"Moon Man" Miklouho-Maclay: how the ethnographer lived with wild aborigines. The great traveler Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay Portrait of Miklouho-Maclay

The Village found a man who had never been to Europe or the States, but had traveled literally half of Russia - at the time of publication of the text - 626 cities. Perhaps by the time you read this, this figure has already increased. 33-year-old Ivan Shiryaev told The Village why he wants to visit every city in Russia and what he learned about the country while traveling.

I visited 626 cities, about 56%, but there is still a lot to come. In total there are at least 1,127 of them (“Wikipedia” says 1,117. - Ed.), but this number is constantly changing: every year different settlements receive city status. I haven’t traveled around the world at all, only in Russia. If there were foreign states, then only from the CIS: Ukraine, Belarus, Abkhazia, South Ossetia. I don’t know why, but I just don’t feel like going abroad yet. Plus, the more I travel, the slower I travel. If at first I managed to visit 120, or even 150 cities in a year, now I can hardly manage 70–80. Because some cities want to pay more attention. Plus it takes a lot of time to write something, publish something, and post photos. Therefore, it is difficult to say how much more time is needed.

My journey began seven years ago. I then left Jehovah's Witnesses - I just up and disappeared one day. I was completely absorbed in religion, so when I left, I had absolutely no idea what I would do or how to live.

For three months I worked and read the blogs of various seasoned hitchhikers. I was very inspired by these stories. I found a travel companion on the Internet, and we set off on a trip to Ukraine and Belarus. We camped together for two weeks, and then we realized that it was easier to catch a ride and find a place to stay on our own, so we parted ways.

Monasteries, Ministry of Emergency Situations and other ways to spend the night for free

The book “The Practice of Free Travel” by Anton Krotov helped me more than others. There he gives a lot of useful advice for novice hithikers: bright clothes are important so that you can be seen from afar; you need to stand behind some kind of junction or police checkpoint - where cars slow down; When talking with drivers, it is better to avoid political and religious topics so that there is no reason for an argument.

Mostly I stayed in monasteries - I specially planned my route so that I could get from one to another in a day. The monks accept almost everyone, the main thing is to have a passport: they copy down data in order to report to the police - you never know, runaway prisoners or someone else. I imagined myself as a pilgrim traveling to the holy places of Ukraine. Typically, such pilgrims are expected to stay for a few days, attend services, and help take care of the monastery. But I always limited myself to only one overnight stay, so as not to stay for a long time, because all this is not interesting to me. The pilgrims are fed, given a place to stay for the night, and helped. In short, this is a free registration with all the basic amenities. Only once was I required to pay for an overnight stay in a monastery, and that was in Kharkov. Although inexpensive, the fact itself surprised me.

I was enrolled in both male and female monasteries, and not far from Donetsk, Buddhists allowed me to visit them. It was then the only Buddhist monastery in Ukraine, very small, there were only three or four monks. It was interesting to be with them: they are calm, immersed in their thoughts, but at the same time very sociable and easy to make contact with. And in Sudak I was invited to stay in a mosque with the Crimean Tatars. I remember we sat for a long time and talked about Islam.

Then I hitchhiked to the Far East. In three weeks I reached Magadan. There I met a local who promised to take me to a high hill, from where a beautiful view of the village opens up. Our path was blocked by a river, which at normal times can be easily forded. But just then the rains came, the river rose and overflowed its banks. The current was so strong that all my documents and money floated out of my pockets, even my shoes were blown off my feet. My friend found himself cut off on a small island. The nearest bridge was seven kilometers away. I ran for help - rescuers arrived, everything worked out. We never got to the hill, but thanks to this incident I visited the fire department for the first time and became friends with the Ministry of Emergency Situations. After this story, I became their frequent guest. I usually spend the night in emergency department units. But, of course, this is not the only way to save on accommodation while traveling.

In any city there are hospitable people who will accommodate you without any problems. You just need to be able to find them. For example, on the CouchSurfing website - among members of local tourist clubs, cyclists or bikers. This allows you not only to save money, but also to see the city as it really is. Locals are almost always ready to show interesting locations; they willingly tell city stories: where an entrance blew up, which kindergarten a plane crashed on, how to find the grave of a crime boss shot dead in the 90s or the house of a gypsy baron.

In Murom, I was registered by a person whose VKontakte nickname was Alexander Damer. And Dahmer is such a famous American maniac who lured boys to himself, raped, tortured, reading the Gospel aloud, killed and piled corpses in the basement of his house. This host’s room was strange - all covered with some kind of inscriptions, only later did I find out that he was an artist. That day I wanted to get some sleep, and therefore, when I didn’t get in touch in the morning, my mother started calling me: she was afraid that this Dahmer had done something to me. But he turned out to be an ordinary person, friendly, hospitable. So, I hope I’ll go visit him again soon.

About closed cities of Russia

The purpose of my trip is to travel around all the cities of Russia, including closed ones. I have already visited eight of them: Mirny in the Arkhangelsk region, Vilyuchinsk in Kamchatka, Zelenogorsk and Zheleznogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk region, Znamensk in the Astrakhan region, Shikhany in the Saratov region, Fokino in Primorye and Raduzhny in the Vladimir region.

All closed cities are alike. Most often, young military families live there, many pregnant women and women with strollers. It is usually quite clean, well-groomed, people feel safer and calmer, because strangers cannot get there. But what distinguishes these cities is the degree of closedness: in some places you can arrive without problems, there is not even a checkpoint, in others there is, but it’s enough to say where and to whom you came, but in some cities you just can’t get in. But you can always find local residents who will issue a pass, negotiate with the city administration or with journalists. For example, a Cossack ataman helped me get to one city. I wrote to the local motorcycle club, and a relative of this chieftain turned out to be there. He gave me an official pass, although the city administration had previously refused me, checked me into a church house for the night, took me around the city, showed me everything. These are the kind of people who are ready to help and always help - both in closed and open cities.

Stereotypes about cities

In each city, I ask that a local seal or stamp be placed on my notebook. Most often I contact the city administration, newspaper offices, museums, the post office or the train station. In some small towns it is impossible to find a stamp on weekends. Then I mail myself a postcard or letter so I can use the postmark. I need this for my stamp collection. I don’t really show them to anyone, they are just kept in my notebook so that I have something to look through later and remember: here I was, and here, and here too. Well, besides, when you set yourself the goal of getting a stamp, you walk around the city more, because to do this you need to go somewhere, meet someone, talk - it’s more interesting.

It often happens that you come to a city with stereotypes that are actively spread by people who have never been to this region. But this is like hearing a joke about the Chukchi and deciding that all Chukchi are stupid, although they are, in general, the same as everyone else. Therefore, now I divide everything I hear about a particular region in half.

And in general, in my experience these stereotypes have never been confirmed. People are different everywhere: among the Dagestanis there are, for example, Wahhabis and non-believers in general, and there are simply inadequate people who are capable of causing harm to others, just like everywhere else. But this does not mean that Dagestan is dangerous and you should not go there. I think it is much more dangerous in Moscow than in Dagestan or Chechnya. In the North Caucasus, I was stopped by cops much more often than in other regions. But they there are not like ours, they are more friendly and stopped me not so much for the sake of order, but out of curiosity. For example, if a cop approaches us, you’ll feel uneasy, you don’t know what to expect from him. And there, on the contrary, there were no problems, although it happened that in the same city I was stopped seven or eight times a day. They see a non-local coming with a large backpack and a camera, they come up, ask about something, offer tea, and help with a ride. Apparently they were bored there, that’s all, and wanted to get to know each other.

