About the renunciation of the twin cult in the Andronovsky burial ritual

The article deals with the pair burials of the Andronovsky period (the Sintashta-type, the Petrovka-type, the Alakul-type), where a man and a woman were buried face to face. In some burials the skeletons were found in a pose of «embraces». The paper gives the survey of different interpretations of this burial type and the author offers his own point of view. On the one hand, it is necessary to consider that people of all ages were buried there. There are some burials of children in the age of 3-4 or old people in the age of 40-60. On the other hand, people of one age group were buried in the majority of pair burials. In the Indo-Iranian mythology such pairs of divine twins as the Yama and his sister Yami, Yma and his sister Ymak, who were the ancestors of people, are known. Some scientists consider that these pair ancestors of people are the later version of the myth of «a divine androgen». In «Rigveda» (X. 10) Yami offers her brother Yama to marry her, but the brother refuses, as they are the brother and the sister. Obviously, what was forbidden in life was possible and even desirable in myths and rituals. The pair burials, in which a man and a woman were buried face to face, embodied the marriage of divine twins in the ritual. In the Indo-Iranian tradition there is a rather stable relation of a mythological image of twins with healing. It is possible to assume that the ritual was directed to the prevention of diseases and epidemics.