The origin of the Slavs There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs. Someone refers them to the Scythians and Sarmatians, who came from Central Asia, someone to the Aryans, Germans, others even identify them with the Celts. In general, all hypotheses of the origin of the Slavs can be divided into

The Slavs are perhaps one of the largest ethnic communities in Europe, with numerous myths circulating about the nature of their origin.

But what do we really know about the Slavs?

Who are the Slavs, where did they come from, and where is their ancestral home, we will try to figure it out.

Origin of the Slavs

There are several theories of the origin of the Slavs, according to which some historians attribute them to a tribe permanently residing in Europe, others to the Scythians and Sarmatians who came from Central Asia, and there are many other theories. Let's consider them sequentially:

The most popular is the theory of the Aryan origin of the Slavs.

The authors of this hypothesis are called theorists of the “Norman history of the origin of Rus'”, which was developed and put forward in the 18th century by a group of German scientists: Bayer, Miller and Schlozer, to substantiate which the Radzvilovskaya or Königsberg Chronicle was concocted.

The essence of this theory was as follows: the Slavs are an Indo-European people who migrated to Europe during the Great Migration of Peoples, and were part of some ancient "Germanic-Slavic" community. But as a result of various factors, having broken away from the civilization of the Germans and finding itself on the border with the wild eastern peoples, and becoming cut off from the advanced Roman civilization at that time, it lagged behind in its development so much that their paths of development radically diverged.

Archeology confirms the existence of strong intercultural ties between Germans and Slavs, and in general, the theory is more than worthy of respect if the Aryan roots of the Slavs are removed from it.

The second popular theory has a more European character, and it is much older than the Norman one.

According to his theory, the Slavs did not differ from other European tribes: Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Gepids, Getae, Alans, Avars, Dacians, Thracians and Illyrians, and were of the same Slavic tribe

The theory was quite popular in Europe, and the idea of ​​​​the origin of the Slavs from the ancient Romans, and Rurik from the emperor Octavian Augustus, was very popular with historians of that time.

The European origin of the peoples is also confirmed by the theory of the German scientist Harald Harman, who called Pannonia the homeland of the Europeans.

But I still like a simpler theory, which is based on a selective combination of the most plausible facts from other theories of the origin of not so much Slavic as European peoples in general.

The fact that the Slavs are strikingly similar to both the Germans and the ancient Greeks, I think you do not need to tell.

So, the Slavs came, like other European peoples, after the flood, from Iran, and they landed in Illaria, the cradle European culture, and from here, through Pannonia, they went to explore Europe, fighting and assimilating with the local peoples, from whom they acquired their differences.

Those who remained in Illaria created the first European civilization, which we now know as the Etruscans, while the fate of other peoples depended largely on the place they chose to settle.

It is hard for us to imagine, but in fact all European peoples and their ancestors were nomads. So were the Slavs...

Remember the oldest Slavic symbol that so organically fit into Ukrainian culture: the crane, which the Slavs identified with their most important task, reconnaissance of territories, the task of walking, settling and covering more and more new territories.

Just as the cranes flew to unknown distances, so did the Slavs across the continent, burning the forest and organizing settlements.

And as the population of the settlements grew, they gathered the strongest and healthiest young men and women and poisoned them on a long journey, like scouts, to explore new lands.

Age of the Slavs

It is difficult to say when the Slavs stood out as a single people from the pan-European ethnic mass.

Nestor attributes this event to the Babylonian pandemonium.

Mavro Orbini by 1496 BC, about which he writes: “At the indicated time, the Goths and the Slavs were of the same tribe. And having subjugated Sarmatia to its power, the Slavic tribe was divided into several tribes and received different names: Wends, Slavs, Antes, Verls, Alans, Massaets .... Vandals, Goths, Avars, Roskolans, Polyans, Czechs, Silesians .... ".

But if we combine the data of archeology, genetics and linguistics, we can say that the Slavs belonged to the Indo-European community, which, most likely, came out of the Dnieper archaeological culture, which was located between the Dnieper and Don rivers, seven thousand years ago during the Stone Age.

And from here, the influence of this culture spread to the territory from the Vistula to the Urals, although no one has yet been able to accurately localize it.

About four thousand years BC, it again broke up into three conditional groups: the Celts and Romans in the West, the Indo-Iranians in the East, and the Germans, Balts and Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe.

And around the 1st millennium BC, the Slavic language appeared.

Archeology nevertheless insists that the Slavs are the carriers of the "culture of under-closing burials", which got its name from the custom of covering the cremated remains with a large vessel.

This culture existed in V-II centuries BC between the Vistula and the Dnieper.

Ancestral home of the Slavs

Referring to a number of authors, Orbini sees Scandinavia as the original Slavic land: “The descendants of Japheth the son of Noah moved to Europe to the north, penetrating into the country now called Scandinavia. There they multiplied innumerably, as St. Augustine points out in his City of God, where he writes that the sons and descendants of Japheth had two hundred homelands and occupied the lands located north of Mount Taurus in Cilicia, along the Northern Ocean, half of Asia, and throughout Europe all the way to the British Ocean.

Nestor calls the homeland of the Slavs the land along the lower reaches of the Dnieper and Pannonia.

The prominent Czech historian Pavel Šafarik believed that the ancestral home of the Slavs should be sought on the territory of Europe in the neighborhood of the Alps, from where the Slavs left for the Carpathians under the onslaught of the Celtic expansion.

There was even a version about the ancestral home of the Slavs, located between the lower reaches of the Neman and the Western Dvina, and where the Slavic people themselves were formed, in the 2nd century BC, in the Vistula River basin.

The Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis about the ancestral home of the Slavs is by far the most popular.

It is sufficiently confirmed by local toponyms, as well as vocabulary.

Plus, the areas of the culture of underclothe burials already known to us fully correspond to these geographical features!

Origin of the name "Slavs"

The word "Slavs" is firmly in use already in the VI century AD, among Byzantine historians. They were spoken of as allies of Byzantium.

The Slavs themselves began to call themselves that in the Middle Ages, judging by the annals.

