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

If you believe various figures from folk history, then scientists from all over the world have agreed and have a common point of view about the origin of the Slavs. I propose to look at a small analysis of this common point of view, which was made by K. Reznikov in the book "Russian History: Myths and Facts. From the Birth of the Slavs to the Conquest of Siberia."

Written evidence

Indisputable descriptions of the Slavs are known only from the first half of the 6th century. Procopius of Caesarea (born between 490 and 507 - died after 565), secretary of the Byzantine commander Belisarius, wrote about the Slavs in the book "War with the Goths". Slavyan Procopius learned from the mercenaries of Belisarius in Italy. He was there from 536 to 540 and compiled a famous description of the appearance, customs and character of the Slavs. It is important for us here that he divides the Slavs into two tribal unions - Antes and Slavs, and sometimes they acted together against enemies, and sometimes fought among themselves. He points out that they used to be one people: “Yes, and the name of the old Slavs and Antes was the same. For those and others were called "disputes" from ancient times, precisely because they inhabit the country, scattered about their homes. That is why they occupy an incredibly vast land: after all, they are found on most of the other side of the Istra.

Procopius tells about the invasions of the Slavs into the empire of the Romans, about the victories over the Romans (Byzantines), about the capture and cruel executions of prisoners. He himself did not see these cruelties and retells what he heard. However, there is no doubt that the Slavs sacrificed many prisoners, especially military leaders, to the gods. Procopius' statement that the Slavs first crossed the Istres from military force"On the 15th year of the Gothic War, that is, in 550. After all, he also wrote about the invasions of the Slavs in 545 and 547. and remembered that "already often, having made the crossing, the Huns and Antes, and the Slavs did terrible evil to the Romans." In The Secret History, Procopius writes that Illyricum and the whole of Thrace to the outskirts of Byzantium, including Hellas, "the Huns and Slavs, and the Antes ruined, raiding almost every year since Justinian took power over the Romans" (from 527 G.). Procopius notes that Justinian tried to buy the friendship of the Slavs, but without success - they continued to devastate the empire.

Before Procopius, Byzantine authors did not mention the Slavs, but wrote about the Getae, who disturbed the borders of the empire in the 5th century. Conquered by Trajan in 106 AD e., the Getae (Dacians) for 400 years turned into peaceful Roman provincials, not at all prone to raids. Byzantine historian of the beginning of the 7th century. Theophylact Simokatta calls the new "Gets" Slavs. “And the Getae, or, what is the same, the hordes of Slavs, caused great harm to the region of Thrace,” he writes about the campaign of 585. It can be assumed that the Byzantines met with the Slavs 50-100 years earlier than Procopius writes.

In the Late Antique world, scientists were extremely conservative: they called the peoples of their time by the usual names of the peoples of the ancients. Whoever has not visited the Scythians: the Sarmatians, who exterminated them, and the Turkic tribes, and the Slavs! It came not only from poor awareness, but from the desire to show off erudition, to show knowledge of the classics. Among these authors is Jordanes, who wrote in Latin the book On the Origin and Deeds of the Getae, or briefly Getica. It is only known about the author that he was from the Goths, a person of clergy, a subject of the empire and finished his book in the 24th year of the reign of Justinian (550/551). The Book of Jordanes is an abridged compilation of the “History of the Goths” that has not come down to us by the Roman writer Magnus Aurelius Cossiodorus (c. 478 - c. 578), courtier of the Gothic kings Theodoric and Vitigis. The vastness of Cossiodorus' work (12 books) made it hardly readable, and Jordanes shortened it, possibly adding information from Gothic sources.

Jordan brings the Goths from the island of Scandza, from where they began their wanderings in search of a better land. Having defeated the Rugs and Vandals, they reached Scythia, crossed the river (Dnepr?) and came to the fertile land of Oyum. There they defeated the spolos (many see them as disputes of Procopius) and settled near the Pontic Sea. Jordan describes Scythia and the peoples inhabiting it, including the Slavs. He writes that to the north of Dacia, “starting from the birthplace of the Vistula River, a populous tribe of Veneti settled down in the boundless spaces. Although their names are now changing ... nevertheless, they are mainly called Sclavens and Antes. The Sklavens live from the city of Novietuna (in Slovenia?) and the lake called Mursian (?), to Danastra and north to Viskla; instead of cities, they have swamps and forests. Antes - the strongest of both [tribes] - spread from Danastra to Danapra, where the Pontic Sea forms a bend.

In the IV century, the Goths were divided into Ostrogoths and Vezegoths. The author tells about the exploits of the kings of the Ostrogoths from the Amal clan. King Germanaric conquered many tribes. Among them were the Veneti: “After the defeat of the Heruli, Germanaric moved the army against the Veneti, who, although they were worthy of contempt because of the [weakness of their] weapons, were, however, powerful due to their large numbers and tried to resist at first. But a great number of those unfit for war are worth nothing, especially when God allows it and many armed men approach. These [Venets], as we already told at the beginning of our presentation ... are now known under three names: Veneti, Antes, Sclaveni. Although now, due to our sins, they rage everywhere, but then they all submitted to the power of Germanaric. Germanaric died in extreme old age in 375. He subjugated the Venets before the invasion of the Huns (360s), that is, in the first half of the 4th century. - this is the earliest dated message about the Slavs. The question is only in the veins.

The ethnonym Veneti, Venedi, was widespread in ancient Europe. Italian Veneti are known, which gave the name to the Veneto region and the city of Venice; other Veneti - Celts, lived in Brittany and Britain; still others in Epirus and Illyria; their venets were in southern Germany and Asia Minor. They spoke in different languages.

