On September 20, 1871, a young Russian scientist landed on the verdant shore of a tropical paradise. His dream finally came true. After a long 10 months of travel on the Vityaz corvette, 25-year-old Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay landed in the Astrolabe Bay, on the coast of the island of New Guinea, which became the coast of his fate, where he aspired for the rest of his life.
Thus began this wonderful story and a new era in the life of a young researcher, traveler and great humanist, whose name, after a century and a half, is called children in Papuan families on the Maclay Coast, on the northeast coast of the island of New Guinea.
Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay - "White Papuan"
Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukha, later Miklukho-Maclay, was born on June 17, 1846 in the village of Yazykovo-Rozhdestvenskoye near Borovichi, Novgorod province. He was the second of five children in the family of a young railway engineer Nikolai Ilyich Miklukha, who in those years worked on the construction of a railway in this province. Nikolai Ilyich became the first head of the Nikolaevsky, today the Moscow station in St. Petersburg, but he lived a short life, dying at the age of 39 from tuberculosis. He was a true patriot of his work, personally participating in the construction of the railway, where he often lived in extremely cramped conditions and undermined his health. The children, the eldest of whom at that time was 12, and the youngest 1.5 years old, remained with their mother, Ekaterina Semyonovna, nee Becker, who came from a family of Russified Germans who came to Russia under Catherine II. Ekaterina Semyonovna's grandfather was a life doctor of the Polish king Stanislav Poniatowski, to whose service he came from Prussia on behalf of the Prussian king, and her father married a Polish woman, Louise Shatkovskaya, originally from the city of Vilna.
Nikolai Nikolaevich became the most famous of the Miklukho-Maklaev family, and today Novgorodians and all Russians are proud of their famous compatriot. However, the life of Nikolai Nikolaevich was filled with difficulties from an early age. It was very difficult for the mother to support such a large family, but she managed to raise all the children in the spirit of the original Russian nobility, with high morals and principles. All children received a good education. Nikolai Nikolaevich began his education at St. Petersburg University, but in 1864, he was expelled for participating in the student movement. Nikolai Nikolayevich continued his studies abroad, at the Faculty of Philosophy of Heidelberg University, and at the Medical Faculties of Leipzig and Jena Universities, studying anatomy and zoology. Scientific work in these areas brought Nikolai Nikolayevich his first fame in scientific circles.
In 1866, N. N. Miklouho-Maclay went to the Canary Islands, where, together with his teacher of zoology, a famous biologist, professor at the University of Jena, Ernst Haeckel, he studied the fauna of the island of Lanzarote. After trips to Sicily and the coastal regions of the Red Sea, in the autumn of 1869, Nikolai Nikolayevich presented his plan for a scientific trip to the Pacific Ocean to the Russian Geographical Society and received support and approval. As a result, the Vityaz corvette, which was then circumnavigating the world, took a young scientist on board, and on September 20, 1871, he landed on the island of New Guinea, in the Astrolabe Bay, and the Vityaz team built a small hut for Nikolai Nikolaevich on the shore of the bay and two of his companions. Thus began an amazing epic of life and scientific research of the famous scientist. During his first trip, Miklukho-Maclay lived for 15 months among the Papuans, gaining boundless trust and respect, as a man of his word, who became his "white Papuan" for the local population.
Miklouho-Maclay was the first among Europeans to assert the equality of all races and advocated the right of the Papuans to independence. In 1882, during his stay in St. Petersburg, Nikolai Nikolayevich even turned to Emperor Alexander III with a proposal to protect the population of the Malay coast of New Guinea and establish a "free Russian colony" there. However, this offer was not accepted, and he went back to Sydney, where for two years he put his extensive collections and diaries in order.
There he also married Margaret Robertson (01/21/1855 - 01/01/1936), the daughter of a large landowner, the Governor General of New South Wales in Australia, with whom he later lived in St. Petersburg for almost two years, bringing with him two sons to his homeland - Alexander (11/14/1884 - November 1951) and Vladimir (12/29/1885 - 02/19/1958).
The collected materials and collections allowed Nikolai Nikolayevich to arrange an exhibition in St. Petersburg in 1886, which became a sensation in scientific circles. Miklukho-Maclay's articles were published in many editions, and, first of all, in Izvestia of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.
