East Europe as a proto-homeland of the Indo-Europeans - страница 19

In order to find out how accurate the information of Claudius Ptolemy about Eastern Europe was, you can use the map of the European part of the USSR. On the map of Ptolemy there are quite real geographical objects such as the Baltic, Black, and Sea of Azov, as well as the Caspian Sea with the Volga flowing into it, called the Avestan name RHA (this name is also found in the literature in the form of Ra). Here, almost all the more or less significant elevations of Eastern Europe are indicated up to the Southern Urals, which is separated by a considerable distance from the Ptolemy in the north and stretching in the latitudinal direction of the Hyperborean mountains, giving rise to two sources of the sacred river of the ancient Iranians – Rgi or Rakhi. This map already indicates that Ptolemy, and probably the geographers of antiquity long before him, distinguished the Hyperborean (or Riphean) mountains and the Urals, and did not associate them with each other.

Hyperborean and Riphean Mountains. Goa Map 1570

To the question posed: Ptolemy was right or wrong, are there any elevations in the north of Eastern Europe from which the Volga and Kama originate (which the ancients considered as another source of the Volga), the physical map gives an impartial answer – there are such elevations!

These are located in the north-east of the European part of Russia, uniting through the Timan Ridge into a single system with the Subpolar Urals and stretching for 1,700 km from west to east Northern Uvals. Interestingly, Ptolemy in his «Geographical Guide» gives the coordinates of the Hyperborean mountains in northern Europe at about 63—64° N, at the latitude of Northern Uvals.

In his major work Relief of the USSR, published in 1972, one of the largest Soviet geomorphologists Yu. A. Meshcheryakov wrote: «The global watershed bordering the Arctic Ocean basin is most advanced southward, deep into the continent of Eurasia, in the Asian part of the USSR. The maximum distance from the ocean to the watershed is 3000—3500 km. marked on the meridians of Baikal-Yenisei… Crossing the Urals, the watershed line immediately sharply approaches the coast, and within the Northern Uvals hill, the watershed line is only 600—800 km from the coast.»