Of course, people change from region to region. Compared to the hospitable Ingush, Ossetians, Kabardians and Balkars, who immediately invite you to the table, the Circassians seem unfriendly and even suspicious. In Tyva you generally feel like a foreigner. They rarely see guests like me. Tourism there is not developed at all, and the locals speak only their own language and are reluctant to make contact. But in neighboring Khakassia there are no problems with this. In the Far East, people are more responsive, especially in remote areas. Probably, in harsh conditions like there, you can’t do without it. And in the Moscow region, in Obninsk, I once needed to charge my phone, I went around all the shops and offices of the shopping center - and no one allowed me to use the outlet.

About dialects and the worst roads

In some regions, sometimes you hear such words that you don’t understand right away, you have to ask again. Once in the Arkhangelsk region I came to the store and said: “I need a kilogram of sugar.” And they answer me: “There is no sugar, only sand.” They simply call refined sugar, and loose sugar is sand. They also say “this year” and “for those years.” For example, “there are few mushrooms this year, not like in those years.” In the Perm region, a loofah is called a “vekhotka”. And in Kamyshin we have white and dark bread, and the “brick” of bread is called “saika.” I remember one of my visiting friends laughed hard when I asked for “half a dark bag” in a store.

The worst roads, in my experience, are in my native Volgograd region and in the neighboring Saratov region, where they are almost never repaired. Of course, the metropolitan regions - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan, Krasnodar Territory - differ in the quality of roads. And so it is everywhere and in everything: the central cities live and prosper, but the remote ones are dying out, the population is rapidly decreasing, and only the old people remain. But even in the outback people manage to live well. In general, it seems to me that not so much depends on where a person lives, but rather on what he does, how he looks at the world. So in remote regions there are those who live happier lives than many metropolitan residents: some fish, some hunt, collect mushrooms, some even engage in scientific activities or writing.

I remember St. Petersburg, Kazan and Novosibirsk more than other Russian cities. I like Peter for some of his special spirit. It's hard for me to describe it in words, but I feel very comfortable there. In Kazan, as in Tatarstan in general, everything is very well-maintained: clean, beautiful, children's parks, squares, playgrounds - everything is for people. It is clear that not all taxes from the region go to Moscow. In general, it’s a very pleasant place to be there. As in Novosibirsk: of all the Siberian cities, it is distinguished by some kind of comfortable urban environment and civilization, or something.

Sometimes I give myself a weekend, a break while traveling, to take a break from new experiences, from people, from traveling, from everything. I don’t go anywhere, I don’t see anyone, I just get enough sleep and mind my own business. Most often for the winter I stay in St. Petersburg or in my native Kamyshin. Having traveled to more than half of the cities of Russia, I began to look differently at the place where I was born, I began to notice details that I had not paid attention to before: architecture, unusual places and views, interesting facts from the history of the city - now I have become much more interested in Kamyshin than before.

Now I have a break from my own travel, but I travel for work: I just flew from Norilsk to Krasnoyarsk, in an hour I have a train to Novosibirsk, from there a plane to Khanty-Mansiysk, then to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg, and from there to Vorkuta. I lead tourist groups along various extraordinary routes as part of the “Unknown Russia” project.

Name Miklouho-Maclay It is well known to everyone: an outstanding ethnographer did a lot to study the life of the indigenous population of New Guinea. It seemed to ordinary people that his life was akin to a breathtaking adventure, but in fact the great traveler faced enormous difficulties in his work, he was constantly overcome by illness. How Miklouho-Maclay lived with the Papuans, and why they called him “the moon man” - read on.

Miklouho-Maclay lived only 41 years and since childhood he constantly fought for the right to life. At first he suffered from pneumonia, later malaria and fever, these diseases provoked constant fainting and bouts of delirium. Maclay's death was generally caused by a disease that doctors were unable to diagnose: the scientist had a sore jaw, one arm did not function, and there was severe swelling in his legs and abdomen. Many years later, during the reburial of Maclay's remains, studies were carried out, as a result of which it was established: Maclay had cancer of the jaw, and metastases had spread throughout the body.

Miklouho-Maclay also had an official wife, an Australian. The couple had two sons, Maclay moved the family to St. Petersburg, where they lived for 6 years. After the death of Miklouho-Maclay, his wife and children returned to Australia.

Read about modern life of Aboriginal people in our review.

The article is devoted to the anthropological study of the skull of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay and the restoration of his lifetime appearance on his basis. A brief description of his life is given, basic biographical data is given, as well as an outline of his travels and scientific research.

Nikolai Nikolaevich bequeathed his skull to science. The authors obtained it from the repository of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after. Peter the Great, St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. The intricate story of the discovery of the skull of this famous scientist and traveler is given.

The skull was studied using a full craniometric program. The skull is ovoid in shape, brachycranial, of medium height. The forehead is straight and wide. The face is narrow and high, the nose protrudes significantly. An individual feature is the combination of a wide brain with a narrow face.

A copy of Miklouho-Maclay's skull was made and two sculptural portraits were made on its basis. The first portrait represents the appearance of the scientist without scalp and facial hair, and was made with the aim of depicting anatomical details and details of appearance. The second portrait is close to the real appearance of the great traveler (with the appropriate hairstyle, beard and mustache).

Features of the external appearance in the reconstructed portrait of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay can be represented as follows. The brain section is large in size and seems to prevail over the facial section, the face is narrow, elongated in shape with a large lower jaw, significantly profiled, the nose is high, protrudes significantly, the forehead is vertical, wide and high, the eyes are large.

Key words: anthropological reconstruction, craniology, individual characteristics of appearance, N.N. Miklukho Maclay.

Introduction

The idea to restore the exact appearance from the skull of the famous scientist arose when the authors visited his homeland - the Rozhdestvenskoye estate, located in the village of Yazykovo-Okulovsky district, Novgorod region. To date, the estate has not been preserved, and the village no longer exists. However, through the efforts of the Okulovsky Museum of Local Lore, with the support of the district administration, celebrations are held annually at this place, and in 1986, for the 140th anniversary of Miklouho-Maclay, a memorial stone was erected by the public with the inscription: “The great traveler, scientist and humanist N.N. Miklouho was born here -Maclay (17(5).07.1846 – 14(2).04.1888" (Fig. 1). Every year, the International Maclay readings are held in the Okulovsky district, which attract ethnographers, anthropologists, local historians, writers and poets. Descendants of the great scientist are frequent guests.

Rice. 2. K.G. Makovsky. Portrait of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay. 1882.

The available photographs and portraits of Miklouho-Maclay present a certain range of images that are united by luxuriant hair and abundant facial hair. However, photographs are not always clearly drawn; many artistic and sculptural portraits were taken after death, and information about the lower part of the face is completely absent in most images (Fig. 2, 3). This served as the first argument in favor of reproducing the scientist’s appearance. The second reason was put forward by Nikolai Nikolaevich himself: he bequeathed his remains to science. In this article, a separate chapter is devoted to the history of the discovery of the skull and the fulfillment of the scientist’s last will.

Rice. 3. N.N. Miklouho-Maclay with his brother M.N. Miklukhoy. Vein. 1870s?

