Origin of the Slavs

(Ethnogenesis)

Using the sources listed above, scientists build hypotheses about the origins of the Slavs. However, different scientists do not agree not only in determining the place of the Slavic ancestral home, but also in the time of separation of the Slavs from the Indo-European group. There are a number of hypotheses according to which one can speak with confidence about the Slavs and their ancestral home starting from the end of the 3rd millennium BC. (O.N. Trubachev), from the end of the II millennium BC. (Polish scientists T. Ler-Splavinsky, K. Yazhzhevsky, Yu. Kostshevsky etc.), from the middle of the II millennium BC. (Polish scientist F. Slavsky), from the 4th c. BC. ( M. Vasmer, L. Niederle, S.B. Bernstein, P.J. Safarik).

The earliest scientific hypotheses about the ancestral home of the Slavs can be found in the works of Russian historians of the 18th - 19th centuries. N.M. Karamzin, S.M. Solovieva, V.O. Klyuchevsky. Their research is based on "The Tale of Bygone Years" and conclude that the ancestral home of the Slavs were R. Danube and Balkans. Supporters Danubian origin of the Slavs there were many Russian and Western European researchers. Moreover, at the end of the XX century. Russian scientist IS HE. Trubachev refined and developed it. However, during the XIX - XX centuries. This theory also had many opponents.

One of the major Slavic historians, Czech scientist P.I. Safarik believed that the ancestral home of the Slavs should be sought in Europe, next to their kindred tribes of the Celts, Germans, Balts and Thracians. He believes that the Slavs already in ancient times occupied the vast expanses of Central and Eastern Europe, and in the 4th century. BC. under the onslaught of the Celts moved beyond the Carpathians.

However, even at this time they occupy very vast territories - in the west - from the mouth of the Vistula to the Neman, in the north - from Novgorod to the sources of the Volga and Dnieper, in the east - to the Don. Further, she, in his opinion, went through the lower Dnieper and Dniester along the Carpathians to the Vistula and along the watershed of the Oder and Vistula to the Baltic Sea.

At the end of XIX - beginning of XX centuries. acad. A.A. Shakhmatov developed the idea of ​​two Slavic ancestral homelands : the area within which the Proto-Slavic language developed (the first ancestral home), and the area that the Proto-Slavic tribes occupied on the eve of settlement in Central and Eastern Europe (the second ancestral home). He proceeds from the fact that initially the Balto-Slavic community stood out from the Indo-European group, which was autochthonous on the territory of the Baltic states. After the collapse of this community, the Slavs occupied the territory between the lower reaches of the Neman and the Western Dvina (the first ancestral home). It was here that, in his opinion, the Proto-Slavic language developed, which later formed the basis of all Slavic languages. In connection with the great migration of peoples, the Germans at the end of the 2nd century AD. move south and release the river basin. Vistula, where the Slavs come (the second ancestral home). Here the Slavs are divided into two branches: western and eastern. The western branch moves into the area of ​​the river. Elbe and becomes the basis for modern West Slavic peoples; after the collapse of the Hun empire (the second half of the 5th century AD), the southern branch was divided into two groups: one of them settled the Balkans and the Danube (the basis of the modern South Slavic peoples), the other - the Dnieper and the Dniester (the basis of the modern East Slavic peoples).

The most popular hypothesis among linguists about the ancestral home of the Slavs is Vistula-Dnieper. According to scholars such as M.Fasmer(Germany), F.P.Filin, S.B.Bershtein(Russia), V. Georgiev(Bulgaria), L. Niederle(Czech), K. Moshinsky(Poland) and others, the ancestral home of the Slavs was located between the middle reaches of the Dnieper in the east and the upper reaches of the Western Bug and Vistula in the west, as well as from the upper reaches of the Dniester and the Southern Bug in the south to Pripyat in the north. Thus, the ancestral home of the Slavs is defined by them as modern northwestern Ukraine, southern Belarus and southeastern Poland. However, in the studies of individual scientists there are certain variations.

L. Niederle believes that the place of the Slavic ancestral home can only be determined presumably. He suggests that such tribes as Nevri, Budins, Scythians-plowmen belong to the Slavs. Based on the reports of Roman historians and linguistic data, in particular toponymy, L. Niederle very carefully outlines the area of ​​\u200b\u200bSlavic settlement at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD.

She, in his opinion, was located to the north and northeast of the Carpathians, in the east it reached the Dnieper, and in the west - the upper reaches of the Varta River. At the same time, he notes that the western borders of the Slavic area may have to be moved to the Elbe River if the Slavic belonging of the cemeteries - the burial fields of the Lusatian-Silesian type - is proved.

F.P. Owl determines the area of ​​\u200b\u200bsettlement of the Slavs at the beginning of our era. between the Western Bug and the Middle Dnieper. Based on linguistic and extralinguistic data, he proposes a periodization of the development of the language of the Proto-Slavs. The first stage (until the end of the 1st millennium BC) is the initial stage in the formation of the basis of the Slavic language system. At the second stage (from the end of the 1st millennium AD to the 3rd-4th centuries AD), serious changes in phonetics take place in the Proto-Slavic language, its grammatical structure evolves, and dialectal differentiation develops. The third stage (V-VII centuries AD) coincides with the beginning of the widespread settlement of the Slavs, which ultimately led to the division of a single language into separate Slavic languages. This periodization largely corresponds to the main stages historical development early Slavs reconstructed on the basis of archeological data.

Further resettlement of the Slavs from the Vistula-Dnieper region took place, according to S.B. Bernshtein, to the west to the Oder, to the north to Lake Ilmen, to the east to the Oka, to the south to the Danube and the Balkans. S.B. Bernshtein supports the hypothesis of A.A. Shakhmatov about the initial division of the Slavs into two groups: western And eastern; from the latter at one time stood out eastern And southern groups. This explains the great proximity of the East Slavic and South Slavic languages ​​and a certain isolation, in particular phonetic, West Slavic.

The problem of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs was repeatedly addressed B.A. Rybakov. His concept is also associated with the Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis and is based on the unity of the territories inhabited by the Slavic ethnic group for two millennia: from the Oder in the west to the left bank of the Dnieper in the east. The history of the Slavs B.A. Rybakov starts from the Bronze Age - from the 15th century. BC. - and identifies five of its stages.

First step he connects with the Trzynec culture (XV-XIII centuries BC). The area of ​​its distribution, in his opinion, was "the primary place for the unification and formation of the first splintered Proto-Slavs ... this area can be designated by the somewhat vague word ancestral home." The Tshinec culture extended from the Oder to the left bank of the Dnieper. Second phase - Lusatian-Scythian - covers the XII-III centuries. BC. The Slavs at this time are represented by several cultures: Lusatian, Belogrudovskaya, Chernolesskaya and Scythian forest-steppe. The tribes of the forest-steppe Scythian cultures, engaged in agriculture, were Slavs, united in an alliance under the name of Skolots. The fall of the Lusatian and Scythian cultures led to the restoration of Slavic unity - the third stage the history of the Proto-Slavs, which lasted from the II century. BC. according to the II century. AD, and represented by two closely related cultures: Przeworsk and Zarubinets. Their territories stretched from the Oder to the left bank of the Dnieper. Fourth stage it dates back to the 2nd-4th centuries. AD and calls it Przeworsk-Chernyakhovsky. This stage is characterized by the strengthening of the influence of the Roman Empire on the Slavic tribes. Fifth stage - Prague-Korchak, dates back to the 6th-7th centuries, when, after the fall of the Roman Empire, Slavic unity was restored. According to B.A. Rybakov, proof of the Slavic affiliation of all these cultures.

In recent decades, expeditionary research by Ukrainian archaeologists has significantly expanded the scientific base. According to these scientists, the history of the Slavs begins with the Late La Tene period. According to V.D. ram, the formation of the early medieval Slavic cultures was the result of the integration of several cultures of the Roman time: the Prague-Korchak culture developed on the basis of the Chernyakhov culture of the Upper Dniester and Western Bug regions with the participation of elements of the Przeworsk and Kiev cultures; the Penkovo ​​culture developed under the conditions of the merger of elements of the Kiev and Chernyakhov cultures with nomadic cultures; The Kolochin culture arose as a result of the interaction of the late Zarubintsy and Kievan elements with the Baltic ones. The leading role in the formation of the Slavs, according to V.D. Baran, belonged to the Kiev culture. The concept of Slavic ethnogenesis is outlined V.D. Baran, R.V. Terpilovsky and D.N. Kozak. The early history of the Slavs, in their opinion, begins from the first centuries of our era, when information about the Slavs, then called Wends, appears in the writings of ancient authors. The Wends lived east of the Vistula, they belonged to the Zarubintsy and Przeworsk cultures of the Volyn region. In the future, the Zarubinets and late Zarubinets cultures were associated with the Slavs, and through them - the Kyiv and partially Chernyakhov cultures, on the basis of which the early medieval Slavic cultures were formed.