According to another version, the name comes from the word "word", since the "Slavs", unlike other peoples, knew how to write and read.

Mavro Orbini writes: “During their residence in Sarmatia, they took the name “Slavs”, which means “glorious”.

There is a version that relates the self-name of the Slavs to the territory of origin, and according to it, the name of the river "Slavutich" is the basis of the name, the original name of the Dnieper, which contains a root with the meaning "wash", "cleanse".

An important, but completely unpleasant for the Slavs, version says that there is a connection between the self-name "Slavs" and the Middle Greek word "slave" (σκλάβος).

It was especially popular in the Middle Ages.

The idea that the Slavs, as the most numerous people in Europe, at that time, made up the largest number of slaves in their mass and were a sought-after commodity in the slave trade, there is a place to be.

Recall that for many centuries the number of Slavic slaves supplied to Constantinople was unprecedented.

And, realizing that the executive and hardworking slaves, the Slavs in many respects surpassed all other peoples, they were not just a sought-after product, but also became the standard representation of the “slave”.

In fact, by their own labor, the Slavs forced other names of slaves out of use, no matter how insulting it may sound, and again, this is only a version.

The most correct version lies in the correct and balanced analysis of the name of our people, by resorting to which one can understand that the Slavs are a community united by one common religion: paganism, who glorified their gods with words that could not only pronounce, but also write!

Words that had a sacred meaning, and not the bleating and lowing of the barbarian peoples.

The Slavs brought glory to their gods, and glorifying them, glorifying their deeds, they united into a single Slavic civilization, a cultural link in the pan-European culture.

Slavic peoples occupy more space on earth than in history. The Italian historian Mavro Orbini, in his book “The Slavic Kingdom”, published back in 1601, wrote: “ The Slavic clan is older than the pyramids and so numerous that it inhabited half the world».

The written history of the Slavs BC says nothing. Traces of ancient civilizations in the Russian North is a scientific issue that has not been resolved by historians. The country is a utopia, described by the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Plato hyperborea - presumably the Arctic ancestral home of our civilization.

Hyperborea, also known as Daaria or Arctida, is the ancient name of the North. Judging by the chronicles, legends, myths and traditions that existed among different peoples of the world in antiquity, Hyperborea was located in the north of today's Russia. It is quite possible that it also affected Greenland, Scandinavia, or, as shown on medieval maps, was generally spread over the islands around the North Pole. That land was inhabited by people who are genetically related to us. The real existence of the mainland is evidenced by a map copied by the greatest cartographer of the 16th century G. Mercator in one of the Egyptian pyramids in Giza.

Gerhard Mercator's map published by his son Rudolf in 1535. The legendary Arctida is depicted in the center of the map. Cartographic materials of this kind before the Flood could only be obtained with the use of aircraft, highly developed technologies and with the powerful mathematical apparatus necessary to create specific projections.

In the calendars of the Egyptians, Assyrians and Maya, the catastrophe that destroyed Hyperborea dates back to 11542 BC. e. Climate change and the Flood 112 thousand years ago forced our Ancestors to leave their ancestral home Daaria and migrate through the only isthmus of the Arctic Ocean (the Ural Mountains).

“... the whole world turned upside down, and the stars fell from the sky. This happened because a huge planet fell to Earth ... at that moment "the heart of Leo reached the first minute of the head of Cancer." The great Arctic civilization was destroyed by a planetary catastrophe.

As a result of the impact of an asteroid 13659 years ago, the Earth made a "jump in time". The jump affected not only the astrological clock, which began to show a different time, but also the planetary energy clock, which sets the life-giving rhythm for all life on Earth.

The ancestral home of the peoples of the White race of clans did not completely sink.

From the vast territory of the north of the Eurasian Plateau, which was once land, today only Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands are visible above the water.

Astronomers and astrophysicists who study the problems of asteroid safety claim that every hundred years the Earth collides with cosmic bodies less than a hundred meters in size. More than a hundred meters - every 5000 years. Impacts of asteroids with a diameter of one kilometer are possible once every 300 thousand years. Once in a million years, collisions with bodies with a diameter of more than five kilometers are not ruled out.

The surviving ancient historical chronicles and research show that over the past 16,000 years, large asteroids, whose dimensions exceeded tens of kilometers in diameter, hit the Earth twice: 13,659 years ago and 2,500 years before.

If there are no scientific texts, material monuments are hidden under the Arctic ice or are not recognized, the reconstruction of the language comes to the rescue. Tribes, settling, turned into peoples, and marks remained on their chromosome sets. Such marks remained on Aryan words, and they can be recognized in any Western European language. Mutations of words coincide with mutations of chromosomes! Daaria or Arctida, called Hyperborea by the Greeks, is the ancestral home of all Aryan peoples and representatives of the racial type of white people in Europe and Asia.

Two branches of the Aryan peoples are evident. Approximately 10 thousand years BC. one spread to the east, and the other moved from the territory of the Russian Plain to Europe. DNA genealogy shows that these two branches sprouted from the same root from the depths of millennia, from ten to twenty thousand years BC, it is much older than the one that today's scientists write about, suggesting that the Aryans spread from the south. Indeed, the movement of the Aryans in the south existed, but it was much later. At first, there was a migration of people from north to south and to the center of the mainland, where the future Europeans appeared, that is, representatives of the white race. Even before moving to the south, these tribes lived together in the territories adjacent to the Southern Urals.

The fact that the predecessors of the Aryans lived on the territory of Russia in ancient times and there was a developed civilization is confirmed by one of the oldest cities discovered in the Urals in 1987, the city - an observatory, which already existed at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e... Named after the nearby village of Arkaim. Arkaim (XVIII-XVI centuries BC) is a contemporary of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, the Cretan-Mycenaean culture and Babylon. Calculations show that Arkaim is older than the Egyptian pyramids, its age is at least five thousand years, like Stonehenge.

