The Mystery of the Choban Oglan (an anthropological study of the concepts “Choban” and “Oglan”)

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2020-50-2/7-25

Abstract

The folk song of the Gagauz people, whose language stayed unwritten until the mid-twentieth century, is of exceptional interest to ethnologists and anthropologists as a true, albeit heroicized reflection of nomadic life of its ancient and medieval ancestors.
Identification and anthropological analysis of ethnocultural parallels of variants of the Oglan song with texts of the Oghuz, Seljuqs, Kypchaks and other Turkic peoples makes it possible to confirm that the Gagauz folklore undoubtedly belongs to the civilizational heritage of the Turkic world and trace the path of the Gagauz ancestors from Altai and the Chinese wall to the Danube and the Balkan ridge.

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