Purebred Chechens appearance. Chechens. Mixed marriages: nature's lottery

Appearance of Chechens in photos of famous people

Anthropologically, Chechens belong to the Caucasian type of the Caucasian race. Published in late XIX- early 20th century encyclopedic Dictionary Brockhaus and Efron, gives the following description Chechen appearance:

Chechens are tall and well built. Women are beautiful. Anthropologically, Chechens are a mixed type. Eye color, for example, varies (in equal proportions) from black to more or less dark brown and from blue to more or less light green. The nose is often turned up and concave. In hair color, transitions from black to more or less dark brown are also noticeable. Facial index - 75.26 (Chechens) and 76.72 (Ingush).

Appearance of Chechens in comparison with other Caucasian peoples, it is distinguished by the greatest dolichocephaly. Among the Chechens themselves, however, there are not only many subrachycephals, but also many pure brachycephals with a cephalic index from 84 and even up to 87.62.

Genetic genealogy. Most men in the Republic of Chechnya belong to the Y-DNA haplogroup J2, which originated in the Middle East. The second most common haplogroup in the Republic of Chechnya is J1 (about 21%).

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From left to right: economist Aslambek Paskachev, mathematician Sh. Soltakhanov, writer Kanta Ibragimov.

From left to right: artist Pyotr Zakharov, dancer, choreographer, actor Makhmud Esambaev, singer Kheda Khamzatova. Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Armed Forces Sulim Yamadayev, singer Makka Sagaipova, Member of the Parliament of the Chechen Republic Zhamul Eskaev. Chechen women

Topic of the page: appearance of Chechens, photos famous people, Chechen appearance in photographs.

The Chechens themselves call themselves Nokhchi. Some translate this as Noah's people. Representatives of this people live not only in Chechnya, but also in some regions of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Georgia. In total, there are more than one and a half million Chechens in the world.

The name “Chechen” appeared long before the revolution. But in the pre-revolutionary era and in the first decades Soviet power Some other small Caucasian peoples were also often called Chechens - for example, Ingush, Batsbi, Georgian Kists. There is an opinion that these are essentially the same people, individual groups of which, due to historical circumstances, were isolated from each other.

How was the word “Chechen” born?

There are several versions of the origin of the word “Chechen”. According to one of them, it is a Russian transliteration of the word “shashan”, which was used to designate this people by their Kabardian neighbors. For the first time it is mentioned as the “people of the Sasan” in the Persian chronicle of the 13th-14th centuries by Rashid ad-Din, which talks about the war with the Tatar-Mongols.

According to another version, this designation comes from the name of the village of Bolshoy Chechen, where at the end of the 17th century the Russians first encountered the Chechens. As for the name of the village, it goes back to XIII century, when the headquarters of the Mongol Khan Sechen was located here.

Since the 18th century, the ethnonym “Chechens” appeared in official sources in Russian and Georgian, and subsequently other peoples borrowed it. Chechnya became part of Russia on January 21, 1781.

Meanwhile, a number of researchers, in particular A. Vagapov, believe that this ethnonym was used by the neighbors of the Chechens long before the Russians appeared in the Caucasus.

Where did the Chechen people come from?

The early stage of the history of the formation of the Chechen people remains hidden from us by the darkness of history. It is possible that the ancestors of the Vainakhs (the so-called speakers of Nakh languages, for example, Chechens and Ingush) migrated from Transcaucasia to the north of the Caucasus, but this is only a hypothesis.

This is the version the doctor puts forward historical sciences Georgy Anchabadze:
“The Chechens are the oldest indigenous people of the Caucasus, their ruler bore the name “Caucasus,” from which the name of the area came. In the Georgian historiographical tradition, it is also believed that the Caucasus and his brother Lek, the ancestor of the Dagestanis, settled the then uninhabited territories of the North Caucasus from the mountains to the mouth of the Volga River.”

There are also alternative versions. One of them says that the Vainakhs are the descendants of the Hurrian tribes that went north and settled Georgia and the North Caucasus. This is confirmed by the similarity of languages and culture.

It is also possible that the ancestors of the Vainakhs were the Tigrids, a people who lived in Mesopotamia (in the area of the Tigris River). According to the old Chechen chronicles- Teptars, the point of departure of the Vainakh tribes was in Shemaar (Shemar), from where they settled to the North and North-East of Georgia and the North Caucasus. But, most likely, this applies only to part of the Tukhkums (Chechen communities), since there is evidence of settlement along other routes.