According to the type of burials in Arkaim, it can be argued that proto-Aryans lived in the city. Our ancestors, who lived on the land of Russia, already 18 thousand years ago had the most accurate lunisolar calendar, solar-stellar observatories of amazing accuracy, ancient temple cities; they gave mankind perfect tools of labor and laid the foundation for animal husbandry.

To date, the Aryans can be distinguished

1. by language - Indo-Iranian, Dardic, Nuristani groups
2. Y-chromosome - carriers of some R1a subclades in Eurasia
3. 3) anthropologically - the proto-Indo-Iranians (Aryans) were carriers of the Cro-Magnoid ancient Eurasian type, which is not represented in the modern population.

The search for modern "Aryans" encounters a number of similar difficulties - it is impossible to reduce these 3 points to one meaning.

In Russia, interest in the search for Hyperborea has been for a long time, starting with Catherine II and her envoys to the north. With the help of Lomonosov, she organized two expeditions. On May 4, 1764, the Empress signed a secret decree.

The Cheka and personally Dzerzhinsky also showed interest in the search for Hyperborea. Everyone was interested in the secret of the Absolute weapon, which is similar in strength to nuclear weapons. XX century expedition

under the leadership of Alexander Barchenko, she was looking for him. Even the Nazi expedition, which consisted of members of the Ahnenerbe organization, visited the territories of the Russian North.

Doctor of Philosophical Sciences Valery Demin, defending the concept of the polar ancestral home of mankind, gives versatile arguments in favor of the theory according to which a highly developed Hyperborean civilization existed in the North in the distant past: the roots of Slavic culture go into it.

Slavs, like all modern peoples, arose as a result of complex ethnic processes and are a mixture of previous heterogeneous ethnic groups. The history of the Slavs is inextricably linked with the history of the emergence and settlement of the Indo-European tribes. Four thousand years ago, a single Indo-European community begins to disintegrate. The formation of the Slavic tribes took place in the process of separating them from among the numerous tribes of a large Indo-European family. In Central and Eastern Europe, a language group is separated, which, as shown by genetic data, included the ancestors of the Germans, Balts and Slavs. They occupied a vast territory: from the Vistula to the Dnieper, individual tribes reached the Volga, crowding out the Finno-Ugric peoples. In the 2nd millennium BC. The Germano-Balto-Slavic language group also experienced fragmentation processes: the Germanic tribes went to the West, beyond the Elbe, while the Balts and Slavs remained in Eastern Europe.

From the middle of the II millennium BC. over large areas from the Alps to the Dnieper, Slavic or Slavic speech prevails. But other tribes continue to be in this territory, and some of them leave these territories, others appear from non-contiguous regions. Several waves from the south, and then the Celtic invasion, prompted the Slavs and their kindred tribes to leave to the north and northeast. Apparently, this was often accompanied by a certain decrease in the level of culture, and hindered development. So the Baltoslavs and the separated Slavic tribes turned out to be excluded from the cultural and historical community, which was formed at that time on the basis of the synthesis of the Mediterranean civilization and the cultures of the newcomer barbarian tribes.

In modern science, the views according to which the Slavic ethnic community initially developed in the area either between the Oder (Odra) and the Vistula (Oder-Vistula theory), or between the Oder and the Middle Dnieper (Oder-Dnieper theory) have received the greatest recognition. The ethnogenesis of the Slavs developed in stages: the Proto-Slavs, the Proto-Slavs and the early Slavic ethno-linguistic community, which subsequently broke up into several groups:

• Romanesque - the French, Italians, Spaniards, Romanians, Moldavians will come from it;
• German - Germans, British, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians; Iranian - Tajiks, Afghans, Ossetians;
• Baltic - Latvians, Lithuanians;
• Greek - Greeks;
• Slavic - Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians.

The assumption of the existence of the ancestral home of the Slavs, Balts, Celts, Germans is rather controversial. Craniological materials do not contradict the hypothesis that the ancestral home of the Proto-Slavs was located in the interfluve of the Vistula and the Danube, the Western Dvina and the Dniester. Nestor considered the Danube lowlands to be the ancestral home of the Slavs. Anthropology could provide much for the study of ethnogenesis. The Slavs during the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD burned the dead, so researchers do not have such material at their disposal. And genetic and other studies are the business of the future. Taken separately, various information about the Slavs in the ancient period - both historical data, and archeological data, and toponymic data, and data of language contacts - cannot provide reliable grounds for determining the ancestral home of the Slavs.

Hypothetical ethnogenesis of proto-peoples around 1000 BC e. (Proto-Slavs are highlighted in yellow)

Ethnogenetic processes were accompanied by migrations, differentiation and integration of peoples, assimilation phenomena, in which various, both Slavic and non-Slavic ethnic groups took part. Contact zones emerged and changed. Further settlement of the Slavs, especially intensive in the middle of the 1st millennium AD, took place in three main directions: to the south (to the Balkan Peninsula), to the west (to the region of the Middle Danube and the interfluve of the Oder and Elbe) and to the northeast along the East European plain. Written sources did not help scientists determine the boundaries of the distribution of the Slavs. Archaeologists came to the rescue. But when studying possible archaeological cultures, it was impossible to single out the Slavic one. Cultures were superimposed on each other, which spoke of their parallel existence, constant movement, wars and cooperation, mixing.

The Indo-European linguistic community developed among the population, individual groups of which were in direct communication with each other. Such communication was possible only in a relatively limited and compact area. There were quite extensive zones within which related languages ​​developed. In many areas, multilingual tribes lived in stripes, and this situation could also persist for centuries. Their languages ​​converged, but the addition of a relatively single language could only be realized under the conditions of the state. Tribal migrations were seen as a natural cause of the disintegration of the community. So the once closest "relatives" - the Germans became Germans for the Slavs, literally "dumb", "speaking in an incomprehensible language." The migration wave threw out this or that people, crowding, destroying, assimilating other peoples. As for the ancestors of the modern Slavs and the ancestors of the modern Baltic peoples (Lithuanians and Latvians), they constituted a single nationality for one and a half thousand years. During this period, the northeastern (mainly Baltic) components increased in the composition of the Slavs, which brought changes both in the anthropological appearance and in certain elements of culture.

