From whom did the Slavs originate? Origin of the Slavs. Orlova O. Yu. The early name of the Slavs

There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs. Someone refers them to the Scythians and Sarmatians, who came from Central Asia, someone to the Aryans, the Germans, others completely identify with the Celts.

"Norman" version

All hypotheses of the origin of the Slavs can be divided into two main categories, directly opposite to each other. One of them, the well-known "Norman", was put forward in the 18th century by the German scientists Bayer, Miller and Schlozer, although for the first time such ideas appeared during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.

The bottom line was this: the Slavs are an Indo-European people who were once part of the "German-Slavic" community, but broke away from the Germans during the Great Migration of Nations. Caught on the periphery of Europe and cut off from the continuity of Roman civilization, they were very backward in development, so much so that they could not create their own state and invited the Varangians, that is, the Vikings, to rule them.

This theory is based on the historiographic tradition of The Tale of Bygone Years and the famous phrase: “Our land is great, rich, but there is no side in it. Come reign and rule over us." Such a categorical interpretation, which was based on an obvious ideological background, could not but arouse criticism. Today, archeology confirms the existence of strong intercultural ties between Scandinavians and Slavs, but it hardly says that the former played a decisive role in the formation of the ancient Russian state. But disputes about the "Norman" origin of the Slavs and Kievan Rus do not subside to this day.

"Patriotic" version

The second theory of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, on the contrary, is patriotic in nature. And, by the way, it is much older than the Norman one - one of its founders was the Croatian historian Mavro Orbini, who wrote a work called “The Slavic Kingdom” at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. His point of view was very extraordinary: he attributed to the Slavs the Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Gepids, Getae, Alans, Verls, Avars, Dacians, Swedes, Normans, Finns, Ukrovs, Marcomanni, Quadi, Thracians and Illyrians and many others: "They were all of the same Slavic tribe, as will be seen in the future."

Their exodus from the historical homeland of Orbini dates back to 1460 BC. Wherever they didn’t have time to visit after that: “The Slavs fought almost all the tribes of the world, attacked Persia, ruled Asia and Africa, fought the Egyptians and Alexander the Great, conquered Greece, Macedonia and Illyria, occupied Moravia, the Czech Republic, Poland and the coast of the Baltic Sea ".

He was echoed by many court scribes who created the theory of the origin of the Slavs from the ancient Romans, and Rurik from the emperor Octavian Augustus. In the 18th century, the Russian historian Tatishchev published the so-called "Joachim Chronicle", which, in contrast to the "Tale of Bygone Years", identified the Slavs with the ancient Greeks.

Both of these theories (although there are echoes of the truth in each of them) represent two extremes, which are characterized by a free interpretation of historical facts and archeological information. They were criticized by such "giants" national history, like B. Grekov, B. Rybakov, V. Yanin, A. Artsikhovsky, arguing that the historian should in his research not rely on his preferences, but on facts. However, the historical texture of the “ethnogenesis of the Slavs”, to this day, is so incomplete that it leaves many options for speculation, without the ability to finally answer the main question: “who are these Slavs anyway?”

Origin of the Slavs

Ethnogenesis of the Slavs- the process of the formation of the ancient Slavic ethnic community, which led to the separation of the Slavs from the conglomerate of Indo-European tribes. Currently, there is no generally accepted version of the formation of the Slavic ethnos.

The Slavs as a formed people were first recorded in the Byzantine written sources of the middle of the 6th century. Retrospectively, these sources mention Slavic tribes in the 4th century. Earlier information refers to peoples who could take part in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, but the degree of this participation varies in different historical reconstructions. The earliest written evidence of Byzantine authors of the 6th century deals with an already established people, divided into Slavs and Antes. Mentions of the Wends as the ancestors of the Slavs (or a separate Slavic tribe) are of a retrospective nature. The testimonies of the authors of the Roman era (I-II centuries) about the Wends do not allow us to connect them with any reliably Slavic archaeological culture.

Archaeologists identify as authentically Slavic a number of archaeological cultures dating back to the 5th century. In academic science, there is no single point of view on the ethnic origin of the bearers of earlier cultures and their continuity in relation to later Slavic ones. Linguists also do not have a consensus on the time of the appearance of a language that could be considered Slavic or Proto-Slavic. Existing scientific versions suggest the separation of the Proto-Slavic language from the Proto-Indo-European (or from a language family of a lower level) in a wide range from the 2nd millennium BC. e. until the turn of the eras or even the first centuries AD. e.