In recent decades, a number of works have been devoted to the problems of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs. V.V. Sedov. He considers the culture of under-klesh burials (400-100 BC) to be the most ancient Slavic culture, since it is from this culture that elements of continuity can be traced in the evolutionary development of antiquities up to the reliably Slavic era of the early Middle Ages.

The culture of underklesh burials corresponds to the first stage in the history of the Proto-Slavic language according to the periodization of F.P. Owl. At the end of the II century. BC. under the strong Celtic influence, the culture of under-klesh burials is transformed into a new one, called Przeworsk. As part of the Przeworsk culture, two regions are distinguished: the western one - the Oder region, inhabited mainly by the East German population, and the eastern one - the Vistula region, where the Slavs were the predominant ethnic group. Chronologically, the Przeworsk culture corresponds, according to the periodization of F.P. Filin, the middle stage of the development of the Proto-Slavic language. Zarubintsy culture, which was formed with the participation of alien Podkleshevo-Pomeranian tribes and local Milograd and late Scythian, he considers a special group in linguistic terms, which occupied an intermediate position between the Proto-Slavic and Western Baltic languages. The Slavic Prague-Korchak culture is connected with the Przeworsk culture. According to V.V. Sedov, the Slavs were one of the components of the polyethnic Chernyakhov culture.

O.N. Trubachev in his works he rejects both the Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis and its Vistula-Oder variant. As an alternative, he puts forward the so-called "non-Danubian" hypothesis of the ancestral home of the Slavs. He considers the place of their primary settlement to be the Middle Danube - the territory of the countries of the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro), the south of Czechoslovakia and the lands of the former Pannonia (on the territory of modern Hungary).

For some time around the 1st century AD. the Slavs were driven out by the Celts and Ugrians to the north, to the Povislenye, and to the east, to the Dnieper region. It was connected with the great migration of peoples. However, already in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. the Slavs, "keeping the memory of their former habitats", "again occupy the Danube, the lands beyond the Danube, the Balkans." Thus, "the movement of the Slavs to the south was returnable."

ONTrubachev argues his hypothesis with linguistic and extralinguistic facts. He believes that, firstly, the advance of the Slavs first to the north and then to the south fits into general process migrations of peoples within Europe. Secondly, it is confirmed by the records of the chronicler Nestor: "For many times, the same time." Thirdly, it was among the southern Slavs who lived along the river. Danube, the self-name *slověne appeared before everyone else - Slovenia, which is gradually being established in the works of Byzantine historians of the 6th century, the Gothic historian of the 6th century. Jordan (sklavins). At the same time, they call the Western and Eastern Slavs Wends and Ants, that is, names alien to the Slavs. The ethnonym Slavs O.N. Trubetskoy correlates the word with the lexeme and interprets it as “clearly speaking”, that is, speaking in an understandable, not alien language. Fourthly, in the folklore works of the Eastern Slavs, the river is very often mentioned. Danube, which O.N. Trubachev considers to be a living memory of the Danube. Fifthly, he believes that the Ugrians, having come to the territory of the Danube region and founded in the 1st century AD. their state, they found the Slavic population and Slavic toponyms there: *bъrzъ, *sopot, *rěčina, *bystica, *foplica, *kaliga, *belgrad, *konotopa, etc.

Thus, O.N. Trubachev believes that “the southern Vistula-Oder area ... approximately coincides with the northern periphery of the Middle Danubian area”, and the area of ​​​​the primary settlement of the Slavs coincides with the area of ​​\u200b\u200bprimary settlement of speakers of the common Indo-European language.

The question of the ancestral home of the Slavs continues to remain open. Scientists put forward more and more evidence in favor of a particular hypothesis. In particular, G.A.Khaburgaev believes that the Proto-Slavic tribes arose as a result of crossing the West Baltic tribes with Italics, Thracians (in the region of modern northern Poland) and Iranian tribes (on the Desna River).

Literature

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Antiquities of the Slavs and Russia. - M., 1988.
Antiquity. Arya. Slavs. - M., 1996.
Ivanov VV, Toporov VN Research in the field of Slavic antiquities. Lexical and phraseological issues of text reconstruction. - M., 1974.
Jordanes, On the origin and deeds of the Getae, Getica, trans. from Greek - M., 1960.
Kalashnikov V.L. Slavic civilization. - M., 2000.
Kobychev V.P. In search of the ancestral home of the Slavs. - M., 1973.
Who are they and where are they from? Ancient connections of the Slavs and the Aryans. - M., 1998.
Lyzov A.I. Scythian history. - M., 1990.
Lyapushkin I. I. The Dnieper forest-steppe Left Bank in the Iron Age. Archaeological research on the time of the settlement of the Left Bank by the Slavs, M. - L., 1961.
Lyapushkin I.I. Slavs of Eastern Europe on the eve of education ancient Russian state(VIII - first half of the IX century). Historical and archaeological essays - L., 1968.
Milyukov P.N. Essays on the history of Russian culture. In 3 vols. T.1. Earth. Population. Economy. Estate. State. - M., 1993.
Mishulin A. V. Ancient Slavs in excerpts from Greco-Roman and Byzantine writers in the 7th century. n. e. // Bulletin ancient history, 1941, № 1.
Mylnikov A.S. Picture of the Slavic world: a view from Eastern Europe. Ideas about ethnic nomination and ethnicity of the 16th - early 18th centuries. - St. Petersburg, 1999.
Peoples of the European part of the USSR, vol. 1. - M., 1964.
Peoples of foreign Europe, vol. 1. - M., 1964.
Niederle L. Slavic antiquities, trans. from Czech. - M., 2000.
Petrukhin V.Ya. Slavs. - M., 1999.
Pogodin A.L. From the history of Slavic movements. - St. Petersburg, 1901.
Procopius of Caesarea, War with the Goths, trans. from Greek - M., 1950.
Rybakov B. A. The pagan worldview of the Russian Middle Ages // Questions of History, 1974, No. 1.
Sedov V.V. Slavs in antiquity. - M., 1994.
Semenova M. We are Slavs. - St. Petersburg, 1997.
Slavs on the eve of education Kievan Rus. - M., 1963.
Smirnov Yu. I. Slavic epic traditions. - M., 1974.
Tretyakov P.N. At the origins of ancient Russian nationality. - L., 1970.
Tretyakov P.N. Some information about public relations in the East Slavic environment in the 1st millennium AD. e. // Soviet archeology, 1974, No. 2.
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Filin F. P. Education of the language of the Eastern Slavs. - M. - L., 1962.
Shakhmatov A. A. The most ancient fate of the Russian tribe. - P., 1919.
Lerh-Spławinski T. About pochodzeniu i praoji czyznie słowian. - Poznań, 1946.
Szymanki W. Słowianszczyzna wschodnia. - Wroclaw, 1973.
Słowianie w dziejach Europy. - Poznań, 1974.
Niederle L. Zivot starych slovanu, dl 1-3. - Prague, 1911-34.

