

6. Name the first Roman explorers of the "barbarian peoples".

7. The problem of intercultural relationships in Roman society.

8. Who and why studied ancient languages ​​and cultures in medieval Europe?

9. Ethnographic research in Europe during the Enlightenment (XVIII century).

10. Scientific discoveries K.Yu. Thomsen and L.G. Morgan.

11. Basic principles of philosophical anthropology by W. Humboldt.

12. What is "economic reductionism"?

13. The main ideas of the representatives of the French sociological school.

14. Causes and prerequisites for the appearance of the racial theory of Gobineau and his followers.

Topics of reports and abstracts 1. Ideas of "progressive development" of mankind in classical Greece.

2. "Barbarian peoples" in the Roman Empire.

3. Medieval ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures.

Practice 1. Explain how, in your opinion, the world of "barbarians" differed from the ancient world.

2. Give an assessment of the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures in medieval Europe.

3. What contribution did the Enlightenment make to the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures?

4. Compare the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century. with previous eras.

Topic 3. Modern ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures Topic 3.

MODERN VIEWS

3.1. FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYSIS AND JUNG'S ARCHETYPES

The twentieth century was marked by unprecedented technical and scientific achievements that radically changed the modern world. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. the second industrial revolution took place, which noticeably accelerated the technical progress of society and at the same time put forward completely new scientific concepts of social organization. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century. it became clear that the old industrial age was fading into the past, making room for some new civilization. Its contours were still very vague, but everyone felt that the new society would be connected in one way or another with information processes. The main achievement of this period was the crisis of the long-dominated Eurocentrism and the emergence of new ideas about the formation of a planetary civilization based on interdisciplinary research.

The first herald new era was the outstanding Austrian psychologist, psychiatrist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In contrast to the French sociologists of the late nineteenth century. Freud and the followers of his theory of psychoanalysis put forward a very original idea of ​​the determining influence of the subconscious on the life of a person and society. The Freudian thesis about the similarity of the psychology of ancient peoples with the psychology of a neurotic personality determined the nature of further studies of ancient languages ​​and cultures for a long time. At the same time, Freud paid special attention to the neurotic impulses in the origin of ancient religions, totem 3. Modern ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures of the language and all sorts of taboos, which together give rise to an indelible "Oedipus complex" and the so-called repressive nature of any culture.

The Freudian understanding of ancient cultures caused serious contradictions, which were able to resolve the outstanding Swiss psychologist and culturologist C. Jung (1875–1962). He tried to bring Freud's concept of "collective unconscious" closer to "collective representations"

Durkheim and developed on this basis his own concept of archetypes, which determine the ritual and extremely mythologized form of life not only of ancient, but also quite modern peoples. In accordance with this concept, the "collective unconscious" is the universal spiritual basis of mankind, its superpersonal psychological nature. An important feature of this phenomenon is that it is not amenable to awareness and therefore, Jung argues, no analytical technique can help to remember it, because it has simply been forgotten or forced into the subconscious. Thus, in Jung's view, the archetype is the "primary condition or pattern" of any human society, from ancient times.

Jung's archetypes determine the picture of the world of a particular society and determine one or another type of response to surrounding circumstances. In other words, archetypes are innate possibilities of representations that regulate the principles of formation of our views on the world, the conditions for its understanding and comprehension. At the same time, symbols are the dominant way of representing archetypes, and the process of symbolization itself is the main and, perhaps, the only fact of the manifestation of the unconscious. “Just as a plant gives birth to a flower,” Jung wrote, “so does the soul give birth to symbols.” It follows from this that any symbol is a kind of archetypal image.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures

3.2. PEDERSEN'S NOSTRATIC THEORY

Simultaneously with historians, linguistics also developed, in which the comparative historical analysis of ancient languages ​​began to occupy the main place. At the beginning of the twentieth century. the outstanding Danish scientist H. Pedersen was the first to put forward the idea of ​​the existence in ancient times of a certain common group of distantly related languages, called "Nostratic"

(from the Latin noster - "our") and includes an extensive family of distantly related languages ​​​​of Europe, Asia and Africa. Having established the fact of a distant relationship between the Indo-European, Semitic-Hamitic and Ural-Altaic languages, Pedersen called them Nostratic, but did not have time to substantiate his theory with any reliable anthropological and ethnolinguistic data.