Byzantine writer of the 6th century Procopius of Caesarea described the Slavs as people of very tall stature and great strength, with white skin and hair. Entering the battle, they went to the enemies with shields and darts in their hands, but they never put on shells. The Slavs used wooden bows and small arrows dipped in a special poison. Having no head over them and being at enmity with each other, they did not recognize the military system, were unable to fight in the right battle and never showed up on open and level places. If it happened that they dared to go into battle, then with a cry they all together slowly moved forward, and if the enemy could not withstand their cry and onslaught, then they actively advanced; otherwise, they took to flight, slowly measuring their strength with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. Using the forests as cover, they rushed towards them, because only among the gorges they knew how to fight well. Often, the Slavs abandoned the captured prey, allegedly under the influence of confusion, and fled into the forests, and then, when the enemies tried to take possession of it, they unexpectedly struck. Some of them did not wear shirts or cloaks, but only trousers, pulled up by a wide belt on the hips, and in this form they went to fight the enemy. They preferred to fight the enemy in places overgrown with dense forests, in gorges, on cliffs; they suddenly attacked day and night, profitably used ambushes, tricks, inventing many ingenious ways to unexpectedly hit the enemy. They easily crossed the rivers, courageously withstanding their stay in the water.

The Slavs did not keep captives in slavery for an unlimited time, like other tribes, but after a certain time they offered them a choice: for a ransom, return home or stay where they were, in the position of free people and friends.

The Indo-European language family is one of the largest. The language of the Slavs retained the archaic forms of the once common Indo-European language and began to take shape in the middle of the 1st millennium. By this time, a group of tribes had already formed. the actual Slavic dialectal features, which sufficiently distinguished them from the Balts, formed the language formation that is commonly called Proto-Slavic. The settlement of the Slavs in the vast expanses of Europe, their interaction and miscegenation (mixed ancestry) with other ethnic groups disrupted the common Slavic processes and laid the foundations for the formation of individual Slavic languages ​​and ethnic groups. Slavic languages ​​fall into a number of dialects.

The words "Slavs" in those ancient times did not have. There were people, but differently named. One of the names - Wends, comes from the Celtic vindos, which means "white." This word is still preserved in the Estonian language. Ptolemy and Jordanes believe that Wends is the oldest collective name of all the Slavs who lived at that time between the Elbe and the Don. The earliest news about the Slavs under the name of the Wends belong to the 1st - 3rd centuries AD and belong to Roman and Greek writers - Pliny the Elder, Publius Cornelius Tacitus and Ptolemy Claudius.According to these authors, the Wends lived along the Baltic coast between the Stetinsky Bay, where it flows into the Odra, and the Gulf of Danzing, into which the Vistula empties, along the Vistula from its headwaters in the Carpathian Mountains to the coast of the Baltic Sea. Their neighbors were the Ingevonian Germans, who may have given them such a name. Such Latin authors as Pliny the Elder and Tacitus they are also singled out as a special ethnic community with the name “Veneds.” Half a century later, Tacitus, noting the ethnic difference between the Germanic, Slavic and Sarmatian worlds, allotted the Wends a vast territory between the Baltic coast and the Carpathians.

Wends inhabited Europe already in the 3rd millennium BC.

Venedi withVcenturies occupied part of the territory modern Germany between the Elbe and the Oder. INVIIcentury, the Wends invaded Thuringia and Bavaria, where they defeated the Franks. The raids on Germany continued until the startXcentury, when Emperor Henry I launched an offensive against the Wends, putting forward their adoption of Christianity as one of the conditions for concluding peace. The conquered Wends often rebelled, but each time they were defeated, after which an increasing part of their lands passed to the winners. The campaign against the Wends in 1147 was accompanied by the mass destruction of the Slavic population, and henceforth the Wends did not offer any stubborn resistance to the German conquerors. German settlers came to the once Slavic lands, and the new cities founded began to play an important role in the economic development of northern Germany. From about 1500, the area of ​​distribution of the Slavic language was reduced almost exclusively to the Lusatian margraviates - Upper and Lower, later included, respectively, in Saxony and Prussia, and adjacent territories. Here, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe cities of Cottbus and Bautzen, and live modern descendants Wends, who are left approx. 60,000 (mostly Catholic). In Russian literature, they are usually called Lusatians (the name of one of the tribes that were part of the Wends group) or Lusatian Serbs, although they themselves call themselves Serbja or Serbski Lud, and their modern German name is Sorben (formerly also Wenden). Since 1991, the Foundation for Lusatian Affairs has been in charge of preserving the language and culture of this people in Germany.

In the IV century, the ancient Slavs finally stand apart and appear on the historical arena as a separate ethnic group. And under two names. This is “Slovene” and the second name is “Antes”. In the VI century. the historian Jordanes, who wrote in Latin in his essay “On the Origin and Deeds of the Getae”, reports reliable information about the Slavs: “Starting from the birthplace of the Vistula River, a large tribe of Veneti settled in immense spaces. Although their names are now changing according to different clans and localities, yet they are predominantly called Sclaveni and Antes.The Sclaveni live from the city of Novietuna and the lake called Mursian to Danastra, and north to Viskla; Danastra to Danapra, where the Pontic Sea forms a bend". These groups spoke the same language. At the beginning of the 7th century, the name "Antes" ceased to be used. Apparently, because during the migration movements a certain tribal union, which was called by that name.In ancient (Roman and Byzantine) literary monuments the name of the Slavs looks like “Sklavins”, in Arabic sources it looks like “Sakaliba”, sometimes the self-name of one of the Scythian groups “Schips” is brought together with the Slavs.

The Slavs finally stood out as an independent people not earlier than the 4th century AD. when the "Great Migration of Nations" "torn" the Balto-Slavic community. Under their own name, "Slavs" appeared in chronicles in the 6th century. From the 6th century information about the Slavs appears in many sources, which undoubtedly indicates their significant strength by this time, the entry of the Slavs into the historical arena in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, their clashes and alliances with the Byzantines, Germans and other peoples who inhabited at that time Eastern and Central Europe. By this time they occupied vast territories, their language retained archaic forms of the once common Indo-European language. Linguistic science determined the boundaries of the origin of the Slavs from the 18th century BC. until the VI century. AD The first news about the Slavic tribal world appears already on the eve of the Great Migration of Nations.