On April 14, 1888, at the age of 42, Nikolai Nikolayevich died in St. Petersburg and was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery. In 1938, his ashes were reburied next to the grave of his father at Literary Bridges. After the death of Nikolai Nikolaevich, his widow and children returned to Sydney. Until 1917, for special services to the fatherland, she received a pension from the Russian government for the maintenance of children. She donated the works and collections of her husband to the Russian Geographical Society. More than 700 drawings are stored in the archives of the Russian Geographical Society, a collection of items collected during expeditions, and some diaries are now stored in St. Petersburg, in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera)¹.
The rare Russian surname Miklukho-Maclay is known all over the world today. But it was Nikolai Nikolaevich who restored it, after which the whole family officially accepted it.
According to one of the family legends, in 1648, during the Battle of Zhovti Vody, in Ukraine, the Cossacks of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who defeated the troops of the Polish hetman Potocki, captured the Scottish baron Mikael MacLay, who served in the Polish army. The baron remained in Ukraine, became Russified and married the daughter of a Cossack who captured him, named Miklukha, taking the name of his wife. Until the 60s of the XIX century, the second part of the surname was used very rarely, and Nikolai Nikolayevich officially restored it before his first trip to the island of New Guinea.
It was after Margaret took her sons to Sydney that the Miklukho-Maklayev family got an Australian branch. The descendants of Nikolai Nikolaevich live in Australia - in the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Canbera, and still maintain contact with his family in Russia.
The Russian branch of bearers of the surname in the male line comes from the elder brother of Sergei Nikolaevich. Unfortunately, there are not so many bearers of the surname left - someone died during the war in besieged Leningrad, someone left for Yugoslavia during the revolution, someone disappeared in the troubled 20s of the twentieth century.
Miklukho-Maclay and Maclay Coast
The descendants of Sergei Nikolayevich, the elder brother of the great humanist and traveler, live in St. Petersburg. His great-grandson Nikolai Andreevich was born in 1940, graduated from the Faculty of Geography of Leningrad University, and worked for 35 years at the Central Research Geological Prospecting Institute. Now he is retired. His son, great-great-grandson Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay, was born in 1973. He is the first full namesake of the great scientist, an economist by education, fond of the legacy of the great traveler Nikolai Nikolayevich, the first of Miklukho-Maklaev to repeat the trip to the island of New Guinea in 2017, organizing an expedition with the participation of researchers from the St. Petersburg Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology (Kunstkamera ) of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. N.N.Miklukho-Maclay RAS.
Modern Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maklai is the founder of the Foundation for the Preservation of Ethnocultural Heritage named after. Miklouho-Maclay.
As a result of the expedition, it was possible to bring to Russia a rich collection of objects of material culture of the peoples living on the Maclay Coast, a unique photo and video material was collected that will serve humanity and become the basis for organizing exhibitions, creating documentaries, scientific articles and works.
The modern collection will replenish the one that was collected in the 19th century by Miklukho-Maclay the Great, and is stored in the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. Now we can really say that the idea of preserving the legacy of the great scientist has come to life, opening up a unique world that is still little studied, and the interest of the world community in it has not faded to this day.
The expedition of the descendant of Miklouho-Maclay with the participation of scientists confirmed the relevance of the works of Nikolai Nikolaevich and the collections he had collected. We are rediscovering a world unknown to us 150 years ago, establishing ties not only with the local population, but also with the scientific community, with the largest Universities and Museums of Papua New Guinea.
It is symbolic that Papua New Guinea opened its doors to the full namesake and descendant of Miklouho-Maclay from Russia, with a desire to restore lost ties. Miklouho-Maclay of the 21st century was received by the "father of the nation" Sir Michael Somare, major public figures of this country, one of which is Sir Peter Barter, the leadership of Universities and National Museums.
Oceania, the island of New Guinea, once so distant and unknown, is getting closer thanks to Miklouho-Maclay the Younger and the memory of Miklouho-Maclay the Elder, who is still rightfully considered the discoverer of the island. After all, it was he who opened to mankind an island inhabited by people equal to Europeans, although it was previously believed that a separate transitional species between apes and humans lives on the island. Miklouho-Maclay proved the untenability of these ideas and fought for a long time for the rights of the peoples inhabiting the second largest island in the world.
At one time, the Maclay Coast was named after the great scientist - a section of the northeastern coast of the island of New Guinea, about 300 km long. But over time, the historical name was lost, and today it is called Rai Coast, after a French explorer who studied the languages of New Guinea.