Notes
See more details: Shakhmatov A.A. Russian language and its features. The question of the formation of adverbs // Shakhmatov A.A. Essay on the modern Russian literary language. - M., 1941.
Niederle L. Slavic Antiquities. - M., 2000.
Filin F.P. The formation of the language of the Eastern Slavs. M.-L., 1962.
Bernstein S.B. Essay on comparative grammar of Slavic languages. - M., 1961.
Rybakov B.A. The paganism of the ancient Slavs. - M., 1981. S. 221.
Rybakov B.A. Herodotus Scythia. - M., 1979.
Baran V.D. To the question of the origins of the Slavic culture of the early Middle Ages//Acta archeologica Carpathica. T. 21. Krakow, 1981. pp. 67-88.
Baran V.D., Terpilovsky R.V., Kozak D.N. Adventures of words "Jan. Kiev, 1991.
Sedov V.V. Origin and early history of the Slavs. M., 1979. Sedov V.V. Slavs in antiquity. M., 1994.
Sedov V.V. Slavs in antiquity. - M., 1994. S. 144.
Filin F.P. The formation of the language of the Eastern Slavs. - M.; L., 1962. S. 101-103.
Filin F.P. The formation of the language of the Eastern Slavs. - M.; L., 1962. S. 103-110.
Trubachev O.N. Linguistics and ethnogenesis of the Slavs // Questions of linguistics. - 1985. - No. 4. - P.9.
Trubachev O.N. Linguistics and ethnogenesis of the Slavs. Ancient Slavs according to etymology and onomastics // Questions of linguistics. - 1981. - No. 4. - P.11.
Trubachev O.N. Linguistics and ethnogenesis. Ancient Slavs according to etymology and onomastics // Questions of linguistics. - 1982. - No. 5. - P.9.
Trubachev O.N. There.
Trubachev O.N. Linguistics and ethnogenesis of the Slavs // Questions of linguistics. - 1985. - No. 5. - P.12.

Hypotheses about the ancestral home of the Slavs

Remark 1

There are a significant number of hypotheses as to which territory to take as "original" in relation to the Slavs. Theories about the presence of some initial communities like the German-Balto-Slavic or lesser - the Balto-Slavic are currently recognized as untenable.

According to researchers Rybakov B.A. and Tretyakova P.N., first contacts of Slavs and Balts can be established according to Trzynecka archaeological culture. This is a culture of the Bronze Age and geographically it belongs to the Oder-Dnieper region. In this case, if the fact of the existence of the Slavs in the territory of another group of tribes is established, it is necessary to find out where they came from.

The Trzyniec culture was discovered by the Poles, who at first did not imagine its scale. However, it was in the Dnieper region that the most significant finds were made, on the basis of which Rybakov put forward the assumption that culture moved west from the east, and not vice versa.

Picture 1.

At the same time, it should be noted that in that era, the Srubnaya culture prevailed in the east, which did not include the Slavs.

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The next interesting hypothesis was put forward by ON Trubachev. Based on the foregoing, as well as the linguistic archaism of the Slavic language, Trubachev suggested that the ancestral home of the Slavs and Indo-Europeans is one territory. That is, probably, the ancestors of the Slavs lived on the same territory with a certain Indo-European community. This area was located in Central Europe.

Anthropology about the origin of the Slavs

In favor of the location of the Proto-Slavs in Central Europe, arguments can be made from linguistics, as well as anthropology and archeology.

Remark 2

The most famous domestic studies of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs were carried out Trofimova T.A. And Alekseeva T.I. Their theories and conclusions are different. For example, researchers differently assess the role of carriers of the culture of band ceramics in the formation of the Slavic ethnic group: Trofimova considers them fundamental, according to Alekseeva T.I. they can be included in the composition of the Slavs as a substratum or superstratum. Alekseeva's opinion is confirmed by many anthropologists.

Hypothesis of Trofimova T.A. based on the so-called autochthonic theories, therefore, she recognized the presence of various elements in the Slavic community, but did not take any of them as the main one. Such an approach ruled out, on the whole, for anthropology the possibility of solving the problem of ethnogenesis.

Alekseeva T.I. conducted her research later, in the $60-70s, at that time the costs of autochthonism were overcome. Began to be taken into account comparative studies and population migration. The authority of anthropology in matters of ethnogenesis has grown.

Among the Slavs in terms of volume, the most representatives of cultures Corded Ware. This type of population is characterized by a broad face and a long head. Such an appearance brings them very close to the Balts and makes it difficult to separate them from the Slavs from an anthropological point of view. The following fact is important: in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, the related population lived in most of the Left-Bank Ukraine and the northwestern coast of Europe, and the zone of distribution of the Dinaric anthropological type, which is currently manifested among Albanians, Serbs and Croats, must also be taken into account. This means that when considering the issue of Slavic ethnogenesis, it is necessary to take into account the territory that significantly exceeds the area of ​​residence of the Balts.

The formation of the Slavs was also significantly influenced tribes of the culture of bell-shaped cups and those who practiced burials in cysts . According to Alekseeva T.I. the population of the culture of bell-shaped cups is most important in the issue of the ancestral home of the Slavs, because the Slavs unite the North European and South European races. However, the culture of bell-shaped cups is rather poorly studied. It is known that she came from North Africa to Spain, where she changed the culture of megaliths. By $1800 B.C. the culture of bell-shaped cups moved along the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean and became part of the future Celts, as well as in Central Europe. The origins of this culture are not precisely defined, approximately this is the territory of the Eastern Mediterranean, Front or middle Asia. Perhaps related to this culture were the Hittites and Pelasgians, as well as the Ligurians who inhabited Northern Italy. In any case, it is curious that the supreme deity of the Ligurians Kupavon coincided in function with the Kupala of the Slavs. From this fact it can be concluded that linguistically and religiously close independent tribes lived along with the Slavs on the Alpine territory.

The main anthropological difference between the Slavs and the Balts consists in the presence in the composition of the Slavs of the Central European Alpine racial type, as well as representatives of the culture of bell-shaped cups. The migratory southern waves in the Baltics were of a different kind. Southern population was only an admixture among the Illyrians, Veneti and various waves of Cimmerians who overcame Asia Minor and the Balkans. The origins and languages ​​of these groups were quite similar. The languages ​​available to them were also on the territory of the Franco-Cimmerian culture in the Carpathians. The language of the Alpine population and the culture of the bell-shaped goblets differs from the Baltic-Dnieper and Black Sea languages.

Remark 3

Maybe, Slavic was formed in Central Europe through contacts between the bearers of the cultures of bell-shaped cups and others, originating from the Corded Ware cultures, or came to this territory already formed. It is undeniable that living nearby for a long time equally influenced the Proto-Slavic language and the Celtic and Illiro-Venetian languages, intermediate dialects appeared.

Alekseeva believed that the culture of bell-shaped cups could well be the original anthropological type of the Slavs, and cited the similarity of the ancient Russian population, as well as the modern inhabitants of the Dnieper region, with the North Balkan, South German, North Italian, Swiss, Hungarian and Austrian populations. Thus, the Proto-Slavs moved precisely from west to east. This type spread from Moravia and the Czech Republic to the future tribes of the streets, the Drevlyans, etc. It is impossible to establish exactly the beginning of the movement to the east from Central Europe, because cremation was widespread among the Slavs.

Figure 2.

Advances in toponymy in defining the Chernoles culture

However, rich linguistic material, including toponymy, remained from that era. Here are the most famous research Trubacheva O.N. He owns works on craft terminology, toponyms of the Right Bank of the Dnieper. On the basis of his works, Trubachev deduced the coincidence of the territory of origin of the Indo-Europeans and the Slavs, since the Slavic terminology of the craft is similar to the ancient Roman one, and there are Illyrian ones in the names of rivers and other toponyms.

Ukrainian archaeologists determined that the Chernoles culture of $X-VII$ cc. BC. was Slavic. The Chernolesians coexisted with the Cimmerians, and fortified settlements were discovered on the border territory, evidence of the growing separation of these cultures. The Slavic toponymy discovered by Trubachev completely coincides with the Chernolesskaya archaeological culture, which is very rare for ethnogenetic studies.

Remark 4

Thus, the Chernolesskaya culture can be regarded as a beacon in the deepening of searches, as well as in the study of successors. However, it should be taken into account that at the turn of the forest-steppe and the steppe, farmers and steppe nomads clashed for many centuries, and with the onset of social stratification, conflicts arose among related tribes, in addition, many new waves of migrations took place from Central Europe.

So, establishing the nature of the Chernoles helps in the question of the ethnicity of the Trzynec culture: it is precisely here that the movement of the Proto-Slavs from the Alpine regions to the Dnieper is drawn. It is the cremation that makes it possible to single out the Slavs, and among the corpses of the Slavic anthropological type, it was not found, probably they were the Balts. Within the framework of this culture, the southern type with a predominance of dark pigment met with the northern, light-pigmented type and assimilated it.

