Ethnos and Endogamy

The ethnos in general, and certain of its types in particular, are usually defined in our scholarly literature as groups unified by combinations of common characteristics - territory, language, culture, etc. If the most important of these components of an ethnos - language, and particularly culture - are represented spatially, a clear failure of the boundaries of these two features to coincide reveals itself in many cases. This is shown with particular clarity in atlases of historical ethnography. For example, the most cursory familiarization with the cartographic materials of the atlas The Russians [Russkie] is sufficient to convince oneself that the areas of prevalence of certain components of the traditional forms of material culture of the Russian population do not coincide with each other.