During the first Russian expedition in 2017, Miklukho-Maclay Jr., or the fourth, as he was called on the island, discovered documents in the Mitchell Library in Australia confirming the historical name of the coast - Maclay Coast, used in documents of that time. And today there is a real opportunity to restore this name on the maps of Papua New Guinea, especially since public figures and local residents of this country were glad to learn about such an initiative.
More than a century has passed since the death of H. H. Miklouho-Maclay - a classic of world science, a brave traveler, humanist thinker, a passionate fighter for the rights of oppressed peoples. But his scientific and social feat, his rich heritage have not lost their significance to this day.
¹ Based on materials from the archives of the Miklukho-Maklaev family and the article “The Russian family is a scattering of diamonds. Meet Miklukho-Maclay. V.E. Pavlov, magazine "History of St. Petersburg" No. 3 (13) of 2003
The name of Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay, who revealed to the world information about the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and other wild tribes, is known far beyond the borders of Russia. For his invaluable contribution to the development of anthropology, 150 years after his death, the traveler was awarded the title of "Citizen of the World."
In the village of Rozhdestvensky, Novgorod Region, on July 17, 1846, Miklukho-Maclay was born. Nikolai Nikolaevich grew up in the family of a railway worker.
When the young man turned 18, he entered the University of St. Petersburg, but a year later he was expelled from there for membership in a banned student society. In the future, Nikolai was deprived of the right to study at any university in Russia.
Because of the ban, the young man was forced to study at the University of Heidelberg at the Faculty of Philosophy. The following year, he moved to the University of Leipzig in the medical department. Then Mykola Miklouho-Maclay moved to Jena, where he continued to study medicine, paying particular attention to animal anatomy.
The debut of a young man as a traveler took place under the leadership of Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, whom he assisted during a visit to Morocco and the Canary Islands. The student received the coveted diploma from the University of Jena in 1868.
The young doctor did not engage in medical practice. The next year after graduation, he went on a trip to the Red Sea coast. There he studied and researched the rich marine fauna. The subjects of his research were sharks and sea sponges. Apart from marine life anatomy the young scientist paid attention to the geography, cultural traditions and social environment of the locals. Nikolai Nikolayevich even put forward a theory, to substantiate which he decided to go to the Pacific Islands to meet with the "Papuan race."
The Russian Geographical Society came to the aid of the researcher and helped organize his trip to New Guinea. A military vessel called "Vityaz" was equipped. In 1871, it landed on the northeast coast, which has since been called the Maclay Coast.
Miklukho-Maclay lived among the Papuans for about 15 months. The natives treated him friendly and trustingly. In 1873, the traveler went to Indonesia and the Philippines, and a few months later landed on the southwestern coast of New Guinea.
The life of the wild tribes was very interested in Miklouho-Maclay, so after a while he visited the Malay Peninsula to get acquainted with the local residents of the Sakays and Semangs. Two years later, the traveler went to the islands of Oceania and North Melanesia.
In 1876-1877. The Russian traveler lived on the coast named after him. He already wanted to return to his homeland, but a serious illness forced him to change his plans. He had to move to the Australian continent in the city of Sydney, where he lived for 5 years. There, the famous traveler founded a biological station, and then again went to Melanesia and New Guinea.
Nikolai Nikolayevich returned to Russia in 1882 to make reports to the Geographical Society about his travels and discoveries. The contribution to science was highly appreciated, and Miklouho-Maclay was awarded a gold medal in the field of anthropology, natural science and ethnography. After Russia, the traveler made presentations in a number of European capitals, including:
- Paris;
- Berlin;
- London.
On the way to Australia, Nikolai Nikolayevich again visited the coast named after him. He lived in Sydney for about two years, after which in 1886 he decided to return to his homeland.
In recent years, the famous traveler has been preparing to the publication of their diaries and scientific materials. He handed over to the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology a unique collection, which he had collected for more than 15 years.
The anthropologist died in 1888 in St. Petersburg. His grave is at the Volkovo Cemetery.
The great Russian traveler was not a bachelor. His wife was Margaret Clark, daughter Australian politician John Robertson. The marriage was registered in 1884, and a year later the first-born son Alexander Nils was born to the spouses. In the last month of 1885, the second son, Vladimir Allen, was born.
