Scholarly record

TUNGUS-MANCHURIAN COMPONENT IN ETHNIC HISTORY AND ETHNOGENY OF KOREAN PEOPLE

A. Alexeev, P. Vitebsky, S. Alekseyva, V. Alexeeva

Abstract

The problem of ethnic history and ethnogeny of Goguryeo people has been of great interest to Russian archaeologists and ethnographers because we have to assume this ethnographic group of ancient Korean people had closer ties with Tungus-Manchurian people, particularly with the DongyiXianbei, Sushen-Yilou, Ugu-Udegeis, possibly Uvas-Uvan, Jurchen people and Manchurians themselves.In 1851 for the first time N.Y. Bichurin suggested that ancient Korean people, Goguryeopeople in particular, were connected to Tungus-Manchurian people.We believe that in the first millennium BC Goryeo people shared territory with ancient Tungus-Manchurian tribes and possibly were part of the Tungus-Manchurian group of tribes.We assume that ancient Tungus tribes took part in the ethnic formation of the northern tribes of Buyeo and Goguryeo at the end of the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD. Therefore, three tribe groups were involved in the forming of the Korean people: Paleoasian (the ancient one, possibly autochthonous), Altai and Austronesian, which is connected to the Eastern coast of China with the origins of culture Xinlangang. Although the groups speaking the proto-Altai languages dominated. First of all, we are interested in a Tungus component of Korean people’s ethnogenesis.The economy, artefacts and culture’s analysis confirms their ancient kinship with the Tungus-Manchurian people. It’s not a coincidence, that a description of ymnu (yilou) people, which many researchers consider the Manchurian ancestors, is included in the Chinese annals, such as “The Record of the Three Kingdoms” and “The Book of the Later Han”, between the sections dedicated to the ancient Korean tribes. Initially one of the oldest Manchurian ethnonyms “shalgal” (“mohe”) has meant one of the tribe Yo’s parts – the eastern Yo, which has inhabited the modern Hamgyong province territory at the turn of our millennium. All the Manchurian tribes, beginning with the “mohe”,have considered the Taebaeksana (Changbaishanz) area – the Goguryeo ancient settlement area – their ancestral homeland.

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