When we started work, we set ourselves the following tasks. First, carefully examine and describe the skull. Next, based on an exact copy made from the skull, recreate the scientist’s lifetime appearance and characterize the individual features of his appearance, which were until now hidden behind lush vegetation. Of course, we could not ignore the enormous contribution to science and the moral feat of the scientific humanist, which made him famous throughout the world - the article is preceded by a brief description of his life. It is interesting to note that the sculptural reconstruction became possible due to grant support from the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) - and it was the RGS that financed a number of the scientist’s expeditions. We take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the Russian Geographical Society for the allocated funds.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay - life path (1846–1888)

The great Russian traveler, wide-ranging naturalist (zoologist, anthropologist, ethnographer), defender of the aboriginal peoples of Southeast Asia and Oceania, Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay was born on July 17, 1846 in the village of Rozhdestvenskoye, Novgorod province, in the family of engineer-captain Nikolai Ilyich Mikloukha, one of the builders of the Nikolaev railway (St. Petersburg–Moscow) and his wife Ekaterina Semyonovna (nee Becker).

From 1859 to 1863 Nikolai Nikolaevich studied at the gymnasium. Due to poor health, he often missed classes and did not graduate from high school. However, he entered St. Petersburg University as a free student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, where he studied natural sciences. However, in 1864, as a participant in student unrest, he was expelled from the university; in the same year he left for Germany. Here Nikolai Nikolaevich attended lectures on completely different sciences (from some branches of mathematics, physics, chemistry to philosophy, political economy and jurisprudence) first at the University of Heidelberg, then at the University of Leipzig. Nikolai Nikolaevich was intensely looking for a place to apply his intellectual abilities.

In the fall of 1865, he entered the medical faculty of the University of Jena, where the prominent German biologist (later the famous follower of the evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin) Ernst Haeckel worked. Here Nikolai Nikolaevich found himself. Professor Haeckel appreciated the intelligent and hardworking Russian student, patronized him in every possible way and made him his assistant. In 1866, Nikolai Nikolaevich participated in a scientific expedition organized by Haeckel to the island. Madeira, and then to the Canary Islands, where he studied the biology of marine invertebrates, fish, and sea sponges. One of the consequences of this expedition was his first scientific article, devoted to the anatomy of certain species of cartilaginous fish, published in 1867 in the Jena Journal of Medicine and Natural History. Here for the first time Nikolai Nikolaevich signed the surname Miklouho-Maclay, using the old nickname of his paternal ancestors. In 1868, the year he graduated from the university, two more of his scientific articles were published. One was devoted to sea sponges, where a new species discovered by him was described, the second was devoted to the comparative anatomy of the brain of cartilaginous fish and was based on his own field materials. In this article, Nikolai Nikolaevich, having entered the soil of theoretical biology, discovered his fighting spirit and polemicized with his venerable colleagues - Ernst Haeckel and Karl Maksimovich Baer. In the same year, he went to Italy, where in a field laboratory he studied the morphology of sea sponges and the brain of fish.

In 1869, Nikolai Nikolaevich, defying difficulties and danger, went alone to the Red Sea, where he studied the marine biocenoses of coral reefs. According to D.D. Tumarkin, the best domestic expert on the life and work of Miklouho-Maclay, it was from this time that Nikolai Nikolaevich showed a tendency to conduct his field research alone, covering the maximum range of phenomena of the object under study (Tumarkin 2012). This was in keeping with the independent and courageous nature of this seemingly frail and sickly man.

In July 1869, Nikolai Nikolaevich, after a long absence, arrived in Russia. In the same year, he participated in the Second Congress of Russian Nature Explorers in Moscow and was accepted into the ranks of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS), where he made a report on his trip to the Red Sea.

Miklouho-Maclay sought to explore completely unexplored areas of the Earth. He chose the island of New Guinea as such (Lubchenkova 1999). In 1870, Nikolai Nikolaevich’s plans to study Australia and Oceania were approved by the Council of the Russian Geographical Society, he received financial support, and in November of this year he sailed on the corvette Vityaz. The voyage was difficult and long; only on September 20, 1871, the Vityaz anchored in Astrolabe Bay off the coast of New Guinea. A hut was built for Miklouho-Maclay on Cape Garagasi between the Papuan villages of Gorendu and Gumbu, where he settled with servants - the Swedish sailor Ohlson and the Polynesian boy Boy (who soon fell ill and died). In the very first days of his stay on the coast of New Guinea, Nikolai Nikolaevich visited the Papuan village of Gorendu alone and without weapons. His courage and calm, unobtrusive behavior gave a positive result. As he himself wrote later: “I soon realized that my extreme helplessness against hundreds, even thousands of people was my main weapon” (Miklouho-Maclay 1950a: 634). And further: “In my relations with the natives, I strictly watched myself, so that even the slightest promise I made would always be fulfilled, so that the Papuans had a conviction, expressed by them in three words and which became a kind of saying among them - “balal Maklay khudi”, which in translation means: Maclay’s word is one” (Miklouho-Maclay 1950a:637).

Soon the Papuan Tui, after Nikolai Nikolaevich cured him of a serious head injury, became his friend and informant. Nikolai Nikolaevich later demonstrated this style of cold-blooded, but at the same time friendly behavior when meeting with any natives of both New Guinea and other territories of the great island world between Asia and Australia. Miklouho-Maclay's behavior, which sharply contrasted with the behavior of most other Europeans, gave him the reputation among the Papuans as a great man (tamo boro-boro) and a kind spirit. Over time, a cult of a cultural hero began to take shape on the basis of his personality.

Nikolai Nikolaevich carefully recorded and described all aspects of the local nature - he studied the original flora and fauna of this special part of the tropics, and conducted meteorological observations. On this coast of New Guinea, he was the first European to penetrate the life of the local population - the inhabitants of the classical Neolithic culture, completely unaffected by the influence of cultures of a different level. That is why Miklouho-Maclay was especially interested in all aspects of the cultural life of the local Papuan aborigines: their farming, crafts, tools, family relationships, celebrations, connections between neighboring and more distant villages, etc. Nikolai Nikolaevich studied the language of the Papuans from nearby villages. On this first visit to New Guinea, he lived here for 15 months. Subsequently, this territory received the name – Maclay Coast.

Miklouho-Maclay paid special attention to his anthropological research. Here and in his further expedition trips, Nikolai Nikolaevich usually measured the height (body length) of the subjects studied and the structural features of the body of both men and women - he recorded the following signs of the studied population: the shape and color of the scalp, its prevalence on the body, the degree of pigmentation of various areas skin. For the sake of the then trend in anthropology, he paid special attention to the shape of the cranium, highlighting its dolichocranial and brachycranial forms. Nikolai Nikolaevich also noted and described the traditional operations of the aborigines on the body, such as tattooing, circumcision in men, artificial deformation of the head, the sometimes encountered specific operation “mika”, etc. Being a strictly objective research scientist, he encountered and noted negative, from a European point of view, local traditions: the excessive workload of women in family life, frequent (but not bloody) clashes between villages, and even cannibalism found in some areas of New Guinea. Miklouho-Maclay himself did not see the forced burial of elderly parents, but according to information from some European missionaries, this custom was found in the New Hebrides Islands of Melanesia.