Perhaps the Indo-Europeans had a Venetian tribal union, which broke up into tribes that joined different language families (Italics, Celts, Illyrians, Germans). Among them could be the Baltic Venets. Coincidences are also possible. There is no certainty that Pliny the Elder (1st century AD), Publius Cornelius Tacitus and Ptolemy Claudius (1st - 2nd century AD) wrote about the same venets as Jordanes, although everyone placed them on the southern coast of the Baltic . In other words, more or less reliable reports about the Slavs can be traced only from the middle of the 4th century. n. e. By the VI century. The Slavs were settled from Pannonia to the Dnieper and were divided into two tribal unions - the Slavens (Sclavens, Sklavins) and the Ants.

Various schemes of relations between the Baltic and Slavic languages

Linguistics data

To resolve the issue of the origin of the Slavs, the data of linguistics are of decisive importance. However, there is no unity among linguists. In the 19th century the idea of ​​a Germano-Balto-Slavic linguistic community was popular. Then the Indo-European languages ​​were divided into groups of centum and satem, named depending on the pronunciation of the number "hundred" in Latin and Sanskrit. Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Greek, Venetian, Illyrian and Tocharian languages ​​were in the centum group. Indo-Iranian, Slavic, Baltic, Armenian and Thracian languages ​​are in the satem group. Although many linguists do not recognize this division, it is confirmed by the statistical analysis of the main words in the Indo-European languages. Within the satem group, the Baltic and Slavic languages ​​formed the Balto-Slavic subgroup.

Linguists have no doubt that the Baltic languages ​​- Latvian, Lithuanian, dead Prussian - and the languages ​​of the Slavs are close in vocabulary (up to 1600 common roots), phonetics (word pronunciation) and morphology (have grammatical similarities). Back in the 19th century August Schlozer put forward the idea of ​​​​a common Balto-Slavic language, which gave rise to the languages ​​\u200b\u200bof the Balts and Slavs. There are supporters and opponents of the close relationship of the Baltic and Slavic languages. The former either recognize the existence of a common Balto-Slavic proto-language, or believe that the Slavic language was formed from peripheral Baltic dialects. The latter point to the ancient linguistic connections of the Balts and Thracians, to the contacts of the Proto-Slavs with the Italics, Celts and Illyrians, and to the different nature of the linguistic proximity of the Balts and Slavs to the Germans. The similarity of the Baltic and Slavic languages ​​is explained by a common Indo-European origin and long-term residence in the neighborhood.

Linguists disagree about the place of the Slavic ancestral home. F.P. Filin summarizes the information about nature that existed in the Old Slavic language in the following way: “The abundance in the lexicon of the common Slavic language of names for varieties of lakes, swamps, forests speaks for itself. The presence in the common Slavic language of various names of animals and birds living in forests and swamps, trees and plants of the temperate forest-steppe zone, fish typical of the reservoirs of this zone, and at the same time the absence of common Slavic names of the specific features of mountains, steppes and the sea - all this gives unequivocal materials for a definite conclusion about the ancestral home of the Slavs ... The ancestral home of the Slavs ... was away from the seas, mountains and steppes, in the forest zone of the temperate zone, rich in lakes and swamps.

In 1908, Józef Rostafinsky proposed a "beech argument" for finding the Slavic ancestral home. He proceeded from the fact that the Slavs and the Balts did not know the beech tree (the word "beech" is borrowed from German). Rostafinsky wrote: "The Slavs ... did not know larch, fir and beech." Then it was not known that in the II - I millennia BC. e. beech grew widely in Eastern Europe: its pollen was found in most of European Russia and Ukraine. So the choice of the ancestral home of the Slavs is not limited to the "beech argument", but the arguments against the mountains and the sea still remain valid.

The process of the appearance of dialects and the division of the proto-language into daughter languages ​​is similar to the geographical speciation, which I wrote about earlier. More S.P. Tolstov drew attention to the fact that kindred tribes living in adjacent territories understand each other well, while the opposite outskirts of a vast cultural and linguistic area no longer understand each other. If we replace the geographical variability of language with the geographical variability of populations, then we get a situation of speciation in animals.

In animals, geographic speciation is not the only, but the most common way for new species to appear. It is characterized by speciation at the periphery of the species' habitat. The central zone retains the greatest similarity with the ancestral form. At the same time, populations living at different edges of the range of a species can differ no less than different related species. Often they are not able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. The same laws were in effect during the separation of the Indo-European languages, when the Hitto-Luvian and Tocharian languages ​​took shape on the periphery (thanks to migrations), and in the center there was an Indo-European community (including the ancestors of the Slavs) for almost a millennium, and with the alleged isolation of the Proto-Slavs as a peripheral dialect of the Baltic language community.

There is no agreement among linguists about the time of the appearance of the Slavic language. Many believed that the separation of Slavic from the Balto-Slavic community occurred on the eve of new era or several centuries before. V.N. Toporov believes that Proto-Slavic, one of the southern dialects of the Old Baltic language, became isolated in the 20th century. BC e. He switched to Proto-Slavic approximately in the 5th century. BC e. and then developed into Old Slavonic. According to O.N. Trubachev, “the question now is not that ancient history Proto-Slavic can be measured on the scale of II and III millennium BC. e., but in the fact that, in principle, we find it difficult to even conditionally date the "appearance" or "separation" of the Proto-Slavic or Proto-Slavic dialects from the Indo-European ... "

The situation seemed to improve with the advent in 1952 of the method of glottochronology, which makes it possible to determine the relative or absolute time of the divergence of related languages. In glottochronology, changes in the basic vocabulary are studied, i.e., the most specific and important concepts for life, such as: go, talk, eat, person, hand, water, fire, one, two, me, you. From these base words, lists of 100 or 200 words were compiled and used for statistical analysis. Compare lists and count the number of words that have a common source. The fewer of them, the earlier the separation of languages ​​occurred. Shortcomings of the method soon became apparent. It turned out that it does not work when the languages ​​are too close or, conversely, too far away. There was also a fundamental drawback: the creator of the method, M. Swadesh, proceeded from a constant rate of change of words, while words change at different rates. In the late 1980s S.A. Starostin increased the reliability of the method: he excluded all language borrowings from the list of basic words and proposed a formula that takes into account the coefficients of word stability. Nevertheless, linguists are wary of glottochronology.