The joint life of Nikolai and Margaret was not always cloudless. In recent years, the traveler was ill, and his family experienced financial difficulties. After the death of her husband, Margaret did not marry and returned to Sydney. From the royal family, through the consulate, the wife of the great traveler received 5 thousand rubles.
Nikolai Nikolayevich made discoveries that drew attention to the unity of races. He managed to prove the kinship of the black inhabitants of the Philippines and the Limay Mountains with the Papuans.
In addition, he presented the world with information about an extraordinary people - the "people of the forest" of the Malacca Peninsula. The traveler met the Oran-Utan tribe near the Palon River, collected information about their way of life, religion and relationships.
Nikolai Nikolayevich was the first to describe the local population of New Guinea. All travelers who visited these places before him only made geographical marks on the map, without taking into account the inhabitants of the region. The following objects are named after the Russian traveler:
- mountain and river in New Guinea;
- seamount in the waters of the Pacific Ocean;
- Miklukho-Maclay coast;
- bay in Antarctica on Wilkes Land.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay made discoveries in various fields. He was the author of more than a hundred scientific papers in the field of anthropology, anatomy, ethnography and geography. Contemporaries could not appreciate the contribution of the scientist. This happened already in Soviet times, when a collection of his works was published.
Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay was born on July 17 (5), 1846 in the family of a railway engineer. Place of birth - the village of Yazykovo-Rozhdestvenskoye, Borovichsky district, Novgorod province.
The hereditary nobility for the family was earned by the Zaporozhian Cossack Stepan Miklukha, who distinguished himself in the capture of Ochakov. In 1858, the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Nikolai continued his studies at the Second St. Petersburg Gymnasium. Without graduating from the gymnasium, Miklukho-Maclay became a volunteer at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University.
The study did not last long. Miklukho-Maclay, an active participant in student unrest, was expelled from the university without the right to enter others. The student community supported the disgraced comrade. Money was collected, for which he left for the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he continued his studies - at the Faculty of Philosophy. Soon he transferred to the medical faculty of Leipzig and then the University of Jena. Here he met the famous zoologist E. Haeckel, with whom he traveled as an assistant to the Canary Islands and Morocco. After graduating from the university, Nikolai Nikolaevich made an independent trip along the Red Sea coast and in 1869 returned to his homeland.
Here Nikolai Nikolayevich turned to an active study of natural science, anthropology, ethnography and geography, and the next page in the biography of Miklukho-Maclay is the long journey he went on in 1870. On the warship "Vityaz" he reached New Guinea. Here, among the natives (Papuans), he spent two years studying their way of life, customs, and religious rites. Later, he continued his observations in the Philippines, Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Oceania.
In 1876-1877 he returned to the already explored shores of northeastern New Guinea. Poor health and general exhaustion forced him to leave the island and depart for Singapore. The treatment continued for six months. There were no funds to return to Russia, and he moved to Australia, where at one time he lived with the Russian vice-consul.
Then he moved to a public figure, zoologist and chairman of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, W. Maclay. With his help, the proposal of Miklouho-Maclay was implemented - the construction of the Australian Zoological Station, which later became known as the Marine Biological Station.
In 1879-1880, he was a member of an expedition to the islands of Melanesia and again returned to his “native” places of New Guinea.
In 1882 Miklukho-Maclay returned to Russia. His plans included the construction of a Russian station and a Russian settlement in New Guinea, but no one supported them. The audience with Emperor Alexander III ended almost to no avail. True, a little help was nevertheless provided: debts were paid off and funds were allocated for further research and the publication of scientific papers.
In 1883, Nikolai Nikolaevich returned to Australia, where he married Margarita Robertson, the daughter of a large landowner.
In 1886, the scientist came to Russia again and proposed to the emperor the "Project for the Development of the Maclay Coast" in order to counteract the colonization of the island by Germany. A positive decision on this project has not yet been made.
On April 2 (14), 1888, the great Russian scientist died in the Willie clinic in St. Petersburg. The worn-out organism could not cope with the aggravated diseases.
After the death of Nikolai Nikolaevich, his wife and children returned to Australia. As a token of the scientist's high merit, until 1917 they received a pension, which was paid from the personal money of Alexander III and Nicholas II.
In 1996, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Miklouho-Maclay, UNESCO named him a Citizen of the World.