Slavic speech - when did it sound? Even in the second half of the XIX century. The Slavs were considered a relatively "young" ethnic group, and scientists doubted the very possibility of talking about Slavic history before Christ. But peoples are not young ladies, gray hair and wrinkles are desirable for them. And the 20th century was marked by a dizzying deepening of the dating of early Slavic history. It turned out that even in the pre-Christian era, it can be measured in millennia, because in the language, culture, religious ideas of the Slavs, a very ancient Indo-European layer clearly emerges.

The Indo-European language family arose in the 5th-4th millennium BC. e., that is, at the beginning of the "copper age". Some of the languages ​​included in it disappeared in ancient times - Hittite-Luvian, Italic, Tocharian, Thracian, Phrygian, Illyrian and Venetian; others still exist today - Indian, Iranian, Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian. The ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans has not yet been found, although in the vast expanses between the Atlantic coast of Europe and the upper reaches of the Yenisei there is no longer, it seems, a piece of land in which the pointing finger of science would not have poked at one time: Spain, the Balkans, Asia Minor, Armenia, northern "Hyperborea", the Altai and Orenburg steppes... It is not even quite clear in which part of the world the Indo-European community was formed - in Europe or Asia. Or maybe at the crossroads...

So, then, the Slavs were forged on the anvil of the Copper Age? Hardly. Who will take the liberty, grasping one link in an unbroken chain of generations, to proclaim that everything began with him? The Indo-European community in the historical sense is not a starting point, but the final stage of a long process of ethnic cohesion and relative cultural and linguistic leveling of the tribes and nationalities that were part of it. It is impossible to “bring out” the Slavs by “addition” of two ethnic groups or, on the contrary, “separate” them from a larger, multi-ethnic community. Slavs are Slavs, as the patriarch of Slavic philology Abbot J. Dobrovsky (1784-1829) perspicaciously remarked. The development of Slavism within the framework of the Indo-European language family symbolically better expresses not the outdated image of the "tree of languages", but a "bush" more in line with reality. In other words, the Slavic language and Slavic ethnos is a completely original and unique historical phenomenon, with its own roots that go back to the impenetrable darkness of time. In a certain sense, one can speak of the "appearance" or "emergence" of the Slavs only conditionally. History is a bottomless well; in vain are our attempts to scoop it up from its very bottom. We are hardly even able to imagine what the concept of "beginning" means in relation to such a complex process as the self-determination of an ethnos and its language; the image of the Babylonian division of languages ​​and peoples is still perhaps our highest achievement in this field of knowledge. It is equally absurd to say that the Slavs "have always been", or that they "appeared then." For the historian, the question of the initial Slavic history is, in fact, not when it "began", but where we can start it, based on the historical, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic data available to this day.

History finds the Slavs in Europe, among other Indo-European tribes, which at the turn of the 5th-4th millennium BC. e. inhabited these ancient lands.

The crystallization of tribal and linguistic differences within the Indo-European population of Europe proceeded slowly. By the middle of the II millennium BC. e. no clear boundaries have yet been drawn on its ethnic map. Only in the very south, in Greece, did the Achaean union of Greek tribes draw the first boundary line in European history, separating the Hellenes from the barbarians.

The barbarian world, which stretched to the north of the Danube, was united by the striking closeness of religious and symbolic ideas about life, which were based on the solar cult. Solar symbolism was extremely diverse. Household items and weapons were covered with images of concentric circles, wheels, crosses, bull horns, swans and other waterfowl. birds (even much later, in the Middle Ages, there were still widespread ideas that the sun, having made its daily journey across the sky, moved to the “lower” part of the world, which was thought of as an underground ocean, and the return, invisible path from the west to the east was done with the help of ducks, geese or swans). Death also appeared in the form of a cleansing fire of a funeral pyre, and a vessel with a handful of human ashes was placed in the middle of a circle of stones - the magical sign of the sun.

This cultural and historical community, which existed in Central Europe from the 16th to the 7th centuries. BC e., called by archaeologists the culture of the fields of funerary urns. Within its borders, apparently, the formation of the main ethnic groups of ancient Europe was completed [see. Sedov. VV Slavs in antiquity. M., 1994; Krahe H. Sprache und Vorzeit. Heidelberg, 1954]. It was from the territory of the culture of the fields of burial urns that the peoples known to us from ancient written monuments came to Western and Southern Europe. From the end of the II millennium BC. e. Italians penetrate the Apennine Peninsula; France and Northern Italy in the VIII-V centuries. BC e. inhabited by the Celts; around the same time, the Adriatic coast of the Balkans is occupied by the Illyrians; and in the 7th century BC e. Germans appear in Jutland and adjacent lands along the lower reaches of the Rhine and Oder.

But what about the Slavs?

About 1300-1100 years. BC e. from the culture of the fields of burial urns stood out Lusatian culture(named after the first finds in the town of Luzhitsa, between the Oder and the Vistula), covering the basins of the Oder, the Vistula and the right bank of the Elbe. The Lusatian tribes were engaged in cattle breeding and agriculture and already used not only a plow, but also a plow for plowing. Men had a high social status as masters and warriors. Bronze swords, axes, sickles were made with high craftsmanship. Not later than the ninth century BC e. Lusatians learned how to process iron, and a century later, the manufacture of weapons and household items from it became commonplace. The so-called “pillar houses” served as dwellings, the walls of which were made of vertically dug-in pillars with wattle covered with clay; The village was surrounded by an earthen rampart. The Lusatians continued to bury the dead in funeral urns.

Lusatian culture did not receive a reliable ethnographic description in antiquity. And yet its predominant population was undoubtedly the Slavs. The presence of their main ethnic mass on its territory is well explained by the linguistic contacts of the Slavs with the Italics, Celts, Germans and Balts, since these ethnic groups surrounded the Lusatian lands from the north, northeast, west and south. The oldest Slavic vocabulary relating to fauna, flora and geographical features is also fully consistent with natural conditions this area. Linguists agree among themselves that "the ancient Slavic region, or Slavic ancestral home ... judging by the lexical data, was in a forest, flat area with the presence of lakes and swamps, away from the sea, mountain ranges and steppe spaces" [ Sedov. Decree. op., p. 144]. True, the oldest Slavic monuments in the Lusatian area date back only to the 5th century BC. BC e., but, on the other hand, archaeologists have not noted a significant change ethnic composition population in the area throughout the previous millennium. So, the Slavs lived here for a long time.

From the second third of the ninth century the Slavic population of the Don and the entire forest-steppe zone was attacked by the Magyars, whom the Slavs called the Ugrians, the Arabs and Byzantines called the Turks, and in Central and Western Europe they became known as the Hungarians.

It was a people speaking a language that belonged to the Finno-Ugric language family. The ancestral home of the Magyars - Great Hungary - was located in Bashkiria, where back in 1235 the Dominican monk Julian discovered people whose language was close to Hungarian.

Breaking through in the first half of the IX century. in the interfluve of the Volga and Don, the Magyars then settled in areas that in their legends are called Levedia (Swans) and Atelkuza. Researchers usually believe that we are talking about the Lower Don and the Dniester-Dnieper interfluve, respectively.

The entire Magyar horde numbered no more than 100,000 people and, according to contemporaries, could field from 10,000 to 20,000 horsemen. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to resist them. Even in Western Europe, which not so long ago defeated the Avars, the appearance of the Magyars caused panic. These nomads are short, with three pigtails on their shaved heads, dressed in animal skins, sitting firmly on their small, but hardy horses, - terrified with their very appearance. The best European armies, including the Byzantine one, were powerless in the face of the military tactics of the Magyars, which were unusual for them. Emperor Leo the Wise (881 - 911) described it in detail in his military treatise. When setting out on a campaign, the Magyars always sent horse patrols forward; during camps and overnight stays, their camp was also constantly surrounded by guards. They began the battle by showering the enemy with a cloud of arrows, and then with a swift raid they tried to break through the enemy system. In case of failure, they turned into a feigned flight, and if the enemy succumbed to the trick and began to pursue, then the Magyars turned around at once and the whole horde fell upon the enemy’s battle formations that had become disordered; an important role was played by the reserve, which the Magyars never forgot to put up. In the pursuit of the defeated enemy, the Magyars were tireless, while there was no mercy for anyone.