Meanwhile, three recent studies have given fairly similar results about the time of the divergence of the Balts and Slavs. R. Gray and K. Atkinson (2003), based on a statistical analysis of the vocabulary of 87 Indo-European languages, found that the Indo-European proto-language began to disintegrate 7800-9500 BC. e. The separation of the Baltic and Slavic languages ​​began around 1400 BC. e. S. A. Starostin at a conference in Santa Fe (2004) presented the results of applying his modification of the glottochronology method. According to him, the collapse of the Indo-European language began 4700 BC. e., and the languages ​​of the Balts and Slavs began to separate from each other by 1200 BC. e. P. Novotna and V. Blazhek (2007), using the Starostin method, found that the divergence of the language of the Balts and Slavs occurred in 1340-1400. BC e.

So, the Slavs separated themselves from the Balts 1200-1400 BC. e.

Anthropology and anthropogenetics data

The territory of Eastern and Central Europe, inhabited by the Slavs by the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. e., had a Caucasoid population since the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. In the Mesolithic era, the population retained the appearance of the Cro-Magnons - tall, long-headed, broad face, sharply protruding nose. Since the Neolithic, the ratio of the length and width of the brain region of the skull began to change - the head becomes shorter and wider. It is not possible to trace the physical changes of the ancestors of the Slavs due to the prevalence of the rite of cremation among them. In craniological series X - XII centuries. Slavs are anthropologically quite similar. They were dominated by a long and medium head, a sharply profiled, medium-wide face, and a medium or strong protrusion of the nose. In the interfluve of the Oder and the Dnieper, the Slavs are relatively broad-faced. To the west, south and east, the value of the zygomatic diameter decreases due to mixing with the Germans (in the west), Finno-Ugric peoples (in the east) and the population of the Balkans (in the south). The proportions of the skull distinguish the Slavs from the Germans and bring them closer to the Balts.

The results of molecular genetic studies have made important additions. It turned out that Western and Eastern Slavs differ from Western Europeans in Y-DNA haplogroups. For Lusatian Sorbs, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians of the South and Central Russia, Slovaks are characterized by a high frequency of the haplogroup R1a (50-60%). Among Czechs, Slovenes, Russians of northern Russia, Croats, and among the Balts - Lithuanians and Latvians, the frequency of R1a is 34-39%. Serbs and Bulgarians are characterized by a low frequency of R1a - 15-16%. The same or lower frequency of R1a is found in the peoples of Western Europe - from 8-12% in Germans to 1% in Irish. IN Western Europe haplogroups R1b predominate. The data obtained allow us to draw the following conclusions: 1) Western and Eastern Slavs are closely related in the male line; 2) among the Balkan Slavs, the share of Slavic ancestors is significant only among Slovenes and Croats; 3) between the ancestors of the Slavs and Western Europeans over the past 18 thousand years (the time of separation of R1a and R1b) there was no mass mixing in the male line.

Archaeological data

Archeology can localize the area of ​​a culture, determine the time of its existence, the type of economy, and contacts with other cultures. Sometimes it is possible to identify the continuity of cultures. But cultures do not answer the question about the language of the creators. There are cases when carriers of the same culture speak different languages. The most striking example is the Châtelperon culture in France (29,000-35,000 BC). The carriers of the culture were two types of man - the Neanderthal man (Homo neanderthalensis) and our ancestor - the Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens). Nevertheless, most hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs are based on the results of archaeological research.

Hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs

Exists four main hypotheses origin of the Slavs:

1) the Danubian hypothesis;

2) the Vistula-Oder hypothesis;

3) Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis;

4) the Dnieper-Pripyat hypothesis.

M.V. wrote about the Danubian ancestral home of the Slavs. Lomonosov. Supporters of the Danubian ancestral home were S.M. Solovyov, P.I. Shafarik and V.O. Klyuchevsky. From modern scientists, the origin of the Slavs from the Middle Danube - Pannonia was substantiated in detail by Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev. The basis for the hypothesis was Slavic mythology - historical memory people, reflected in the PVL, Czech and Polish chronicles, folk songs, and the ancient layer of borrowings of the Slavs from the language of the Italians, Germans and Illyrians, identified by the author. According to Trubachev, the Slavs separated from the Indo-European linguistic community in the 3rd millennium BC. e. Pannonia remained their place of residence, but most of the Slavs migrated north; the Slavs crossed the Carpathians and settled in a strip from the Vistula to the Dnieper, entering into close interaction with the Balts who lived in the neighborhood.

Trubachev's hypothesis, given the importance of his linguistic findings, is vulnerable in several respects. First, it has a weak archaeological cover. No ancient Slavic culture has been found in Pannonia: the reference to a few Slavic-sounding toponyms/ethnonyms mentioned by the Romans is insufficient and can be explained by word coincidence. Secondly, glottochronology, which Trubachev despises, speaks of the separation of the Slavic language from the language of the Balto-Slavs or Balts in the 2nd millennium BC. e. - 3200-3400 years ago. Thirdly, the data of anthropogenetics testify to the comparative rarity of the marital relations of the ancestors of the Slavs and Western Europeans.