Miklouho-Maclay's next expedition to New Guinea took place in 1873. This time Nikolai Nikolayevich visited the western coast of New Guinea - the territory of the Koviai coast, where the negative influence of Malayan and Mollucan merchants and pirates, who did not disdain the slave trade, was already felt. As a consequence of this, instead of villages surrounded by well-groomed agricultural plots, as on the banks of the Maclay, he observed here the dominance of the nomadic lifestyle of the aborigines and the collapse of economic agricultural culture. Nikolai Nikolaevich wrote about this: “All these dwellings are only temporarily inhabited, and it is even rare to find residents in them. The entire population wanders around the bays and bays in their pirogues, remaining only a few hours or days in one area. The reason for this is constant wars between the population, attacks by Hongyi. Comparing the way of life of the Papuans of Koviai with the way of life of the Papuans of the Maclay Coast, one encounters a great difference between both populations. Despite the fact that the Koviai Papuans have long been familiar with iron and various tools, although they have become acquainted with clothing and firearms, although they wear silver and even gold jewelry, they remained and remain nomads. The lack of food due to the lack of plantations and domestic animals forces them to wander around the bays in search of sea animals, to catch fish, and to wander through the forests to obtain some fruits, leaves and roots. The Papuans of the Maclay Coast, although they live completely isolated from intercourse with other races, although they were not familiar (before my visit in 1871) with any metal, nevertheless they built and are building large villages with their stone axes, with relatively very comfortable, often large huts, They carefully cultivate their plantations, which supply them with food all year round, and have domestic animals - pigs, dogs and chickens. Due to the sedentary lifestyle and the union of many villages among themselves, wars among them are comparatively much less frequent than between the Koviai Papuans” (Miklouho-Maclay 1950b:107–108). Here Miklouho-Maclay saw with his own eyes the dramatic consequences of the clash of different civilizations. Representatives of the more developed civilization of the Malay Archipelago plundered, robbed and often enslaved the inhabitants of the culturally more backward population of New Guinea, causing retaliatory aggression from the Papuans. This led to the economic regression of the autochthonous population, a return from the producing economy of the Neolithic type to the economically less productive one - the appropriating one, and, as a further consequence of this, forced inter-tribal wars, which aggravated the economic decline. Here Miklouho-Maclay already had to, unlike life on the banks of the Maclay, not part with weapons and sometimes even use them.

Apparently the first visit to New Guinea, its northeastern part, where the way of life of the natives had not yet been deformed by external influences, just as Nikolai Nikolaevich’s first love could not be erased from the memory of Nikolai Nikolaevich, and he visited the shore of his name twice more. In 1876-1877 he spent seventeen months here, settling near the village of Bongu, continuing to study the cultural and anthropological characteristics of both coastal and mountain Papuans.

The third and last visit of Nikolai Nikolaevich to the Maclay coast was very brief (March 17–23, 1883). Here sad news awaited him - many of his friends, including Tui, died. The village of Gorendu was abandoned, Bongu was significantly reduced in number. Despite this, Nikolai Nikolaevich forever fell in love with this place, where he fully revealed his talent as a researcher and a kind person.

“I felt at home, and it seems to me positively that to no corner of the globe where I have lived during my travels do I feel such affection as to this coast of New Guinea. Every tree seemed old to me.” (Miklouho-Maclay 1950c.:582–595). Local residents asked him to stay and live there.

Miklouho-Maclay also visited the southern coast of New Guinea twice (in 1880 and 1881), where he studied the local Papuans, slightly affected by the superficial influence of European culture. Some European Christian missions were already working here. The Torres Strait region, which separates north-eastern Australia from New Guinea, was home to pearl fishing, which attracted a wide range of people, including adventurers. In addition, the recent Australian “gold rush” of the late 40s and early 50s of that century led to the appearance of gold miners on the southern coast of New Guinea, where, however, no gold was found. All this to a certain extent deformed the social life of the local population. Anthropological studies of the Papuans in these places showed Nikolai Nikolaevich the presence of foreign racial admixture here, but not European, but Polynesian. Thus, it turned out that of all the regions of the island of New Guinea explored by Nikolai Nikolaevich, the population of the Maclay coast turned out to be the least affected by any external influence.

Miklouho-Maclay's anthropological and ethnological research was not limited to the Papuans of New Guinea. He studied many previously little-studied or completely unstudied ethnic groups of the archipelagos of Melanesia, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippine island of Luzon. (Butinov 1950).

He paid particular attention to the anthropology of the Negritos (Aeta), representatives of a short, dark-pigmented and curly-haired race, small populations of which were mosaically interspersed with the main modern southern Mongoloid population of the Malay Archipelago, the Philippines and Indochina, and who are probably relics of the more ancient population of this region. Outwardly, they were very similar to the Papuans of New Guinea. “The first glance at the Negritos was enough for me to recognize them as one tribe with the Papuans, whom I saw on the islands of the Pacific Ocean and with whom I lived for 15 months in New Guinea...” wrote Nikolai Nikolaevich (Miklouho-Maclay 1950b:8) .

To what extent are the Negritos really anthropologically close to the Papuans of New Guinea? On this occasion, Nikolai Nikolaevich argued with his senior colleague Karl Maksimovich Baer, ​​who wrote: “These two skulls (Aeta of the Philippine Islands) were positively brachycephalic, while the Papuans were positively dolichocephalic” (Miklouho-Maclay 1951a: 14). Craniological measurements made by Miklouho-Maclay showed that among the Papuans, as well as among the Melanesians, brachycephalic individuals are often found: “I think that among the many varieties of the Papuan tribe there are those who, like the Negritos of Luzon, are brachycephalic or whose skull sizes approaching the brachycephalic form" (Miklouho-Maclay 1950: 9). On our part, there is nothing to argue with this - indeed, any anthropometric character in the studied population (or cranioseries) has a certain range of variability, often significant. Unfortunately, in the articles available to us by Miklouho-Maclay, he provides only selective data on the values ​​of the cranial or cephalic index of individual Papuans and individuals of other populations (although, according to his records, a large number of individuals, both male and female, were measured). Sometimes the range of variability of these anthropological characteristics was recorded, but nowhere were the average group values ​​of measurement parameters and, especially, statistical indicators of variability of characteristics, i.e. dispersion values. In his time, it was not yet customary to cite the latter in scientific publications of this kind.

According to later anthropological studies of the 20th century, Karl Maksimovich Baer turned out to be closer to the truth. Massive craniological studies by anthropologists of the 20th century showed a significant difference between the cranioseries Aeta (Negrito of the Philippines), on the one hand, and the Papuans and Melanesians, on the other. As it turned out, for example, according to the very complete informative summary work of V.P. Alekseev, the Aeta (also the Andamanese) are obvious brachycranes, and the Papuans and most series of Melanesians are dolichocranes, often even ultradolichocranes (Alexejev 1973).

The shape of the skull of the population of a particular territory, including one of its parameters - the cranial index, although variable over time, is quite stable, since it is genetically determined. It has now become clear that the Papuans and Melanesians belong to a different craniotype than the Aeta and Andamanese. The first is characterized by an elongated and high shape of the skull, the other by a short, wide and lower shape (Pestryakov 1995; Pestryakov, Grigorieva 2004). Therefore, the genesis of these two populations of the Malayan-Pacific tropics must be significantly different.