The dominance of the Magyars in the Black Sea steppes lasted about half a century. In 890 a war broke out between Byzantium and the Danube Bulgarians. Emperor Leo the Wise attracted the Hungarians to his side, who crossed to the right bank of the Danube and, devastating everything in their path, reached the walls of the Bulgarian capital Preslav. Tsar Simeon asked for peace, but secretly decided to take revenge. He persuaded the Pechenegs to attack the Hungarians. And so, when the Hungarian cavalry left for another raid (apparently on the Moravian Slavs), the Pechenegs attacked their nomad camps and slaughtered the few men and defenseless families left at home. The Pecheneg raid put the Hungarians in the face of a demographic catastrophe that threatened their very existence as a people. Their first concern was to make up for the lack of women. They moved beyond the Carpathians and in the fall of 895 settled in the valley of the upper Tisza, from where they began to make annual raids on the Pannonian Slavs in order to capture women and girls. Slavic blood helped the Hungarians survive and continue their race.

Crossing of Prince Arpad through the Carpathians. The cyclorama was written for the 1000th anniversary of the conquest of Hungary by the Magyars.

The Magyar dominion made me remember the times of the Avar yoke. Ibn Ruste compared the position of the Slavic tribes subordinate to the Magyars with the position of prisoners of war, and Gardizi called them slaves who were obliged to feed their masters. In this regard, GV Vernadsky gives an interesting comparison of the Hungarian word dolog - "work", "labor" and the Russian word "duty" (meaning "duty"). According to the historian, the Magyars used the Slavs for "work", which it was their "duty" to perform - hence the different meaning of this word in the Hungarian and Russian languages. Probably, the borrowing by the Hungarians of the Slavic words “slave” - rab and “yoke” - jarom ( Vernadsky G.V. Ancient Russia. pp. 255 - 256).

Probably during the ninth century. the Slavic tribes of the Dnieper and Don regions also experienced the heavy onslaught of the Hungarian cavalry more than once. Indeed, “The Tale of Bygone Years” notes under 898: “the Ugrians went past Kyiv as a mountain, the hedgehog is now called Ugorskoe, and having come to the Dnieper, stacked with vezhas [tents] ...”. However, on closer examination, this fragmentary report is hardly credible. Firstly, the date of the invasion is incorrect: the Hungarians left the Lower Dnieper region for Pannonia no later than 894. Secondly, the absence of a continuation of the story about the “standing” of the Ugrians near Kiev indicates that the chronicler-local historian in this case only wanted to explain the origin the name of Ugric, which actually goes back to the Slavic word eel- "high, steep bank of the river" ( Fasmer M. Etymological Dictionary. T. IV. S. 146). Thirdly, it is not clear where the Ugrians could go, going “past Kyiv as a mountain” (that is, up the Dnieper, along its right bank), not to mention the fact that, fleeing from the Pechenegs, they moved from their Atelkuza not at all to north, and straight west into the Pannonian steppes.

The latter circumstance again makes us suspect that the chronicler here also dated a legend relating to one of the Danube Kievs to the historical reality of Kyiv on the Dnieper. In a more complete form, it can be read in the "Acts of the Hungarians" (an unnamed chronicle written at the court of King Bela III in 1196 - 1203), which says that the Hungarians, retreating from Atelkuza, "reached the region of the Rus and, without meeting any or resistance, went all the way to the city of Kyiv. And when they passed through the city of Kyiv, crossing (on ferries. - S. C.) the Dnieper River, they wanted to subjugate the kingdom of the Rus. Upon learning of this, the leaders of the Rus were very frightened, for they heard that the leader Almosh, the son of Yudek, comes from the family of King Attila, to whom their ancestors paid an annual tribute. However, the Kyiv prince gathered all his nobles, and after conferring, they decided to start a battle with the leader Almosh, wanting to die in battle rather than lose their kingdom and, against their will, submit to the leader Almosh. The battle was lost by the Russians. And "the leader Almosh and his soldiers, having won, subjugated the lands of the Rus and, having taken their estates, for the second week went to attack the city of Kyiv." The local rulers considered it best to submit to Almos, who demanded that they give "him their sons as hostages", pay "ten thousand marks in the form of an annual tax" and, in addition, provide "food, clothing and other necessary things" - horses " with saddles and bits "and camels" for the transport of goods. The Rus obeyed, but on the condition that the Hungarians leave Kyiv and leave "to the west, to the land of Pannonia", which was done.

In Hungary, this tradition was apparently intended to justify Hungarian dominance over the "Kingdom of the Rus", that is, over the subordinate area of ​​the Carpathian Rusyns, thanks to which the heir to the Hungarian throne bore the title "Duke of the Rus".

In view of all this, we can say that the period of Magyar domination in the Northern Black Sea region passed almost without a trace for the initial Russian history.

Where did the Slavic ethnic group come into the world, and what territory can be called “originally Slavic”?

Historians' accounts vary. The Dominican monk-historian Mavro Orbini, who wrote at the end XVI-early XVII century, a work called “The Slavic Kingdom”, referring to a number of authors, claims that the Slavs came out of Scandinavia: “Almost all authors, whose blessed pen conveyed to the descendants the history of the Slavic tribe, argue and conclude that the Slavs came out of Scandinavia ...

The descendants of Japheth the son of Noah (to whom the author refers to the Slavs) moved to Europe to the north, penetrating into the country now called Scandinavia. There they multiplied innumerably, as St. Augustine points out in his "City of God", where he writes that the sons and descendants of Japheth had two hundred homelands and occupied the lands located north of Mount Taurus in Cilicia, along the Northern Ocean, half of Asia, and throughout Europe. all the way to the British Ocean.

The chronicler Nestor called the most ancient territory of the Slavs - the lands along the lower reaches of the Dnieper and Pannonia. The reason for the settlement of the Slavs from the Danube was the attack on them by the Volkhovs. “For many years, the essence of Slovenia sat along the Dunaev, where there is now Ugorsk land and Bolgarsk.” Hence the Danube-Balkan hypothesis of the origin of the Slavs.

The European homeland of the Slavs also had its supporters. Thus, the prominent Czech historian Pavel Safarik believed that the ancestral home of the Slavs should be sought on the territory of Europe, next to their kindred tribes of the Celts, Germans, Balts and Thracians. He believed that in ancient times the Slavs occupied the vast territories of Central and Eastern Europe, from where they were forced to leave the Carpathians under the onslaught of the Celtic expansion.

There was even a version about the two ancestral homelands of the Slavs, according to which the first ancestral home was the place where the Proto-Slavic language developed (between the lower reaches of the Neman and the Western Dvina) and where the Slavic people themselves were formed (according to the authors of the hypothesis, this happened from the 2nd century BC). BC) - the basin of the Vistula River. Western and East Slavs. The first settled the area of ​​the Elbe River, then the Balkans and the Danube, and the second - the banks of the Dnieper and Dniester.

The Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis about the ancestral home of the Slavs, although it remains a hypothesis, is still the most popular among historians. It is conditionally confirmed by local toponyms, as well as vocabulary. If you believe the “words”, that is, the lexical material, the ancestral home of the Slavs was located away from the sea, in a forested flat zone with swamps and lakes, as well as within the rivers flowing into the Baltic Sea, judging by the common Slavic names of fish - salmon and eel. By the way, the areas of the culture of underclothe burials already known to us fully correspond to these geographical features.

The ethnogenesis of the Slavs according to archeology- the formation of the ancient Slavic ethnos on the basis of the succession of successive archaeological cultures from the 1st millennium BC. e. until the VI century, when the ancient Slavs were recorded in epigraphic monuments as an already formed cultural and linguistic community.

The appearance of archaeological cultures, recognized by most archaeologists as Slavic, refers only to the 5th-6th centuries. The Prague-Korchak, Penkovo ​​and Kolochin cultures are structurally close and separated geographically. Earlier so-called post-Zarubinets monuments (II-IV centuries) are proposed to be singled out as a separate Kievan culture, on the basis of which, according to some archaeologists, the aforementioned cultures developed. The study of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs with the help of archeology encounters the following problem: modern science fails to trace the change and continuity of archaeological cultures to the beginning of our era, the carriers of which could be confidently attributed to the Slavs or their ancestors. Some archaeologists take some archaeological cultures at the turn of our era and earlier as Slavic, a priori recognizing the autochthonous nature of the Slavs in this territory, even if it was inhabited in the corresponding era by other peoples according to synchronous historical evidence.

