My father's black lasso. The road from ancestors to descendants in the Altai culture

The article undertakes to explore the Altai people's conceptions of the time-space continuum through their views on the road / path as a focal point of communication channels between the human world and the world of non-human beings. The article draws on the author's field materials collected in the Republic of Altai from 1986 to 2018. In addition, various other sources are used, including materials on the linguistics and folklore of the Altaians. Three aspects of the Altai people's worldview are reflected on: 1) the road as a concept features communications within both space and time; the road connects the worlds of ancestors and descendants and separates them according to particular periods of time during which the culture prescribes that the living and the dead, human beings and other beings should be active; 2) not only real, both old and new roads, but also elements can serve as a road for ancestors, for example, an unusually long-lasting whirlwind connecting the sky and the earth can be seen as ancestors' road; and 3) even today the Altai people continue to practice sacral rites and rituals dedicated to correcting one's path, treating it as life in general and as a concrete life path; neglecting the cultural norms, which prescribe that man in the lunar-solar world should be active when the sun is out and in the period from the new moon to the full moon, entails sanctions understood as punishment by the ancestors executed as either a one-off act through an obstacle in one's path or as a continuous effect when one becomes deprived of the right fate - the one that has no bad luck but brings happiness and self-realisation.

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