In Australia, Nikolai Nikolaevich, as well as in New Guinea and Oceania, continued to study the anthropology of the aborigines, including collecting craniological material. In the Australian Museum, he found and studied one amazing skull (more precisely, a calvarium). This is how he describes it: “...The cephalic index of the skull does not seem to modern anthropologists to be such an important factor for the classification of human races as in the time of Retzeus, it still remains a very important feature in craniology.... This skull is remarkable for its extreme length. The ofrio-occipital length is 202 mm, the length between the glabella and the back of the head is 204 mm, with a width of 119 mm. So the width index calculated from the first dimension is 58.9 (the same index calculated from the second dimension is 58.3). I must especially note that this skull is natural, that is, it does not give even the slightest indication of any deformation... The height index of this skull (from basion to bregma 131 mm)..." (Miklouho-Maclay 1951b: 417-418) . From our point of view, it is likely that the relative length of this skull is the absolute maximum, and the relative width is the absolute minimum, among all known skulls of modern humanity.

However, it was not only anthropological research that occupied Miklouho-Maclay’s attention. He, being a generalist naturalist, never gave up purely biological research, where his main interest was the comparative anatomical study of the brain of vertebrates, ranging from cartilaginous fish (sharks) to humans inclusive. Arriving in Australia in 1878, he met and then became friends with the head of the Linnean Society, Dr. William Macleay (almost complete similarity of surnames). Here, near the city of Sydney, with the support of Australian government circles, he managed to open a marine biological station for the study of autochthonous fauna. And here, in Australia, Nikolai Nikolaevich met the young widow Margaret Emma Robertson, who fell in love with him, as they say, “at first sight.” The love turned out to be mutual and, overcoming the resistance of Margaret’s father, the rich and influential John Robertson, Nikolai Nikolaevich’s wedding took place on February 27, 1884. The wedding took place according to the Protestant rite, although Miklouho-Maclay was Orthodox and did not renounce his religion. Nikolai Nikolaevich received permission for this wedding ceremony from the Russian Emperor Alexander III himself, who strongly supported the Russian traveler.

Miklouho-Maclay’s activities were not limited to scientific research; he actively and selflessly fought for a humanistic attitude towards the population of the economically backward population of the tropical regions of the Earth. The evolutionary teachings of Lamarck and Darwin gave birth to an “illegitimate child” - anthropological racism. This pseudo-scientific reactionary political movement arose in the middle of the 19th century as a result of the struggle between two scientific concepts concerning the origin of humanity: a) monogenism (humanity has one initial evolutionary line) and b) polygenism (different parts of humanity - races, descended from different ancestral forms). But every scientific point of view acquires both its political fans and political opponents. In the USA, in the middle of the last century, the theory of polygenism challenged the biblical tradition (the origin of all humanity from the same ancestors - Adam and Eve) and at the same time served as a theoretical weapon of slave owners against abolitionists (opponents of slavery). In 1854, Knott and Gliddon’s book “Types of Humanity” was published, where the authors try to prove that blacks and Europeans have different evolutionary (simian) ancestors. The same ideas about the inferiority of blacks, about their special phylogenetic origin, were developed by English scientists: paleontologist Agassiz and James Ghent - the founder of the London Anthropological Society and others.

Around the same time, another reactionary pseudoscientific movement arose in France - “anthroposociology”, the founder of which was Count A. Gobineau. The essence of his teaching, published in his Treatise on the Inequality of Human Races, is that the driving force of all great civilizations was the dominance of the superior “Aryan” race. Mixing it with “inferior” conquered races, supposedly incapable of independent cultural progress, has always led to the decline of civilization.

Our Russian anthropological science has always taken the position of principled anti-racism, and one of its predecessors on this issue was Miklouho-Maclay. As a scientist-anthropologist, Nikolai Nikolaevich adhered to the concept of a single origin of humanity, using scientific arguments to prove the inconsistency of polygenism and rejecting the idea that some races (Negroids and Australoids) represent, as it were, transitional variants from ancestral forms to the modern human species. He defended the rights of the indigenous population of Southeast Asia and Oceania, and actively fought against the most terrible and shameful phenomenon in human history - the slave trade (Tumarkin 1981). Being a humanist and political idealist, he tried to turn the Maclay Coast into a kind of ethnographic reserve, where he claimed the role of ruler. In this regard, Nikolai Nikolaevich unsuccessfully called on the Russian administration to colonize this territory of New Guinea. Later he approached government circles in Great Britain and the young German Empire with similar proposals. However, Miklouho-Maclay’s dreams were not destined to come true; in 1884, the territories of northwestern New Guinea, together with part of the Melanesian archipelago, were turned into a German colony. Morally dejected, seriously ill Nikolai Nikolaevich, together with his wife and two young children, returned to Russia, where he died on April 14, 1988 in St. Petersburg.

Below is a map - a diagram of the main expedition routes of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay in Southeast Asia and Oceania (Fig. 4).

Rice. 4. Map of the main expedition routes of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay in Southeast Asia and Oceania.

Despite his sharp and observant mind and tremendous ability to work, Nikolai Nikolaevich was an idealist by nature and a very impractical person, completely indifferent to public honor, and disdainful of an academic scientific career. Science was the only god he served. His anthropological and ethnographic works devoted to the peoples of the then little-studied territory of the southwestern Pacific became a golden fund in the building of our national science (Roginsky, Tokarev 1950).

Rice. 5. Australian with a boomerang. 1880(?). Photo from the collection of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay.

One should completely agree with the opinion of D.D. Tumarkin that Miklouho-Maclay was one of the last wide-ranging natural scientists (Tumarkin 2012).

St. Petersburg ethnologist B.N. Butinov wrote:

“Traveller - scientist - humanist: these three words most fully and accurately express the main content of the entire life of Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay - a life that is offensively short, surprisingly integral and bright.” (Butinov 1971).

From our point of view, the description given by the Norwegian polar explorer Herald Sverdrup to his famous countryman Fridtjof Nansen is fully suitable for Nikolai Nikolaevich: “He was great as a traveler, greater as a scientist, and even greater as a person” (Lobusov 2013).

Rice. 6. Chief from the island of Fiji. 1870s(?). Photo from the collection of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay.

Here we present several little-known photographs from the collection of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay (Fig. 5–7).

The history of the execution of N.N.’s will Miklouho-Maclay

Will of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay’s skull to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography seems to our contemporary to be a well-known fact, seemingly not requiring a separate discussion.

In 1874, while in Batavia (the modern city of Jakarta, Java), N.N. Miklouho-Maclay bequeathed a collection of skulls (Collection of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) RAS No. 211), as well as his skull to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg to increase the collection of the founder of anthropology in Russia (Alekseev 1969:11), academician Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876): “I will try to take the necessary measures to ensure that my head is preserved and sent to Mr. Ankersmit, whom I ask to send it to the Museum of Anthropology of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, to whom I bequeath it” ( Miklouho-Maclay 1953:418).

Rice. 7. Akhmat, boy 12 years old. Manila. 1873. Photograph from the collection of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay.

However, the story turned out a little differently.

The answer to the question “Why did the skullcap get into the museum only in 1962?” Neither the museum documentation nor the old-timers of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography could provide them. Peter the Great.

The search led us to the Archive of the Russian Geographical Society (we express our gratitude to the archive team and the head of the archive M.F. Matveeva).

Archival documents on the history of the Geographical Society of the Soviet period revealed an unexpected picture.

In April 1938, the All-Union Geographical Society of the USSR Academy of Sciences celebrated the 50th anniversary of the death of the traveler, anthropologist, ethnographer N.N. Miklouho-Maclay (1846–1888). The Commission for the Perpetuation of the Memory of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay at the Geographical Society, painstaking, large-scale work was carried out to identify documents about the life and works of Miklouho-Maclay, his diaries, manuscripts in archives and other scientific and educational institutions of the USSR.