The origin, history of formation and habitat of the ancient Slavs are studied by methods and at the intersection of various sciences: linguistics, history, archeology, paleoanthropology, genetics.

Linguistics data

Indo-Europeans

In Central Europe in the Bronze Age there was an ethno-linguistic community of Indo-European tribes. The assignment of certain groups of languages to this community is controversial. The German scientist G. Krae came to the conclusion that while the Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Greek languages \u200b\u200bhad already separated and developed as independent ones, the Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Illyrian, Slavic and Baltic languages existed only in the form of dialects of a single Indo-European language. The ancient Europeans, who lived in Central Europe north of the Alps, developed a common terminology in the field of agriculture, social relations and religion. The well-known Russian linguist, academician O. N. Trubachev, based on the analysis of the Slavic vocabulary of pottery, blacksmithing and other crafts, came to the conclusion that the speakers of the early Slavic dialects (or their ancestors) at the time when the corresponding terminology was being formed were in close contact with the future Germans and Italics, that is, the Indo-Europeans of Central Europe. Tentatively, the separation of the Germanic languages from the Baltic and Proto-Slavic occurred no later than the 7th century. BC e. (according to the estimates of a number of linguists - much earlier), but in linguistics itself there are practically no exact methods of chronological linking to historical processes.

Early Slavic vocabulary and habitats of the Proto-Slavs

Attempts were made to establish the Slavic ancestral home by analyzing the early Slavic vocabulary. According to F. P. Filin, the Slavs as a people developed in a forest belt with an abundance of lakes and swamps, far from the sea, mountains and steppes:

“The abundance in the lexicon of the common Slavic language of names for varieties of lakes, swamps, forests speaks for itself. The presence in the common Slavic language of various names of animals and birds living in forests and swamps, trees and plants of the temperate forest-steppe zone, fish typical of the reservoirs of this zone, and at the same time the absence of common Slavic names for the specific features of mountains, steppes and the sea - all this gives unambiguous materials for a definite conclusion about the ancestral home of the Slavs ... The ancestral home of the Slavs, at least in the last centuries of their history as a single historical unit, was away from the seas, mountains and steppes, in the forest belt of the temperate zone, rich in lakes and swamps ... "

The Polish botanist Yu. Rostafinsky tried to localize the ancestral home of the Slavs more precisely in 1908: “ The Slavs transferred the common Indo-European name yew to willow, willow and did not know larch, fir and beech.» Beech- Borrowed from the Germanic language. In the modern era, the eastern border of the distribution of beech falls approximately on the Kaliningrad-Odessa line, however, the study of pollen in archaeological finds indicates a wider range of beech in antiquity. In the Bronze Age (corresponds to the Middle Holocene in botany), beech grew in almost the entire territory of Eastern Europe (except for the north), in the Iron Age (Late Holocene), when, according to most historians, the Slavic ethnos was formed, beech remains were found in most of Russia, the Black Sea region, Caucasus, Crimea, Carpathians. Thus, Belarus and the northern and central parts of Ukraine can be a likely place for the ethnogenesis of the Slavs. In the north-west of Russia (Novgorod lands), beech was found in the Middle Ages. Beech forests are currently common in Western and Northern Europe, in the Balkans, the Carpathians, and in Poland. In Russia, beech is found in the Kaliningrad region and the northern Caucasus. Fir in its natural habitat does not grow in the territory from the Carpathians and the eastern border of Poland to the Volga, which also makes it possible to localize the homeland of the Slavs somewhere in Ukraine and Belarus, if the assumptions of linguists about the botanical lexicon of the ancient Slavs are correct.

All Slavic languages (and Baltic) have the word Linden to designate the same tree, from which follows the assumption that the distribution range of linden overlaps with the homeland of the Slavic tribes, but due to the vast range of this plant, localization is blurred over most of Europe.

Baltic and Old Slavic languages

Map of the Baltic and Slavic archaeological cultures of the III-IV centuries.

It should be noted that the regions of Belarus and northern Ukraine belong to the zone of widespread Baltic toponymy. A special study by Russian philologists, academicians V. N. Toporov and O. N. Trubachev showed that in the Upper Dnieper region, Baltic hydronyms are often decorated with Slavic suffixes. This means that the Slavs appeared there later than the Balts. This contradiction is removed if we accept the point of view of some linguists on the separation of the Slavic language from the general Baltic.