Most modern Caucasus scholars are inclined to believe that the Chechen nation was formed in the 16th-18th centuries as a result of the unification of the Vainakh peoples who were developing the foothills of the Caucasus. The most important unifying factor for them was Islamization, which occurred in parallel with the settlement of the Caucasian lands. One way or another, it cannot be denied that the core of the Chechen ethnic group is the Eastern Vainakh ethnic groups.

From the Caspian to Western Europe

Chechens did not always live in one place. Thus, their earliest tribes lived in an area stretching from the mountains near Enderi to the Caspian Sea. But, since they often stole cattle and horses from the Greben and Don Cossacks, in 1718 they attacked them, chopped up many, and drove the rest away.

After the end of the Caucasian War in 1865, about 5,000 Chechen families moved to the territory Ottoman Empire. They began to be called muhajirs. Today, their descendants represent the bulk of the Chechen diasporas in Turkey, Syria and Jordan.
In February 1944, more than half a million Chechens were deported by order of Stalin to the regions Central Asia. On January 9, 1957, they received permission to return to their previous place of residence, but a number of migrants remained in their new homeland - in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

First and second Chechen wars led to the fact that a significant number of Chechens moved to Western European countries, Turkey and Arab countries. The Chechen diaspora in Russia has also increased.

At the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th centuries, Christianity began to spread among the Chechens. Traces of it are still visible in the ruins of temples, in holidays: the Kists and Ingush celebrate New Year, the day of the prophet Elijah and Trinity Day. In many places they sacrifice rams in honor of the Holy Virgin, St. George and St. Marina.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Chechens converted to Sunni Islam. In their religious customs, in addition to Christian and Mohammedan elements, the Chechens retained many elements of primitive paganism, among other things, and the phallic cult. Small bronze naked priapic figurines, often found in the country, are worshiped by men as guardians of flocks, and by women who embrace them, begging for male children.

In cysts and galgai we find even more interesting custom. A childless woman goes to a hut with two exits, in which a priest, a representative of the matsel (Mother of God), sits in one shirt and asks him for the gift of children, after which she leaves through the other exit, always facing the priest.

During their independence, the Chechens, in contrast, did not know the feudal structure and class divisions. In their independent communities, governed by popular assemblies, everyone was absolutely equal.

We are all “uzdeni” (that is, free, equal), the Chechens say. Only a few tribes had khans, whose hereditary power dates back to the era of the Mohammedan invasion. This social organization (the absence of aristocracy and equality) explains the unparalleled resilience of the Chechens in the long struggle with the Russians, which glorified their heroic death.

The only unequal element among the Chechens were prisoners of war, who were in the position of personal slaves. They were divided into laevi yasirs; the latter could be ransomed and returned to their homeland. The legal system represents the usual features of tribal life. Until recently, blood feud was in full force.

Men's clothing is the usual clothing of the Caucasian mountaineers: checkmen made of yellow or gray cloth homemade, beshmets or arkhaluks of different colors, mostly white in summer, cloth leggings and chiriki (a type of shoe without soles). An elegant dress is trimmed with braid. The weapons are the same as those of the Circassians; special attention is paid to their decoration. Women's costume is no different from the picturesque costume of Tatar women.

Chechens live in villages - auls. The houses are made of stone, neat and bright inside, while the mountain Chechens have stone houses and are less tidy. The windows are without frames, but with shutters to protect against cold and wind. On the entrance side there is a canopy for protection from rain and heat. For heating - fireplaces. In each house, the kunakskaya consists of several rooms, where the owner spends the whole day and only returns to his family in the evening. There is a courtyard next to the house, surrounded by fences.

Chechens are moderate in food, content with urek, wheat soup, shish kebab and corn porridge. Bread is baked in specially built round ovens in the yard.

The main occupations of the Chechens are cattle breeding, beekeeping, hunting and arable farming. Women, whose position is better than that of the Lezgins, bear all the household chores: they weave cloth, prepare carpets, felts, burkas, sew dresses and shoes.

Appearance

Chechens are tall and well built. Women are beautiful. Anthropologically, Chechens are a mixed type. Eye color, for example, varies (in equal proportions) from black to more or less dark brown and from blue to more or less light green. In hair color, transitions from black to more or less dark brown are also noticeable. The nose is often upturned and concave. The facial index is 76.72 (Ingush) and 75.26 (Chechens).

In comparison with other Caucasian peoples, the Chechen group is distinguished by the greatest dolichocephaly. Among the Chechens themselves, however, there are not only many subrachycephals, but also many pure brachycephals with a cephalic index from 84 and even up to 87.62.