Modern Slavic peoples were formed over a long time. They had many ancestors. These include the Slavs themselves and their neighbors, who significantly influenced the life, culture and religion of these tribes, when they still lived according to the foundations of the tribal community.

Antes and Slavins

Until now, historians and archaeologists have put forward a variety of theories about who the Slavic ancestors could be. The ethnogenesis of this people took place in an era from which there are almost no written sources left. Specialists had to restore the early history of the Slavs to the smallest grains. Byzantine chronicles are of great value. It was the Eastern Roman Empire that had to experience the pressure of the tribes, which eventually formed the Slavic people.

The first evidence of them dates back to the 6th century. Slavic ancestors in Byzantine sources were called Antes. The famous historian wrote about them. At first, the Ants lived in the interfluve of the Dniester and Dnieper in the territory of modern Ukraine. During their heyday they lived in the steppes from the Don to the Balkans.

If the Antes belonged to the eastern group of Slavs, then to the west of them lived their kindred Slavs. The first mention of them remained in Jordan's Getica, written in the middle of the 6th century. Sometimes the Sclaveni were also called Veneti. These tribes lived on the territory of modern Czech Republic.

social order

The inhabitants of Byzantium believed that the Slavic ancestors were barbarians who did not know civilization. It really was. Both the Slavins and the Antes lived under democracy. They did not have a single ruler and statehood. The early Slavic society consisted of many communities, the core of each of which was a certain clan. Such descriptions are found in Byzantine sources and are confirmed by the findings of modern archaeologists. The settlements consisted of large dwellings in which large families lived. In one settlement there could be about 20 houses. Among the Slavs, a hearth was common, among the Antes - a stove. In the north, the Slavs built log cabins.

Customs corresponded to cruel patriarchal mores. For example, ritual murders of wives were practiced at the grave of a spouse. Slavic ancestors were engaged in agriculture, which was the main source of food. Wheat, millet, barley, oats, rye were grown. Cattle were bred: sheep, pigs, ducks, chickens. The craft was poorly developed compared to the same Byzantium. Basically, it served domestic household needs.

Army and slavery

Gradually, a social stratum of warriors emerged in the community. They often organized raids on Byzantium and other neighboring countries. The goal has always been the same - robbery and slaves. Ancient Slavic squads could include several thousand people. It was in the military environment that governors and princes appeared. The first ancestors of the Slavs fought with spears (less often with swords). Throwing weapons, the sulica, were also widespread. It was used not only in combat, but also in hunting.

It is known for certain that slavery was widespread among the Ants. The number of slaves could reach tens of thousands of people. Mostly they were prisoners captured in the war. That is why there were many Byzantines among the Antes slaves. As a rule, the Antes kept slaves in order to get a ransom for them. However, some of them were employed in the economy and crafts.

Avars invasion

In the middle of the 6th century, the lands of the Ants came under attack from the Avars. These were nomadic tribes whose rulers bore the title of kagan. Their ethnicity remains a subject of controversy: some consider them to be Turks, others to speak Iranian languages. The ancestors of the ancient Slavs, although they were in a subservient position, noticeably crowded the Avars in their numbers. This relationship has led to confusion. The Byzantines (for example, John of Ephesus and completely identified the Slavs and Avars, although such an assessment was a mistake.

The invasion from the east led to a significant migration of the population, who had previously lived in one place for a long time. Together with the Avars, the Antes first moved to Pannonia (modern Hungary), and later began to invade the Balkans, which belonged to Byzantium.

The Slavs became the basis of the army of the kaganate. The most famous episode of their confrontation with the empire was the siege of Constantinople in 626. The history of the ancient Slavs is known from brief episodes of their interaction with the Greeks. The siege of Constantinople was just such an example. Despite the assault, the Slavs and Avars failed to take the city.

Nevertheless, the onslaught of the pagans continued in the future. Back in 602, the Lombard king sent his shipbuilding masters to the Slavs. They settled in Dubrovnik. The first Slavic ships (monoxyls) appeared in this port. They took part in the already mentioned siege of Constantinople. And at the end of the 6th century, the Slavs laid siege to Thessaloniki for the first time. Soon thousands of pagans moved to Thrace. Then the Slavs appeared on the territory of modern Croatia and Serbia.

East Slavs

The unsuccessful siege of Constantinople in 626 undermined the forces of the Avar Khaganate. Slavs everywhere began to get rid of the yoke of strangers. In Moravia Samo raised an uprising. He became the first Slavic prince known by name. At the same time, his fellow tribesmen began their expansion to the east. In the 7th century, the colonialists became neighbors of the Khazars. They managed to penetrate even into the Crimea and get to the Caucasus. Where the ancestors of the Slavs lived and their settlements were founded, there was always a river or lake, as well as land suitable for cultivation.

The city of Kyiv appeared on the Dnieper, named after Prince Kyi. Here a new tribal union of polyans was formed, which, among several other such unions, replaced the ants. In the 7th-8th centuries, three groups of Slavic peoples were finally formed, which still exist today (western, southern and eastern). The latter settled on the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and in the interfluve of the Volga and Oka, their settlements ended up within the borders of Russia.

In Byzantium, Slavs and Scythians were often identified. This was a serious Greek error. The Scythians belonged to Iranian tribes and spoke Iranian languages. During their heyday, they inhabited, among other things, the Dnieper steppes, as well as the Crimea. When the Slavic colonization got there, regular conflicts began between the new neighbors. A serious danger was the cavalry, which was owned by the Scythians. The ancestors of the Slavs for many years held back their invasions, until, finally, the nomads were swept away by the Goths.