From the point of view of linguists in terms of grammatical structure and other indicators Old Slavonic was closest to the Baltic languages. In particular, many words not noted in other Indo-European languages are common, including: roka(hand), golva(head), lipa(Linden), gvEzda(star), balt(swamp), etc. (up to 1,600 words are close). The name itself Baltic derived from the Indo-European root *balt- ( stagnant water), which has a correspondence in Russian swamp. The wider spread of the late language (Slavic in relation to the Baltic) is considered by linguists to be a natural process. V. N. Toporov believed that the Baltic languages were closest to the original Indo-European language, while all other Indo-European languages departed from their original state in the process of development. In his opinion, the Proto-Slavic language was a Proto-Baltic southern peripheral dialect, which passed into Proto-Slavic approximately from the 5th century BC. BC e. and then developed on its own into the Old Slavic language.

Archaeological data

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 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.

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

Map of the Baltic and Slavic archaeological cultures of the 5th-6th centuries.

The appearance of archaeological cultures recognized by most archaeologists as Slavic refers only to the -VI centuries, corresponding to the following close cultures, separated geographically:

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 with an area of up to 20 m² with stoves or hearths in the corner, or log houses with a stove in the center 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 (the 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 Bulgars-farmers as the main bearers 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.

In II-III centuries. Slavic tribes of the 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 the 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 is formed with a predominance of Slavs. 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 Antes.

Within the Slavic anthropological type, subtypes are classified associated with the participation in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs of tribes of various origins. Most general classification indicates the participation in the formation of the Slavic ethnos of two branches of the Caucasoid race: southern (relatively broad-faced mesocranial type, descendants: Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians) and northern (relatively broad-faced dolichocranic type, descendants: Belarusians and Russians). In the north, participation in the ethnogenesis of Finnish tribes was recorded (mainly through the assimilation of the Finno-Ugric peoples in the process of expansion of the Slavs to the east), which gave some Mongoloid admixture to East Slavic persons; in the south, there was a Scythian substratum noted in the craniometric data of the Polyan tribe. However, it was not the glades, but the Drevlyans, who determined the anthropological type of future Ukrainians.

genetic history

The genetic history of an individual and entire ethnic groups is reflected in the diversity of the male sex Y chromosome, namely its non-recombining part. Y-chromosome groups (outdated designation: HG - from English haplogroup) carry information about a common ancestor, but as a result of mutations they are modified, due to which by haplogroups, or, in other words, by the accumulation of one or another mutation in the chromosome, it is possible to trace the stages of development humanity. The human genotype, like the anthropological structure, does not coincide with his ethnic identification, but rather reflects the migration processes of large population groups in the Late Paleolithic, which allows us to make probable assumptions about the ethnogenesis of peoples at their earliest stage of education.

Written evidence

Slavic tribes first appear in the Byzantine written sources of the 6th century under the name of the Slavs and Antes. Retrospectively, in these sources, the antes are mentioned when describing the events of the 4th century. Presumably, the Slavs (or ancestors of the Slavs) include the Wends, who, without determining their ethnic characteristics, were reported by the authors of the late Roman time (-II centuries). Earlier tribes, noted by contemporaries in the supposed area of the formation of the Slavic ethnos (middle and upper Dnieper, southern Belarus), could contribute to the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, but the extent of this contribution remains unknown due to lack of information on both the ethnicity of the tribes mentioned in the sources, and along the exact boundaries of the habitat of these tribes and the Proto-Slavs proper.

Archaeologists find a geographical and temporal correspondence to the neurons in the Milograd archaeological culture of the 7th-3rd centuries. BC e., whose range extends to Volyn and the Pripyat river basin (north-west Ukraine and southern Belarus). On the issue of the ethnicity of the Milograds (Herodotov neurons), the opinions of scientists were divided: V.V. Sedov attributed them to the Balts, B.A. Rybakov saw them as Proto-Slavs. There are also versions about the participation of Scythian farmers in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, based on the assumption that their name is not ethnic (belonging to Iranian-speaking tribes), but generalizing (belonging to barbarians) character.