At the same time, the activity of a group of Western metaphysicians and historians began, who adhered to traditionalist views on the development of ancient cultures and languages ​​(Rene Guenon, Mircea Eliade, Julius Evola, Ernst Junger, and others). For the first time, they spoke of a "revolution of the spirit", "pagan imperialism" and a "conservative revolution", in every possible way trying to absolutize the patriarchal foundations of society and exalt the "heroic impulses" of ancient cultures. Having subjected the contemporary bourgeois system to devastating criticism, they called for a return to the distant past, when the heroic efforts of the ancient peoples led to the emergence of great Tradition and great empires based on the primordial (original) tradition and the sacred nature of power. The supporters of these esoteric views exalted the so-called "aristocracy of the spirit" and completely denied democratic ideas. In Russia, their ideas found a wide response among the “neo-Eurasians” (A. Dugin, G. Dzhemal).

The German philosopher O. Spengler also thought in the same style, setting out in his book “The Decline of Europe” (1918–1922) his understanding of the history of mankind as a combination of cultures independent of each other, which, like living organisms, go through the stage of origin in their development. rise, rise, decline and death. And Spengler takes about a thousand years for this whole process.

In the 1930s 20th century the first books of the 12-volume fundamental study of the outstanding British scientist A. Toynbee "A Study of History" begin to appear, in which he proposed the theory of cycles and resolutely rejected the idea of ​​the progressive progressive development of ancient societies.

Toynbee finally breaks with the Eurocentric view of world history and defends the idea of ​​the equal importance of all cultures and peoples, which in their development go through strictly defined cycles, guided by the energy and talent of the "creative minority". Toynbee's theory suffers from a certain schematism, but on the whole it is the product of a highly developed intellect and impeccable historical erudition.

At the same time, the first works of the famous French historian F. Braudel began to appear, laying the foundations for the so-called civilizational approach to ancient history. Being one of the founders of the French Annales School, Braudel drew attention to everyday life as a leading factor in civilizational development and thus contributed to the development of anthropological studies both in France and around the world.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures The next stage in the development of scientific ideas about ancient societies was the functional theory of the British scientist B. Malinovsky and his compatriot M. Moss.

Malinovsky came to the conclusion that the history of mankind begins only with the advent of writing, and all pre-literate history can only be prehistory, or protohistory. In other words, any ancient culture can be considered only as a certain function of this or that society and, therefore, it is possible to study only its functional features, and not the idle inventions of scientists.

Along with the development of this or that society, the functional basis of its culture inevitably changes, and all the so-called survivals are just speculations of subsequent researchers. Malinovsky paid special attention to the economic factors in the development of ancient societies, and thereby significantly enriched the ideas about the general patterns of their evolutionary development.

In the middle of the twentieth century. In the UK, a new scientific trend was born, called "political anthropology". Its founder was the famous English scientist A. Radcliffe-Brown. The followers of this school drew attention to the problems of organizing power and control in ancient societies at the stage of decomposition. tribal community and also exhaustively analyzed the formation and development of political institutions.

It is curious that the political anthropologists of Great Britain became the founders of structuralism, but it was not they who achieved the greatest success in this matter, but other Europeans and Americans. The Swiss F. de Saussure, the French C. Levi-Strauss, J. Lacan, M. Foucault, the Americans N. Chomsky, E. Sapir and Topic 3. Modern ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures C. Pike studied in detail the problems of formation and development public consciousness in ancient cultures and the mechanism of reflection in it of real ethnic processes.

P. Sorokin, an American philosopher of Russian origin, played a significant role in the development of ideas about the origins of ancient cultures. He outlined his very original theory of the existence of cultural supersystems in a 4-volume fundamental monograph " Sociocultural dynamics» (1937–1941). He developed the ideas expressed long ago that the historical past can be represented as a unity of various cultural systems, united by a certain common destiny and the same origin. In each culture, he saw a certain value, which is system-forming and, in this capacity, similar to the system-forming values ​​of other cultures.

