The Avesta, the sacred monument of the Iranian peoples, in its most ancient part Bundakhishna, which tells about the creation of the world, also tells about the distant northern ancestral home of the Iranians – the land of gods and ancestors, where the ranges of High Hara – Hara Berezaiti stretch from west to east with their main peak mountain Hukayrya. And above High Hara also seven stars of the Big Dipper and the North Star, set in the center of the universe, sparkle. From here, from the golden peaks originate, all the earthly rivers and the greatest of them are the pure Ardvi River, flowing with a noise into the white sea of Vourukash. Over the mountains of Vysokaya Khara, the Rapid Sun is always circling, and half a day lasts here for a year, and half a year – night. Only the brave and strong in spirit can pass these mountains and get into the happy country of the blessed, washed by the waters of the white-fronted ocean. Again these fabulous golden mountains, covered with dense forests, where the sacred plant of catfish, or haoma, grows, and from which violent rivers flow down in the golden channels. Where, how, when did the Indians and Iranians learn about the countries of cold and snow, freezing waters and the northern lights? When and where were you able to see the North Star high above your head? Scientists have been asking these questions for a century now. At the beginning of the 20th century, a book by Bal Gangadhar Tilak “The Arctic Homeland in the Vedas” appeared. He believed that the ancestors of the Indians lived in the Arctic, from where, in the 8—6 millennium BC, they left to the south under the influence of the onset of cold weather.
More than 100 years have passed since the publication of the book of Tilak, and the debate about where the Indians’ ancestral home was, where the sacred mountains eru and Hara Berezaiti rise, do not stop. But today, most scientists have come to the conclusion that the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) community was formed somewhere in the southern Russian steppes in the third – beginning of the second millennium BC. Soviet researcher B.V. Hornung suggested that the “cradle of Indo-Iranian linguistic and cultural-historical unity” was in the Middle Volga.
Scientists now know that the ancient Indo-Iranians (Aryans) were farmers and pastoralists, they sowed bread, grazed cattle and, settling in ever wider spaces, moved to the east, and west, and north, and south. And somewhere exactly in the north of their ancestral home there should have been those very sacred mountains that sang the hymns of the Avesta and the Rig Veda. But where? Ancient Greek authors also wrote about the great northern mountains, who believed that these mountains, which they called the Riphean Mountains, occupied the entire north of Europe and were the northern border of Great Scythia. So they were depicted on one of the first maps of the earth – a map of the 6th century BC Hecateus of Miletus. Herodotus wrote about the distant Northern Mountains stretching from west to east. Doubting the incredible, fantastic magnitude of the Riphean Mountains, Aristotle, nonetheless, believed in their existence and was convinced that it was from these mountains that all the largest rivers of Europe flow accept the Istros – Danubes. Behind the Riphean Mountains, in the north of Europe, the ancient Greek and Roman geographers placed the Great Northern, or Scythian, ocean.
But where exactly are the Northern Mountains – this question remains open to this day. Perhaps the creators of ancient Aryan hymns sang these ridges of the Urals, as well-known Soviet scholars G.M.Bongard-Levin and E.A. Grantovsky think? Indeed, the Ural Mountains are located in the north with respect to India and Iran; they are rich in gold and gems and stretch far to the freezing North Sea.
Yes, only the Avesta, the Veda, and ancient historians constantly repeat that the great mountains stretched from west to east, divided the land to the north and south, and the Urals – this is the border of west and east. And, finally, neither the Don, nor the Dnieper, nor the Volga originates from the Ural Mountains, and the sacred river Ardvi, flowing into the “white ocean”, is difficult to find on the spurs of the Urals. He does not divide the “earthly waters” into those that flow to the south, and those that rush to the north. But this is a distinguishing feature of the Meru Mountains and High Hara. Or did the ancient Aryans mix up east and west with north and south in their travels? Unlikely! They knew geography for their time very well, and it was more than difficult to frighten the sides of sunrise and sunset. And if neither the Veda singers, nor the creators of the Avesta, nor the ancient authors were mistaken, and did these mountains really exist in northern Europe, stretching like a bow curved towards the south, from west to east? And, probably, they have not gone anywhere in the 3—4 thousand years that separate us from the time when the ancient Aryans began their journey to India and Iran. And one thing remains – a little closer look at the map of our homeland. Here is the Black, Azov and Caspian Seas, steppes scorched by the sun; great rivers flow here from the north – the Dnieper, Don, Volga. And here is the north of the European part of the country. Cold and inhospitable White and Barents Seas, Arctic Ocean.
Many rivers flow here from south to north and among them the mighty, full-flowing Northern Dvina, which flows into the White Sea. The vast East European Plain is replete with elevations: Central Russian, Valdai, Volga… Among them, the arc consisting of the mountains of the Kola Peninsula, small elevations of the west of the Vologda Region does not immediately catch the eye. Northern Uvals and the Northern Urals, stretching from west to east for 3,700 kilometers and really separating the coast of the White and Barents Seas from the rest of Europe.
Part of this huge arc, and a very significant one, are the Northern Uvals, reaching two thousand kilometers from the west to the east, and reaching the Northern Urals. They are not high; the highest point here is only 293 meters above sea level. Of course, not the Pamir, not the Himalayas, but… it is here that the watershed of the rivers of the Caspian and White Seas is located. It is here, on the Northern Uvals, that the south of Unzha and Vetluga, the Kama and Vyatka, the rivers of the Great Volga basin, begin, and only a few kilometers from them begins its rapid movement north, to the White Sea, the South river, which merges with River Sukhona, forms the Small Northern Dvina. The second major watershed section also fits into the arc of the North Russian Uplands. This is the area of the White Lake, where the source of the high-water Sheksna flowing south, and Onega and Sukhona to the White Sea.
What is the Northern Uvals? “Damn… In the area of the White Sea,” as stated in the “Dictionary of Popular Geographic Terms” by E. M. Murzaev, “the steep and high coast of the river, mountainous ridge accompanying the valley.”
On the watershed section of the Northern Uvals, where the mountains seem to cut the rivers into southern and northern, the river valleys are deep, up to 80 meters or more canyons with steep banks. The Sukhona River (part of the small Northern Dvina) on the stretch from the city of Tot’ma to the mouth resembles a mountain river with its swiftness, because its fall here exceeds 49 meters, and in the vicinity of the village of Opoki, the banks height exceeds 80 meters. Sukhona has about 130 tributaries. The channels of the rivers flowing in the regions of the Northern Uvals are usually lined with pure orange-yellow micaceous sand, and the high steep banks surrounding them are made of orange mica sand, bright red plastic clay, red coarse-grained and yellow sandstone. How not to be born here the legends of rivers flowing in the “golden” channels, among the “golden” mountains!
Of course, they may object: “How is it, because the mountains Meru and Hara Berezaiti are Great, the highest in the world, higher than the sky and even higher than the sun, and here are some 293 meters?” This is probably due to the fact that when a person leaves the homeland, its image – where the brightest sun, the greenest grasses, the cleanest rivers and the highest mountains – lives in legends