While the expeditions of the Roman legions opened up to the civilized world Germany from the Rhine to the Elbe and the barbarian lands from the middle Danube to the Carpathians, Strabo, in describing Eastern Europe north of the Black Sea region, uses legends collected by Herodotus. Critically comprehending the available information, Strabo directly declared a white spot on the map of Europe east of the Elbe, between the Baltic and the Western Carpathian mountain range. However, he provided important ethnographic information related to the appearance of Bastarns in the western regions of Ukraine.

Whoever ethnically the bearers of the Zarubintsy culture were, their influence can be traced in the early monuments of the Kievan culture (first classified as late Zarubintsy), early Slavic in the opinion of most archaeologists. According to the assumption of the archaeologist M. B. Shchukin, it was the Bastarnas, assimilating with the local population, that could play a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, allowing the latter to stand out from the so-called Balto-Slavic community:

“A part [of the Bastarns] probably remained in place and, along with representatives of other “post-Zarubinets” groups, could then take part in the complex process of Slavic ethnogenesis, introducing certain “centum” elements into the formation of the “common Slavic” language, which separate the Slavs from their Baltic or Balto-Slavic ancestors.

“I really don’t know whether the Peukins, Wends and Fenns can be attributed to the Germans or Sarmatians […] The Wends adopted many of their customs, because for the sake of robbery they roam the forests and mountains, which only exist between Peukins [Bastarns] and Fenns. However, they are more likely to be reckoned among the Germans, because they build houses for themselves, carry shields and move on foot, and moreover with great speed; all this separates them from the Sarmatians, who spend their whole lives in a wagon and on a horse.”

Some historians are making hypothetical assumptions that perhaps Ptolemy mentioned among the tribes of Sarmatia and the Slavs under distorted stavan(south of the vessels) and sulons(on the right bank of the middle Vistula). The assumption is substantiated by the consonance of words and intersecting habitats.

Slavs and Huns. 5th century

L. A. Gindin and F. V. Shelov-Kovedyaev consider the Slavic etymology of the word to be the most reasonable strava, pointing to its meaning in Czech "pagan funerary feast" and Polish "funeral feast, commemoration", while allowing for the possibility of a Gothic and Hunnic etymology. German historians are trying to deduce the word strava from the Gothic sûtrava, meaning a pile of firewood and possibly a funeral pyre.

The manufacture of boats by gouging is not a method inherent exclusively to the Slavs. Term monoxyl found in Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Strabo. Strabo points to gouging as a way of making boats in antiquity.

Slavic tribes of the VI century

Noting the close relationship of the Sclavinians and Antes, Byzantine authors did not give any signs of their ethnic separation, except for different habitats:

“Both of these barbarian tribes have the same life and laws […] They both have the same language, quite barbaric. And by appearance they do not differ from each other [...] And once even the name of the Sklavens and Antes was one and the same. In ancient times, both of these tribes were called disputes [Greek. scattered], I think because they lived, occupying the country "sporaden", "scattered", in separate villages.
“Starting from the birthplace of the river Vistula [Vistula], a populous tribe of Veneti settled down in the boundless spaces. Although their names are now changing according to different clans and localities, they are still mainly called Sclavens and Antes.

The "Strategikon", the authorship of which is attributed to Emperor Mauritius (582-602), contains information about the habitats of the Slavs, consistent with the ideas of archaeologists on early Slavic archaeological cultures:

“They settle in forests or near rivers, swamps and lakes - generally in hard-to-reach places […] Their rivers flow into the Danube […] The possessions of the Slavs and Antes are located right now along the rivers and adjoin each other, so there is no sharp border between them. Due to the fact that they are covered with forests, or swamps, or places overgrown with reeds, it often happens that those who undertake expeditions against them are immediately forced to stop at the border of their possessions, because the entire space in front of them is impassable and covered with dense forests.

The war of the Goths with the Ants took place somewhere in the Northern Black Sea region at the end of the 4th century, if one is tied to the death of Germanaric in 376. The question of the Ants in the Black Sea region is complicated by the point of view of some historians who saw in these Ants the Caucasian Alans or the ancestors of the Adygs. However, Procopius expands the habitat of the Ants to places north of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, although without an exact geographic reference:

“The peoples who live here [Northern Azov] were called Cimmerians in ancient times, but now they are called Utigurs. Further, to the north of them, countless tribes of Ants occupy the lands.

Procopius reported the first known raid of the Antes on Byzantine Thrace in 527 (the first year of the reign of Emperor Justinian I).