Exactly 130 years ago, on April 14, 1888, the famous Russian ethnographer, biologist, anthropologist and traveler Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay, who devoted most of his life to studying the indigenous population of Australia, Oceania and Southeast Asia, including the Papuans of Northeast Asia, passed away. the eastern coast of New Guinea, today called the Maclay Coast (a section of the northeastern coast of the island of New Guinea between 5 and 6 ° south latitude, about 300 kilometers long, between Astrolabe Bay and the Huon Peninsula). His research was highly appreciated during his lifetime. Considering his merits, Miklouho-Maclay's birthday on July 17 is unofficially celebrated in Russia as a professional holiday - Ethnographer's Day.
Nikolai Nikolayevich Miklukho-Maclay was born on July 17, 1846 (July 5, according to the old style) in the village of Rozhdestvenskoye (today it is Yazykovo-Rozhdestvenskoye, Okulovsky municipal district of the Novgorod region) in the family of an engineer. His father, Nikolai Ilyich Miklukha, was a railroad worker. The mother of the future ethnographer was Ekaterina Semyonovna Becker, she was the daughter of a hero of the Patriotic War of 1812. Contrary to a fairly common misconception, Miklouho-Maclay did not have any significant foreign roots. The widespread legend about the Scottish mercenary Mikael Maclay, who, having taken root in Russia, became the founder of the clan, was only a legend. The traveler himself came from an obscure Cossack family Mikluh. If we talk about the second part of the surname, then for the first time he used it in 1868, signing the first scientific publication in German, “The Rudiment of the Swim Bladder in Selachians”. At the same time, historians have not been able to come to a consensus on the reason why this double surname Miklouho-Maclay arose. Speaking about his nationality, in his dying autobiography, the ethnographer pointed out that he was a mixture of elements: Russian, German and Polish.
Surprisingly, the future ethnographer studied rather poorly at school, often skipping classes. As he admitted 20 years later, at the gymnasium he skipped classes not only because of ill health, but also simply because he did not want to study. In the 4th grade of the Second Petersburg Gymnasium, he spent two years, and in the 1860/61 academic year he attended classes very rarely, missing a total of 414 lessons. Miklukha's only mark was "good" in French, in German he had "satisfactory", in other subjects - "poor" and "mediocre". While still a high school student, Miklukho-Maclay was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he was sent there with his brother for participating in a student demonstration, which was caused by the socio-political upsurge of 1861 and was associated with the abolition of serfdom in the country.
Photo of Nikolai Miklukha - student (until 1866)
In Soviet times, the biography of the ethnographer indicated that he was expelled from the gymnasium, and then from the University of Miklouho-Maclay, for participating in political activities. But this is not true. The future famous traveler left the gymnasium of his own free will, and he simply could not be expelled from the university, since he was in it as a volunteer. He did not finish his studies in St. Petersburg, leaving for Germany. In 1864, the future ethnographer studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, in 1865 at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leipzig. And in 1866 he moved to Jena (a university city in Germany), where he studied the comparative anatomy of animals at the medical faculty. As an assistant to the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, he visited Morocco and the Canary Islands. In 1868, Miklouho-Maclay completed his studies at the University of Jena. During the first expedition to the Canary Islands, the future explorer studied sea sponges, discovering as a result a new type of calcareous sponge, naming it Guancha blanca in honor of the indigenous inhabitants of these islands. It is curious that from 1864 to 1869, from 1870 to 1882 and from 1883 to 1886 Miklukho-Maclay lived outside of Russia, never staying in his homeland for more than one year.
In 1869, he traveled to the Red Sea coast, the purpose of the trip was to study the local marine fauna. In the same year he returned back to Russia. The first scientific studies of the ethnographer were devoted to the comparative anatomy of sea sponges, the brain of sharks, as well as other issues of zoology. But during his travels, Miklouho-Maclay also made valuable geographical observations. Nicholas was inclined to the version that the cultural and racial characteristics of the peoples of the world are formed under the influence of the social and natural environment. In order to substantiate this theory, Miklouho-Maclay decided to undertake a long journey to the Pacific Islands, here he was going to study the "Papuan race". At the end of October 1870, with the assistance of the Russian Geographical Society, the traveler got the opportunity to travel to New Guinea. Here he went on board the military ship "Vityaz". His expedition was designed for several years.
