Tumarkin D.

White papuan.

Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura Publ., 2011, 624 p. 500 copies. (p) ISBN 978 - 5 - 02 - 036470 - 7

The book "White Papuan" is a fundamental literary source, without which in the history of Russian science one cannot do without. Having carefully selected from the national and foreign archival "ore" everything that was even slightly significant, Daniil Tumarkin finally erased the white spots in the biography of Miklukho-Maklay, dispelled the still not obsolete myths and gave the name "tamo Russ" (as the Guineans called Nikolai Nikolaevich) an even glow. From now on, both the scientific world and every inquisitive compatriot will appreciate the extraordinary life of the passion-bearing traveler in the fullness of facts and events, starting from the revolutionary quest and ending with the final scientific scheme.

Tumarkin's book has innumerable plots and characters-by the way, quite worthy of a separate study, or even a book, which formed a giant puzzle of the fate of Nikolai Miklukhi. Stoically fighting poverty and disease, he not only made a huge contribution to the development of many scientific directions, but always defended exclusively humanistic principles in the study of peoples standing on the early stages of civilization. The defense of these principles eventually became his main scientific topic.

It is incomprehensible how much Miklukho-Maklay managed to do in his 42 years. Here is just a short list of his research interests: ethnography, zoology, mineralogy, meteorology, anthropology, mythology, linguistics, geography, oceanology, medicine, geography and economic geography, geology, ecology, cultural studies. In oceanology, he was the first to introduce the concept of "ocean climate". Geopolitics stands apart, in which he defended Russian interests in the Pacific Ocean to the last. And a decade and a half later, the Russo-Japanese war proved him right. Nikolai Nikolaevich thoroughly studied the customs and life of dozens of peoples, created a graphic collection of anthropological population types in such countries as Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Oceania Islands, Polynesia, Samoa, Canary Islands, the Red Sea coast, Morocco, New Guinea, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Malacca Peninsula, New Caledonia, Easter Island; became the founder rapanuistics, ethnobotany. He was one of the first to express the idea of creating marine scientific stations.

For today's layman, burdened with historical information only in the volume of computer games, Robinson Crusoe, James Cook and Miklouho-Maclay-on the same person. Robinson's day was Friday, Miklukha's was Tui, and Cook's was generally " eaten by the aborigines." And it is only thanks to Tumarkin's book that we can truly appreciate the enormous losses caused by the colonizing policies of the "higher" European races when we find ourselves on the coast of New Guinea with the hero.

Yes, James Cook was a Hawaiian deity; Miklouho, who lit the water, was a god, a" man from the moon " for the Guineans. Yes, the Papuans ' fear of seeing a white man for the first time was absolutely animal: their legs gave out, they hid women and children. But this is not a reason to reject the "lower" ones as dead-end branches of human evolution. The German scientist Haeckel, in whose department Miklukho-Maklay began as a laboratory assistant, attributed Papuans to the transitional link between Caucasians and their ape-like ancestors on the basis of "tuftiness".

"Culled" - that is, sent to their totem gods - the tribes of Hawaiians, Papuans, residents of Easter Island... and all those who spoke an incomprehensible language and wore a loincloth. Therefore, familiarity with civilizations (tolerance as an idea appeared much later) quickly led to the exchange of material arguments-lead and spears. Here and the end of the Cook.

The missianism of Miklouho-Maklay and his study of the ethnogenesis of the Guinean (and many other) tribes clearly demonstrated the exceptional complexity of the human world at any stage of civilization development. His scientific conclusions, made a century and a half ago, remain relevant to this day. In a letter to Nikolai Nikolaevich dated September 25, 1886, Leo Tolstoy summarized:: "You are the first to prove by your own experience that a person is a person everywhere."

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