Tribal unions and cities of the Eastern Slavs

In the northeast, the neighbors of the Slavs were numerous Finno-Ugric tribes, including the whole and Merya. The settlements of Rostov, Beloozero and Staraya Ladoga appeared here. Another city, Novgorod, became an important political center. In 862, the Varangian Rurik began to reign in it. This event was the beginning of Russian statehood.

The cities of the Eastern Slavs appeared mainly in places where the Path from the Varangians to the Greeks ran. This trade artery led from the Baltic Sea to Byzantium. Along the way, merchants transported valuable goods: ambergris, whale skin, amber, marten and sable furs, honey, wax, etc. The goods were delivered on boats. The path of the ships ran along the rivers. Part of the route ran on land. In these areas, the boats were transported by portage, as a result of which the cities of Toropets and Smolensk appeared on the ground.

The East Slavic tribes lived apart from each other for a long time, and often they were at enmity and fought among themselves. This made them vulnerable to neighbors. For this reason, at the beginning of the 9th century, some East Slavic tribal unions began to pay tribute to the Khazars. Others were heavily dependent on the Varangians. The Tale of Bygone Years mentions a dozen such tribal unions: Buzhans, Volhynians, Dregovichi, Drevlyans, Krivichi, Polyana, Polochan, Severyans, Radimichi, Tivertsy, White Croats and Ulichi. A single culture for all of them developed only in the XI-XII centuries. after the formation of Kievan Rus and the adoption of Christianity. Later, this ethnic group was divided into Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. This is the answer to the question of whose ancestors are the Eastern Slavs.

South Slavs

The Slavs who settled in the Balkans gradually separated themselves from their other tribesmen and made up the South Slavic tribes. Today their descendants are Serbs, Bulgarians, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Slovenes. If the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs inhabited mostly empty lands, then their southern counterparts got the land, in which there were many settlements founded by the Romans. From the ancient civilization there were also roads along which the pagans quickly moved around the Balkans. Before them, Byzantium owned the peninsula. However, the empire had to cede the land to strangers due to constant wars in the east with the Persians and internal turmoil.

In the new lands, the ancestors of the southern Slavs mixed with the autochthonous (local) Greek population. In the mountains, the colonialists had to face the resistance of the Vlachs, as well as the Albanians. The outsiders also clashed with the Christian Greeks. The resettlement of the Slavs to the Balkans ended in the 620s.

Neighborhood with Christians and regular contacts with them had a great influence on the new masters of the Balkans. The paganism of the Slavs in this region was eradicated the fastest. Christianization was both natural and encouraged by Byzantium. First, the Greeks, trying to understand who the Slavs were, sent embassies to them, and then preachers followed them. Emperors regularly sent missionaries to dangerous neighbors, hoping in this way to increase their influence on the barbarians. So, for example, the baptism of the Serbs began under Heraclius, who ruled in 610-641. The process went on gradually. The new religion took root among the southern Slavs in the second half of the ninth century. Then the princes Rashki were baptized, after which they converted their subjects to the Christian faith.

It is interesting that if the Serbs became the flock of the Eastern Church in Constantinople, then their brothers the Croats turned their gaze to the West. This was due to the fact that in 812 the Frankish emperor Charlemagne concluded an agreement with the Byzantine king Michael I Rangava, according to which part of the Adriatic coast of the Balkans became dependent on the Franks. They were Catholics and, during their short reign in the region, baptized Croats according to their Western custom. And although in the 9th century the Christian church was still considered one, the great schism of 1054 noticeably alienated Catholics and Orthodox from each other.

Western Slavs

The western group of Slavic tribes settled vast territories from the Elbe to the Carpathians. She laid the foundation for the Polish, Czech and Slovak people. To the west of all lived Bodrichi, Lutichi, Lusatians and Pomeranians. In the 6th century, this Polabian group of Slavs occupied about a third of the territory of modern Germany. Conflicts between tribes of different ethnicity were constant. The new colonialists pushed the Lombards, Varins and Rugs (who spoke

Curious evidence of the presence of the Slavs on the present German soil is the name of Berlin. Linguists have figured out the nature of the origin of this word. In the language of the Polabian Slavs, "burlin" meant a dam. There are many of them in the northeast of Germany. That's how far the ancestors of the Slavs penetrated. Back in 623, these same colonists joined Prince Samo in his uprising against the Avars. Periodically, under the successors of Charlemagne, the Polabian Slavs entered into an alliance with the Franks in their campaigns against the Khaganate.

German feudal lords launched an offensive against strangers in the 9th century. Gradually, the Slavs who lived on the banks of the Elbe submitted to them. Today, only small isolated groups remain of them, including several thousand people each, who have retained their own unique dialect, unlike even Polish. In the Middle Ages, the Germans called all neighboring Western Slavs Wends.

Language and writing

To understand who the Slavs are, it is best to turn to the history of their language. Once upon a time, when this people was still united, they had one dialect. It received the name of the Proto-Slavic language. There are no written records left of him. It is only known that it belonged to an extensive Indo-European family of languages, which makes it related to many other languages: Germanic, Romance, etc. Some linguists and historians put forward additional theories about its origin. According to one of the hypotheses, the Proto-Slavic language at some stage of its development was part of the Proto-Balto-Slavic language, until the Baltic languages ​​separated into their own group.

Gradually, each nation developed its own dialect. On the basis of one of these dialects, which was spoken by the Slavs who lived in the vicinity of the city of Thessalonica, the brothers Cyril and Methodius created Slavic Christian writing in the 9th century. Enlighteners did this by order of the Byzantine emperor. Writing was necessary for the translation of Christian books and sermons among the pagans. Over time, it became known as Cyrillic. This alphabet today is the basis of the Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and Montenegrin languages. The rest of the Slavs who converted to Catholicism use the Latin alphabet.

In the 20th century, archaeologists began to find many artifacts that became monuments of ancient Cyrillic writing. Novgorod became the key place for these excavations. Thanks to the finds in its vicinity, experts learned a lot about what the ancient Slavic writing and culture.