The idea of ​​a Slavic ancestral home in the interfluve of the Elbe and the Bug - the Vistula-Oder hypothesis - was proposed in 1771 by August Schlozer. IN late XIX V. the hypothesis was supported by Polish historians. In the first half of the XX century. Polish archaeologists linked the ethnogenesis of the Slavs with the expansion of the Lusatian culture to the lands of the Odra and Vistula basins during the Bronze Age and at the beginning of the Iron Age. The prominent linguist Tadeusz Ler-Splavinskiy was a supporter of the "western" ancestral home of the Slavs. The composition of the Proto-Slavic cultural and linguistic community was presented by Polish scientists in the following form. At the end of the Neolithic (III millennium BC), a vast area from the Elbe to the middle reaches of the Dnieper was occupied by tribes of the Corded Ware culture - the ancestors of the Balto-Slavs and Germans.

In the II millennium BC. e. The “corders” were divided by the tribes of the Unetitsky culture who came from southern Germany and the Danube region. The Trzyniec Corded Culture complex disappeared: instead, the Lusatian culture developed, covering the Odra and Vistula basins from the Baltic Sea to the foothills of the Carpathians. The tribes of the Lusatian culture separated the western wing of the "Shnurovtsy", that is, the ancestors of the Germans, from the eastern wing - the ancestors of the Balts, and themselves became the basis for the formation of the Proto-Slavs. The Lusatian expansion should be considered the beginning of the disintegration of the Balto-Slavic linguistic community. The composition of the Eastern Slavs is considered by Polish scientists to be secondary, referring, in particular, to the absence of Slavic names of large rivers in Ukraine.

In recent decades, the hypothesis of the Western ancestral home of the Slavs was developed by Valentin Vasilievich Sedov. He considered the most ancient Slavic culture to be the culture of under-alley burials (400-100 BC), which received its name from the method of covering burial urns with a large vessel; in Polish "flare" - "turned upside down." At the end of the II century. BC e. under the strong Celtic influence, the culture of the under-klesh burials is transformed into the Przeworsk culture. Two regions are distinguished in its composition: the western one - the Oder region, inhabited mainly by the East German population, and the eastern one - the Vistula region, where the Slavs predominated. According to Sedov, Slavic Prague-Korchak culture is connected with the Przeworsk culture. It should be noted that the hypothesis of the Western origin of the Slavs is largely speculative. The idea of ​​a Germano-Balto-Slavic linguistic community attributed to the Corded Ware tribes looks unproven. There is no evidence that the creators of the culture of underklesh burials were Slavic-speaking. There is no evidence of the origin of the Prague-Korchak culture from Przeworsk.

The Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis has attracted the sympathy of scientists for many years. She painted the glorious Slavic past, where the eastern and western Slavs were the progenitors. According to the hypothesis, the ancestral home of the Slavs was located between the middle course of the Dnieper in the east and the upper reaches of the Vistula in the west and from the upper reaches of the Dniester and the Southern Bug in the south to Pripyat in the north. The ancestral home included Western Ukraine, Southern Belarus and South-Eastern Poland. The development of the hypothesis is largely due to the work of the Czech historian and archaeologist Lubor Niederle "Slavic Antiquities" (1901-1925). Niederle outlined the habitat of the early Slavs and indicated their antiquity, noting the contacts of the Slavs with the Scythians in the 8th and 7th centuries. BC e. Many of the peoples listed by Herodotus were Slavs: “I do not hesitate to assert that among the northern neighbors of the Scythians mentioned by Herodotus, there are not only the Neuri in Volhynia and the Kiev region, but, probably, the Boudins who lived between the Dnieper and the Don, and even the Scythians, called plowmen. .. placed by Herodotus to the north of the steppe regions proper ... were undoubtedly Slavs.

The Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis was popular among Slavists, especially in the USSR. She acquired the most finished form from Boris Aleksandrovich Rybakov (1981). Rybakov followed the scheme of the prehistory of the Slavs of the linguist B.V. Gornung, who distinguished between the period of linguistic ancestors of the Slavs (V-III millennium BC), Proto-Slavs (late III - early II millennium BC) and Proto-Slavs (from the middle of the II millennium BC.). In terms of separation of the Proto-Slavs from the Germano-Balto-Slavic linguistic community, Rybakov relied on Gornung. Rybakov begins the history of the Slavs from the Proto-Slavic period and distinguishes five stages in it - from the 15th century. BC e. to the 7th century n. e. Rybakov supports his periodization cartographically:

“The basis of the concept is elementary simple: there are three solid archaeological maps, carefully compiled by different researchers, which, according to a number of scientists, have one or another relation to the Slavic ethnogenesis. These are - in chronological order - maps of the Trzyniec-Komarovo culture of the 15th - 12th centuries. BC e., early Pshevorskaya and Zarubintsy cultures (II century BC - II century AD) and a map of Slavic culture of the VI - VII centuries. n. e. like Prague-Korchak... Let's superimpose all three maps one on top of the other... we will see an amazing coincidence of all three maps...» .

Looks beautiful. Perhaps even too much. Behind the dramatic map overlay trick, there are 1,000 years separating the cultures on the first and second maps, and 400 years between the cultures of the second and third maps. In between, of course, there were also cultures, but they did not fit into the concept. Not everything goes smoothly with the second map either: the Przeworsk and Zarubians did not belong to the same culture, although both were influenced by the Celts (especially the Przeworsk), but this is where the similarity ends. A significant part of the Przeworsk people are Germans, and the Zarubins in the mass were not Germans; it is not even known whether the ruling tribe (Bastarns?) was Germanic. The linguistic affiliation of the carriers of cultures is determined by Rybakov unusually easily. He follows the linguist's advice, but Gornung is prone to risky conclusions. Finally, about the coincidence of cultures on the maps. Geography is behind it. The relief, vegetation, soils, climate influence the settlement of peoples, the formation of culture and states. There is nothing surprising that ethnic groups, albeit of different origin, but having a similar type of economy, develop the same ecological niches. You can find many examples of such coincidences.

