Chuchuná or chuchuny, myuleny (Yakut: chuchuna, chuchunaa, chuchna, muluön) — are names of a wild people in Yakut and Evenki folklore. According to ethnographic findings, chuchuny wore long hair, dressed in animal skins, and carried bows and arrows. Their speech was inarticulate. They stole deer and food; attacked people at night, shooting them with arrows or throwing stones. Folklore accounts in the second half of the 20th century served as the basis for the construction of a scientific hypothesis about the existence of a relic hominoid in North Asia.
Ethnographic findings
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On April 26, 1929 the newspaper Avtonomnaya Yakutiya [Autonomous Yakutia] published an article entitled "Chuchuna". The article recounted that as far back as tsarist Russia in the northern regions of Yakutia there was a belief that "far to the north" there existed an unknown people called the chuchuna. Every year they were to be seen in the Butantaysky settlement of the Verkhoyansky District in the direction of Zhigansk. According to witness accounts, chuchuny were tall and strongly built, with very long hair; they dressed in animal skins, could shoot a bow, and ran very fast. Two or three chuchuny were killed by "hunters" who hid the deed in fear of being held responsible for murder.
In the sixth issue of the magazine Budushchaya Sibir' [Future Siberia] for 1933, an article by Peter Dravert was published under the title "Dikiye lyudi myuleny i chuchuna" ["Wild people myuleny and chuchuna"]. It told about primitive people living in northeastern Siberia. The Ayan-Nelcan Tungus called them myulenami. They presented a grave danger to people crossing the Durumdur Range. The Yakuts feared the myulenami. These wild men, with long hair and a furry face, were either much shorter or much taller than the average man, dressed in animal skins, and carried a bow and knife. Their speech was inarticulate, and presumably they lived in caves. They attacked people at night, firing arrows or throwing stones. They stole deer and food. The last time a myulyeny was killed was in 1913 by the Yakut. Having collected material about chuchun, Dravert came to the conclusion that there existed "svoyeobraznykh predstaviteley chelovecheskoy porody" ["peculiar representatives of the human race"] in the territory of Yakutia, which were on the verge of extinction. He also drew attention to the lack of information in these stories about women or children of wild people.
In the same issue of the magazine a review was published by Gavriil Ksenofontov. In the review, the author attributed the stories about wild people to primitive beliefs: the Yakuts believed in the existence of spirits who lived in the mountains and forests.
In the Yakut language there is a word chuuchus: "Ghost, evil spirit."[1].
In the second half of the 20th century, Russian old-timers from the village of Russkoye Ustye in the lower reaches of the Indigirka still believed in the existence of the tundra spirit, which they called “sentushny” (from the “sendukh” - tundra, land, by analogy with woodland or water). He was tall, and took women as wives. Anyone who associated with the sentushny would go to Satan in the next world.
The Russian Ustyins also remembered the "bad" Chukchi who came from the Chukchi Nose. Sometimes they stole horses at night; had a bow and were able to run fast. In the Yakut village of Allaikh, there were stories of “bad” Chukchi, who were also called Chuchun. Russian Ustyins were considered enemies of these Chukchi. A local resident named Rozhin, who spoke Russian, gave the following story: "Chukchi, kak znayete, lyudi brodyachiye. Kochuyut po neskol’ko let v nash·ch storonu, potom opyat’ ukhodyat na Chukotku… Ikh ubivali — bol’no vrednyye. Oni tozhe ubivayut" [“The Chukchi, as you know, are wandering people. They wander for several years in our direction, then again go to Chukotka ... They were killed - painfully. They kill too. ”]
The manuscript of the exiled Ivan Alexandrovich Khudyakov "Kratkoye opisaniye Verkhoyanskogo okruga" ["A Brief Description of the Verkhoyansk District"] from 1868-1869 has been preserved. The author spoke about rumors about the existence of some wild people wandering through the region. They were very few in number, sometimes dressed in rags, had a bow, and left large tracks. They had run-ins with civilised people. They would throw stones at tje backs of Yakut women. The Yakuts were afraid when they saw these people. They lived on the coast of the Arctic Ocean in the Zhigansky District, as well as in Chistye, to the west. They were called in Tunguska Khuchana, which means "runaway."
According to the conclusions of Ilya Samuilovich Gurvich, the leading specialist in ethnography of the peoples of the Far North of the USSR Academy of Sciences (d. 1992), who collected and studied ethnographic data related to chuchuny for more than thirty years: "chuchuny, oni zhe — myuleny, dikiye ili «khudyye» chukchi — byli po svoyemu proiskhozhdeniyu beregovymi chukchami" ["chuchuny, they are — myuleny, wild or "bad Chukchi"]. During the hunt for marine mammals in summer and autumn, the ice broke off and carried lone sea mammal hunters far to the west, to the shores of Yakutia. Separated from their relatives, they considered themselves outcast: the Chukchi custom forbade them to return to their homeland, where they were already considered dead. Finding themselves in new and unusual conditions, the Chukchi "robinsons" were doomed to starvation, because they did not have tools for hunting wild deer. Therefore, they were forced to steal food, and in extreme cases, to attack fishermen and hunters, which often turned into death for them.
It should also be noted that the archetype of malicious savages, secretly living in the tundra, in the mountains or forests, is very common in the mythologies of the peoples of the world. For example, in the folklore of the Greenland Eskimos there are cast-iron-like characters called "tuniit." Perhaps this is a mythologized memory of the earlier cultures and tribes that inhabited the area.
In cryptozoology
editThe idea of the existence of a Neanderthal relic hominoid in North Asia was put forward by Professor Boris Porshnev (d. 1972), who headed the Commission for the Study of the Bigfoot. During the expedition conducted by the commission, fossil paleoanthropes were not found. The result of the research was the publication by Porshnev in 1963 of the monograph "Sovremennoye sostoyaniye voprosa o reliktovykh gominoidakh" ["The Current State of the Question of Relic Hominoids."] Despite the fact that his hypothesis did not find sympathy among specialists, he did not give up his beliefs.
See also
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editCategory:Mythological peoples Category:Yakut mythology Category:Humanoid cryptids