Character

Chechens are considered cheerful, witty, impressionable people, but they enjoy less sympathy than the Circassians, due to their suspicion, tendency to treachery and severity, probably developed during centuries of struggle. Indomitability, courage, agility, endurance, calmness in the fight - these are the traits of the Chechens that have long been recognized by everyone, even their enemies.

Until recently, the ideal of the Chechens was robbery. Stealing cattle, taking away women and children, even if it meant crawling dozens of miles underground and risking your life during an attack, is a Chechen’s favorite thing. The most terrible reproach a girl can make to a young man is to tell him: “Get out, you’re not even capable of driving away a sheep!”

Chechens never beat their children, but not out of special sentimentality, but out of fear of turning them into cowards. The deep attachment of Chechens to their homeland is touching. Their songs of exile (“Oh birds, fly to Little Chechnya, bring greetings to its inhabitants and say: when you hear a cry in the forest, think of us, wandering among strangers without hope of an outcome!” and so on) are full of tragic poetry.

The Chechens are a Caucasian people of the Eastern Mountain group, who before the war occupied the territory between the Aksai, Sunzha and Caucasus rivers. Nowadays they live mixed with Russians in the Terek region, east of, between the Terek and the southern border of the region, from Daryal to the source of the Aktash River.
The Sunzha River divides the extremely fertile country of the Chechens into two parts: Greater Chechnya (upland) and Lesser Chechnya (lowland). In addition to the Chechens themselves (in the Grozny district), divided into several different tribes, they include:

Cysts;
Galgai;
Karabulaki;
The most hostile tribe to us, who moved entirely to ) and the Ichkerins.

All Chechens, not counting the Ingush, numbered 195 thousand people in 1887. The name “Chechens” originates from the name of the village of Bolshoy Chechen (on Argun), which once served as the central point for all meetings at which military plans against Russia were discussed. The Chechens themselves call themselves “nakhcha,” which translates as “people” or “people.” The closest neighbors of the Chechens call them “misdzhegs” (and kumuki) and “kists” ().

There is no information about the ancient destinies of the Chechen tribe, except for fantastic legends about foreigners (Arabs), the founders of this people. Starting from the 16th century, the Chechens consistently fought against the Kumuks and, finally, against the Russians (from the beginning of the 17th century). In our historical acts, the name of the Chechens appears for the first time in the agreement between the Kalmyk Khan Ayuki and the Astrakhan governor Apraksin (1708).

Until 1840, the attitude of the Chechens towards Russia was more or less peaceful, but this year they betrayed their neutrality and, embittered by the Russian demand for weapons, went over to the side of the famous Shamil, under whose leadership for almost 20 years they waged a desperate struggle against Russia, which cost the latter enormous sacrifices. The struggle ended with the mass emigration of one part of the Chechens to Turkey and the resettlement of the rest from the mountains. Despite the terrible disasters that befell the first immigrants, emigration did not stop.

When talking about the inhabitants of the Caucasus, an image of a dark-skinned man with dark hair and thick black eyebrows immediately forms in my head. This is exactly what, according to the majority, Ossetians, Ingush, Georgians and Armenians look like. But often in families representatives of this group of nationalities have bright children. No, they are far from blondes of the Scandinavian type, but light brown hair, gray, blue or green eyes are not so rare.

Mixed marriages: nature's lottery

Why is this happening? One of the reasons, of course, is mixed marriages in previous generations. The “white-skinned” gene is recessive, so mixed couples are born with brunettes much more often. However, the genetic information is preserved and after a few generations a smiling, blue-eyed blond can be born. And then the young father should not grab his heart, but first of all he needs to look at the album with family photos. There will definitely be a golden-haired beauty or a man with hair the color of ripe wheat.

The legacy of ancestors

But not only close ancestors can cause the appearance of a fair-haired baby in a Caucasian family. It is enough to turn to historical sources to find out that the ancestors of the Ossetians and Ingush were not at all similar to their contemporaries. In chronicles they are described as tall, with white skin and mostly blond hair.

The Alans, as this nomadic ethnic group was called, lived on a vast territory stretching from the Roman Empire to Asia. After numerous wars, some of them settled on the territory of modern Ossetia and Ingushetia and mixed with local tribes. But here too, heredity and evolutionary mechanisms came into play - dark hair are inherited more often; in warm climates, having skin rich in melanin is much more comfortable. Therefore, the population gradually became more and more similar to their contemporaries.

Proof of this hypothesis are the notes of the ethnographer researcher I.I. Pantyukhova. He argued that the percentage of light eyes among certain peoples of the Caucasus ranges up to 30%, which is comparable to the indicators of Europeans and Slavs.