On September 20, 1871, the Vityaz landed Maclay on the northeast coast of New Guinea. In the future, this area of the coast will be called the Maclay Coast. Contrary to erroneous ideas, he did not travel alone, but was accompanied by two servants - a young man from the island of Niue named Boy and a Swedish sailor Olsen. At the same time, with the help of the Vityaz crew members, a hut was built, which became for Miklukho-Maclay not only housing, but also a suitable laboratory. He lived among the local Papuans for 15 months in 1871-1872, and with his tactful behavior and friendliness, he managed to win their love and trust.
Corvette "Vityaz" under sail
But initially, Miklukho-Maclay was considered among the Papuans not as a god, as is commonly believed, but quite the opposite, an evil spirit. The reason for this attitude towards him was the episode on the first day of their acquaintance. Seeing the ship and the white people, the islanders thought that it was Rotei, their great ancestor, who had returned. A large number of Papuans went in their boats to the ship in order to present gifts to the arrival. On board the Viking, they were also well received and given gifts, but already on the way back, a cannon shot suddenly rang out from the ship, as the crew saluted in honor of their arrival. However, the islanders, out of fear, literally jumped out of their own boats, threw gifts and swam to the shore, deciding that it was not Rotey, but the evil spirit Buka, who had come to them.
A Papuan named Tui, who was braver than the rest of the islanders, helped to change the situation in the future and managed to make friends with the traveler. When Miklukho-Maclay managed to cure Tui from a serious wound, the Papuans accepted him into their society as an equal to themselves, including him in the local society. Tui, for a long time, remained the ethnographer's translator and mediator in his relations with other Papuans.
In 1873, Miklouho-Maclay visited the Philippines and Indonesia, and the very next year he visited the southwestern coast of New Guinea. In 1874-1875, he again traveled twice around the Malay Peninsula, studying the local Sakai and Semang tribes. In 1876 he traveled to Western Micronesia (the islands of Oceania), as well as Northern Melanesia (visiting various island groups in the Pacific Ocean). In 1876 and 1877 he again visited the Maclay Coast. From here, he wanted to return back to Russia, but due to a serious illness, the traveler was forced to settle in Sydney, Australia, where he lived until 1882. Not far from Sydney, Nikolai founded the first biological station in Australia. During the same period of his life, he made a trip to the islands of Melanesia (1879), and also examined the southern coast of New Guinea (1880), and a year later, in 1881, he visited the southern coast of New Guinea for the second time.
Miklukho-Maclay with the Papuan Akhmat. Malacca, 1874 or 1875
It is curious that Miklukho-Maclay was preparing a Russian protectorate over the Papuans. He made several expeditions to New Guinea, drawing up the so-called Maclay Coast Development Project. His project envisaged the preservation of the way of life of the Papuans, but at the same time declared the achievement of a higher level of self-government on the basis of already existing local customs. At the same time, Maclay Coast, according to his plans, was to receive a protectorate of the Russian Empire, also becoming one of the bases for the Russian fleet. But his project was not feasible. By the time of his third trip to New Guinea, most of his friends among the Papuans, including Tui, had already died, at the same time the villagers were mired in internecine conflicts, and the officers of the Russian fleet, who studied the local conditions, concluded that the local coast was not suitable for deployment of warships. And already in 1885, New Guinea was divided between Great Britain and Germany. Thus, the question of the possibility of implementing a Russian protectorate over this territory was finally closed.
Miklukho-Maclay returned to his homeland after a long absence in 1882. After returning to Russia, he read a number of public reports about his travels to members of the Geographical Society. For his research, the society of lovers of natural science, anthropology and ethnography awarded Nikolai a gold medal. After visiting the European capitals - Berlin, London and Paris, he acquainted the public with the results of his trips and research. Then he again went to Australia, having visited the Maclay Coast for the third time along the way, this happened in 1883.
From 1884 to 1886 the traveler lived in Sydney, and in 1886 he returned to his homeland. All this time he was seriously ill, but at the same time he continued to prepare for the publication of his scientific materials and diaries. In the same 1886, he handed over to the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg all the ethnographic collections he had collected from 1870 to 1885. Today these collections can be seen at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg.
Miklukho-Maclay in the winter of 1886-1887. Saint Petersburg
The traveler who returned to St. Petersburg has changed a lot. As people who knew him noted, the 40-year-old still young scientist sharply became decrepit, weakened, his hair turned gray. Pain in the jaw again manifested itself, which intensified in February 1887, a tumor appeared. Doctors could not diagnose him and could not determine the cause of the disease. Only in the second half of the 20th century, doctors managed to remove the veil of secrecy from this issue. The ethnographer was killed by cancer with localization in the region of the right mandibular canal. Exactly 130 years ago, on April 14, 1888 (April 2, old style), Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay died, he was only 41 years old. The traveler was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg.
