Where is the ancestral home of the Slavs? What versions are put forward by scientists about this? Read the article and you will find the answers to these questions. The ethnogenesis of the Slavs is the process of the formation of an ethnic ancient Slavic community, which led to the separation of this people from the mass of Indo-European tribes. Today there is no generally accepted version of the maturation of the Slavic ethnic group.
First evidence
The ancestral home of the Slavs is of interest to many experts. This people was first witnessed in the Byzantine documents of the VI century. In retrospect, these sources mention the Slavs in the IV century. Earlier information refers to the peoples who participated in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs (Bastars), but the degree of their involvement in different historical restorations varies.
Written confirmation of the authors of the VI century from Byzantium speak of an already established people, divided into Ants and Slavs. Wends are mentioned as ancestors of the Slavs in retrospect. The evidence of the authors of the Roman era (I-II centuries) about Wends does not allow them to be connected with some old Slavic culture.
Definition
The ancestral home of the Slavs is still not precisely defined. Archaeologists call Russian originals some archaic cultures dating back to the 5th century. In the academic teaching there is no single point of view on the ethnic genealogy of the bearers of earlier civilizations and their connection with later Slavic. Linguists also have different opinions about the time of the emergence of the language, which could be called Slavic or Proto-Slavic. Current scientific versions suspect the isolation of Russian speech from the pre-Indo-European in a colossal range from the 2nd millennium BC. e. until the first centuries AD e.
The history of formation, the origin and range of ancient Rusyns are studied by special methods at the junction of various sciences: history, linguistics, genetics, paleoanthropology, archeology.
Indo-Europeans
The ancestral home of the Slavs today excites the minds of many. It is known that in the Bronze Age in Central Europe there was an ethnolinguistic community of the Indo-European race. The attribution to it of individual speech groups is controversial. The German professor G. Krae concluded that while the Indo-Iranian, Anatolian, Greek and Armenian languages had already separated and developed independently, the Celtic, Italian, Illyrian, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages were only dialects of a single Indo-European language. The ancient Europeans who inhabited central Europe north of the Alps created common terminology in the areas of agriculture, religion, and social relations.
Eastern race
And where was the ancestral home of the eastern Slavs? The tribes of this people, who managed to merge into a single whole (according to many scholars), made up the main population of medieval Ancient Russia. As a result of the subsequent political stratification of these people, by the 17th century, three peoples had formed: Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian.
Who are the Eastern Rusyns? This is a cultural and linguistic society of Russians who use East Slavic languages in their speech. Some early scholars also used the designation "Russian Slavs." Eastern Slav ... About its history, few people know. The reason for this is not only the lack of their own written language, but also remoteness from the civilized centers of that period.
The Eastern Slav is described in Byzantine, Arabic and Persian written sources. Some information about him was found using a comparative analysis of Slavic languages and archaeological data.
Expansion
The ancestral home of the Slavs and their settlement are discussed by many researchers. Some believe that the expansion occurred due to a population explosion caused by climate warming or the emergence of the latest farming techniques, and others - that the Great Migration of Peoples, which devastated part of Europe during the invasions of the Sarmatians, Germans, Avars, Huns, in the first centuries of our era, Bulgars and Russians.
Presumably, the origin and ancestral home of the Slavs are associated with the population of Przeworsk culture. This people in the west bordered on the Celtic and Germanic tribal world, in the east - with the Finno-Ugric peoples and the Balts, in the southeast and south - with the Sarmatians. Some explorers think that during this period there was still an uninterrupted Slavic-Baltic totality, that is, these tribes were not yet completely fragmented.
At the same time, there was an expansion of Krivichy in the Smolensk Dnieper. The Tushemlino civilization previously existed in this area, and its archaeologists view ethnicity differently. It was replaced by a purely Slavic old culture, and Tushemlinskie fortifications were destroyed, since at that time the Slavs did not live in cities.
conclusions
The most ancient Slavic tribes were studied by the famous academic linguist O. N. Trubachev. He analyzed the Slavic vocabulary of blacksmithing, pottery and other crafts and concluded that the carriers of ancient Slavic dialects (or their forefathers) at the time when the proper terminology was formed, were in active contact with Italians and Germans, that is, Indo-Europeans of Central Europe. He believes that the tribes of ancient Rus were separated from Indo-European society on the Danube region (northern part of the Balkans), after which they migrated and mixed with other ethnic groups. Trubachev says that it is impossible to identify by means of linguistics the moment of separation of the Proto-Slavic dialect from Indo-European due to their archaic proximity.
Many linguists argue that pan-Slavic speech began to form in the first centuries BC. e. Some call the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. According to glottochronology, Slavic was a separate language in the middle of the II millennium BC. e. Some linguists call earlier terms.
Vocabulary analysis
There are different versions of the ancestral home of the Slavs. Many tried to determine the ancient fatherland of Rus by analyzing their old vocabulary. F.P. Filin believes that this people developed in a forest strip with an abundance of swamps and lakes, far from the sea, steppes and mountains.
