When and why the Great Migration of Peoples began, it is not established by historians up to a day. Between the second and seventh centuries of our era, it is assumed that numerous tribes of the Huns, Alans, Germans and others removed from their places of residence and headed southwest, where they settled in the upper Volga and Don, in Britain, Spain and Gaul, crushing at the same time The Western Roman Empire and "finishing off" the remains of the ancient world. The tribes that arose during the mixing of Roman Latinized peoples with barbarians became the basis for modern Romanesque nationalities, while many nationalities and cultural values disappeared from the face of the Earth.
Was climate change the cause of the resettlement?
When and why did the Great Migration of Peoples begin? And what are its results? It is safe to say that the result of this hitherto unprecedented process was the formation of a political and ethnic map of modern Europe, which subsequently did not undergo such significant changes. The reason for the mass migration of the population was, most likely, climate change, known as the climatic pessimum in the era of the early Middle Ages. It is believed that this process began in various regions in the years 250-450 AD and was fully completed somewhere around 750.
During the pessimum, the average annual temperature became about one and a half degrees below normal, which led to disastrous consequences in several regions, as the climate became more humid and winters colder.
Reasons for population decline
To understand when and why the Great Migration of Peoples began, and what are its results, it is necessary to study changes in the living conditions of the peoples of Northern Europe during the period under review. Scientists have found that in those years in the Alps, the size of glaciers increased significantly. As a result, the border of forests has shifted 200 meters down. Because of the cold, crop failures were observed, in mountainous areas it became impossible to grow cereals and produce wines, and a number of lands, including fertile ones, were lost on the coast of the North Sea and in areas of South England due to intensified storms.
Alternative version
Let us consider when and why the Great Migration of Peoples began, and what are its results (briefly), since a pattern of alternation of climatic pessimums and optimums has been revealed (during the last there has been an increase in temperatures), and another cooling may take place in the future.
Some scholars believe that peoples began to migrate south a little earlier, even during the Roman climatic optimum, when the temperature was 1-2 degrees above normal and there was enough rainfall, which together contributed to the prosperity of agriculture and animal husbandry, which, in turn, led to an increase in population. The increased number of tribes of Gepids, Vandals and Goths led to the fact that some of them went south and settled in the Black Sea region and the Carpathians before the Great Migration.
It all started with the island of Gotland
Some historians, considering the question of when and why the Great Migration of the Peoples of Germany began, note that perhaps the process started with the exodus of Germanic tribes, ready from the island of Gotland and the south of modern Sweden at the beginning of the first century AD.
Under the leadership of King Berig, the tribes were ready to arrive on the territory of modern Poland, from where they replaced the vandals and rugs, who were forced to retreat further south. Thus, in the second century the Germanic peoples arrived at the borders of the Roman Empire for the first time, which began to exert pressure on the largest geopolitical formation of that era.
Stimulus from Asia
Speaking about when and why the Great Migration of Peoples began, it should be noted that a certain event most likely influenced its most active phase. This is the attack of the Hunnic tribes on Europe in 354 CE, when the invaders subjugated the Alanian tribes in the North Caucasus and captured the Ostrogoth state under Germanarik's rule, forcing these tribes to the west (375).
There is very little information about the Huns themselves. Some historians believe that the Huns are the Hunnu (Hunnu) people who lived in the bend of the Yellow River and created the world's first nomadic empire. In battles with neighboring tribes, the Huns were defeated and forced to leave to the west, where they encountered the Germanic tribes. At the same time, most scientists do not consider the Huns to be Chinese, but believe that they belonged to the proto-Türks or Türks, which at all times were considered warlike and quite bloodthirsty.
Accident 536-537 AD
Considering when and why the Great Migration of Peoples began, it must be borne in mind that in the middle of the 6th century a short-term weather anomaly of a global scale occurred. It was characterized by a decrease in the transparency of the atmosphere to such an extent that contemporaries of this event wrote that the sun began to shine like the moon. It is assumed that such a natural phenomenon was the result of large eruptions of tropical volcanoes (Tavurvura or Krakatau) or a consequence of the collision of the planet with a large asteroid. This happened during the reign of Justinian in 536-537. AD was accompanied by raids by the Antes, Huns and Slavs in Thrace and Illyria, the mass death of the population in Northern China (up to 80%), the resettlement of Slavs on the banks of the Elbe, on the foothills of the Alps, the lower Danube and the upper Rhine.
When and why did the Great Migration of Peoples begin? And is the plague to blame?
The population was moving away from hunger and crop failures to the south, while fighting with the natives of the occupied lands. In addition, a mutation of the causative agent of the plague (or its drift with an alien body) occurred during the period under review, which led to a pandemic of the disease.