Pre-Slavic and Proto-Slavic cultures

The subject of discussions between archaeologists continues to be the problem of identifying the cultures of the pre-literate period that existed in the future Slavic territory (between the Oder and the Dnieper). The main one is the problem of distinguishing between pre-Slavic cultures (genetically related to peoples authentically non-Slavic) and proto-Slavic (that is, presumably speakers of languages ​​ancestral to modern Slavic).

These are the Bronze Age Trzynetska culture, the Chernoles culture of the early Iron Age, the Przeworsk culture at the turn of the Common Era. e. and Chernyakhov culture of late antiquity. Without denying the contribution of these cultures to the formation of the Slavs, researchers nevertheless notice the presence of non-Slavic components in them: Thracians, Celts, Germans, Balts and Scythians.

Several approaches have developed in domestic and foreign archeology. If until about the middle of the 20th century, including for political reasons, autochthonism was popular, that is, the classification of these cultures by default as Slavic, then starting from the post-war period, these views are increasingly losing popularity. Academician B. A. Rybakov can be attributed to the most influential late supporters of autochthonism. In modern archeology, the question of the archaeological reflection of the genesis of the Slavs is considered in the context of their interaction with the carriers of neighboring cultures (Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric, etc.) and the reflection of this interaction in linguistic factors.

Kyiv archaeological culture II-IV centuries.

There is no consensus among historians and archaeologists on the early history and geography of the Proto-Slavs; views evolve as new archaeological material is accumulated. In the 2nd half of the 20th century, monuments of the Kiev type of the late 2nd-4th centuries were identified and attributed to a special culture, found in the Middle Dnieper region (from the mouth of the Ros in the south to Mogilev in the north) and the basin of the left tributaries of the Dnieper, Desna and Seim, up to sources of the Seversky Donets. Some archaeologists (P. N. Tretyakov, R. V. Terpilovsky, N. S. Abashina, M. B. Shchukin) see a direct continuity between the Kievan archaeological culture and the following Slavic cultures of the 5th-6th centuries (Sklavins and Antes). O. M. Prikhodnyuk even suggested that the term “Kyiv culture” be abandoned altogether and the early monuments should also be considered Penkovsky. Currently, archaeologists are inclined to the following version of the continuity of cultures:

• The Kolochin culture developed directly from the Kiev culture as its northern variant.
• The Penkovskaya culture developed from the Kievan one with the participation of the ethnos of the polyethnic Chernyakhov culture, defeated by the Huns at the end of the 4th century. Both of the latter cultures existed simultaneously and partially overlapped geographically, but belonged to different levels of civilization. However, V.V. Sedov believed that the Penkov culture developed primarily by the descendants of the Chernyakhov culture with some participation of settlers from the Kiev area, and V. N. Danilenko suggested that the Penkov antiquities arose on the basis of the Kolochin culture.
• The Prague-Korchak culture is believed to have originated initially in the Pripyat basin, where the earliest Prague-type monuments of the first half of the 4th century have recently been discovered. According to this version, the Prague-Korchak culture developed as a result of the expansion of the Slavs to the west along the outer Carpathians to the sources of the Vistula, then the Elbe and south from the headwaters of the Oder to the Danube along its tributaries (towards Pannonia). However, archaeologists note that this culture is not derived from Kiev.
• The Ipoteshti-Kyndesht culture on the lower and middle left bank of the Danube arose as a result of the expansion of the carriers of the early Penkov culture to the west and the carriers of the Prague-Korchak culture to the south into the region of modern. Romania. The cultures developed simultaneously, but the formation of the Ipoteshti-Kyndesht culture was influenced by the local Thracian population and proximity Byzantine Empire. It was in its area that Byzantine authors first recorded the Slavic ethnic group.
• The Sukovsko-Dziedzitskaya culture in the interfluve of the Oder and the Elbe adjoins in the south the area of ​​the Prague-Korchak culture. Geographically and chronologically, the Sukovsko-Dziedzica culture looks like an expansion in the 6th century of the carriers of the early Prague-Korczak culture down first along the Oder towards the Baltic, then down the Elbe and east towards the middle Vistula. Slavic tribes occupied the lands depopulated by the 6th century, and apparently assimilated the local population remaining in some places. The Slavs reached the Baltic coast in the lower reaches of the Elbe somewhere by the beginning of the 7th century. The northern area of ​​the Sukovsko-Dziedzica culture and the craft and everyday traditions of the local population caused noticeable differences in the nature of the monuments from the Prague-Korchak culture, but in general it corresponds to the structure of the latter.

The recognition of Kievan culture as Slavic does not resolve the issue of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs. Among the possible candidates preceding the Kievan culture are Zarubinets, Milogradskaya and Yukhnovskaya, earlier Chernolesskaya and other archaeological cultures, however, their role in the formation of the Slavic ethnos cannot be precisely established.

Reliably Slavic archaeological cultures of the 5th-6th centuries

• Prague-Korchak archaeological culture: the range stretched as a strip from the upper Elbe to the middle Dnieper, touching the Danube in the south and capturing the upper reaches of the Vistula. The area of ​​the early culture of the 5th century is limited by the southern basin of the Pripyat and the upper reaches of the Dniester, the Southern Bug and the Prut (Western Ukraine).

Corresponds to the habitats of the sklavins of Byzantine authors. Characteristic features: 1) dishes - hand-made pots without decorations, sometimes clay pans; 2) dwellings - square semi-dugouts up to 20 m² in size with stoves or hearths in the corner, or log houses with a stove in the center; 3) burials - cremation, burial of the remains of cremation in pits or urns, the transition in the VI century from ground burials to the kurgan burial rite; 4) lack of inventory in the burials, only random things are found; brooches and weapons are missing.

• Penkovskaya archaeological culture: range from the middle Dniester to the Seversky Donets (western tributary of the Don), capturing the right bank and left bank of the middle part of the Dnieper (territory of Ukraine).

Corresponds to the probable habitats of the Antes of Byzantine authors. It is distinguished by the so-called Antian hoards, in which bronze cast figures of people and animals are found, painted with enamels in special recesses. The figurines are Alanian in style, although the technique of champlevé enamel probably came from the Baltic (earliest finds) through the provincial-Roman art of the European West. According to another version, this technique developed on the spot within the framework of the previous Kievan culture. The Penkov culture differs from the Prague-Korchak culture, in addition to the characteristic shape of pots, by the relative wealth of material culture and the noticeable influence of the nomads of the Black Sea region. Archaeologists M. I. Artamonov and I. P. Rusanova recognized the Bulgar farmers as the main carriers of culture, at least at its initial stage.

• Kolochinsky archaeological culture: range in the basin of the Desna and the upper reaches of the Dnieper (Gomel region of Belarus and Bryansk region of Russia). It adjoins in the south to the Prague and Penkovsky cultures. Mixing zone of the Baltic and Slavic tribes. Despite the proximity to the Penkovo ​​culture, V.V. Sedov attributed it to the Baltic based on the saturation of the area with Baltic hydronyms, but other archaeologists do not recognize this feature as ethno-determining for the archaeological culture.

Versions of archaeologists on the continuity of cultures:

V.V. Sedov

The well-known Slavic archaeologist Academician V. V. Sedov (1924-2004) singled out several early archaeological cultures, which he considered Slavic. In his opinion, the Slavs are a culture of flared burials of 400-100 years. BC e. in the interfluve of the Oder and the Vistula (central and southern Poland). As a result of migration, the Celtic tribes came into contact with the Proto-Slavs, and the culture of under-klesh burials was transformed into Przeworsk (II-IV centuries), and the Celts in Poland were assimilated by the Slavs, whom Sedov associated with the Wends.

In the II-III centuries. Slavic tribes of Przeworsk culture from the Vistula-Oder region migrate to the forest-steppe regions between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers, inhabited by Sarmatian and late Scythian tribes belonging to the Iranian language group. At the same time, the Germanic tribes of Gepids and Goths move to the southeast, as a result of which, from the lower Danube to the Dnieper forest-steppe left bank, a polyethnic Chernyakhov culture with a predominance of Slavs is formed. In the process of Slavicization of the local Scythian-Sarmatians in the Dnieper region, a new ethnic group is formed, known in Byzantine sources as the Antes.

At the end of the 4th century, the development of the Przeworsk and Chernyakhov cultures was interrupted by the invasion of the Huns. In the southern part of the area of ​​Przeworsk culture, where the Celtic substratum participated in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, the Prague-Korchak culture was formed, spread to the south by migrating Slavs. In the interfluve of the Dniester and the Dnieper in the 5th century, the Penkovskaya culture was formed, the carriers of which were the descendants of the Chernyakhiv population - the Ants. Soon they expanded their range at the expense of the left bank of the Dnieper.