Representatives of structural anthropology for the first time set themselves the task of studying ancient societies through the analysis of their language, because it is the language, in their opinion, that is the most ancient and stable structure. Thanks to the structuralists, the study of ancient languages ​​became an integral part of anthropology and made a significant contribution to expanding our understanding of the life and way of life of ancient peoples. For example, Levi-Strauss was the first to develop and meaningfully interpret models of kinship in ancient societies and systems of blood-kinship ties, basing his research on the complex concept of “structure”. “Of all social phenomena,” he wrote in Structural Anthropology, “apparently, only language can be subjected to true scientific research, explaining the mode of its formation and considering some directions of its subsequent development.” A significant contribution to the development of ideas about ancient societies was made by his compatriot and the founder of structural (linguistic) psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures In the second half of the twentieth century. in France and other countries, the concept of postmodernism was born and began to rapidly gain popularity. Analyzing contemporary society, the ideologists of postmodernism (J. Baudrillard, D. Barthes, J. Deleuze, M. Foucault, U. Eco, J. Lacan, F. Guattari, J.-F. Lyotard, etc.) resolutely rejected the previously fashionable ideas of a holistic perception of the past and proposed to consider all ancient cultures and peoples as completely equivalent and equivalent, differing only in minor features in everyday, cultural and social life. They finally undermined the previously dominant ideas of Eurocentrism and clearly demonstrated the special value of all original cultures within the framework of modern universal humanism, whose ecological dimension embraces not only human society, but also nature and the cosmos.

Postmodernism destroyed global historical schemes with their inherent desire to embrace the integrity of history and its essential social forces, and at the same time undermined the philosophical variety of historical knowledge. No less significant was the blow to scientific thinking proper, since postmodernists from the very beginning began to deny the objective content of scientific knowledge and abandon systemic, synthesizing constructions, seeing them as a painful symptom of totalitarian consciousness.

In addition, the criticism of rationalism was accompanied by criticism of the positivist ideal of scientific knowledge, which, on the one hand, destroyed scientific knowledge in general, and on the other hand, undermined its positivist orientation and even the very type of science of modern times.

Nevertheless, the postmodern paradigm of knowledge also had some positive consequences, since it unwittingly stimulated such scientific thinking as Theme 3. Modern ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures were based on the recognition of the fundamental heterogeneity and pluralism of ancient languages ​​and cultures, the decisive role of the subject of knowledge and focused on the need development of many research programs. It was this circumstance that allowed many supporters of postmodernism to state the birth of a new “historical formation of science” and a new style of scientific thinking.

At the same time, all kinds of theories of the global historical process began to be effectively developed, in connection with which there was a transition from structuralism to post-structuralism, which reduced the entire historical process to one form or another of the use of language (M. Foucault, H. White). The ideas of intercultural communication and cultural symbiosis became the basis of the postmodern understanding of ancient societies. At the same time, historical, anthropological and linguistic research began to be based on the ideas of the emerging synergetics - the science of self-organization of complex non-equilibrium systems.

The first description of the dynamics of nonequilibrium systems was developed and published in 1967 by a Belgian scientist of Russian origin, Ilya Prigogine. He not only put forward the theory of dissipative structures (dissipation - energy dissipation), but also substantiated the principle of generating order through fluctuation (oscillation), thus creating a completely new idea of ​​self-renewal and self-development of open non-equilibrium systems. He was the first to declare that any story must somehow meet three minimum conditions: irreversibility, probability, and the possibility of new connections.

In addition, his idea of ​​bifurcation helped to clarify, and in some cases update, previous ideas about the role of the individual in the history and development of ancient societies. The more complex the system, he argued, the more internal mechanisms of self-development it contains and the more opportunities for the transition of this system to a more complex state.

Ancient languages ​​and cultures From this point of view, the decisive factors in the development of ancient societies are instability, crises, upheavals, since it is during these short periods of time that the social system finds itself in a state of bifurcation and makes a fateful choice that determines the trajectory of a new movement. And the state of order, balance and stability inevitably leads her to death.

Second half of the 20th century was marked by another postmodern trend in linguistics, which was called "semiotics". This discipline became one of the leading branches of linguistics and cultural theory and was entirely devoted to the study of the theory of sign systems. Currently, semiotics exists in two main varieties - the semiotics of the text and the semiotics of culture. In fact, these varieties simply characterize two stages in the formation and development of the science of sign systems.