It can be argued that the reason for the transformation of the political and ethnic map of Europe at that time was climate change, and a significant event that accelerated this process was the attack of the Hunnic tribes on European nationalities.
When and why did the Great Migration of Peoples begin? And what are the results? These issues are worth considering in chronological order. After the attack of the Huns around four hundred years of our era, the ancient Germanic tribes of the Franks began to populate the territory of modern Netherlands belonging to Rome, crowding out the Frisians and Batavians. In 401, the king of the Western Goths, Alaric, who had previously unsuccessfully besieged Constantinople in 395 and then left for the Greek lands, where he had carried out a monstrous defeat and plunder, moved with his troops and tribes to the Alps and entered Italy, which was considered an unplanned rich country, as the barbarians had not yet visited. In the spring of 402, Alaric threatened the seizure of Tuscany and Rome itself, however, in the battle of modern Pollenzo, he was defeated and left the Italian lands. He will come back here later.
A few years later (406), clashes broke out between the Alans, Vandals and Alemans with the Franks over lands on the banks of the Rhine, as a result of which the left northern coast fell to the Franks and the southern part to the Alemans. Vandals and Suevs (Germanic tribes of Eastern Europe) in 409 reached Spain, where they settled in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula.
The fall of Rome under the pressure of the Visigoths
When and why the Great Migration of Peoples began and what its results were, everyone should know, since the scale of this process is impressive.
In 410, the Visigoth king Alaric returned to Italy and captured Rome. This event was preceded by the defeat of Alaric under Verona, when most of his troops deserted, was received by the military commander Stilichon and resettled near Savva. Alaric himself concluded a federal agreement with Stilich and subsequently conducted joint actions to win back from Constantinople in favor of the empire of the regions of eastern Illyric. However, the Western and Eastern empires entered into negotiations at some point, and Alaric’s troops were no longer needed.
Fierce wars went to get trophies on their own. They forced the Roman rulers to consider providing a ransom of two tons of gold for the non-looting of some areas of Italy, which they were denied, which led to a three-time siege of Rome, the passage of many slaves to the side of Alaric and the fall of Rome in August 410.
Germanic tribes and slaves plundered the city and burned many houses without touching the church institutions, since Alaric had already adopted Arian Christianity by that time. Then his troops went to the south of Italy with plans to capture Sicily and ferry to the shores of Africa, where Alaric was going to find the grain needed to feed his people. However, these plans were not destined to come true, since the storm in the Strait of Messina sank most of the ships. Alarich turned back north to Gaul, but died on the road near the city of Cosenza, and the remnants of his army and people mixed with the local tribes.
The crowding out of each other by nationalities
When and why did the Great Migration of Peoples begin? Briefly, this process, initiated by climate change, can be described as follows: in 415 AD, the Visigoths began to oust from Spain the tribes of the Vandals, the Alans, who had come there earlier. In 449, the Anglo-Saxon tribes and the Jutes moved from the Jutland Peninsula in Germany to Britain, where they supplanted the Celtic Christians, forming several small states. A year later, the migration of peoples through the territory of modern Romania intensified - the Hepids and Huns crossed it in 450, the Avars in 456, the Bulgars and Slavs in 680 CE.
In 451-452 years. Roman civilization conducts successful military operations against the head of the Huns of Attila, while the Ostrogoths populate modern Hungary in 453, when they were driven out by vandals from Malta in 454, the Vandals settled in Sardinia (since 458). In 476, the German commander overthrows the last Roman emperor. The Roman Empire (Western) ceases to exist.
In the future (about 486 years), the Franks settled in the territory of modern France, the Bavars came from the Czech Republic to present Bavaria, the Slavs came to the Danube lands of the former Roman Empire, and the Breton, expelled by the Anglo-Saxon peoples from Britain, founded the present Brittany.
Process completion
When and why did the Great Migration of Peoples begin, and what are its results? Grade 6 of the school is the time for a brief study of this process.
It is known that in the sixth century AD, tribes of Slavs occupied the lands in the north of modern Germany (Mecklenburg), the Ostrogoths captured almost all of Italy by 550, and by 585 - all of Spain, while by 570 Lower Austria and present-day Hungary was occupied by nomadic Avars from Asia.
This process ends in the seventh century with the resettlement of the Slavs east of the Elbe, and the Croats and Serbs - in modern Dalmatia and Bosnia, as well as in some regions of Byzantium. The exact number of people who resettled and died during the resettlement is unknown, but it is believed by scientists to be tens of millions of people.