Close to this concept is the concept of the archaeologist I.P. Rusanova, who advocates that the Przeworsk culture belongs to the Slavs on the basis that Slavic ceramics of the Prague-Korchak culture has direct prototypes in Przeworsk ceramics. The concept of V. D. Baran combines all of the above cultures into different branches of the Proto-Slavic cultures.

G. S. Lebedev

In a number of articles, famous Leningrad archaeologists G.S. Lebedev and D.A. Machinsky formulated their concept of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs. The linguistic ancestors of the Slavs by the middle of the 1st millennium BC were a collection of related groups scattered by tribal groups in the forest zone of Eastern Europe and speaking similar dialects of the Proto-Balto-Slavic language, the differences in which increased as they moved away from each other. A possible archaeological equivalent of the Balto-Proto-Slavs in the VIII-IV centuries. BC e. is the Milograd-Podgortsevo cultural community (correlative to Herodotus' neurons) in the region of northern Ukraine and southern Belarus, as well as the culture of lined ceramics (KSHK) in Central Belarus. These close cultures of the Early Iron Age are characterized by: settlement on permanent ancestral fortified settlements, dwellings slightly deepened into the ground with a hearth in the corner of the room, pit graves with cremation without inventory, high stucco pots, narrow-bladed axes, slightly curved sickles, bone arrowheads.

By the 3rd century BC e. Milogradskaya culture disappears as a result of the crushing advance of the Sarmatians to the West, but the more northern KSHK continues its development without visible upheavals until the 4th century.

The archaeologically empty area of ​​the Milogradians from the 2nd century BC. e. partially filled with monuments of Zarubintsy culture, which arose as a result of the arrival of a new population from the west (probably Bastarns), who included the remaining inhabitants in their composition. By the beginning of the 2nd century, the Zarubinets culture was dying under the pressure of the next wave of nomads (Sarmatians and Alans) and the expansion of the Goths from the Baltic coast. In the Middle Dnieper, the so-called post-Zarubinets monuments (or monuments of the Kiev type) are replacing them, corresponding to the new way of life of the local population, which is often forced to change their habitats. Structurally, the Kyiv culture is very close to the Milograd one: a similar economic structure, type of dwelling, a set of tools, jewelry and utensils. At the same time, the Chernyakhov culture appeared in the Middle Dnieper region (usually associated with the migration of the Goths), whose monuments do not mix, but rather coexist with post-Zarubinets antiquities.

In the I-IV centuries. the Proto-Slavic tribes, which were part of a conglomerate of related tribes of the Balto-Slavic community, were known to Roman authors under the name of the Wends. These Wends lived in the forest zone of the Dnieper basin between the Dniester in the west and the upper reaches of the Oka in the east. To the north of the Wends, around Lake Ilmen, there was a sparsely inhabited (according to archaeological monuments) border zone, where clashes with Finno-Ugric tribes took place. In the south and west, the Wends opposed nomads (Sarmatians, Alans) and migrating Germanic tribes (Bastarns, Goths, Vandals). Archaeologically, the area of ​​settlement of the Wends corresponds to the Kiev culture and the Belarusian version of the KSHK.

To the south of the borders of the Kiev culture, where the forests pass into the forest-steppe regions, from the 3rd century. BC e. until the 5th century, there was the so-called "zone of archaeological elusiveness" (where no supporting archaeological sites were found). In this border area, the Wends entered into contacts and conflicts with other, more clearly defined ethnic groups, which contributed to the development of the Proto-Slavic self-consciousness and the formation of a special ethnic group in the southern part of the settlement of the Balto-Slavic ethnic massif.

In the 1st half of the 4th century, some part of the Wends was included in the Gothic association, their southern part, after the defeat of the state in Germanarich (c. 375), took shape in the Antian union of tribes, which is reflected in the emergence in the 5th century of a reliably Slavic Penkovskaya culture on the basis of Kiev. The Penkovsky monuments were abandoned by the population, which moved from the forest zone to the south into the forest-steppe and steppe areas of the Chernyakhov culture and began to lead a sedentary lifestyle under the conditions of the Hun-Avar rule. In the 7th century, the Penkovo ​​culture was replaced by monuments of the late version of the Prague culture, which is seen as a consolidating basis for the formation of the Slavic ethnos.

Monuments of authentically Slavic Prague-Korchak culture appear in the 5th century on the borders with the Celtic-Germanic world in the upper reaches of the Prut, Dniester, and Vistula. This culture is associated with the powerful migration movement of the Proto-Slavs in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples to the west and southwest to Central Europe and the Balkans from the depths of the forests of Eastern Europe. Structurally, the Prague monuments are very close to the Kiev ones. At the same time, the evolutionary expansion of the range of the Proto-Slavs also occurs to the east and north, which is reflected, in particular, in the Kolochin culture.

In contacts with the more developed Celto-Greek-Germanic world, the ethno-self-consciousness of the Slavic ethnos finally took shape and passed into the epic memory of ancient Russian and Polish chronicles about the ancestral home of the Slavs on the Danube. In the VI-VII centuries. among the Slavs on the Danube and in Central Europe, a new, more progressive economic structure is being formed, based on arable farming with the use of iron arable tools. Since the 8th century, this household complex has become an ethnographic marker of the Slavic ethnos. On its basis, in the future, the consolidation into a single ethnic group of language-related Proto-Slavic-Baltic tribes in the forest zone of Eastern Europe, from where the expansion of the Proto-Slavs to the southwest began.

M. Gimbutas

American archaeologist Maria Gimbutas (1921-1994) believed that by the beginning new era the Proto-Slavs were already a significant people, who, however, being an autochthonous population of the northern Carpathian region, lived under the yoke of newcomers, first from the east, and then from the west. After the departure of the Goths, who are associated with the relatively more developed Chernyakhov culture, in this region there is a return to the traditions of the early Iron Age, traced during the rule of the Goths and other newcomer tribes only in some isolated territories. Turning to the predecessors of the Slavs, M. Gimbutas saw traces of their ancestors in the local Chernoles culture of the early Iron Age, which flourished in the Carpathian region before the invasion of the Sarmatians, and then the Germans.

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From the course of history, we know that man entered the space of Eastern Europe from the south during the early Stone Age, that is, about 3 million years ago. In the Crimea, on the Dniester, in the Zhytomyr region, in Abkhazia, in Armenia and in the south of Kazakhstan, archaeologists find traces of the most ancient human sites. As for written sources, according to which scientists could accurately determine the ancestral home of the Slavs, they are scarce. Here scientists come to the aid of archeology, comparative historical linguistics, toponymy, geography, anthropology. There are several theories about when and from where the Slavs came to the territory of the East European Plain: the autochthonous origin of the Slavs (a supporter of B.A. Rybakov, for example), the Baltic theory and the Carpathian.

It is important that it is known for sure that in the 5th-7th centuries AD. the territory of the East European Plain was inhabited. The estimated maximum territory of settlement of the ancestors of the Slavs in the north reached the Baltic Sea (Varangian), in the south their border was a strip of forest-steppe (from the left bank of the Danube to the east in the direction of Kharkov), in the west it reached the Elbe (Laba), and in the east to the Seim and Okie. Several hundred Slavic tribes lived there. L. Niederle writes that “autochthonistic theories that place the Proto-Slavs on the territory of all Central Europe east of the Rhone and the Rhine” are scientifically unfounded (L. Niederle, “Slavic Antiquities”, ch. II, p. 22). L. Niederli does not share the Balkan theory either, since, for example, geographical names testify to the spread in the period BC. in the Balkans in the Danube region of other languages. Although the Danubian theory (Balkan) was defended in the nineteenth century. Many scientists: V. Klyuchevsky, M. Pogodin, A. Veselovsky. The main source of this theory was the Kievan Chronicle, the testimony of which, according to Niederli, cannot be considered "neither authentic nor truthful", since it is based on a myth.

