Man and nature in traditional views of tyurco-mongolian peoples of South Siberia

Abstract

The aim of the work is to study the perception of nature in the traditional worldview of the Turkic and Mongolian peoples of Southern Siberia.

The chronological scope of work covers the end of the XIX — mid XX centuries. Selection temporal boundaries caused primarily by the status of the database sources on the research topic. The main sources are archival and ethnographic materials. The work based on comprehensive, system-historical approach to the study of the past. The research methodology based on historical and ethnographic methods — scientific description, the specific historical and relic.

The indigenous inhabitants of Southern Siberia, in the process of prolonged interaction with the environment and result of adaptation to it, formed the culture most adapted to the given natural conditions. A significant place in it given to traditions associated with environmental views and norms. The basis of the ecological consciousness of the peoples of this region was the idea of an inseparable connection between man and his environment, the homeland, that is, with the place where he was born, lived and died. In fact, it was the space in which the entire life activity of man. In the thinking of believers, nature perceived as a living and sentient being, which reflected in the corresponding practical relation to it. In the traditional worldview, man is not isolated from nature. There is no rigid boundary between it and the surrounding world, which, as already noted, in the mythological consciousness, had a partial or complete identification with man.