The beginning of the semiotics of the text was laid by the representatives of the so-called "Leningrad school" (F. de Saussure, M.S. Pierce, L. Elmslev, R.O. Yakobson, Yu.M. Lotman, etc.) . developed the main directions and tasks of the new science. These include the following:

the definition of language as a primary sign system, the characteristics of secondary (modeling) systems, the study of text as a system product in the semiotics of being. If we summarize major achievements semiotics, we can conclude that all ancient cultures can be deciphered using a sign system of symbols and ancient archetypes based on the culture of everyday life and social life. The dynamic nature of semiotic meanings and the constant renewal of the signified under the influence of growing historical experience creates an additional property of the sign, which R. Barthes called "imagination". In other words, the signs of culture are constantly enriched with new historical experience, making it a permanent factor in human existence.

Topic 3. Modern ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures

3.7. STUDYING ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN THE USSR AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The same period of time was marked by the successful activity of the outstanding Slavic scholar I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, who made a significant contribution to the development of ideas about systemic origin and development of ancient languages. He not only revealed the specifics of human language and its universal properties, but also determined the dialectical relationship between individual and collective language, which in itself was the most important prerequisite for using a systematic approach to the study of ancient societies.

In the USSR, notable success in the study of ancient cultures and languages ​​was achieved by scientists who worked mainly within the framework of the Marxist-Leninist methodology. They paid special attention to the process of the formation of classes and the state, material production, the development of the relationship of exploitation and the class struggle corresponding to it. A thorough study of economic processes allowed them not only to reconstruct the ancient forms of management, but also to identify stable economic and cultural types, rooted in antiquity (Yu.A. Bromley, S.A. Tokarev, Yu.I. Semenov, D.A. Olderogge, M. O. Kosven, L. E. Kubbel, B. B. Piotrovsky, P. I. Puchkov, V. M. Masson, etc.).

For example, the outstanding Soviet ethnographer S.A. Tokarev developed the problems of ethnogenesis in detail, drawing attention to the interdisciplinary nature of ethnogenetic research, which requires careful use of disciplines such as ethnography, archeology, linguistics, folklore, and anthropology in the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures.

Big scientific interest also presented the works of well-known Soviet and Russian linguists and culturologists who traced the main stages in the formation and development of ancient languages, symbols and sign systems in ancient cultures, including important experiments in the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language and the cultural characteristics of ancient Indo-European communities (V.V. Ivanov, V. N. Toporov, A. A. Formozov, V. T. Gamkrelidze, and others). In particular, T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov proposed a rather convincing theory of the initial settlement of the Indo-European tribes, localizing the area of ​​the Indo-European ancestral home in a large space from Transcaucasia to Upper Mesopotamia and referring them to a number of ancient archaeological cultures of Southwest Asia.

A significant contribution to the development of the so-called Nostratic theory was made by the outstanding Soviet linguist V.M. Illich-Svitych, who died untimely in the prime of life.

He not only proved the scientific validity of the Nostratic hypothesis put forward by Pedersen, but also significantly expanded the scope of the Nostratic macrofamily, including the Kartvelian and Dravidian languages. Despite the presence of a large number of specialists who are still skeptical about the idea of ​​the relationship of the Nostratic languages, the number of supporters of this theory is constantly growing, and Nostratic has long turned from a bold hypothesis into a very serious scientific theory. In the future, it was quite successfully developed by such scientists as V.V. Ivanov, V.A. Dybo, O. Trubachev.

Suffice it to say that now many linguists also include Japanese, Korean, Yukagir and Eskimo-Aleut languages ​​among the Nostratic languages. In addition, opinions are also expressed about the Nostratic roots of some languages ​​of the peoples of Chukotka, as well as the Indians of America.

The real sensation of recent times has been put forward by the Russian linguist S.A. Starostin's hypothesis about the existence of a Sino-Caucasian macrofamily uniting the Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian and Yenisei families. Later, some languages ​​​​of Indian tribes in the USA and Canada, primarily the Navajo tribe, were added to it, but this has a very distant relation to our topic.

Topic 3. Modern ideas about ancient languages ​​and cultures Unfortunately, during the years of the Stalinist regime, about 500 scientists who studied the peoples and languages ​​of the world were repressed. Among them you can find the names of famous ethnographers N.I. Konrad, A.N. Genko, N.I. Hagen-Thorn, P.F. Preobrazhensky, G.V. Ksenofontova, A.A. Busygin and many others. It was an irreparable loss for Soviet ethnographic science, the consequences of which are still being felt.