The Polessky-Pripyat hypothesis has been revived and is being actively developed. The hypothesis about the original residence of the Slavs in the Pripyat and Teterev basins, rivers with ancient Slavic hydronymy, was popular in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. among German scientists. The Polish literary critic Alexander Bruckner joked: “German scientists would willingly drown all Slavs in the swamps of Pripyat, and Slavic scientists would drown all Germans in Dollart; absolutely vain work, they will not fit there; it is better to give up this business and not spare the light of God for either one or the other. The Proto-Slavs really did not fit in the forests and swamps of Polissya, and now more and more attention is being paid to the Middle and Upper Dnieper. The Dnieper-Pripyat hypothesis (more precisely) owes its revival to the joint seminars of Leningrad linguists, ethnographers, historians and archaeologists, organized in the 1970s and 1980s. A.S. Gerd and G.S. Lebedev at Leningrad University and A.S. Mylnikov at the Institute of Ethnography, and remarkable finds of the late 20th - early 21st centuries made by Kyiv archaeologists.

At the Leningrad seminars, the existence of a Balto-Slavic linguistic community was recognized - a group of dialects that occupied the territory from the Baltic to the Upper Don at the beginning of the new era. The Proto-Slavic language originated from the marginal Balto-Slavic dialects. The main reason for its appearance was the cultural and ethnic interaction of the Balto-Slavs with the Zarubinets tribes. In 1986, the head of the seminar, Gleb Sergeevich Lebedev, wrote: “The main event, which, apparently, serves as the equivalent of the linguistically identified separation of the southern part of the population of the forest zone, the future Slavs, from the original Slavic-Baltic unity, is associated with the appearance in the 2nd century BC - I century new era of Zarubintsy culture. In 1997, the archaeologist Mark Borisovich Shchukin published the article "The Birth of the Slavs", in which he summed up the seminar discussions.

According to Shchukin, the beginning of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs was laid by the "explosion" of Zarubintsy culture. The Zarubinets culture was left by the people who appeared on the territory of Northern Ukraine and Southern Belarus (at the end of the 3rd century BC). Zarubintsy were Proto-Slavs or Germans, but with strong influence, Celts. Farmers and cattle breeders, they were also engaged in crafts, making elegant brooches. But first and foremost they were warriors. Zarubintsy waged wars of conquest against the forest tribes. In the middle of the 1st c. n. e. Zarubintsy, known to the Romans as Bastarns (the language is unknown), were defeated by the Sarmatians, but partly retreated north into the forests, where they mixed with the local population (Balto-Slavs).

In the Upper Dnieper region, archaeological sites called late Zarubintsy are spread. In the Middle Dnieper region, late Zarubinets monuments pass into the related Kyiv culture. At the end of the II century. Germanic Goths move to the Black Sea region. In a vast area from the Romanian Carpathians to the upper reaches of the Seim and the Seversky Donets, a culture known as the Chernyakhov culture is taking shape. In addition to the German core, it included local Thracian, Sarmatian and early Slavic tribes. The Slavs of the Kyiv culture lived in stripes with the Chernyakhovites in the Middle Dnieper, and in the Upper Transnistria there was a Zubritsa culture, the predecessor of the Prague-Korchak culture. The invasion of the Huns (70s of the 4th century AD) led to the departure of the Goths and other Germanic tribes to the west, towards the decaying Roman Empire, and a place for a new people appeared on the liberated lands. These people were the emerging Slavs.

Shchukin's article is still being discussed at historical forums. Not everyone praises her. The main objection is caused by the extremely late dates of the divergence of the Slavs and the Balts - I - II centuries. n. e. Indeed, according to glottochronology, the divergence of the Balts and Slavs occurred at least 1200 BC. e. The difference is too great to be attributed to the inaccuracies of the method (generally confirming the known data on the separation of languages). Another point is the linguistic affiliation of the Zarubins. Shchukin identifies them with the Bastarnae and believes that they spoke Germanic, Celtic, or an "intermediate" type of language. He doesn't have any evidence. Meanwhile, in the area of ​​Zarubinets culture, after its collapse, Proto-Slavic cultures (Kiev, Protoprazhsko-Korchak) developed. At historical forums, it is suggested that the Zarubins themselves were Proto-Slavs. This assumption brings us back to Sedov's hypothesis about the Slavic-speaking nature of the creators of the culture of under-klesh burials, whose descendants could be the Zarubins.

Map of the settlement of tribes in Eastern Europe in 125 (territories of modern eastern Poland, western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania)

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, she is Daaria or Arctida - ancient name North. Judging by the annals, legends, myths and traditions that existed among different peoples 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 position 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. actually Slavic dialectal features, which sufficiently distinguished them from the Balts, formed something language education, which 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 word "Slavs" did not exist in those ancient times. 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 Odra, and the Danzing Gulf, into which the Vistula flows; along the Vistula from its headwaters in the Carpathian Mountains to the coast of the Baltic Sea. Their neighbors were the Ingevone Germans, who may have given them such a name. Such Latin authors, as Pliny the Elder and Tacitus also distinguish them as a special ethnic community with the name "Wends". Half a century later, Tacitus, noting the ethnic difference between the Germanic, Slavic and Sarmatian worlds, allotted to 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 of 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 economic development 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 ​​​​the cities of Cottbus and Bautzen, the modern descendants of the Wends live, of which 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 in ancient (Roman and Byzantine) literary monuments, the name of the Slavs looks like “Slavins”, in Arabic sources it looks like “with akaliba", sometimes the self-name of one of the Scythian groups "chipped" 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.

Introduction

The historical development of mankind has always been uneven. And this is not surprising, because man in those distant times was completely dependent on nature. Features of the landscape, flora and fauna, climate determined the whole life of a person: his appearance(the formation of races, type of economy, language features, cultural differences, worldview foundations and the very speed of the development of civilization. And the harder, harsher the living conditions were, the slower the pace of historical development. In the most favorable areas for humans, local civilizations of Antiquity developed, which laid the foundations - civilizations of the Middle Ages It was at this time - in the Middle Ages - that the history of our Fatherland begins.