In the ancient Germanic epic "Widsid" (the content of which dates back to the -5th centuries), the list of tribes of northern Europe mentions the Vineds (Winedum), but there are no other names for the Slavic peoples. The Germans knew the Slavs under the ethnonym veins, although it cannot be ruled out that the name of one of the Baltic Baltic tribes bordering the Germans was transferred by them in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples to the Slavic ethnos (as happened in Byzantium with the Rus and the ethnonym Scythians).

Written sources about the origin of the Slavs

The civilized world learned about the Slavs, cut off before by the warlike nomads of Eastern Europe, when they reached the borders of the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines, who consistently fought off waves of barbarian invasions, may not have immediately identified the Slavs as a separate ethnic group and did not report legends about its origin. The historian of the 1st half of the 7th century Theophylact Simokatta called the Slavs Getae (" so in the old days they called these barbarians”), obviously mixing the Thracian tribe of the Getae with the Slavs who occupied their lands on the lower Danube.

Old Russian chronicle At the beginning of the 12th century, The Tale of Bygone Years finds the homeland of the Slavs on the Danube, where they were first recorded by Byzantine written sources:

“A lot of time [after the biblical Babylonian pandemonium] the Slavs settled along the Danube, where now the land is Hungarian and Bulgarian. From those Slavs, the Slavs dispersed throughout the earth and were called by their names from the places where they sat down. So some, having come, sat down on the river by the name of Morava and were called Morava, while others were called Czechs. And here are the same Slavs: white Croats, and Serbs, and Horutans. When the Volokhi attacked the Danubian Slavs, and settled among them, and oppressed them, these Slavs came and sat on the Vistula and were called Poles, and from those Poles came Poles, other Poles - Lutich, others - Mazovshan, others - Pomeranians. In the same way, these Slavs came and sat down along the Dnieper and called themselves glades, and others - Drevlyans, because they sat in the forests, while others sat down between Pripyat and Dvina and called themselves Dregovichi, others sat down along the Dvina and were called Polochans, along the river flowing into the Dvina , called Polota, from which the Polotsk people were called. The same Slavs who sat down near Lake Ilmen were called by their name - Slavs.

Independently of this scheme, the Polish chronicle "Great Poland Chronicle" also follows, reporting on Pannonia (a Roman province adjacent to the middle Danube) as the homeland of the Slavs. Before the development of archeology and linguistics, historians agreed with the Danubian lands as the place of origin of the Slavic ethnos, but now they recognize the legendary nature of this version.

Review and synthesis of data

In the past (Soviet era), two main versions of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs were widespread: 1) the so-called Polish, deducing the ancestral home of the Slavs in the interfluve of the Vistula and Oder; 2) autochthonous, under the influence of theoretical views Soviet academician Marra. Both reconstructions recognized a priori the Slavic nature of the early archaeological cultures in the territories inhabited by the Slavs in the early Middle Ages, and some initial antiquity of the Slavic language, which independently developed from Proto-Indo-European. The accumulation of data in archeology and the departure from patriotic motivation in research led to the development of new versions based on the isolation of a relatively localized core of the formation of the Slavic ethnos and its spread through migrations to neighboring lands. Academic science has not developed a unified point of view on exactly where and when the ethnogenesis of the Slavs took place.

Genetic studies also confirm the ancestral home of the Slavs in Ukraine.

How the expansion of the early Slavs from the region of ethnogenesis took place, the directions of migration and settlement in central Europe can be traced by the chronological development of archaeological cultures. Usually, the beginning of expansion is associated with the advancement of the Huns to the west and the resettlement of the Germanic peoples towards the south, associated, among other things, with climate change in the 5th century and agricultural conditions. economic activity. By the beginning of the 6th century, the Slavs reached the Danube, where their further history is described in written sources of the 6th century.

The contribution of other tribes to the ethnogenesis of the Slavs

The Scythian-Sarmatians had some influence on the formation of the Slavs due to the long geographical proximity, but their influence, according to archeology, anthropology, genetics and linguistics, was mainly limited to vocabulary borrowings and the use of horses in the household. According to genetic data, common distant ancestors of some nomadic peoples, referred to by the common name Sarmatians, and Slavs within the framework of the Indo-European community, but in historical time these peoples evolved independently of each other.