Applying for documents, the Geographical Society not only mentioned the scientist’s merits, but also emphasized the relevance of Miklouho-Maclay’s works for Europe in the late 1930s and the fight against racism: “N.N. Miklouho-Maclay was not only a remarkable traveler and geographer, he was a great humanist, for whom there were no higher or lower races. Having proved the unity of the human race, he thus exposed the racist theory of the inferiority of different peoples more than 50 years ago, a theory that is currently one of the leading ones in fascism countries” (RGS Archive. F. 1. Op. 1 No. 45. L.155).

An exhibition of archival documents and museum exhibits was organized. President of the All-Union Geographical Society N.I. took an active part in preparing the exhibition and other events for this date. Vavilov (1887–1943). While selecting documents for the memorial exhibition, Vavilov drew attention to the scientist’s will, in which he bequeathed his skull to the anthropological department of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The document was identified by the head of the archive E.I. Gleyberomi created, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, a real sensation (Pomerantsev 1987:323).

“Yes, this is a real feat!” – conveys the words of A.M. Vavilov. Chernikov (1907–2002), who worked in those years as an inspector of the Archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences, “I didn’t even regret giving my skull for science!” (Chernikov 1987:329).

Commission for Perpetuating the Memory of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay was also involved in putting in order the crypt of the scientist and his relatives at the Volkovo cemetery in Leningrad. In the fall of 1938, the Commission received a decision from the Leningrad City Council to rebury, in connection with the reconstruction of the cemetery, the remains of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay to part of the Literary Bridges cemetery (Pomerantsev 1966:108). Referring to the will of the scientist and traveler, the Commission of the Geographical Society appealed to the Commission for the reburial of I.S. Turgeneva, M.S. Saltykova-Shchedrina, D.V. Grigorovich and N.N. Miklouho-Maclay with a “persistent proposal” to transfer the skull of Miklouho-Maclay to the Geographical Society (Archive of the Russian Geographical Society. F. 1. Op. 1. No. 45. L. 155 vol.). On October 8, 1938, the Miklukh crypt was opened at the Volkov cemetery in Leningrad. The scientist's father (1857) and sister (1880) were also buried in the crypt. A study was carried out on the possible affiliation of the burial:

"1. The location of the coffins in the ground corresponds to the chronological order of burials, i.e. The traveler's coffin is closest to the surface. Although both upper coffins were covered with slabs, the latter sank under the weight of a significant layer of earth.

2. The small size of the bones and the presence of a woman’s earring exclude the possibility that the first open coffin belonged to N.N. Miklouho-Maclay. The earring found is similar to the earring that can be seen in O.N.’s photograph. Miklouho-Maclay, located in the Scientific Archive of the Society.

3. Comparison of decorations on the second coffin with a photograph depicting N.N. Miklouho-Maclay in his coffin (the photograph is in the Scientific Archive of the Society) shows their complete resemblance. The remains of men's civilian clothing and the size of the bones also confirm that this burial belonged to a traveler.

4. The belonging of the third coffin to the traveler’s father is confirmed by the following: A) this coffin is located at the lowest level of the grave, in that part of it that can actually be called a crypt, for the upper coffins were buried, although under slabs, but, as was already said above , these slabs settled because were not firmly anchored to the foundation. B) the presence of fairly well-preserved remains of military boots (N.N. Miklouho-Maclay’s father, judging by the photograph available to his relatives, was buried in military uniform). C) the size of the bones—the exact height of the traveler (according to one of his letters, stored in the Archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences) is 1 m 60 cm, the same bones belong to a person of greater height” (Archive of the Russian Geographical Society.F.6.Op.4.No.18.L .3-4). A witness to the opening of the burial, geographer-cartographer P.P. Pomerantsev (1903–1979) wrote: “The skull was separated and, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, we delivered it to
archive of the Society before transfer to the Academy of Sciences" (Pomerantsev 1966:128).
After exhumation by the preparator of the Central Scientific Research Geological Exploration Museum named after. Academician F.N. Chernysheva V.V. Lebedinsky performed a dissection of N.N.’s skull. Miklouho-Maclay (Archive of the Russian Geographical Society. F. 1. Inventory 1. No. 45. L. 171). The scientist’s seized skull was transferred to the Archives of the Geographical Society, a branch of the Academy of Sciences. In memoirs about the President of the Geographical Society N.I. Vavilov also found a place for this event, which caused some speculation.

Witness to the exhumation, cartographer P.P. Pomerantsev mentioned public condemnation: the removal of the skull was called grave digging and blasphemy. However, N.I. Vavilov, having come to the head of the Archives and the “discoverer” of the will of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay E.I. According to Pomerantsev’s recollections, Gleyber said: “Well, you probably never thought that, having unearthed the will, you would have to dig up Maclay’s grave. Well, Evgeny Izrailevich, thank you for being able to fulfill the traveler’s will” (Pomerantsev 1966:128).

A.M. Chernikov in the article “Interest in the History of Science” retells the words of the President of the Geographical Society N.I. Vavilova: “So we accepted the will of Miklouho-Maclay. The Geographical Society is located at the Academy of Sciences, therefore, now the skull of Miklouho-Maclay will be at the Academy of Sciences” (Chernikov 1987:330).

Skull N.N. Miklouho-Maclay was kept in the Archives of the Geographical Society for many years. In May 1962, the Presidium of the society decided to transfer the skull “due to the lack of necessary conditions for its storage” to the Institute of Ethnography. N.N. Miklouho-Maclay/Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Archive of the Russian Geographical Society F.31.Op.1.No.134.L.4). May 31, 1962 skull of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay was accepted by the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Inventory of the MAE collection No. 6499). It was from there that the skull of the great anthropologist was removed in 2015 for this study.

Craniological study

Skull N.N. Miklouho-Maclay has large dimensions of a horizontal circle through the ophrion and a transverse arc. The sagittal arch is very large for men, that is, the skull is quite long.

Description of the brain box

The shape of the skull when viewed from above is ovoid - the greatest width of the skull is shifted back and falls to the back. The skull of Nikolai Nikolaevich can be described as shortened and relatively wide - brachycranial. The middle altitude-longitudinal indicator indicates orthocrania. It falls into the category of metric skulls based on the altitude-transverse index. Both indicators indicate a relatively medium-high skull.

The forehead is straight and visually quite wide. The absolute dimensions of the smallest and largest forehead widths fall into the category of medium and very large. According to the frontal-transverse index, the skull is mesoterrestrial (forehead of medium width). The frontozygomatic index is very large. Based on the fairly low index of curvature of the frontal bone, one can conclude that it is quite strongly curved. The development of the glabella is assessed as three points on the six-point Broca scale. Superciliary ridges (type II) – do not reach the middle of the superior orbital rim.

The parietal tubercles are located high. A relatively low curvature index of the parietal bones indicates a small radius of curvature. The mastoid processes are quite large, about 2 cm long and rated 2. The occiput is medium wide.

Description of the facial skeleton

The facial part of the skull is narrow and relatively high, and according to the upper facial index it is molded (indicative of high-facedness). The angles of horizontal profiling are classified as small and very small, i.e. the face, even by Caucasian standards, is sharply profiled. Facial orthognathism is confirmed by low values ​​of the facial prominence index (Flower's index). The craniofacial vertical index has an average value. On the contrary, the craniofacial transverse index is very small, indicating a combination of a narrow face and a relatively wide braincase.

