Ancient inhabitants of Eastern Europe
The most ancient history of Russia is connected with the territories located in Eastern Europe. Two climatic zones met here - steppe and forest-steppe. Objective natural factors contributed to the formation of two different economic structures on them: settled agriculture and nomadic pastoralism. The confrontation between the settled tribes of the forest belt and the forest-steppe and the steppe nomads determined the history of this region for many centuries.
The most ancient Eastern European people mentioned in historical sources were the Cimmerians, nomads of Indo-European origin, who settled in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region in the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. The first information about the Cimmerians was preserved in the poems of Homer.
From the document (Homer. Odyssey, XI, 12-19):
"The sun set, and all the paths were covered with darkness, and our ship reached the limits of the deep Ocean. There the people and the region of the Cimmerian people, shrouded in mist and clouds; and the shining sun never looks at them with its rays, neither when it rises to the starry sky, nor when from the sky it bows to the earth, but the impenetrable night is stretched out over miserable mortals.
The "father of history" Herodotus calls the Cimmerians the pre-Scythian population of the steppe part of the Northern Black Sea region. He mentions "Cimmerian walls", "Cimmerian crossings", "a region called Cimmeria", "Cimmerian Bosporus".
Image of the Cimmerians on an Etruscan vase
Around the 7th century BC e. Cimmerian tribes were forced into Asia by the nomadic Scythians, who settled in the territory from the Danube to the Volga. Some researchers call the Scythians the heirs of the Srubnaya culture of the Bronze Age, others believe that the Scythians came from Central Asia and mixed with the population of the Northern Black Sea region. The Scythians were divided into several large tribes. As Herodotus writes, the royal Scythians lived in the steppes between the Dnieper and the Don, the nomadic Scythians lived along the right bank of the lower Dnieper and in the steppe Crimea, the Scythian farmers settled the lands between Iigul and the Dnieper. The Kallipids (Helleno-Scythians) mastered the basin of the Southern Bug, near the city of Olbia, to the north of them lived the Alazons, and further north the Scythians-plowmen.
The close relations of the Scythians with the Greek colonists who settled along the shores of the Black Sea intensified the process of class formation among the Scythians. Already in the VI century. BC e. in the Scythian tribes, a tribal nobility stands out, a large tribal union arises, in fact, a proto-state formation. In the IV century. BC e. all Scythian tribes were united by King Atey, who created a powerful state formation. After the death of Atheus in the war with the Macedonian king Philip II, the Scythian state quickly declined. In the III-II centuries. BC e. the Scythians are gradually forced out into the steppe Crimea by their kindred Sarmatian tribes, who migrated to the Northern Black Sea region from the east.
The image of the Scythians on the ridge from the Solokha barrow (4th century BC).
Iranian-speaking Sarmatians lived in the III century. BC e. 4th century AD in the steppes from the Tobol to the Danube. They were nomadic pastoralists. The movement of the Sarmatians to the west is associated with the desire to acquire new pastures. Ancient authors (Polybius, Strabo, Tacitus) knew such Sarmatian tribal unions as Aorses, Siraks, Roxolans, Yazygs, Alans. The heavily armed cavalry of the Sarmatians (cataphractaries) was a formidable force. “When they appear in cavalry units, hardly any people can resist them,” wrote Tacitus. The remnants of matriarchy were strong in the Sarmatian society. Sarmatian women even took part in military campaigns. “Their women ride, noted the pseudo-Hippocrates, shoot bows and javelins from their horses, and fight their enemies while they are in the girls. They remain in the maidens until they kill three enemies. Once they have obtained a husband for themselves, they stop riding until the need arises for a general campaign.
Sarmatian cataphracts depicted on the relief of the column
Emperor Trajan in Rome (1st century)
The neighbors of the Scythians and Sarmatians were the Greeks, in the 7th-6th centuries. BC e. founded a number of policies on the shores of the Black Sea. The largest Greek city-states of the region were Olbia at the mouth of the Dnieper-Bug estuary, Chersonese (modern Sevastopol), Gorgippia (Anapa), Panticapaeum (Kerch). As a result of the unification of a number of policies under the rule of the archons of Panticapaeum in the 5th century. BC e. the Bosporus kingdom was formed, which included the territories of the eastern Crimea, as well as the coast of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov.