Ancient Rus' is the origins of statehood, culture, mentality of the Russian people. Scientific disputes continue about who the Slavs are, where the Russian land came from, what is the prehistory of the Russian state.

Origin of the Slavs

The first information about the Slavs

The first written evidence about the Slavs dates back to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. These are Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic sources. The ancient authors Herodotus (V century BC), Polybius (III-II centuries BC), Strabo (I AD) mention the Slavs under the name of Venedi (Veneti), Antes and Sklavins. The first information about the political history of the Slavs dates back to the 4th century. AD

The Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, etc.), inhabiting modern Eastern Europe, once constituted an ethnic community, which is conventionally called the Proto-Slavs. About II millennium BC. e. stood out from the even more ancient Indo-European community. Therefore, all Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200bare classified as Indo-European language family. This explains the fact that for all the similarity of the language and the elements of culture associated with it, otherwise there are serious differences between the Slavic peoples, even in anthropological type. This applies not only, for example, to the southern and western Slavs, but there are such differences within certain groups of certain East Slavic peoples. No less significant differences are found in the sphere of material culture, since the Slavicized ethnic groups, which became an integral part of certain Slavic peoples, had an unequal material culture, the features of which were preserved among their descendants. It is in the sphere of material culture, as well as such an element of culture as music, that there are significant differences even between such closely related peoples as Russians and Ukrainians.

However, in ancient times there was a certain ethnos, the arena of its habitation was obviously not extensive, contrary to the opinion of some researchers who think that the region of residence of the Proto-Slavs should be significant and are looking for confirmation of this. Such a phenomenon is quite common in history.

The question of what territory to consider the ancestral home of the Slavs does not have a clear answer in historical science. However, when the Slavs joined the global migration process of the II-VII centuries. - "The Great Migration of Peoples", - they settled in three main directions: to the south - to the Balkan Peninsula; to the west - in the interfluve of the Oder and Elbe; to the east and north - along the East European Plain.

There is every reason to believe that the area of ​​settlement of the Proto-Slavs, who, as proven by linguists, separated from their kindred Balts in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, during the time of Herodotus, was very small. Considering that no news about the Slavs until the first centuries AD. not in written sources, and these sources, as a rule, came from the regions of the Northern Black Sea region, most of the territory of modern Ukraine, except for its northwest, has to be excluded from the area of ​​​​settlement of the Proto-Slavs.

Until now, there is historical area Galicia, the western part of which is now inhabited by Poles, and the eastern part by Ukrainians.

The very name of the area seems to suggest that the Gauls once lived here, i.e. Celts, although a number of scholars dispute this. It is quite possible to assume once the presence of Celts in this area, given the Celtic affiliation of the Boii. In this case, the region of the most ancient settlement of the Slavs has to be sought north of Czechoslovakia and the Carpathian Mountains. However, the territory of present-day western Poland was not Slavic either - from the Middle Vistula, including Pomerania, where the East Germanic tribes of the Goths, Burgundians, Vandals, etc. lived.

In general, a retrospective look at the ethnic changes in Central Europe shows that the Germanic tribes once occupied some very limited territory of present-day East Germany and Western Poland. Even to the west of modern Germany, they came relatively late, literally on the eve of the penetration of the Romans there, and earlier the Celts and possibly some other peoples lived there.

Probably, some expansion of the ethnic territory of the Slavs was also observed in the 3rd - 4th centuries, but, unfortunately, there are almost no sources for this time. The so-called Peutinger Map, the final version of which dates back to the first half of the 5th century, however, includes significant elements of earlier information dating back to the 1st century. BC, and therefore it is very difficult to use its data.

The Veneds on this Map are shown to the northwest of the Carpathians, together with some part of the Sarmatians, and obviously, this localization corresponds to the very purpose of the Peutinger Map - itenirarium, which focuses mainly on the most important trade routes that connected Roman possessions with other countries . The joint fixation of the Wends and Sarmatians in the Carpathian region obviously reflects, with elements of the 5th century, the realities of the 2nd - 4th centuries. before the invasion of the Huns.

It would seem that archeology should make significant adjustments to our knowledge of the early history of the Slavs. But due to the specifics of its materials, they cannot be in any way until the appearance of written sources.

accurately identified with certain ethnic communities. Archaeologists are trying to see the Slavs in the carriers of various archaeological

cultures, ranging from the so-called culture of podkloshnyh burials (IV - II centuries BC, the Upper Vistula and the Warta basin) to various archaeological cultures of the first half of the 1st millennium AD. However, there is a lot of controversy in these conclusions even for the archaeologists themselves. Until recently, a fairly common interpretation of the belonging of the Chernyakhov culture to the Slavs has not so many adherents, and most scientists believe that this culture was created by different ethnic groups with a predominance of Iranians.

