PROTOBACTRIAN CIVILIZATION IN SOCIAL PROJECTIONS AND SUBJECTINTERCONNECTIONS THE GENESIS OF ZOROASTRIAN IDEOLOGY

The Proto-Bactrian civilization represents a unique narrative in the material heritage of the Bronze Age of Central Asia. The archaeological complexes of this unique culture are among the most extensive, informative, and thoroughly studied sites of ancient Eastern monuments. The semiosphere of the material world of the Proto-Bactrian civilization has been studied primarily through archaeological reconstructions, which in themselves serve as an important prerequisite for the transition to socio-cultural interpretations. Historical and cultural analysis allows us to identify universal meanings and semantic specifications of the civilizational process and demonstrate how society adapts to changing cultural life cycles through its symbolic practices and objective articulations. This article attempts to examine the phenomenon of the Proto-Bactrian civilization as a unique cultural reality within the social projections and objective interrelations of the genesis of Zoroastrian ideology. Questions regarding the social history of ancient complex (early class) societies remain relevant in historical and cultural studies. This is all the more evident given that the formation and consolidation of a number of general historical phenomena (urban development, institutionalization of power, social division of labor, social and property differentiation, interethnic unification, cultural assimilation, centralization of religious systems, etc.) reveals the decisive influence of sociocultural factors, patterns, and stage-by-stage historical tendencies. Significantly, this interaction, both in time and space, particularly clearly reveals the role of epochal cultural shifts and socio-ideological turning points. It is no coincidence that the formation of major religious doctrines (Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism, etc.) occurred at cultural and civilized crossroads of history, during that transitional stage that led from the Axial Age to the great empires of antiquity (Karl Jaspers), under the inevitable impact of powerful social upheavals and transformations. Thus, the rise of Judaism was accompanied by the collapse of centralized royal power (10th century BC). The crisis of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Common Era largely predetermined the widespread emergence, especially in its eastern provinces, of new ideological movements and religious sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Sicarii, etc.), the most viable of which proved to be the teachings of Jesus Christ. Many reformists religious movements, including Protestantism, Lutheranism, and others, also owe their birth to the radical historical shift toward anthropocentric values and the freethinking paradigms of the Renaissance. The personal dominant in their religious systems historically expressed the objective advancement of the human factor into the arena of the emerging new epochal sociocultural order. As historical facts show, the collapse of some civilizational foundations and the emergence of others occurred most often in parallel and, on the whole, were determined by a single, albeit diverse, historical process. It is noteworthy that it is precisely during transitional periods in history that the most favorable preconditions for the formation of new social structures and relations are created in society. Some of these preconditions can be identified: a) weakening of the resistance of the old system due to its economic imbalance and depression; b) incapacity of the outgoing institutions and power structures in organizing social control and economic management; c) progressive decline in the standard of living, mass impoverishment of the main producers; d) increasing confusion of minds, collapse of the traditional ideological system; e) active maturation of new socio-economic mechanisms and hierarchical structures; e) increasing social, intertribal and interethnic mobility; g) urgent need for a new system of social coordinates, for effective standards and values related to the organization and stabilization of socio-cultural situation; c) an unfavorable foreign policy environment, the penetration of innovative ideological currents into the traditional socio-cultural system (so-called “external stimulation”). It has been noted that this cultural transition, as a rule, historically manifests itself in the interaction and eventual fusion (synthesis) of innovative configurations, emerging within the dying formation as a result of its disintegration, with external elements emerging in radically different socio-economic conditions.