Ancient Concepts of the Kyrgyz about the Structure of the Earth

Ancient Kyrgyz Ideas about the Structure of the World

Human thought has never been satisfied with simply establishing direct, practically significant connections between phenomena. Every nation has tried to understand and explain various phenomena; its cosmological and cosmogonical ideas often took the form of traditions, legends, and myths, which represent a combination of original elements and borrowings. Such are the ancient ideas of the Kyrgyz about the structure of the Earth and the organization of the world.

The Kyrgyz believed that the Earth consists of seven layers (floors). At the very bottom are one-eyed giants (cyclopes) and other beings that speak in human language. There is an untouched magical "blue lake" there, from which even dogs do not drink, meaning a dead lake. This solid seven-layer Earth is held up by the golden horns of a huge kok oguz — a gray bull. When one horn of the bull gets tired, it shifts the Earth to the other horn, causing earthquakes. The strength of the earthquake depends on the force and speed of the shifting of the Earth from one horn to the other: the stronger and faster the bull does this, the stronger the earthquakes. The tides of the seas and oceans, as well as evaporation and fog on Earth, are the result of the breath of the enormous underground bull. People did not believe that deep within the Earth there was from аралаш заттар — fiery lava, which appears on the surface during жанар тоо — volcanic eruptions. And even if they allowed this, they thought that all of it was from кудайдын буйругунан — from God, which the illiterate people were convinced of by the mullahs:

Heaven and Earth
Support each other.
The essence of this phenomenon
Man will never comprehend.

Kyrgyz legends and myths about the structure of the Earth were based on the hadiths (teachings) of the Arab scholar Ibn al-Faqih, who lived in the 9th century, who claimed that the content of the hadith was prompted by Muhammad — the prophet in the Quran. The teaching states: "The Earth rests on the horns of a bull, the bull on a fish, the fish in water, the water in air..." (Department of Manuscripts and Publications of the Kyrgyz SSR. Inv. No. 327. P. 14.)

Kyrgyz legends about the Earth represent a peculiar adaptation of Islamic teachings about the creation of the Earth, somewhat freed from its scholastic dogmas.

Statements that the Earth is not flat but has the shape of a sphere, that the Earth, Moon, and other planets revolve around the Sun, date back to the first half of the 3rd century BC. Believing that the Earth has the shape of a sphere due to its natural structure, and criticizing the opponents of this scientific theory, Biruni asserted: "If the Earth did not have the shape of a sphere, then day and night, winter and summer would not be as they are now; the lines of their movements and the position of the shining celestial bodies would be different."

The Kyrgyz imagined the Earth as a circle surrounded on all sides by water; they believed that the center of the universe is the Earth and that the Sun and Moon revolve around the center, that is, the Earth. Later thinkers (Barpy, Manake, and others) considered the Sun to be the center of the universe. These ideas indicate that the study and understanding of various changes in nature by the Kyrgyz had a predominantly realistic character.

However, far from all ancient ideas correspond to reality. Processes of dislocation occur on Earth with changes both on its surface and in its depths. At the beginning of our century, Croatian scientist Mohorovičić established that at a depth of 35 kilometers there is a boundary where geophysical characteristics of rocks change significantly, and in the oceanic territory of the Earth, this boundary is much closer to the surface — already at 10 kilometers. This boundary has come to be known as the Mohorovičić boundary. The Mohorovičić boundary divides the Earth into two layers: the layer below this boundary is called the Earth's mantle, and the layer above it is called the Earth's crust. It has also been established that at a depth of 2900 km, the density of matter sharply increases; this area forms the Earth's core. Thus, the planet on which we live consists of the crust, mantle, and core.