The most important scientific merit of the scientist was that he raised the question of species unity and kinship of the existing human races. It was also he who first gave a detailed description of the Melanesian anthropological type and proved that it is very widespread on the islands of Southeast Asia and in Western Oceania. For ethnography, his descriptions of the material culture, economy and life of the Papuans and other peoples inhabiting the numerous islands of Oceania and Southeast Asia are of great importance. Many of the traveler's observations, which are distinguished by a high level of accuracy, remain practically the only materials on the ethnography of some of the islands of Oceania at the present time.
During the life of Nikolai Nikolaevich, more than 100 of his scientific works on anthropology, ethnography, geography, zoology and other sciences were published, in total he wrote more than 160 such works. At the same time, during the lifetime of the scientist, not one of his major works was published, all of them appeared only after his death. So in 1923, Miklouho-Maclay's travel diaries were first published, and even later, in 1950-1954, a collection of works in five volumes.
Portrait of Miklukho-Maclay by K. Makovsky. Stored in the Kunstkamera
The memory of the researcher and ethnographer is widely preserved not only in Russia, but throughout the world. His bust can be found today in Sydney, and in New Guinea a mountain and a river are named after him, without taking into account the section of the northeast coast, which is called the Maclay Coast. In 1947, the name of Miklukho-Maclay was given to the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences (RAS). And relatively recently, in 2014, the Russian Geographical Society established a special Gold Medal named after Nikolai Nikolayevich Miklukho-Maclay, as the highest award of the society for ethnographic research and travel. The world recognition of this researcher is also evidenced by the fact that in honor of his 150th birthday, 1996 was proclaimed by UNESCO the year of Miklouho-Maclay, at the same time he was named a Citizen of the World.
Based on materials from open sources.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay is a famous Russian traveler who made a number of expeditions to previously unexplored New Guinea and other Pacific islands, a researcher of primitive culture, who collected the richest materials about primitive peoples. Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay was born on July 17, 1846 in the village of Rozhdestvensky, near the town of Borovichi, Novgorod province. His father, Nikolai Ilyich Miklukha, was an engineer-captain, and his great-grandfather Stepan was a cornet of one of the Little Russian Cossack regiments, who distinguished himself in the capture of Ochakov in 1772. His mother Ekaterina Semyonovna was also from a military family. Nikolai Ilyich Miklukha had four sons and a daughter. Nikolai Nikolaevich was the second. All children bore the father's surname. But Nikolai Nikolaevich from his youthful years began to call himself Miklukho-Maclay. Miklouho-Maclay's father died when the boy was 11 years old. During his father's lifetime, he studied at home. After the death of his father, his mother sent him to a school in St. Petersburg, and then he was transferred to the 2nd St. Petersburg gymnasium.
Gymnasium N. N. Miklukho-Maclay did not graduate; due to frequent misunderstandings with teachers and altercations with them, he was forced to leave the 6th grade. In 1863, seventeen-year-old N. N. Miklukho-Maclay entered St. Petersburg University as a volunteer in the department of natural sciences of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, from where in the spring of 1864 he was fired "for repeated violations of the rules established for volunteers."
To continue his education, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay went abroad. For two years he studied physicists and naturalists, and partly lawyers and philosophers, at the University of Heidelberg. In Leipzig, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay diligently studied anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine, while listening to lectures on the natural sciences at other faculties. His interest in comparative anatomy continued throughout his life. Even completely devoting himself to the study of primitive peoples, he did not leave anatomical work. N. N. Miklukho-Maclay continued his medical education in Jena, where he attended lectures by the famous Ernst Haeckel, then still a young professor of zoology, who had a beneficial effect on him in the development of independent scientific research.
