The most distant periods of history have been little studied, there are only archeological data that cannot cover the entire complex of interaction and development of the human race. But historical science can give comprehensive answers to questions about what tribes are, how they appeared.
Race formation
The first centers of civilization arose in the southeast of our planet (Egypt, India, China, Mesopotamia), and this is no coincidence. Here, a comfortable climate and favorable land, allowing to obtain a significant surplus product, and all this, in turn, led to a complication of relations and the formation of large alliances, prototypes of states.
However, before the advent of such, the entire human race was a primitive herd. As the number of people grew, the differences intensified, which were associated with the fact that people mastered new areas for life. This inevitably affected the diversity of the human species.
Southerners have acquired those racial attributes that we can observe today among the Australoid and Negroid races. The masses of people who inhabited sandy and taiga spaces acquired their own unique features. Today we can observe them in the Mongoloid race. And the Caucasians who populated Europe also have their own characteristics.
Ethnic and Linguistic Features
What are tribes? This is a perfectly logical question. It would seem that the answer is simple: this is a group of related communities of people or just a group of people, it all depends on how interconnected these groups are. But the formation of tribes is more complex.
Initially, there were several large associations of ancient people, each of which represented different linguistic and cultural elements, and even within these more or less general groups there was a significant difference in linguistic and everyday signs.
The largest linguistic family is Indo-European, it was she who gave rise to many tribes, and subsequently 0 to the peoples of Europe and Asia.
The tribes of Africa come from three language groups: Niger-Kordofan, Khoisan and Nilo-Saharan, with the exception of the Arabs, who belong to the Semitic-Hamites.
Subsequently, native speakers of these language families spread throughout Africa, and only the north of the continent later became Arabic.
The largest tribal community
Indo-Europeans, as the name implies, occupied vast territories of Eurasia. It is believed that the ancestral home of the tribes of this group is the region of Southeast and Central Europe. The economic life of the tribes of this community was represented by agriculture and cattle breeding; closer to the third millennium, metallurgy reaches a large level of development.
The growing number of Indo-European tribes leads to their resettlement, some followed to the west and south, the other moved to the east and north of the continent. Having occupied all of Europe, the Indo-Europeans did not stop and rushed further east, up to the Urals, in the southern direction, the territory of modern India becomes the extreme distribution point of this association.
In the course of these global migration movements, the unity of the group began to disintegrate. This happens in 4-3 millennia BC. It is from this environment that the ancient tribes of the Slavs stand out, although at this stage they can be designated as the Pre-Slavs.
The formation of national units
Similar processes took place in other communities of people, Altai and Turkic tribes formed in the vast steppe spaces of Asia. Having an idea of what tribes are and where they lived, we can also assume their occupation.
As for the aforementioned Turkic-Altai tribes, it becomes clear that nomadic cattle breeding was the basis of their economy. Those groups that inhabited fertile lands were mainly engaged in agriculture. Among them are the tribes of the Slavs. Their homeland is considered the middle course of the Vistula, Elba and Oder rivers. From there, they settled in southern, eastern and western Europe. There they gave rise to three groups of Slavs: eastern (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and southern (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, etc.)
However, this happened much later. According to archeology and other sources, in the first millennium BC. e. the Proto-Slavs stood out first from the general group of Germans, and then from the Baltics.
Fighting for a place in the sun
Of course, such massive migrations of large groups of people could not do without conflicts. Tribal war was no less frequent than resettlement and agriculture. Nomadic tribes were most successful in this matter. They were more adapted to hardship and warfare, because their existence depended on it.
In this regard, the Slavs experienced whole waves of successive raids by nomads: at first they were Cimmerians and Scythians, they were replaced by the Sarmatians, and then a huge mass of Huns. This continued until they created their own fighting squads.
However, the time from the VI century BC. e. and until the VIII century AD - this is a continuous war of tribes of various origins for the most favorable living conditions. This period is also known for the fact that there is an active formation of tribal unions.
Tribal groups
Since we have touched the Slavs, on their example we will consider the formation of powerful tribal groups, the last step on the path to creating statehood. The main written source on the history of that period is The Tale of Bygone Years.
According to the information given in this certificate, there were about 15 Slavic tribes and their associations. A small community was part of a larger tribe. Which of them was the most developed economically and politically? The chronicle says that these are glades that lived on the plains in the area of the modern city of Kiev.
Another tribal association that stood close in development to the meadows was the Ilmen Slovenes. These two tribal groups, consisting of closely related groups, set the tone for the further development of the entire Eastern Slavs. Identical processes occurred in other tribes. The most powerful ethnic and developed ethnic groups included less influential neighbors, forming an intertribal alliance.
The universal historical process
Indeed, it is the meadow and the Ilmen Slovenes that formed two competing political centers - Kiev and Novgorod. These capitals of tribal unions subsequently face in the battle for supremacy in Russia.
If we turn to other historical examples, we can see the Burgundians and Gascons in France in the struggle for supremacy in a single state. In general, this process is universal.
The African tribes are not an exception, as intense rivalry led to the formation of extensive state formations, however, a characteristic feature of the development of these processes here was their transience and great variability, due to the early civilizational influence of Egypt and Middle Eastern empires. This is what tribes are, their impact on further ethnic self-identification in brief.