The orbits are medium high and relatively not wide (mesoconch). In absolute dimensions, the nose is high and relatively narrow (leptorrhine), the same is confirmed by the nasal index. The angle of protrusion of the nose is large. The symotic and maxillofrontal indexes are included in the category of large and very large, which indicates a significant height of the nose. The lower edge of the pyriform opening is anthropina, that is, the lateral edges of the pyriform opening directly pass into the lower edge, which has a sharp shape. The development of the anterior nasal spine is assessed with a score of 4. In 1962, the head of the Department of Radiology and Radiology of the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute, corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, one of the founders of X-ray anatomy, founder of the Russian school of paleopathy D.G. Rokhlin (1895–1981 ) (Buzhilova 2009:31–33) the first x-ray anatomical study of the skull and lower jaw of N.N. Miklukho-Maclay was performed. The research results were published in the work “Diseases of ancient people (bones of people from different eras - normal and pathologically altered)” (Rokhlin 1965:151–154). The causes of the illness that tormented the scientist were established. Rokhlin wrote that both German and St. Petersburg doctors believed that Miklouho-Maclay suffered from the consequences of severe malaria, rheumatism, and the severe pain in the cheek was associated with acute neuralgia, which had no anatomical basis. An X-ray anatomical study in 1962 showed a picture of a cancerous lesion localized in the region of the right mandibular canal and damage to the lower branch of the trigeminal nerve (Rokhlin 1965:151–154).

Work on restoring the appearance of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay

Considering the great value of the skull that we had to work with, it was decided to make a plastic casting from it, which was entrusted to R.M. Galeev, a member of the Laboratory. Next, a comparison was made of the sizes taken on the copy and on the original, which showed a complete match. In international practice, it is strongly recommended to carry out facial reconstruction on casts, and use the original as a control (Damasetal. 2015). For maximum accuracy of reconstruction, the work was carried out by two authors of this article, who are familiar with the method of reconstructing a face from a skull: Veselovskaya E.V. and Grigorieva O.M.

The Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction has been working for many years to improve the methods of accurately conveying the lifetime appearance when reconstructing it from the skull. A unique program “Appearance Algorithm” has been developed, which allows step by step to consistently calculate the lifetime characteristics of the head, based on the size and characteristics of the skull (Veselovskaya 2015a). The application of scientific developments in recent years has enriched anthropological reconstruction with new possibilities. The study of paleoanthropological material is now presented in a more informative and visual way (Veselovskaya et al. 2015). The successful use of the “Appearance Algorithm” in investigative practice in identifying individuals reflects the wide capabilities of the method and its advantages (Abramov et al. 2015; Veselovskaya et al. 2013; Damasetal. 2015; Ibáñezetal. 2015). One of the aspects of the program is the calculation of the proportions of external elements and a verbal description of the external appearance, comparable to a forensic verbal portrait (Veselovskaya 2015b).

Initially, the skull was carefully measured and described with special emphasis on individualizing details. Then, using the “Appearance Algorithm,” the dimensional characteristics of the head were calculated.

Detailed stages of the craniofacial reconstruction process are presented in many works (Veselovskaya, Balueva 2012; Veselovskaya 2015) and they are approximately the same for all cases. Here it is appropriate to dwell on the specifics of working with this particular skull. An important feature is the absence of all teeth in the upper jaw and atrophy of the alveolar process. Apparently, Nikolai Nikolaevich underwent surgery to remove the affected areas of the bone. He wore a yellow metal removable denture (Fig. 9). When discussing the details of the reconstruction, the team of authors decided to recreate the appearance of the scientist not at the time of his death, when he was severely debilitated by illness, but at the age of about 35 years. On the upper jaw, an alveolar process with teeth was formed from plasticine, as it was before the loss of one’s own teeth.

The shape of the bridge of the nose is based on the outline of the skull made on a dioptograph (Fig. 10). The figure shows a contour reconstruction of the face in profile. It can be seen that the bridge of the nose is almost straight with a slight hump. Swollen mastoid processes of the temporal bones are associated with protrusion of the auricle.

The first portrait without hair on the face and head is presented in Figure 11. It is this reconstruction that carries scientific information, since here we see the lower part of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay’s face, the shape of his head, hidden in most portraits. It is immediately noticeable that the brain region is large in size and seems to prevail over the facial region. Mesocephaly is noted: in the fronto-occipital direction the head is of medium length. The face is elongated with a large lower jaw, significantly profiled. The nose is high and protrudes significantly. The forehead is wide and high, its direction is vertical, the eyes are large, the eyebrows are slightly broken. The ears are protruding and of medium height.

Figure 12 shows an artistic sculptural portrait, made taking into account the smallest details, creating a unique individuality of the image.

Rice. 12. Artistic sculptural portrait made from the skull of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay. Authors E.V. Veselovskaya, O.M. Grigorieva
(photo by M.B. Leibov).

© S.V. Vasiliev, E.V. Veselovskaya, O.M. Grigorieva, A.P. Pestryakov, M.V. Hartanovich

N.N. Miklouho-Maclay, Portrait of the artist A. Korzukhin, Mitchell Library NSW

To the 165th anniversary of his birth.

It is difficult to be Russian, live in Australia and not touch the name of Miklouho-Maclay. Well, only if you're not at all curious. Once you find yourself in the Southern Hemisphere, you search with interest and find information about Russian people whom fate brought to this part of the globe earlier. What did they do and what did they achieve?
And here is such a familiar name from school textbooks, and at the same time a mysterious name!
From school geography textbooks and the film of distant 1947, Miklouho Maclay seemed to me not a very real figure, mythical, distant, like Don Quixote...
And somehow it didn’t happen to come closer earlier. Chance helped.
I was asked to look at what letters from a Russian scientist were in the Sydney University Museum. Well, I, like many who were interested in the life of the traveler, was drawn in like a magnet by his unusual fate, the extraordinary, purposeful personality of a Citizen of the World.
What is most striking is his scientific obsession, full of Christian self-sacrifice. Much has been written about him, but the memories of his contemporaries have not yet been collected together, and not everything has yet been studied and verified. The image emerges as bright, talented, contradictory.

Dream of Black Russia
Nikolai Nikolaevich was born on July 17, 1846. His father, a railway engineer, then the first head of the Moscow station in St. Petersburg, died early, when Nikolai was 11 years old. Family legend says that the ancestor of the famous traveler, Cossack Miklukha from the army of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, captured the Scottish knight Michael Mac Lai, who fought in the Polish army of Potocki. The Scot took root in Miklukha’s family, married his sister, and the surname acquired a second part, which only Nikolai Nikolaevich and his family began to actively use.
The mother raised five children herself and gave them all higher education. Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay studied in Europe, since he was expelled from St. Petersburg University for participating in student unrest. Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, then the Faculty of Medicine at the Universities of Leipzig and Jena. After graduation, Nikolai Nikolaevich traveled a lot, participated in several expeditions to collect zoological collections and study sponges and the brain of cartilaginous fish. Also interested in comparative anatomical work. This interest grew into a plan for an anthropological-ethnographic expedition to Oceania.
Why New Guinea? The choice was made, most likely, because in the 19th century it was one of the most unexplored countries, and for the anthropologist it was extremely interesting to confirm or refute existing hypotheses about the origin of the local Papuan tribes. For two years the scientist lived and worked in New Guinea among the Papuans. He studied their life, anthropological features, defended their social interests, developed a plan and tried to create a Russian settlement in New Guinea - Chernorossiya.

