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Yuri Yevgen'yevich Berezkin

Yuri Yevgen'yevich Berezkin
Independent Researcher · American

doctor of historical sciences

About

31
Publications
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219
Citations
Introduction
folklore databases, comparative mythology, peopling of America, prehistoric migrations and interactions spheres

Publications

Publications (31)
Article
Full-text available
The study of the narrative elements in tales and myths (motifs) belongs to a long tradition, initially aimed at finding the area of origin of early narratives (Urtexts). This objective, which has been much criticized, is generally abandoned today, but is it possible to establish the basis for an objectively verifiable mythogeography? Computer techn...
Article
Full-text available
The study of the narrative elements in tales and myths (motifs) belongs to a long tradition, initially aimed at finding the area of origin of early narratives (Urtexts). This objective, which has been much criticized, is generally abandoned today, but is it possible to establish the basis for an objectively verifiable mythogeography? Computer techn...
Article
Full-text available
The study of the narrative elements in tales and myths (motifs) belongs to a long tradition, initially aimed at finding the area of origin of early narratives (Urtexts). This objective, which has been much criticized, is generally abandoned today, but is it possible to establish the basis for an objectively verifiable mythogeography? Computer techn...
Article
Full-text available
This study applies phylogenetic software to motifs connected with the Pleiades as identified in Yuri Berezkin’s database, The Analytical Catalogue of World Mythology and Folklore. The aim of analysis is to determine which, if any, of the analysed motifs are likely to have spread in conjunction with the earliest migrations out of Africa and to the A...
Chapter
Over the past two decades, a catalogue of folklore and mythology has been created which now contains approximately 50,000 abstracts of texts from all over the world, with information on the distributions of more than 2000 motifs from almost 1000 traditions. In this chapter, we describe this databank and use it to analyse the distribution of motifs...
Article
Full-text available
For these kinds of studies, it is extremely important to rely on sources as exhaustive as possible, and to go beyond the ones already translated into English.
Article
The Aarne-Thompson-Uther index contains rich data on the tale repertoire of the main areas of Eurasia and North Africa, but it is still Eurocentric, and does not reflect many widespread tale-types that are not registered in Europe or rarely found across the region. We have revealed several plots of such kind. Their distribution seems to point to th...
Article
There is a strange story among the fables ascribed to Aesop. It was preserved by Aristophanes and tells about the lark, who was born before the creation of the earth and had to bury her dead father in her own head. This article investigates Indian, Arabic, and North and West African parallels to this story. The analysed texts share several specific...
Article
The article operates with two categories of units selected from folklore and mythological texts. These are the A-motifs (images and episodes related to cosmology and etiology) and B-motifs (episodes related to adventures and tricks). The areal distribution of the A-motifs reflects the existence of interaction spheres that probably emerged in deep p...
Article
Six folklore motifs shared by the native Na-Dené speakers in North America and in Southern Siberia are revealed. In such combination, these motifs are known nowhere else. The spread of the Na-Dené languages to North America was related to the migration of the bearers of the Dyuktai culture. The lack of parallels for the Na-Dené folklore in Yakutia,...
Book
Full-text available
Мифология и фольклор Африки (точнее – ареальное распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов) рассматриваются в качестве источника о дописьменной истории региона от эпохи ранних сапиенсов до колониального времени. Во Введении дана характеристика главной аналитической единицы исследования – фольклорно-мифологического мотива. Здесь же приведены св...
Chapter
Full-text available
Фольклорно-мифологические мотивы встроены в тексты. Тексты принадлежат конкретным культурам и воспринимаются целостно. Мотивы не осознаются людьми как особые единицы и переходят из текста в текст. Нет ограничений для числа операций копирования одного и того же мотива и соответственно для времени его существования. В современных текстах используются...
Book
Мифология и фольклор Африки (точнее – ареальное распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов) рассматриваются в качестве источника о дописьменной истории региона от эпохи ранних сапиенсов до колониального времени. Во Введении дана характеристика главной аналитической единицы исследования – фольклорно-мифологического мотива. Здесь же приведены св...
Article
According to the myth about the origin of man recorded among the people of Eastern Europe and Siberia, the creator set a dog to guard the half-made human figures, but the antagonist bribed the guard and spoiled the creation, making humans vulnerable to disease. The creator told the dog to become the servant of man. Texts recorded in India (mostly a...
Article
The folklore Trickster is usually considered a universally known combination of features intrinsic to human nature. However, there are strong anomalies in the areal distribution of such a figure. Sub-Saharan Africa, North America (except for the Arctic), Northeast Asia and South American Chaco not only are the preferred zones of tricksters’ activit...
Article
Full-text available
The Baltic-Finnish and the Baltic (Latvian and Lithuanian) cosmonymsmostly coincide while the Baltic and Slavic cosmonymic patterns aredifferent. The Pleiades in the Eastern Baltic are ‘a sieve’, the Milky Way is ‘the path of migratory birds’ and a girl holding water pails is seen on the Moon. Across most of Central, Western and Southern Europe the...
Article
Full-text available
This work is devoted to the development and substantiation of intellectual data mining as applied to studying folklore and mythological traditions. The approach is based on use of the functions of distance between traditions. The examples of application of the methods developed to investigate the interrelation between folklore traditions of the Ame...
Article
The Baltic-Finnish and the Baltic cosmonyms mostly coincide, while the Baltic and Slavic ones are different. Baltic-Finnish variants find parallels in texts of the peoples of the Middle Volga. The interpretation of the spots in the Moon as a girl or young woman with water-pails is widespread across all of Northern Eurasia, being also typical of the...
Article
Full-text available
Tales about the struggle between dwarfs and birds are widespreadacross Eurasia and the Americas. About half of them were known to Toivonen(1937), but a large part of the American and some of the Asian materials remained beyond the scope of his research. The southernmost Eurasian version is from Nagaland. The closest parallels are between Ancient Gr...
Article
Full-text available
This note is dedicated to the study of the motif of raven as a scavenging post-Flood scout and its "White Raven" version. In her monograph The Raven and the Carcass, Anna Birgitta Rooth proposed that this motif was brought to all parts of the New World from Western Europe by Catholic missionaries. The article suggests that both "The Raven and the C...
Article
Full-text available
The mythological motif of the Cosmic Hunt is peculiar to Northern and Central Eurasia and for the Americas but seems to be absent in other parts of the globe. Two distinct Eurasian versions demonstrate North-American parallels at the level of minor details which could be explained only by particular historical links between corresponding traditions...
Article
A dozen of motifs found in oral narratives recorded in Southern Siberia find parallels in the folklore of the Plains Indians of North America and can be brought to the New World by early migrants. (Since 2003 when this paper was published much more extensive material in support of this hypothesis was published by the author in Russian; December 201...

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