The Hun invasion led to significant displacements of the population, including from the steppe and partially forest-steppe zone of our south. Most of all, this applies to the steppe regions, where, after a short-term hegemony of the corners, already in the 6th century. proto-Turks prevailed. Another thing is the forest-steppe of present-day Ukraine and the North Caucasus (the Don region). Here the old Iranian population turned out to be more stable, but even it began to be gradually exposed to the influence of the Slavs steadily moving east. Obviously, already in the V century. the latter reached the middle Dnieper, where they assimilated the local Iranians. Probably, it was the latter who founded the towns on the Kyiv mountains, since the name of Kyiv can be explained from the Iranian dialects as a princely (town). Then the Slavs advanced beyond the Dnieper to the basin of the Desna River, which received the Slavic name (Right). It is curious, however, that the main part of the large rivers in the south retained their old, pre-Slavic (Iranian) names. So, the Don is just a river, the Dnieper is explained as a deep river, Ross is a bright river, Pond is a river, etc. But the names of the rivers in the north-west of Ukraine and in most of Belarus are Slavic (Berezina, Teterev, Goryn, etc.), and this is undoubtedly evidence of a very ancient habitation of the Slavs there. In general, there is reason to assert that it was the Hun invasion that gave a significant incentive and opportunity to expand the territory of the Slavs. Perhaps the main enemies of the Huns were the Germans (Goths, etc.) and Iranians (Alans), who were conquered and ruthlessly pursued, dragging them in their campaigns to the west. The Slavs, if they did not become natural allies of the Huns (and there are certain grounds for this conclusion), then, in any case, they used the current situation in their favor. In the 5th century the movement of the Slavs to the west continues and the Germans are pushed back to the Elbe, and then to this river. From the end of the 5th century the beginning of the Slavic colonization of the Balkans is also observed, where they quickly assimilated the local Illyrians, Dalmatians and Thracians. There is also every reason to talk about a similar movement of the Slavs to the east, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe current Ukraine and Great Russia. In the forest-steppe part, after the Hun invasion, the local population has significantly decreased, while in the forest part it has never been numerous.

At the same time, the Slavs initially, as inhabitants of forests (namely, as such, Byzantine historians of the 6th century paint them to us), moved and settled mainly along large rivers, which at that time served as almost the only transport arteries for forest and forest-steppe regions. The local population (Iranian, Baltic, and then Finnish) was quite easily assimilated by the Slavs, as a rule, peacefully. The vast majority of our information about the early Slavs comes from Byzantine sources. Even the information preserved from the VI - VII centuries. Syrian and Arabic writers, as a whole, date back to Byzantium.

Particular, heightened attention to the Slavs precisely from the end of the second decade of the 6th century. is explained primarily by the fact that since that time they began to actively invade the Balkan Peninsula and in a few decades they took over most of it. The Greeks, and the remnants of the Romanesque population (Volochs - the ancestors of the Romanians), and the ancestors of the Albanians, have survived here, but little is written about them, since the Slavs, who were advancing on Byzantium from two sides - from the north, are increasingly playing the main role in the political life of the Balkans. Balkan Peninsula and from the lower reaches of the Danube.

Thus, once united, in the VI-VIII centuries. Proto-Slavs were divided into southern, western and eastern Slavs. In the future, their historical destinies, although they were inevitably connected with each other, nevertheless, each branch of the Slavic peoples already created its own history.

Without knowledge of the past, it is impossible to truly understand the present and predict the future. We know that a people deprived of the heritage of their Ancestors can be taken anywhere.

Ninety percent of the information concerning the annalistic past of the Russian people, its origin, especially before the time of Christianization, is still hidden from you and me. We present only some of the suppressed scientific data.

In the middle of the 11th century, the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Princess Anna became the French queen. But the princess, who came from the “wild” Kievan Rus, did not consider that she had come to “enlightened” Europe and perceived Paris as a big village, which she wrote about in her letters. She brought with her to the remote province, which France was then considered to be, part of the library, some of the books from which returned to Russia only in the nineteenth century, falling into the private library of Sulakadzaev. After his death, his widow sold most of the library to the Romanovs, after which no one heard anything more about the books. Only a small part of his library fell into the hands of other collectors, including the Veles Book, with which Mirolyubov took photographs in 1942.

In 1653-1656 from the river. X. a religious reform is being carried out by Patriarch Nikon, after which Nikon himself is quickly “pushed” into the shadows, forcing him to abandon the patriarchate at the next Ecumenical Council. But why did they “leave” him?! The thing is that before Nikon, Christianity, although it was the state religion, was perceived by the main masses of the Russian people rather as an inevitable necessity. At that time, people lived according to the norms of Orthodoxy - the system of ideas and norms of life of Slavic Vedism, based on the wisdom of many millennia, according to which the Slavs were the descendants of the Heavenly Clan and the grandchildren of Dazhdbog. Christianity began to be called Orthodox in order to appease the ears of the Slavs, introducing a number of ancient Orthodox rites into Christianity. At the same time, in the summer of 1682, localism was abolished in Rus' and all Genealogical and famous Bit Books were burned, containing the history of state appointments and tracing the genealogies of the most noble families of the empire.

Already by Peter I, another grandiose reform was carried out. Having abolished the patriarchate, subordinating the Christian church to the state, actually becoming its head, Peter I, in the summer of 7208 from S. M., introduced the Christian calendar on the lands of Muscovite Rus'. In a moment of pen, in literally of this word, the summer of 7208 from the Creation of the World, at the request of Peter, turned into 1700 from the river. x. In this way, 5508 years of their history were stolen from the Russians.

In tsarist Russia, from the time of the Code of Alexei Mikhailovich, there was a law according to which hard labor was supposed for the "blasphemous", that is, "pagan" faith, and until the 18th century even a fire (the very existence of this law implies that the bearers of this faith were not rarity).
Is it any wonder that many monuments were confiscated and disappeared without a trace. So, in the last century in St. Petersburg, an entire library of runic books, which belonged to the collector A.I. Sulakadzev.

The finds of archaeologists, which do not fit into the generally accepted picture of ancient Slavic history, are subject to the same default. So, for example, the ruins of the Buzh pagan temple with inscriptions and reliefs discovered in the last century are not currently studied, despite the fact that they were mentioned in special literature, and by such authority as Academician B.D. Greeks.
As before, there are disputes around the now published monuments of the Slavic Vedic tradition. Now they are again trying to convince us that the Russian people have nothing to be proud of, they say, neither in antiquity, nor today, we have created anything remarkable, but only learned from foreigners.

How good can education be? modern man, based on the “Book of Veles”, “Boyan Hymn”, “The Tale of Igor's Campaign” and oral folk tradition! A person who has embarked on the path of Rule will otherwise see himself and what he is doing.

