The Book about the Origin of the Yakuts and their Traditional Culture

The author reviews the monograph of A.I. Gogolev “The Origin of the Sakha people and their traditional culture” (2018), the study of the ethnogenesis of the Yakut people (native name — Sakha) and the origins of their material and spiritual culture. For the sources, the author of the book used archaeological, ethnographic, linguistic and historical data of the entire Central Asia and Far Eastern area, as well as the adjacent and remote areas. A.I. Gogolev studied particularly carefully the area of Central Lena, because that area has become ethnic forming for the people of Sakha. The author discovered the Scythian-Siberian, ancient Altai and Hunnic roots of the Sakha culture, traced the formation of its basis under the infl uence of ancient and medieval Turkic tribes of Southern Siberia, Central Asia and the Baikal region. In the latter respect, A.I. Gogolev paid special attention to the historical and cultural ties of the Yakuts with the Turkic-speaking peoples of Southern Siberia and the Buryats. The researchers face the new challenges: to achieve fi nal clarity on the question who were ethnically the indigenous aborigines of the Middle Lena, to determine what impact on the spiritual and material culture of the Yakuts had the oldest religion — Tengrism, and to study more thoroughly the origins of the writing of the Sakha people.