You’re simply amazed when you read how often, already unwell, with a fever, twice a year, he made what were then long sea journeys from Australia - Oceania to Russia, delivering research materials to the Geographical Society. How many cargoes, the results of many months of labor, were lost, lost forever. In a fire in Sydney, many of the scientist's works and documents were destroyed. And yet, a lot of collected materials remained. I haven't had time to process everything. He died in 1888 while preparing for the publication of two volumes with diaries and travel notes about his travels.

After his death, only in 1923, the famous scientist D.N. Anuchin managed to publish the first volume of notes and travel diaries of Miklouho Maclay. Then, in the 50s, employees of the Institute of Ethnography of the Miklouho Maclay Academy of Sciences prepared and published 5 volumes of his works.

Then we seemed to get acquainted with Miklouho-Maclay again, after the “varnishing” of his figure by the Stalin era. From the pages of the diaries, we saw a living, interesting, controversial person, fanatically devoted to science. Don Quixote of Science!
And by 2006, on the 150th anniversary of Miklouho-Maclay, 6 volumes of his works were published. The preface to this publication was written by historian and writer Elena Govor (Australia) http://www.elena.id.au

To Miklouho-Maclay's Sydney addresses
Nikolai Nikolaevich lived in Australia for 5 years. He came here to receive treatment after New Guinea at the invitation of his colleague, naturalist and member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, Sir William Macleay. But from the very first days he continued his scientific work, trying to implement his long-standing plans. Here he opened the first marine biological station in the Southern Hemisphere in the Watson Bay area. He studied marine flora and fauna, the life and anthropology of the Australian aborigines, measured the temperature of the earth in the deepest mine (Victoria) and from here continued to be interested in his beloved New Guinea, the land that he yearned for in separation...
Living in Sydney, it is easy to go to the addresses where Miklouho-Maclay lived and worked; the houses have been preserved. The Macleay House, where Nikolai Nikolaevich lived upon his arrival in Australia, now houses the Elizabeth Bay House Museum. The area also decorates the house near the water “Wyoming” in the current Birchgrove area (No 25 Wharf Road), where two sons were born into the family of Nicholas and Margaret Miklouho-Maclay.

Nikolai Nikolaevich married the daughter of the former Prime Minister of New South Wales, Sir John Robertson. Their love story will not leave you indifferent. I touched it as if it were a secret, looking at the photographs in the Mitchell Library. Encrypted inscriptions on the photo, and then on the tombstone at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg. It was a deep feeling, protected from prying eyes.
Of course, the main materials and collections were transferred to Russia and are stored there. But many documents, letters, some collections, are stored in the University of Sydney Museum (Macleau Museum), in the Sydney University Library (Fisher LIbrary) and the State Library of NSW (Mitchell Library).

The story of one portrait
I really liked the Macleay Museum. Small but meaningful. Free admission. In the foyer there is a bust of Miklouho-Maclay by sculptor Gennady Raspopov, erected for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Nikolaevich. The museum is named after the founder of the museum, Sir William Maclay, an Australian scientist, colleague and friend of Miklouho-Maclay. Stands with a collection of materials collected by Maclay in New Guinea and Australia, photographic documents, drawings by Maclay, various utensils, and household items of the Papuans. Not everything is on display, of course; a lot is in storage. The catalog of the Miklouho-Maclay archive is impressive.
In the rare books department of the Sydney University Library (Fisher LIbrary), they told me that among the originals they only have the diary of Margaret Miklouho-Maclay, the scientist’s wife, for 1888, the year of the scientist’s death. And that, basically, papers, letters, photographs are stored in the State State Library (Mitchell Library).

The curator of the photographic archive, Allan Davies, previously worked at the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney and is familiar with the fate of the Miklouho-Maclay archives in Australia. Allan showed me the original photographs, which included a photo of Margaret Robertson, dated 1881, with a wedding ring on her hand and the inscription on the back: “I will never belong to anyone else.”

When you hold such a document in your hand, a piece of someone’s life, a secret, a feeling of belonging involuntarily arises, as if you were holding time by the hand. And we know that Nicholas received permission to marry Margaret from Tsar Alexander lll only in 1884. Margaret was a young widow, having married at eighteen and losing her husband 3 years later. Who was she writing to? Nicholas first appeared in Australia on July 18, 1878, but traveled a lot and was not in one place all the time. And so on July 14, 1882, on the way to Russia on the corvette Vestnik, he asked Margaret for her hand in a letter. So this inscription is for him and the ring is from him..?.
-Do you know, - Allan told me, - that we have the original of the magnificent portrait of Nikolai Nikolaevich, the work of Alexei Korzukhin?
Yes? And we went to the library basements... Apparently, Allan really really liked the portrait. He quickly found a place and a large, beautiful oil portrait of Nikolai Nikolayevich floated out of the darkness along the rails above. Again there was a feeling of time in my hands... I’m taking a portrait in the Tretyakov Gallery! And it's in the storerooms, in the basement of the Sydney library.
Alexey Korzukhin (1835 - 1894) was one of the founders of the famous Russian group of artists "Peredvizhniki". The artist was friends with Miklouho-Maclay, and when Nikolai was at his mother’s estate in Malin, in 1886, he visited him. This portrait was painted there. In December 1886, Nikolai gave it to his wife. After her husband's death, Margaret donated this beautiful portrait to the state library.

Man is man everywhere...
In the memoirs of contemporaries, Miklouho-Maclay looks like a very gifted person, attractive in communication, and extraordinary. It is known how warmly he wrote and highly appreciated the activities of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay Lev Tolstoy in a letter (September 1886): “As far as I know, you were the first to prove through irrefutable experience that man is a man everywhere, that is, a good open being, with whom one can and should enter into communication only with goodness and truth, and not with guns and alcohol. And you proved this with a feat of true courage, which is so rare in our society that the people of our society do not even understand it."

Many materials, articles, books have been written about the scientist by historians and writers Elena Govor, Alexander Massov, Wendy Payton and others. I knew Wendy. It's a pity that Wendy was no longer with us this year. She did a lot for the memory of Miklouho-Maclay both among Australians and in Russia. She wrote a very necessary book: “Nicholas and his connections with Australia,” which describes in great detail all the events of the scientist’s life and achievements, especially those related to his stay in Australia. There is also an extensive bibliography.

Ethnography, anthropology, geography, zoology, botany - all this interested N.N. Miklouho-Maclay. A brave Russian traveler, a scientist and encyclopedist of global scale, who gave his life to science, in the literal sense of the word, having lost his health in the difficult conditions of tropical Oceania for a European, he became the youngest Member of the Russian Geographical Society,
How can you accomplish so much in 41 years of life?

In his youth, Miklouho-Maclay met in Weimar with Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. He was then struck by the writer’s words about happiness: “When a person wants something, he cannot be happy.” And he decided that until his old age he would want something and would be happy with it.
In 1873, after his first trip to New Guinea, Nikolai Nikolaevich wrote to his friend A.A. Meshchersky: “...I’m walking - I won’t say along a well-known road..., but in a well-known direction, and I’m going to do anything, and I’m ready for anything. This is not a youthful fascination with an idea, but a deep consciousness of power.”

Read about the Australian relatives of the traveler in the article by Alla Mandrabi