For example, the so-called Gnezdovskaya inscription, made on a clay jug in the middle of the 10th century, is considered the oldest East Slavic text in Cyrillic. The artifact was found in 1949 by archaeologist Daniil Avdusin. A thousand kilometers away, back in 1912, a lead seal with a Cyrillic inscription was discovered in an ancient Kyiv church. The archaeologists who deciphered it decided that it means the name of Prince Svyatoslav, who ruled in 945-972. It is interesting that at that time paganism remained the main religion in Rus', although Christianity and the same Cyrillic alphabet were already in Bulgaria. in such ancient inscriptions help to more accurately identify the artifact.

The question of whether the Slavs had their own written language before the adoption of Christianity remains open. Fragmentary references to it are found in some authors of that era, but these inaccurate evidence are not enough to draw up a complete picture. Perhaps the Slavs used cuts and features to convey information using images. Such letters could be of a ritual nature and used in divination.

Religion and culture

The pre-Christian paganism of the Slavs developed over several centuries and acquired independent unique features. This faith consisted of the spiritualization of nature, animism, animatism, the cult of supernatural forces, the veneration of ancestors and magic. The original mythological texts that would help lift the veil of secrecy over Slavic paganism have not survived to this day. Historians can judge this faith only from the annals, chronicles, testimonies of foreigners and other secondary sources.

In the mythology of the Slavs, traits inherent in other Indo-European cults can be traced. For example, in the pantheon there are wars (Perun), the god of the other world and cattle (Veles), a deity with the image of Father-Heaven (Stribog). All this in one form or another is also found in Iranian, Baltic and German mythology.

The gods for the Slavs were the highest sacred beings. The fate of any person depended on their complacency. In the most important, responsible and dangerous moments, each tribe turned to its supernatural patrons. The Slavs had widespread sculptures of gods (idols). They were made of wood and stone. The most famous episode associated with idols was mentioned in chronicles in connection with the Baptism of Rus'. Prince Vladimir, as a sign of acceptance of the new faith, ordered that the idols of the old gods be thrown into the Dnieper. This act was a clear demonstration of the beginning new era. Even despite the Christianization that began at the end of the 10th century, paganism continued to live, especially in the remote and bearish corners of Rus'. Some of its features were mixed with Orthodoxy and preserved in the form of folk customs (for example, calendar holidays). Interestingly, Slavic names often appeared as references to religious views (for example, Bogdan - “given by God”, etc.).

For the worship of pagan spirits, there were special sanctuaries, which were called temples. The life of the ancestors of the Slavs was closely connected with these sacred places. Temple premises existed only among the western tribes (Poles, Czechs), while their eastern counterparts did not have such buildings. Old Russian sanctuaries were open groves. Rites of worship to the gods were held at the temples.

In addition to idols, the Slavs, like the Baltic tribes, had sacred boulder stones. Perhaps this custom was adopted from the Finno-Ugric peoples. The cult of ancestors was associated with the Slavic funeral rite. During the funeral, ritual dances and chants (trizna) were arranged. The body of the deceased was not interred, but burned at the stake. Ashes and the remaining bones were collected in a special vessel, which was left at a post on the road.

The history of the ancient Slavs would have been completely different if all the tribes had not accepted Christianity. Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism included them in a single European medieval civilization.

SLAVS

The country where he was born, like his parents, is not chosen. But in order to consciously love her, a person needs to understand the soul of his people, his past. So, you need to know the history of your Fatherland. At the beginning of the new European-Christian history, two tribes assumed a dominant position and held it forever: Germanic and Slavic, tribes - brothers of the same Indo-European origin. They divided Europe among themselves, and in this initial division, in this initial movement - the Germans from the northeast to the southwest, in the region of the Roman Empire, where a solid foundation of European civilization had already been laid, and the Slavs, on the contrary, from the southwest to the northeast, into the virgin and deprived of nature spaces - in this opposite movement lies the difference in the entire subsequent history of both tribes. But, we only see that one tribe initially acts under the most favorable circumstances, the other under the most unfavorable. And that a tribe that, under all the most unfavorable conditions, skillfully resisted, skillfully preserved its European-Christian image, formed a powerful state. The history of Russia has always been filled with dramatic events: the struggle against foreign invaders, princely civil strife, and popular uprisings. Our ancestors had to overcome a lot so that now their descendants could proudly say: “We live in Russia!”

From the very beginning, our country arose as a multinational state, and the peoples that were part of it contributed to the development of culture, which became an important link in the history of world civilization. Our ancestors explored new lands and built cities, created wonderful monuments of architecture and writing. They showed amazing examples of self-sacrifice and love for their Motherland.

How do we learn about the past. The memory of the people lives on oral art: epics, ancient legends, proverbs and sayings. Many of them have come down to us from the unimaginable distance of centuries. But, unfortunately, neither proverbs nor ancient epics give us the opportunity to see with our own eyes what our ancestors looked like, what they dressed in, how they lived. In addition, the epics themselves and folk songs were created much later than the events they describe. Along the banks of ancient rivers, among the steppes and in forest clearings, mounds rise silent witnesses of ancient events. Mounds are ancient graves that keep the rest of long-dead ancestors.

Time, albeit reluctantly, still opens the veil over the secrets of the past.

There is a separate science that studies the monuments of antiquity. This science is called archeology. Archaeologists are excavating ancient settlements, studying what has been hidden in the earth for many centuries, and based on these findings, they recreate a real picture of the past.

During excavations, scientists often find bones of domestic and wild animals, grains of various cereals, fragments of ancient utensils, children's toys made of clay, and jewelry. Very often, it is archaeologists who manage to answer questions that many generations of scientists have unsuccessfully tried to solve.

During archaeological sites birch bark letters were found. There are many such finds. First, in Novgorod, and then in other Russian cities, birch bark letters were found - letters from the ancient Slavs to each other. In Novgorod, 632 such letters were found. In Staraya Russa - 14, in Smolensk -10, in Pskov - 4, letters were also found in Tver, Vitebsk, Mstislav.

