Mordva is a people speaking one of the Finno-Ugric dialects. He lives in the basins of two rivers, Moksha and Sura, and in the interfluve of Belaya and Volga. This is one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation. A third of these people live within the borders of the Republic of Mordovia , and most of it is settled in neighboring regions of the Russian Federation. By the way, the representatives of this people themselves do not call themselves that. This ethnonym came from the word translated as "man, man." Mordvins are divided into two main tribes - Erzya (Erzyat) and Moksha (Mokshet).
Many historians are interested in the origin of the Mordvin people. Their appearance in most cases does not differ from the appearance of their Slavic-speaking neighbors, but they speak the language of a completely different group. Their culture is different from Russian, but not radically. Many historians see the origin of the Mordovians in the ancient people of the so-called "Gorodets culture." In ancient Russian sources, this people is mentioned from the eleventh century. At the end of the twelfth century, the primitive system disappears at the Mordovians. On its lands, a power is formed, known to the Slavs as "Purgasova volost". Then these territories became part of Russia. Most religions are Orthodox, however, in recent decades, they have shown interest in the ancient religion of their ancestors.
Mordvinians preserved the ancient traditions to our days. Man's appearance from this
people dressed in traditional costume, it seems very distinctive and colorful. The style of women’s and men’s suits is significantly different. Traditional cuisine resembles Russian: porridge, sauerkraut, sour bread, boiled meat. Of the drinks, kvass is popular.
The heterogeneous, binary people are Mordovians. Their appearance has the remains of Mongoloidity, and in some cases its obvious signs. This is due to the fact that several thousand years ago the population of the Urals moved towards the West, mingling with Caucasoid peoples. This also determines the replacement of the language of the people of ancient Gorodets culture with the language of the Finno-Ugric group. The invaders, belonging to the Ural race, assimilated the local population, to a large extent mixed with it. So the people of Mordovians were formed. The appearance of its representatives as a whole is a combination of Caucasoid and Mongoloid characters with a predominance of the former.
The number of the people in our time is declining. To a large extent this is due to assimilation processes. A significant part of this people uses Russian as the language of everyday communication. Assimilation began in the days of the
feudal fragmentation of Russia. Since then, the rate of assimilation of the Mordovians has steadily increased. Some of its ethnographic groups have long ago become Russified and dissolved in the mass of Russians.
There is no single, common Mordovian language - there are Erzya and Moksha. They differ slightly, and there is more in common between them than differences. Once they were only dialects of a single language spoken by Mordovians. Its origin is Finno-Ugric, with some borrowings from the language of neighboring peoples, in particular, from Tatar and Russian.