Brought up on love for the Fatherland, he will become a true patriot, he will clearly distinguish between good and evil, truth and falsehood. He will feel himself a part of Nature and will no longer be able to destroy the surrounding living world.
Human consciousness will expand, forgotten words, concepts will appear in the language, the world will acquire new colors

THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF Rus' ARE MILLIONS OF YEARS FACTS:

1.997.994 BC: on the Lena River, the oldest human settlement is Deering-Yuryakh.
In 1983-1984 discovered a unique site of an ancient man who lived 1-2 million years ago.
In September 1982, on the right bank of the Lena River, 140 kilometers above Yakutsk, in the Deering-Yuryakh area, the expedition of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (headed by Yu. Molchanov), at an altitude of 105-120 meters above the river, discovered the oldest Rus settlement of all that are available today. The settlement is called "Deering". Deering's excavations have no analogues in the world in terms of the scale of work. Over the past 13 years since the discovery, about 32,000 square meters of cultural layer have been unearthed. More than 4.5 thousand items of material culture of the ancient Rus were found, including anvils, chippers, various tools, etc., whose age is determined to be two million years BC. e. The dating was determined by the best modern archaeological methods and rechecked by geological-geomorphological, paleomagnetic and other most reliable methods.
[History of Siberia. Tomsk: Ed. TGU, 1967., Academy of Sciences of the USSR. History of Europe from ancient times to the present day, 1988]

22.994 BC: Siberians on the Angara mastered the art.
The depiction of women with pronounced Mongoloid features on the Angara figurines leads to the conclusion that the bearers of high Paleolithic art in Siberia were, after all, the Siberians who lived on the Angara 25,000 years ago.

15.994 BC: Siberians had lunar and solar calendars.
In 1972, during the excavations of the Achinsk (Minusinsk depression) Paleolithic settlement (18,000 years ago), V.E. Larichev discovered a sculptural wand made of polished mammoth tusk with rows of tiny depressions forming serpentine ribbons on the surface of the wand. It was found that the numerical combinations of individual segments made up digital series that corresponded to calendar entries. The found wand turned out to be the oldest calendar of the Paleolithic man, with the help of which he could calculate the duration of the lunar and solar year, as well as the duration of the periods of annual rotation of the five planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. This calendar allowed the Siberian to accurately calculate the time of solar and lunar eclipses.
[Novgorodtsev N.S., Siberian Homeland. In search of Hyperborea. Moscow: White elves, 2006]

7000 BC: the oldest historical writings-annals.
In the 60s, in the Stone Grave and in numerous grottoes on the Molochnaya River (the left bank of the lower reaches of the Dnieper), archaeologists O.N. Bader and V.N. Danilenko discovered the oldest writings. To decipher this writing, and at the same time to open in it the oldest mytho-historical chronicle of the 7th millennium BC found on Earth at the present time. e. succeeded the outstanding Sumerologist A.G. Kifishin. This is the oldest literary monument currently known, but not the last:
I am the high priest appointed clean hand(Inanna).
Scepter of the heavenly king, mistress of the universe,
"Innin" of all laws, bright Inanna
She truly brought me to Aratta, the country of pure rites.

3.500 BC year: Slavic Sun-mounds in the North Caucasus.
From the second half of the 4th millennium BC. huge models of the Sun-mounds appear in the North Caucasus. In terms of plan, the mounds were round in shape and were surrounded by stone belts of cromlechs. On the Konstantinovsky plateau (in the vicinity of the city of Pyatigorsk) mounds with spiral cromlechs were discovered. In recent decades, thanks to the use of aerial photography, the so-called “whiskers” have been discovered near a number of barrows - elongated and curved narrow stone pavings extending from the mounds and stretching at a distance of several kilometers. In plan, the mound with a “moustache” represents the already known varieties of Swastikas, magnified thousands of times.
[Kuznetsov V.A., Methods of research and interpretation of archaeological materials of the North Caucasus. North Ossetian Research Institute of the History of Philology and Economics under the Council of Ministers of the SOASSR.]

2.750 BC: Slavic gold and bronze items are found in barrows in Stavropol.
A group of six barrows, located in the Novoselitsky district of the Stavropol Territory, was examined in the summer of 1977 by an expedition from the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Finds: several dozen burials oriented in the west-east direction; dark gray spherical vessels with a slightly flattened bottom and a polished surface, made of well-fired clay; four flint flakes; trochnik of rounded outlines and a flat base; bronze adzes; bronze awl; celt; two pendant rings with open ends made of a brittle porous white mineral; gold pendant in one and a half turns and a flat gold ring.
Dated to the last quarter of the III millennium BC.
(Munchaev R.M. Caucasus bronze age. M., 1975.]

2500 BC: Arkaim - ancient city, the cultural center of the Slavs.
In the spring of 1987, in the south of the Chelyabinsk region, two schoolchildren discovered the ancient proto-city of Arkaim (the Ridge of the Earth). Further research conducted by archaeologists G.B. Zdanovich and his colleague N.B. Vinogradov led to the discovery and study by them whole country Cities of the most ancient proto-state whose age is four and a half millennia.

250 BC: developed religious and commercial center on the territory of Perm.
Finds of Perm archaeologists confirm the existence of a developed religious and commercial center on the territory of Perm already in the 3rd century BC. e. In the region of the Southern Urals, near the village of Chandar, in 1999, Professor Chuvyrov discovered a stone slab on which a relief map of the West Siberian region was applied, made using technologies unknown to modern science. It is impossible to create such a map today. In addition to the natural landscape, there are two systems of canals with a total length of twelve thousand kilometers, a width of five hundred meters, as well as twelve dams 300-500 meters wide, up to ten kilometers long and up to three kilometers deep. On the stone slab there are also written signs applied in hieroglyphic-syllabic writing.