The contribution of the Germans to the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, according to anthropology, archeology and genetics, is insignificant. At the turn of the eras, the region of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs (Sarmatia) was separated from the places of residence of the Germans by a certain zone of "mutual fear" according to Tacitus. The existence of an uninhabited area between the Germans and the Proto-Slavs of Eastern Europe is confirmed by the absence of noticeable archaeological sites from the Western Bug to the Neman in the first centuries AD. e. The presence of similar words in both languages is explained by a common origin from the Indo-European community of the Bronze Age and close contacts in the 4th century after the start of the migration of the Goths from the Vistula to the south and east.

Notes

From the report of V. V. Sedov "Ethnogenesis of the early Slavs" (2002)
Trubachev O. N. Craft terminology in Slavic languages. M., 1966.
F. P. Filin (1962). From the report of M. B. Schukin "The Birth of the Slavs"
Rostafinski (1908). From the report of M. B. Schukin "The Birth of the Slavs"
Turubanova S.A., Ecological scenario of the history of the formation of the living cover of European Russia, dissertation for the degree of candidate of biological sciences, 2002:
Toporov V. N., Trubachev O. N. Linguistic analysis hydronyms of the Upper Dnieper. M., 1962.

The Slavs are the largest ethnic community in Europe, but what do we really know about them? Historians are still arguing about who they came from, and where their homeland was located, and where the self-name "Slavs" came from.

Origin of the Slavs

There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs. Someone refers them to the Scythians and Sarmatians, who came from Central Asia, someone to the Aryans, Germans, others even identify them with the Celts. All hypotheses of the origin of the Slavs can be divided into two main categories, directly opposite to each other. One of them, the well-known "Norman", was put forward in the 18th century by German scientists Bayer, Miller and Schlozer, although for the first time such ideas appeared during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.

The bottom line was this: the Slavs are an Indo-European people who were once part of the “German-Slavic” community, but broke away from the Germans during the Great Migration of Nations. Caught on the periphery of Europe and cut off from the continuity of Roman civilization, they were very backward in development, so much so that they could not create their own state and invited the Varangians, that is, the Vikings, to rule them.

Both of these theories (although there are echoes of the truth in each of them) represent two extremes, which are characterized by a free interpretation of historical facts and archeological information. They were criticized by such "giants" of national history as B. Grekov, B. Rybakov, V. Yanin, A. Artsikhovsky, arguing that the historian should in his research not rely on his preferences, but on facts. However, the historical texture of the “ethnogenesis of the Slavs”, to this day, is so incomplete that it leaves many options for speculation, without the ability to finally answer the main question: “who are these Slavs anyway?”

Age of the people

The next sore problem for historians is the age of the Slavic ethnic group. When did the Slavs nevertheless stand out as a single people from the pan-European ethnic "katavasia"? The first attempt to answer this question belongs to the author of The Tale of Bygone Years, monk Nestor. Taking the biblical tradition as a basis, he began the history of the Slavs with the Babylonian pandemonium, which divided mankind into 72 peoples: “From now 70 and 2 languages were the language of Slovenesk ...”. The above-mentioned Mavro Orbini generously granted the Slavic tribes a couple of extra millennia of history, dating their exodus from their historical homeland in 1496: “At the indicated time, the Goths left Scandinavia, and the Slavs ... since the Slavs and Goths were one tribe. So, having subjugated Sarmatia to its power, the Slavic tribe was divided into several tribes and received different names: Wends, Slavs, Antes, Verls, Alans, Massaets .... Vandals, Goths, Avars, Roskolans, Russians or Muscovites, Poles, Czechs, Silesians, Bulgarians ... In short, the Slavic language is heard from the Caspian Sea to Saxony, from the Adriatic Sea to the German, and in all these limits lies the Slavic tribe.

Of course, such "information" was not enough for historians. To study the "age" of the Slavs, archeology, genetics and linguistics were involved. As a result, it was possible to achieve modest, but still results. According to the accepted version, the Slavs belonged to the Indo-European community, which, most likely, came out of the Dnieper-Donets archaeological culture, in the interfluve of the Dnieper and Don, seven thousand years ago during the Stone Age. Subsequently, the influence of this culture spread to the territory from the Vistula to the Urals, although no one has yet been able to accurately localize it. In general, speaking of the Indo-European community, we mean not a single ethnic group or civilization, but the influence of cultures and linguistic similarity. About four thousand years BC, it broke up into conditional three groups: the Celts and Romans in the West, the Indo-Iranians in the East, and somewhere in the middle, in Central and Eastern Europe, another language group stood out, from which the Germans later emerged, Balts and Slavs. Of these, around the 1st millennium BC, the Slavic language begins to stand out.