Based on the materials of twenty volumes of "Archaeology" edited by B.A. Rybakov, "Archaeology of Western Europe" by A.L. Mongait and works on the archeology of Asia by V. I. Sarianidi, the author of the article “... Or the civilization of cities?”, Published in the journal Rodina No. 5 in 1997, A. Gudz-Markov, identifies the ancestral home of the Slavs with the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. He writes that in the vastness from the Carpathians to Altai, the beginning of meaningful life can be attributed to the 5th millennium BC. Then, between the Don and the Dnieper, the Dnieper-Donetsk archaeological culture began to develop. According to archeology and anthropology, its creators were Indo-Europeans. They populated Europe many times in the IV-I millennia BC, each time destroying the previous culture and establishing their own. “The invasion of the Indo-Europeans into the north of Europe and into Asia was preceded by a change of archaeological cultures in the basins of the Lower Volga and the Don. In the XXII-XIX centuries BC. e. representatives of the Yamnaya culture were dispersed or absorbed by the creators of the catacomb archaeological culture, who advanced to the lower reaches of the Don from the shores of the Caspian Sea. The territory of the Indo-Europeans was vast, and its borders moved in different eras. Therefore, the "local history" approach to the topic is insufficient. In the V-I millennia BC. e. Slavs appeared in the space of the Indo-Europeans, bounded from the west by the rivers Laba and Saale, and from the east by the middle reaches of the Don and Volga. The Carpathians and swamps of Pripyat served as protection for the Indo-Europeans, whom the author considers Proto-Slavs.

True as regards eastern border, then it can be moved to the east, including the Oka basin (this is confirmed by the discovery of the Zaraisk site on the banks of the Osetr River, one of the major tributaries of the Oka). That is, the ancestral home of the Slavs at different times had different outlines: either the eastern border advanced, or the southern.

From time to time, the Proto-Slavs were in contact with the northeastern Finno-Ugric tribes and with the Celtic-Italic in the west. Until now, there is no consensus among scientists about what is considered the ancestral home of the Slavs, where they came from, when it happened, what was their economy. Archaeological monuments of the Late Stone Age - Neolithic - are represented in the forest zone of Eurasia by "seasonal sites, long-term settlements, burials, burial grounds, as well as rock carvings" (Motherland magazine, 1997, No. 3-4, p. 13, article "In the wilds Neolithic, by A. Emelyanov). On many Neolithic monuments, the remains of canoes have been found. Approximately 700 thousand years ago, during the ancient stone age, primitive man appeared on the territory of Eurasia. Settlement came from the south. Findings of archaeologists serve as proof of this: sites of ancient people (500-300 thousand years BC) were found in the Zhytomyr region and on the Dniester, and sites of people of the Middle Paleolithic (100-35 thousand years BC) were found on the Middle and Lower Volga .).

A unique monument of the Late Paleolithic era is the Sungir site in the Vladimir region. The State Historical Museum in Moscow has an exhibit: a copy of a double burial (a boy and a girl), which was discovered precisely at the Sungir site. They have beads on their foreheads and wrists. Scientists came to the conclusion that the burial is unique and of world significance, since the children's costume was restored by the location of the decorations, which turned out to be similar to the clothes of the ancient peoples of the North ... So, the border of the ancestral home of the Slavs can be shifted to the north. Starting from the 7th-6th centuries BC. e. the future Slavic space was occupied and conquered by various tribes: Greeks, Scythians (although they were not the direct ancestors of the Slavs), Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Avars (according to the ancient Russian chronicle - obry), Khazars. All these peoples were not only the predecessors of the Slavs, but also their active neighbors. Already in the 5th century BC. e. in the ancient Greek historian Herodotus there is information about the Slavs (chips). Other ancient authors have information about the Slavs called Wends, who lived among the Scythians and Sarmatians in the Vistula region. More information about the Slavs is provided by the Gothic historian Jordanes (VI century). Jordan highlights the Slavic tribes of the Sklavens, Antes and Wends. According to him, the Sclaveni lived in the north, in the Ladoga and Lake regions; antes - in the south along the Black Sea coast, in the lower reaches of the Dnieper and Danube; Wends - the ancestors of the Western Slavs - in the northwest to the Vistula and in the southeast to the Dniester. From archaeological sites It is known that near the mouth of the Southern Bug River there was the city of Olbia, founded at the beginning of the 6th century BC. e. Greeks from the Asia Minor city of Miletus. Olbia traded with the Scythians, Asia Minor Greek cities. Olbia was subjected to severe trials. By the 4th century N. e. her life has come to a standstill. Already in the III century. BC e. a strong Scythian state appears in the Northern Black Sea region. The ancient tribes of the Scythians in the 7th-3rd centuries BC. e. inhabited the vast expanses of the steppes between the mouth of the Danube and the Don. Incomplete, fragmentary information about the Scythians is found in Herodotus, in ancient Greek and Roman authors. On the banks of the Dnieper near the city of Nikopol, the royal burial mounds of the Scythians still rise. Chertomlyk, Solokha and Melitopolsky are the most famous of them. On the left bank of the Dnieper, on the land of modern Zaporizhia region, an ancient settlement was found. By the end of the III century BC. e. from the west, the Scythians were pushed back by the Thracian tribes who came from the Balkans. In the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, the Sarmatians came from behind the Don. The territory of the Scythians was reduced. Crimea became their center. This Lesser Scythia existed until the end of the 3rd century AD. e. At this time, the Scythian kingdom was conquered by the Germanic tribes who came from the Baltic. In the 5th-6th centuries A.D. e. Slavic tribes appeared on part of the territory of the Scythians. IN. Klyuchevsky writes that "the chronicle does not remember the time of the arrival of the Slavs from Asia to Europe" and that "it finds the Slavs already on the Danube." (V.O. Klyuchevsky, "Russian History", book one, lectures I-II).

History and archeology provide fairly reliable facts, but philology and such sciences as hydronics (studies the names of water bodies), toponomy, and linguistics can even more accurately determine who lived in a particular territory. The tongue remembers what no living person remembers.

In the article "Arctic cradle?" (Motherland magazine, 1997, No. 8, p. 82) doctor historical sciences N. Guseva writes that “the most plausible is the so-called Arctic theory. According to it, the great-ancestors of the Indo-European peoples once began to economically develop the extreme northern lands. The author refers to C. Warren's book Paradise Found, or the Cradle of Mankind at the North Pole. Further, N. Guseva writes that "the ancient Iranian Avesta reflects the same northern realities, as well as the gradual departure of the tribes of the Aryans of the Polar region." Referring to the work of geologists, zoologists and botanists, who proved that in the XIII millennium BC. e. the glacier from the territory of Eastern Europe slid into the Arctic Ocean, and the Subarctic region, covered with dense grasses and forests, had a warm climate in that era, the author proves that “scattered tribal groups that descended here from all the edges of the glacier economically settled these areas and were inevitably forced to enter into mutual contacts; here the first tribes were formed and, naturally, the first circle of similar concepts and words should have been developed. This process took at least 5 millennia.” The cold snap forced people south to the Baltic - Black Sea line, which opened up three routes: east (to the Ural Mountains), west and southwest, south (to the Caspian and Black Seas, where the Aryans, they are Indo-Iranians, reached ). The Aryans should not be identified with the Slavs, since the ancestors of the Slavs were the closest neighbors or even tribes mixed with them - the author concludes.

The Swedish anthropologist A. Retzius created a system by which it is possible to unite the ancient Germans, Celts, Romans, Greeks, Indians, Persians, Arabs, Jews, into a group of long-headed (dolichocephalic), and ancient Albanians, Basques, Ugrians, European Turks, ancient Etruscans, Latvians and Slavs into the group of short-headed (brachycephalic). These groups were descended from different races. The ancient burials of the Slavs contained skulls, approximately 88.5% of which were dolichocephalic and mesocephalic (medium size).

Let's summarize. In the Carpathians, the ancestral home of the Slavs should not be sought (the theory is based on a myth). The autochthonous origin of the Slavs seems to be refuted by linguistics, therefore it is doubtful ... This means that the ancestral home of the Slavs should be sought on the lands from the Baltic to the northern Carpathians between the Vistula and the Dnieper. The Slavic and Lithuanian languages ​​are closest. The connection between the Slavs and Arivarta (the ancient name of India) remains mysterious. The Sanskrit “dehi me agni” sounds completely Russian: give me fire (article “Aryan Russia?”, Rodina magazine, 1997, No. 8, p. 77). The problem of the Slavic ancestral home is still a controversial issue. Wandering - this is the most accurate definition of the location of the ancestral home of the Slavs.