Having completed his natural history education, N.N.Miklukho-Maclay devoted himself to the study of the broadest scientific problems devoted to the origin of life, the development of species, and the laws of evolution of the organic world. Together with E. Haeckel, whose assistant he became in 1866, he made his first trip to the Canary Islands. Here he was engaged in the anatomy of sponges and the study of the brain of cartilaginous fish. Returning from the expedition in 1867, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay conducted comparative anatomical work in Messina, where he went with Dr. Dorn, a propagandist for the organization of marine zoological stations. In 1869, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay made a trip along the shores of the Red Sea, collecting material for his large generalizations. In order to avoid persecution by the Arabs, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay transformed himself into a Muslim: he shaved his head, painted his face, put on an Arabic costume, and acquired some familiarity with the language and outward Muslim customs. In this form, he wandered through the coral reefs of the Red Sea with a microscope, alone, undergoing many hardships and dangers. I had to endure a temperature over 35 degrees, fever, mourning and, to top it off, hunger. But, despite all this, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay managed to collect rich zoological and comparative anatomical materials. Soon he went to Constantinople and Odessa, visited the southern coast of the Crimea and visited the Volga, collecting materials on the anatomy of cartilaginous fish. From here he came to Moscow for the 2nd Congress of Russian Naturalists and Doctors, where he made a report on the need to organize Russian zoological and biological stations on the Black, Baltic, Caspian and White Seas, on the Volga and other rivers. This idea of N. N. Miklukho-Maclay met with sympathy at the congress. Soon Russian zoological stations began to appear. But a completely broad plan of scientific research, proposed by N. N. Miklukho-Maclay, was not carried out due to lack of funds.
From Moscow, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay arrived in St. Petersburg and was warmly received at the Academy of Sciences, where he was offered to work on a collection of sponges from rich academic collections. At a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay made a report on the characteristics of the Red Sea, its fauna, the nature of the shores and the life of the population. Then he came up with the idea of traveling to the vast territories of the Pacific Islands to study the life and customs of primitive peoples. It distracted N. N. Miklukho-Maclay from the processing of the huge natural-historical materials he had collected. But for him, the "field of scientific observations" still remained "white", unexplored. Neither personally collected materials nor academic collections seemed to him sufficient for the grandiose generalizations that fascinated him. A young and energetic traveler, obsessed with the desire to give science more and more riches of factual material, rushes into the "field", which this time for him is the Pacific Ocean.
“Choosing in 1868 that part of the globe to which I intended to devote my research,” writes N. N. Miklukho-Maclay in his message to the Russian Geographical Society in 1882, “I settled on the islands of the Pacific Ocean and mainly on New Guinea, as the least known island ... referring mainly to the goal - to find the area, which until then, until 1868, had not yet been visited by whites. Such an area was the northeastern coast of New Guinea, near the Astrolabe Bay. N. N. Miklukho-Maclay called it: “Maclay Coast”. Explaining the reasons why he left zoology and embryology and devoted himself to ethnology, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay writes: the life of this part of humanity under certain new conditions (which may appear every day) is very soon transient. The same birds of paradise and butterflies will fly over New Guinea even in the distant future.”
On October 27, 1870, the Russian military corvette Vityaz set out from Kronstadt to circumnavigate the world. It went on a long journey and N. N. Miklukho-Maclay. The path of the "Vityaz" lay through the Strait of Magellan, and this made it possible for N. N. Miklukho-Maclay to engage in scientific observations at various points in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. In September 1871, N. N. Miklukho-Maclay arrived on the northeastern shore of the huge (785,000 square kilometers) desert island of New Guinea in the Astrolabe Bay, where he settled in a small hut with two servants.
N. N. Miklukho-Maclay was met with hostility by the native Papuans. They pointed out to him with gestures to the sea, demanding his removal. “It got to the point,” wrote N. N. Miklukho-Maclay, “even to the point that almost daily, for fun, they shot arrows that flew very close to me.” But soon the Papuans fell in love with him so much that when the Russian military corvette "Izumrud" came for him in December 1872, the natives did not let him in and persuaded him to stay with them forever; they took him around the villages, declared their friendship, promised to build a new house for him instead of a hut that had collapsed by this time, offered any girl as a wife. N. N. Miklukho-Maclay promised his new friends to return. “Having considered quite objectively all the circumstances of my first stay among the natives and subsequent acquaintance with them,” writes N. N. Miklukho-Maclay, “I came to the conclusion that I owe the good result of relations with savages mainly to my restraint and patience” . The truthfulness of N. N. Miklukho-Maclay, his attentive friendliness to the Papuans amazed and fascinated them, and they decided that he was a special person, “kaaram-tamo”, which means “man from the moon”. His homeland, Russia, they also considered to be on the moon.