But the information of linguistics alone is not enough - to determine the unity of an ethnos, there must be a continuous succession of archaeological cultures. The bottom link in the archaeological chain of the Slavs is considered to be the so-called "culture of under-closing burials", which got its name from the custom of covering the cremated remains with a large vessel, in Polish "flared", that is, "upside down". It existed in the V-II centuries BC between the Vistula and the Dnieper. In a sense, it can be said that its speakers were the earliest Slavs. It is from it that it is possible to reveal the continuity of cultural elements up to the Slavic antiquities of the early Middle Ages.

Proto-Slavic homeland

Where did the Slavic ethnic group come into the world, and what territory can be called “originally Slavic”? Historians' accounts vary. Orbini, referring to a number of authors, claims that the Slavs came out of Scandinavia: “Almost all the authors, whose blessed pen conveyed to their 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 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.

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 pressure 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 Eastern Slavs have already left from there. 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 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.

"Slavs"

The very word "Slavs" is a mystery. It is firmly in use already in the 6th century AD, at least among the Byzantine historians of this time there are frequent references to the Slavs - not always friendly neighbors of Byzantium. Among the Slavs themselves, this term is already being used with might and main as a self-name in the Middle Ages, at least judging by the annals, including the Tale of Bygone Years.

However, its origin is still unknown. The most popular version is that it comes from the words "word" or "glory", going back to the same Indo-European root ḱleu̯- "to hear". By the way, Mavro Orbini also wrote about this, though in his characteristic “arrangement”: “during their residence in Sarmatia, they (the Slavs) took the name “Slavs”, which means “glorious”.

There is a version among linguists that the Slavs owe their self-name to the names of the landscape. Presumably, it was based on the toponym "Slovutych" - another name for the Dnieper, containing a root with the meaning "wash", "cleanse".

A lot of noise at one time was caused by the version about the existence of a connection between the self-name "Slavs" and the Middle Greek word "slave" (σκλάβος). It was very popular among Western scholars of the 18th-19th centuries. It is based on the idea that the Slavs, as one of the most numerous peoples in Europe, made up a significant percentage of captives and often became the object of the slave trade. Today, this hypothesis is recognized as erroneous, since most likely the basis of "σκλάβος" was a Greek verb with the meaning "to get military trophies" - "σκυλάο".

This video lesson is devoted to the topic “The origin of the Slavs. Eastern Slavs in antiquity. During the lesson, the teacher introduces the culture of our ancestors, their occupations, talks about resettlement in the country. The concept of "ethnogenesis" is woven into the outline of the lesson, the main problem of the question of the origin of the Slavs is indicated. The teacher will talk about where the Slavs came from, who their ancestors were, and introduce some scientific theories.

Theme: Ancient Russia

Lesson: The origin of the Slavs. Eastern Slavs in antiquity

In this lesson, we will talk about the ethnogenesis of the Slavs and find out the main versions of their origin. What sources do we have now and what are the prospects for further research in the field of the early history of the Slavs.

1. Source classification

When studying the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, several main types of sources are of paramount importance: 1) written, 2) archaeological, 3) linguistic, and 4) anthropological.

2. The first mention of the Slavs in written sources

The first reliable information about the Slavs, known to us under the name of the Sclavens, refers only to V1st century A.D. uh. It was then that this term was first encountered in the treatises of Procopius of Caesarea, Mauritius the Strategist, Jordanes and other Byzantine and European chroniclers. However, during this period, the Slavs were the largest people in Europe and inhabited a vast territory from the upper reaches of the Volga and Don to the banks of the Oder and Danube. This means that they settled in Europe much earlier than the famous Hun invasion of 375 AD. e.

Rice. 1. Procopius of Caesarea ()

3. When did the Slavic ethnic group arise

There are several different points of view on this matter: I. Rusanova argued that the Slavic ethnos originated in the 4th century AD. e. ( Przeworsk archaeological culture); V. Sedov attributed the origin of the Slavic ethnos to the 5th-2nd centuries BC. e. ( Lusatian archaeological culture); P. Tretyakov believed that the Slavs as an original ethnic group originated in the III BC. e. ( Zarubinets archaeological culture); A. Kuzmin and B. Rybakov believed that the origins of the Slavic ethnogenesis should be sought in Trzyniec archaeological culture of the XIV-II centuries BC. e. etc.