On the basis of the famous beech argument, the Polish botanist J. Rostafinsky tried to localize the forefathering of the Slavs in 1908: "The Slavs transferred the common Indo-European name of the beech to willow, willow and did not know the beech, fir and larch." The word "beech" is borrowed from German speech. Today, the eastern border of the irradiation of this tree is located approximately on the Odessa-Kaliningrad line, however, testing of pollen in fossil finds indicates its wider range in antiquity.
In the Bronze Age, beech grew on almost all the lands of Eastern Europe (except the northern ones). In the Iron Age, during the formation of the Slavic ethnic group (according to most historians), beech remains were found in most of Russia, the Carpathians, the Caucasus, the Crimea and the Black Sea region. It follows that the probable place of Slavic ethnogenesis may be the south-west of Russia, the northern and central regions of Ukraine, Belarus.
In the Russian northwest (Novgorod possessions) beech grew back in the Middle Ages. Beech forests today are in Northern and Western Europe, Poland, the Carpathians, the Balkans. In the natural habitat, fir does not grow on the lands of the Carpathians and the eastern border of Poland to the Volga. Thanks to this nuance, the Rusyns 'fatherland can be placed somewhere in Belarus or Ukraine, if the linguists' guesses about the botanical vocabulary of this people are true.
In all Slavic languages (and Baltic) there is a word "linden", denoting the same tree. Hence the hypothesis of overlapping the area of linden with the homeland of Russian tribes, but because of the impressive prevalence of this plant, it was not taken into account.
Report of Soviet Philologists
The ancestral home of the Slavs and their ethnogenesis are of interest to many experts. The lands of northern Ukraine and Belarus belong to the area of widespread Baltic toponymy. A specific study of Soviet academicians of philologists O. N. Trubachev and V. N. Toporov showed that the Baltic hydronyms in the Upper Dnieper are often framed by Slavic suffixes. This means that these people appeared there later than the Balts. This discrepancy is eliminated if we accept the considerations of individual linguists on the allocation of the Proto-Slavic dialect from the common Baltic.
Opinion of V. N. Toporov
VN Toporov believed that the Baltic language is closest to the original Indo-European, while all other Indo-European languages in the process of development departed from their original state. He claims that the Proto-Slavic dialect was the Baltic southern peripheral dialect, which turned into the Proto-Slavic dialect from about the 5th century BC. e. and further independently transformed into the ancient language of Ruthenians.
Versions
Disputes about the origin and ancestral home of the Slavs continue today. In the Soviet era, two main versions of the Rusyn ethnogenesis were common:
- Polish (defines the ancestral home of the Slavs in the interfluve of the Oder and the Vistula).
- Autochthonous (arose under the influence of the theoretical views of the Soviet scientist Marr).
Both recreations agreed in advance with the Slavic origin of the early archaic cultures on the lands that Rusyns inhabited in the Middle Ages, and some primordial antiquity of the dialect of this people, autonomously formed from the Indo-European.
The accumulation of information in research and deviation from patriotically determined explanations led to the emergence of new versions based on the identification of a relatively concentrated core of maturation of the Slavic ethnic group and its distribution by migration to neighboring territories.
Academic discipline did not produce a single point of view on the place and time of the formation of the Slavic ethnogenesis. Today, there are no universally recognized conditions for classifying old cultures as people. Promising in this regard may be a sign of the dialectlessness of the ancient language of Ruthenians.
It was not possible to create a convincing version of the ethnogenesis of Russians on the basis of information from any one scientific subject only. Current theories try to combine the information of all historical disciplines. In general, it is assumed that the Slavic ethnos appeared due to the merger of ethnically different Indo-European communities at the boundary between Scythian-Sarmatians and Balts with the participation of Finnish, Celtic and other substrates.
Hypotheses of scientists
Scientists are not sure that the Slavic ethnos BC. e. existed. This is indicated only by conflicting assumptions of linguists. There is no evidence that the Slavs descended from the Balts. Using different sources, professors hypothesize the roots of Russians. However, they not only unequally determine the place of the Slavic ancestral home, but also call different times for the allocation of Slavs from the Indo-European community.
There are many hypotheses according to which Rusyns and their forefathers existed already from the end of the third millennium BC. e. (O. N. Trubachev), since the end of the II millennium BC. e. (Polish academicians T. Ler-Splavinsky, K. Yazdzhevsky, Yu. Kostshevsky and others), from the middle of the II millennium BC. e. (Polish professor F. Slavsky), from the VI century. BC e. (L. Niederle, M. Fasmer, P. J. Shafarik, S. B. Bernstein).
The earliest scientific speculation about the ancestral home of the Slavs can be found in the works of Russian historians of the XVIII-XIX centuries. V.O. Klyuchevsky, S.M. Solovyov, N.M. Karamzin. In their studies, they rely on the "Tale of Bygone Years" and conclude that the Danube and Balkans were the ancient homeland of Ruthenians.