At the turn of II and I centuries. BC e. Chersonese, the Kingdom of Bosporus and a number of other Black Sea colonies, weakened by ongoing conflicts with the Scythians and Sarmatians, fell under the rule of Mithridates VI Eupator, the ruler of the small state of Pontus, located on the southern coast of the Black Sea. As a result of the unsuccessful wars of Mithridates VI with the Roman Republic, the Bosporan kingdom and the Greek policies of the Northern Black Sea region fell into centuries-old dependence on Rome.
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Judging by the evidence, in the VI century. the Slavs lived in a primitive military democracy, inherent in peoples at the level of the tribal system. The lack of private property among the Slavs also indicates the primitiveness of social relations, which was reflected in the actual absence of slavery. The main occupations of the Slavic tribes were cattle breeding and agriculture.
Housing of the Eastern Slavs. Hood. S. Ivanov.
In the VI-VII centuries. Slavs settled in the vast territories of Central and Eastern Europe. The expansion of the area of settlement leads to a gradual loss of the original unity of the Slavic tribes. In the 7th-8th centuries there is a final division of the Slavs into three branches: southern Slavs (ancestors of Serbs, Bulgarians and Croats), Western Slavs (Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Lusatians), Eastern Slavs (Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians).
The resettlement of the Slavic tribes
From the document (The Tale of Bygone Years):
"... The Slavs sat down along the Danube, where the land of Hungarian and Bulgarian is now. From those Slavs, the Slavs dispersed over the earth and were called by their names from the places where they sat down. "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 the Poles, other Poles are Lutich, other Mazovshans, other Pomeranians ... "
Eastern Slavs settled by the 8th century. in territories from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Dniester in the west to the Don in the east. The main occupations of the Slavic tribes were, as before, cattle breeding and agriculture (shifting on the more fertile lands of the forest-steppe and slash-and-burn in the forest belt). In addition, a significant part of the population was engaged in fishing and forestry (hunting, beekeeping, etc.). The gradual separation of handicrafts from agriculture, as well as trade contacts with the surrounding peoples, contribute to the emergence of large trade and craft centers, future cities.
Eastern Slavs in the VIII-IX centuries. Drawing by a modern author
The religious beliefs of the Slavs were classical polytheism (paganism), the Slavs believed in many gods, which were personified forces of nature. Perun was considered the main god of thunder, the patron of warriors, the patron of cattle breeding Veles (Volos) "cattle god", the gods of the sun Yarilo, Khors and Dazhdbog, the god of the air element Stribog, the patroness of the hearth Mokosh. In addition, the Slavs worshiped a number of demigods and spirits: brownies, goblins, mermaids, etc. Priests who performed a religious cult were called sorcerers.
East Slavic idol. Drawing by a modern author
From the document (Milyukov P.N. Religion of the Slavs):
"Priests have not yet emerged as a special estate; representatives of tribal unions made sacrifices to tribal and heavenly gods; and free-practicing sorcerers took care of intercourse with the lower demons of the earth, delivering people from their harmful influence and receiving various services from them. The place of sacrifice, Slavic" temple”, did not turn into a temple even when images of gods, pagan “idols” began to be placed on this place.
As you can see, the Slavic religion has not yet had time to develop strict forms of worship, and Slavic mythology has not yet created such clear ideas about pagan gods as the Greeks, for example, came to. The latter early separated their gods from those natural phenomena that these gods personified; transformed them into human beings and, through art and poetry, perpetuated their images and their distinctive features. Slavic mythology did not reach this stage of humanizing the gods (anthropomorphism). Slavic gods continued to merge with the elements when Christianity appeared. Mixing the new faith with the old, the popular consciousness partly merged its gods with Christian saints, partly reduced them to the position of "demons". But even such a mixture of pagan concepts with Christian ones did not make the Slavs forget the original meaning of their ancient gods. Having turned into Saint Ilya, driving around the sky in his chariot, the pagan Perun did not cease to be a thunder god. On the contrary, its elemental signs have been preserved with amazing freshness to our time.
The development of production relations contributes to the transition from the tribal community to the neighboring community (vervi) and, as a result, the emergence of private property, and then property inequality. Despite the fact that in the VIII century. the main body of tribal government remains the people's assembly (veche), in the East Slavic tribes there is already a tribal aristocracy headed by a tribal leader (prince). Initially, the prince performed only the role of an elected military leader, the leader of the tribal militia. By IX Art. the power of the prince, relying on professional combatants, becomes hereditary.
In the VIII-IX centuries. there is a gradual enlargement of the tribes, the emergence of tribal unions, in fact, proto-state formations.