Blonde Circassians

Circassians were one of the most numerous nationalities living on the territory of the modern Stavropol Territory. Ethnographers described them as “fair-haired, with a red mustache and fair skin, gray or light brown eyes.”

However, during the Russian-Caucasian War, a significant part fled to Turkey. But many remained. The inhabitants of the village of Karm are genetically closest to the Circassians; it is difficult to distinguish them from a European until they begin to speak.

There is also a hypothesis that the Circassians are descendants of the Slavs, in particular the Cossacks, since the self-name “Cossacks” is often found in studies. (Russian antiquities in monuments of art. I. Tolstoy and N. Kondakov)

Caucasian Albanians

There lived in the Caucasus a tribe called Albans - white-skinned, blond-haired Caucasians. They were strikingly different from the Turks, they were taller, and had completely different beliefs and culture. Even the self-name of the people comes from the Latin albus - “white”, which confirms the theory of historians about tribes that are not similar to the now widespread Caspian type.

Unfortunately, a significant part of the Albanians were destroyed during numerous wars with the Arabs, but “genetic echoes” are also found among contemporaries.

Svans

Unlike the Albanians, the Svans did not disappear, did not dissolve in the stormy cauldron of small ethnic groups. They, like four thousand years ago, live in the highest mountainous region of Georgia (from 600 to 2500 meters above sea level). Their language is significantly different from Georgian, but is gradually disappearing, remaining only in the everyday speech of the older generation.

The Tsar's Colonel Bartholomew described these people as tall, with a proud profile, fair hair and blue eyes. He noted their simplicity and kindness, as well as the fact that the Svans sacredly respected their traditions. Their culture for a long time developed in isolation, this made it possible to maintain genetic homogeneity.

And even after uniting with Georgia into one state, the Georgians were afraid of the Svans. Blonde mountaineers honored traditions, and blood feud was one of the most common ways to resolve family disputes. Therefore, mixed marriages have become commonplace only in the last few decades. And the gene for “golden curls” often manifests itself, displacing the dominant Caspian appearance.

Chechens

Modern Chechens and Ingush are direct descendants of the Vainakhs, a Hurrian ethnic group. However, around the third millennium BC, these tribes mixed with others carrying the genetic characteristics of the Cromanoid race (modern representatives of this race are the Slavs, as well as Finns and Swedes).

The genetic “cocktail” explains such a wide variety of appearance types in Chechnya. When the genes of the Western Asian race dominate, the child is born dark-skinned, with dark hair. When the Cromanoid type takes over, the appearance is practically no different from the Slavic one.

Nomads: migration for salvation

Another genetic branch that became part of the ethnic heritage of the Caucasus, the predominantly fair-haired and white-skinned Cuman nomads, who fled numerous oppressions from warring tribes. They gradually assimilated, merged with the local residents and actually disappeared into the dominant ethnic groups in the Ciscaucasia.

That is why fair-haired people are not at all uncommon among Caucasians - there are many of them in Chechnya and Dagestan, and in Armenia and Georgia. And this mixing of races is beautiful in its own way, because it once again reminds us that every person who leaves descendants is immortal. A tiny part of it lives on for centuries. And centuries later, blue eyes look at the world, exactly the same as those of the young boy who built the legendary towers of Svaneti.

The Caucasus hides many interesting secrets. One of them -
.

Svaneti is one of the places in the Caucasus where blondes are born.

Mixed marriages: nature's lottery

The legacy of ancestors

The Alans, as this nomadic ethnic group was called, lived on a vast territory stretching from the Roman Empire to Asia. After numerous wars, some of them settled on the territory of modern Ossetia and Ingushetia and mixed with local tribes. But here too, heredity and evolutionary mechanisms come into play - dark hair is inherited more often; in warm climates, having skin rich in melanin is much more comfortable. Therefore, the population gradually became more and more similar to their contemporaries.

Blonde Circassians

Caucasian Albanians

Blonde Caucasians.

Unfortunately, a significant part of the Albanians were destroyed during numerous wars with the Arabs, but “genetic echoes” are also found among contemporaries.

Svans

Somewhere high in the mountains live the Svans.

The Tsar's Colonel Bartholomew described these people as tall, with a proud profile, fair hair and blue eyes. He noted their simplicity and kindness, as well as the fact that the Svans sacredly respected their traditions. Their culture developed in isolation for a long time, which allowed them to maintain genetic homogeneity.

Svans. Grandmother with grandchildren. 1929

Chechens

Nomads: migration for salvation