Special attention should be paid to the scientific activity of the Soviet geographer, ethnologist and historian LN Gumilyov, who developed a unique theory of ethnogenesis based on a holistic analysis of biological, geographical and social factors in the development of ancient languages ​​and cultures. Developing the already known ideas of the outstanding Russian scientist V.I. Vernadsky, Gumilyov writes his most famous monograph "Ethnogenesis and the biosphere of the earth", where he not only sets out the essence of his passionary theory, but also gives many guesses about the causes of the origin and forms of development of ancient ethnic groups, which he considers as predominantly natural phenomena, and not just social or cultural. According to this theory, passionarity is the result of a burst of energy of living matter, which is assimilated by the nascent ethnos, and then consumed by it within 1000-1500 years.

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« Alexander Dmitrievich Vladimirovich Dr. tech. sciences, professor. Candidate tech. Sciences. Head Senior Researcher Lab. Methodological foundations of informatization at the Institute of Informatics Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences Author of more than 100 papers on Author of more than 30 papers on S-modeling, S-modeling, automation of program design and ... "

“I.I. Eliseeva, M.M. Yuzbashev GENERAL THEORY OF STATISTICS Edited by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences I.I. Eliseeva FIFTH EDITION, REVISED AND SUPPLEMENTED Recommended by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation as a textbook for students of higher educational institutions studying direction and specialty Statistics Moscow Finance and statistics 2004 UDC 311(075.8) LBC 60.6ya73 E51 general theory statistics of Moscow State University...»

« UNESCO, South Africa) Scientific editor: Alexander Khoroshilov (UNESCO IITE) Guidelines for adapting the UNESCO Framework Recommendations on the ICT Competence Framework M57 for Teachers ( methodological approach to UNESCO ICT-CFT localization). -M.: IIC Statistics of Russia - 2013. - 72 p. ISBN 978-5-4269-0043-1 The Proposed Guide contains a description of...”

«Natural Science Series No. 2 (4) Published since 2008 Published twice a year Moscow 2009 Scientific Journal natural Sciences No. 2 (4) Published since 2008 Appears Twice a Year Moscow 2009 Editorial Board: Ryabov V.V. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Chairman, Rector of Moscow State Pedagogical University Atanasyan S.L. Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs of Moscow State Pedagogical University Gevorkyan E.N. Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor, Vice-Rector for Research at Moscow State Pedagogical University Rusetskaya M.N. Candidate of Pedagogical...»

"II. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Klaus Wigerling (Germany)1 TO THE VITAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PHILOSOPHY - ON AN OLD PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION The article reviews the current state of philosophy, analyzes its significance on the basis of a philosophical analysis of the conclusions made by Husserl, Hösle. This article is prepared on the basis of two reports that were made at the University of Banja Luka (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Key words: philosophy, life world, fundamental principles, current state...»

“LIST OF PUBLICATIONS STAFF OF THE IPI RAS IN 2013 1. MONOGRAPHS 1.1. Monographs published at IPI RAS 1. Arutyunov E. N., Zakharov V. N., Obukhova O. L., SeifulMulyukov R. B., Shorgin S. Ya. – M.: IPI RAN, 2013. 82 p. 2. Ilyin A. V. Expert resource planning. – M.: IPI RAN, 2013. 58 p. [Electronic resource]: CD-R, state registration number 0321304922. 3. Ilyin AV, Ilyin VD Informatization of status rivalry management. – M.: IPI RAN,...»

«REPORTS BSUIR №2 JANUARY-MARCH 2004 NANOELECTRONICS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY IN THE BELARUSIAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND RADIOELECTRONICS: FROM THE FIRST STEPS TO THE PRESENT DAY V.Ye. BORISENKO Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics P. Brovki, 6, Minsk, 220013, Belarus Received November 19, 2003 The main stages in the development of work on nanoelectronics and nanotechnology at BSUIR are presented. The organizational structure of scientific research and...»

"MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION FEDERAL STATE BUDGETARY EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION STAVROPOL STATE AGRARIAN UNIVERSITY APPROVED by the Vice-Rector for Academic and educational work I. V. Atanov _2013 REPORT on self-examination of the main educational program of higher education Direction of training: 230700.68 - Applied Informatics Profile: 230700.68.01 Corporate governance systems (code, name ... "

"N. V. Maksimov, T. L. Partyka, I. I. Popov ARCHITECTURE OF COMPUTERS AND COMPUTING SYSTEMS Recommended by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation as a textbook for students of secondary schools vocational education students in a group of specialties 2200 Informatics and Computer Engineering Moscow FORUM - INFRA-M 2005 UDC 004.2 (075.32) BBK 32.973-02ya723 M17 G. V. Plekhanova Yu. G. Bachinin, Doctor of Economics,...»

“Registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation on April 28, 2010 N 17035 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ORDER dated March 29, 2010 N 224 ON APPROVAL AND INTRODUCTION OF THE FEDERAL STATE EDUCATIONAL STANDARD OF THE HIGHER PROFESSIONAL OF EDUCATION IN THE DIRECTION OF TRAINING 021300 CARTOGRAPHY AND GEINFORMATION (QUALIFICATION ( DEGREE) MASTER) Consultant Plus: note. Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of June 15, 2004 N 280 became invalid due to the publication of the Decree ... "

“Domestic and foreign experience 5. Conclusion The foregoing allows us to formulate the following main conclusions. The use of new generation DER and EER collections based on the introduction of modern information technologies in the field of educational services is one of the main indicators of the development of the information society in our country, and their development is a fundamental problem of informatization of Russian education. New generation DER and EER collections are an important tool for improving quality...”

“THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IS APPROVED by the Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation V.D. Shadrikov March 14, 2000 State registration number: 52 mzhd / cn STATE EDUCATIONAL STANDARD OF HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION Specialty 351400 APPLIED INFORMATICS (by regions) Qualification of informatics - (qualification in the region) In accordance with the order of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation of 04.12.2003 No. 4482 code of this specialty according to ... "

The Middle Ages, while denying the pagan attitude to the world, nevertheless retained the main achievements of ancient culture. However, it opposed monotheism (monotheism) to polytheism (polytheism) of antiquity, naturalism (interest in the objective world) - spirituality, hedonism (striving for pleasure) - an ascetic ideal, knowledge through observation and logic - book knowledge based on the Bible and its interpretation. If ancient culture was based on the recognition of a universal cosmic law that ensured the stability of the world order, then the Middle Ages, having lost this confidence, turned entirely to God, recognizing him as the creator of the world, the only true reality, rejecting the ancient unity of nature and gods. From now on, the meaning of the world consisted only in God, and the world itself was seen as a huge repository of symbols (all objects and phenomena of the material world were only letters in the divine book of nature). Thus, for the first time, the idea of ​​cultural phenomena as texts appears, which will be actively developed in the 20th century.

Man's task was to understand and read this book. Therefore, culture again appeared to him as the need to "cultivate" one's own abilities. But the main goal of the formation of abilities was not the "cultivation" of the mind, but the education of the need to seek external support in life, the desire to rely on someone, to receive the help necessary due to the weakness and imperfection of the person himself.

Then new dimensions of man were opened: faith, hope, love, in which he began to draw strength for life. Thus, a new understanding of the purpose of human life appeared - not the knowledge of oneself, but the knowledge of God, the realization of the spiritual relationship in which he is with him. Culture, on the other hand, begins to be perceived not as the upbringing of a measure of harmony and order, but as overcoming limitations, as cultivating the inexhaustibility of a bottomless personality, as its constant spiritual improvement.

The Middle Ages also renounces the cyclic idea of ​​time, based on the idea of ​​eternity. The greatest medieval thinker Augustine the Blessed introduces the concept of the "arrow of time", the movement of history from the beginning to the end, which breaks the time circle of antiquity. From now on, it is recognized that history and culture have a meaning given to them by God and accessible to human understanding. The idea of ​​historical progress, the complication of culture, its development from lower to higher forms also appears. The criterion of progress was the correspondence of culture to the highest moral values. The culture of any nation was also evaluated from this point of view (its correspondence to Christian moral values, which were considered universal), which led to the birth of Eurocentrism.