Rice. 2. Battle of the Slavs with the Scythians ()

4. Where was the ancestral home of the Slavs

Most historians consider the Slavs to be the autochthons of Eastern Europe. But many of them defined the historical ancestral home of the Slavs in different ways. I. Rusanova was a supporter of the Vistula-Oder theory; P. Safarik professed the Carpathian theory; L. Niederle was looking for the ancestral home of the Slavs in the interfluve of the Vistula and the Dnieper; A. Kuzmin defended the Danubian theory; V. Sedov - South Baltic, etc.

5. The collapse of a single Slavic ethnic group

At the turn of the 7th-8th centuries, the Slavic superethnos broke up into three large groups:

1) South Slavs (modern Bulgarians, Slovenes, Serbs, Montenegrins and Croats);

2) Western Slavs (modern Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Lusatians);

3) Eastern Slavs (modern Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Belarusians).

6. Social system and religious beliefs of the Eastern Slavs

Until the beginning of the 7th century, the Eastern Slavs lived tribal system. Then it is replaced by a period "military democracy" when, within the framework of several related tribes, a military elite (team) is allocated, headed by a prince, and a tribal nobility appears - governors and elders (“zemstvo boyars”), who begin to control the territory of the tribal union-principality. It was precisely such tribal unions (superunions), where independent reigns were formed, that were mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years: Polyany, Northerners, Drevlyans, Tivertsy, Ulichians, Krivichi, Polochans, Radimichi, Dregovichi, Vyatichi, Ilmen Slovenes, etc.

Rice. 3. Beliefs of the Slavs

The Eastern Slavs were pagans who deified the forces of nature and deceased ancestors (ancestors). In its development, the paganism of the Slavs went through four stages:

1) fetishism;

2) totemism;

3) polydemonism;

4) polytheism.

At the final stage of this development, each tribal union had its own pantheon of gods, but the most revered deities of the Eastern Slavs were Rod, Horos, Perun, Veles, Mokosh and Stribog.

7. The economic structure of the Eastern Slavs

basis economic life Eastern Slavs was slash-and-burn agriculture. According to natural and climatic conditions, their territory was divided into two zones: forest-steppe (in the south) and forest (in the north). In the forest-steppe, the dominant form of agriculture was fallow, or fallow land, and here they plowed with a plow. The slash-and-burn system of agriculture dominated in the forest zone, and the plow or ralo was used as the main tools of labor.

The main field crops of the Eastern Slavs were wheat, barley, buckwheat and millet; among garden crops - turnips, cabbage, beets and carrots. In addition to agriculture, cattle breeding was developed among the Eastern Slavs (pigs, horses, cattle and small cattle were bred), and river and forestry activities played a significant role, in particular beekeeping, fishing and hunting for large and fur-bearing animals.

Rice. 4. Slavs on the Dnieper (Roerich) ()

According to most historians, the era of "military democracy" became the time of the second social division of labor, that is, the separation of handicrafts from other types of economic activity, primarily agriculture. Based on numerous archaeological sources, we can quite definitely state that blacksmithing, foundry, pottery and jewelry crafts received the greatest development among the Eastern Slavs.

1. Alekseeva T. I. Ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs according to anthropological data. M., 1973

2. Galkina E. S. Secrets of the Russian Khaganate. M., 2002

3. Gorsky A. A. Rus from Slavic settlement to the Moscow kingdom. M., 2004

4. Kobychev V.P. In search of the ancestral home of the Slavs. M., 1973

5. Kuzmin A. G. Beginning of Russia. M., 2003

6. Perevezentsev SV The meaning of Russian history. M., 2004

7. Sedov VV Origin and early history of the Slavs. M., 1979

8. Tretyakov P. N. In the footsteps of ancient Slavic tribes. L., 1982

9. Trubachev O. N. Ethnogenesis and culture of the ancient Slavs. M., 1991

2. Theories of the origin of the Slavs ().

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

Written evidence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Various schemes of relations between the Baltic and Slavic languages

Linguistics data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anthropology and anthropogenetics data

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

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

Archaeological data

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

Hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs

Exists four main hypotheses origin of the Slavs:

1) the Danubian hypothesis;

2) the Vistula-Oder hypothesis;

3) Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis;

4) the Dnieper-Pripyat hypothesis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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