On the epic model of the Olonkho world in the Yakut culture

Abstract

In modern conditions of an information civilization, myth and epic are attracting much attention due to the desire to understand and comprehend the constant values of mythological knowledge of the cultural origins. This work focuses on actualizing the role of the epic world model of the Yakut epic Olonkho in the culture of the Sakha people. The purpose was to verify the epic model of the Yakut Olonkho world and to describe how this model is manifested as a cultural universal in various sign systems of the material and spiritual cultures of the Sakha people. The study involved an interdisciplinary approach, modeling methods, structural and semiotic analysis, extrapolation, deduction. It was found that the representation of the geometric scheme of the epic model of the world in the form of a pyramidal structure in a static position and a cone-shaped model in dynamics has a fundamental role in modeling various iconic systems of the Yakut national culture as a universal archetype scheme. The subconscious tendency to symbolize the world model appears in the schemes of “mythological scenarios,” in geometric and semantic embodiments of the Sakha material culture artifacts, in postulated numerical principles, and in the ways of narrating the oral folk texts. Verifying the scheme-archetype as a central symbol of the Yakut culture is of great value, containing as it does the germs of new cultural ideas developing in the modern globalizing society in the continuous movement of time, making it possible to outline the possibilities of national tradition text-forming mechanisms.