Early nomads' clan organization and the problem of its identification

The aim of the article is to determine the peculiarities of the generic organization of the early nomads -Scythians and Sarmatians. The article examines the data of Herodotus, Lucian, Nicholas of Damascus, Valerius Flac-cus, and archaeological information that can shed light on the specifics of the kinship systems of Scythians and Sarmatians. In favor of the existence of a generic organization among the early nomads, one can interpret Herodotus' message about the Scythian ethnogonic tradition, which elevated all Scythians to one ancestor, Targitaos, and his sons - Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Kolaxais. The principle of genealogical kinship in this interpretation extended to the entire Scythian association. Meanwhile, there are reports from sources that may testify in favor of the existence of a sex-and-age division of the Sarmatian society. Nicholas of Damascus reports that Scythians jointly own property and women, so that the eldest of them are considered fathers, the youngest sons, and peers brothers. Nicholas of Damascus is believed to follow the tradition of the Ephor idealization of Scythians, like Pseudo-Scymnus. But these reports about the just Scythians may contain specific ethnographic details. This information can be interpreted as a direct evidence of the age classes of Scythians. The inherited status can be traced by archaeological data, which allows archaeology to be involved in solving these problems. A source such as tamga signs is fundamentally important for the analysis of the generic organization. The generally accepted view is that tamgas are signs of belonging to a family and a clan. The clan requires special attention due to the contradictions between the scientific tradition, the data of sources and modern anthropological theory. The idea of the clan as a universal institution at the early stages of the development of human society has been convincingly refuted. Kinship is a single structure-forming principle of social systems operating at the early stages of society's development, but it implies different institutions and practices. Social organisation of the Turkic- and Mongolian-speaking nomads of the Eurasian steppes cannot be automatically transferred to the social organisation of the early nomads, mainly Iranian-speaking. Moreover, we cannot say that the early nomads necessarily had a genealogical principle of origin. According to V.A. Popov and N.M. Girenko, the clan appears in the late stages of primitiveness. The genealogical (linear) principle of kinship counting replaced the group (lateral) one. In lateral systems, continuity was carried out from group to group, and, in linear systems, individual continuity dominates. The article shows that the use of the concepts “clan”, “generic”, “tribal” in relation to the early nomads is more a tribute to the historiographical tradition than the result of a source analysis. The concepts of ysvo^ ~ gens of ancient authors may hide not only the generic organization, but also other social and political institutions.

Keywords

Authors

References