Like tiny streams, the few legends and texts that have survived to this day, authentic household items, flow and flow to us from the past and, merging, fill the mighty and bright stream of the history of our Motherland. Scientists call them historical sources. They give an idea of ​​the development of the language of the ancient Slavs, tell about their personal and economic affairs.

ORIGIN OF THE SLAVES

The Slavs belong to the Indo-European family of peoples, which means that their ancestors, as well as the ancestors of modern Germans, Lithuanians, Latvians, Greeks, Italians, Iranians, Indians and many other peoples, once spoke the same language and lived in a vast space between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, between mediterranean sea and the Arctic Ocean. The distant ancestral home of the Slavs, most scientists consider the territory from the Alps to the Carpathians.

Long before the Slavs, Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes lived on the territory of Eastern Europe overgrown with dense forests. They were not very numerous, there was enough space for everyone, and peaceful neighborhood led to the fact that the local population mixed with newcomers, perceiving their external features, language, and customs.

Approximately 2-3 in. BC. an event occurred that was extremely important for all mankind: people learned how to process copper, and then bronze.

However, copper in its pure form is rarely found in nature, and the need for this metal has increased. In the end, this led to the development of trade between the tribes to further increase the inequality between them. The struggle for herds and pastures forced the ancestors of the Slavs, Germans and Balts to develop new territories in Central and Eastern Europe up to the Middle Volga.

But pastures were often not enough on the new lands, because they were occupied by other tribes, and when settlement ceased by the 15th century BC, settled life began again in European forests and forest-steppes. Soon, new related languages ​​began to emerge in the vast developed spaces: Germanic in the west, Slavic in the east and in the center of Europe.

OUR LAND IS ABUNDANT

If we try to compare the natural conditions of Eastern and Western Europe, we can draw one indisputable conclusion: the western part of our continent is much more comfortable for life.

One of the well-known Russian historians, S. M. Solovyov, wrote that Western European nature has always been a tender mother for a person, and eastern nature has always been a harsh stepmother.

The middle belt of Eastern Europe is still distinguished by an abundance of forests, and in those days a vast forest stretched from the middle reaches of the Dnieper to the north and northeast to the very Baltic Sea, interspersed with lakes and swamps. In the forests of Eastern Europe there were a huge number of squirrels, hares, wolves, bears, various fur-bearing animals, wild boars and bison roamed in herds. Many forest birds hid in the impenetrable wilds. The bees that lived in the hollows of the trees gave honey to our ancestors.

To the south, where the forest-steppe zone began, there was a large amount of fertile land that had long attracted agricultural tribes. In peaceful periods of history, the ancestors of the Slavs who lived here created flourishing settlements and carried on a lively trade with neighboring peoples.

In the 5th-6th centuries, the movement of the Slavs to the south began, and the Byzantine Empire began to experience an ever-increasing onslaught on its borders. In this great migration of the Slavs across the Danube and to the Balkan Peninsula, both the ancestors of the present-day Croats and Serbs, as well as the Eastern Slavs, took part.

TRIBE AND ROD

By the 5th-6th centuries. the Eastern Slavs formed large unions of tribes: Polyany, Dregovichi, Vyatichi, Krivichi, Northerners, Polochans, Slovenian-Ilmen and others. They were united by a common language, customs and beliefs. We first meet brief but clear indications of the life of the Slavs in Tacitus (Tacitus Cornelius - a Roman historian of the late 1st - early 2nd century): comparing the Slavs with the peoples of Europe and Asia, settled and nomadic, among whom they lived, Tacitus says that they should be attributed to the former, because they build houses, carry shields, and fight on foot. Thus, the first reliable news about the life of the Slavs presents them to us as a sedentary people, sharply different from nomads; for the first time a Slav is brought to the historical stage in the form of a European warrior, on foot and with a shield. Such and such a tribe appeared in the regions of present-day Russia and settled in vast expanses, mainly along the banks of large rivers. The Slavs lived in special families. “Everyone lived with his family, in his own place and ruled over his family,” says our ancient chronicler.

The Eastern Slavs lived in a tribal system. All kinds of matters were discussed and decided at the tribal meeting, which was called veche. Elders, sorcerers (sorcerers and healers), strong and successful warriors, who later became princes, stood out from the community. The Eastern Slavs had patriarchal slavery. But slave labor did not play in the economy leading role. Captives were usually sold to neighbors or merchants, and after several years of captivity, they were given freedom and the right to live in a community.

By the 9th century, the tribal system of the Eastern Slavs fell into decay, but traditions continued to exist. Bloody vengeance was commonplace, peculiar marriage customs were preserved. It was considered a virtue for a young man to kidnap a girl from another tribe and take her as his wife.

Polygamy flourished, which made it possible to significantly increase the number of the clan. The life of our ancestors was difficult and dangerous. Men often died in combat raids, while hunting in battles with forest predators.

Men were supposed to be strong warriors, successful hunters, brave defenders of their tribe and clan. Women valued diligence and endurance. Fragility and refinement were not considered virtues. Slavic men were distinguished by their height and strength. A woman was considered beautiful if she was tall, large-bodied, able to work hard and give birth to children without much difficulty.

All children from a very early age were actively involved in the life of the tribe and were engaged in various jobs on an equal basis with adults. Indeed, in order to survive in those harsh living conditions, our ancestors had to work very hard.

BELIEFS

Until the 10th century, the Eastern Slavs, like all other ancient peoples, believed in many gods. All nature, according to our ancestors, was alive and inhabited by spirits, good and evil. These spirits, helping a person, or vice versa, hindering him, lived everywhere - in forests, rivers, swamps.

Undoubtedly, the most useful spirits were those that protected a person - "beregini". They were primarily "Navii" - ancestors, ancestors and women - progenitors - "rodanitsy". Rod was one of the main deities among the Eastern Slavs. It is no coincidence that in the Slavic languages ​​​​there are many words with this root: clan, relatives, nature, people, Motherland, harvest, give birth. This deity had another name - Rod-Svyatovid. Rod-Svyatovid represented the Universe with all its worlds: the upper one - the firmament, the middle one - where people lived, and the lower one. He gave life to all living nature and created inanimate.