The origin of the Slavs. This phrase itself raises more questions at once than answers.
The Soviet archaeologist P. N. Tretyakov wrote:
"The history of the ancient Slavs in the coverage of archaeological materials is an area of hypotheses, usually short-lived, constantly causing numerous doubts."
Today, even after the global work carried out by archaeologists, many works of linguists, research on toponymy, this question remains open. The fact is that we practically have no written sources on the early history of the Proto-Slavs, and this is a stumbling block for all further reasoning. This work is based on key research on this topic.
Introduction
At the end of the 6th century, new enemies appeared on the Danube border, attacking the Byzantine state.
These were the peoples about which ancient and Byzantine authors had already heard a lot, but now they have become their restless neighbors, leading constant hostilities and carrying out devastating raids on the empire.
How could the new tribes that appeared on the northern border, for a long time not only compete with the military forces of the most powerful country in Europe, but also seize its lands?
How could these peoples, still yesterday unknown or little-known to the Roman world, occupy such vast territories? What powers and capabilities did they possess, how and by whom were they involved in the worldwide migration of peoples, how did their culture develop?
We are talking about the ancestors of the Slavs, who settled in a vast area of central, northeastern and southern Europe.
And if about the hostilities and battles of the Slavs of the VI-VII centuries. is known quite well thanks to the written sources that have come down to us, then archaeological sites give us important information that significantly complements the picture, helps to understand many moments of early Slavic history.
The clash or cooperation of the Slavs with the neighboring peoples: the Byzantine Empire, Germanic tribes and, of course, the nomads of the Eurasian plain, enriched their military experience and military arsenal.
The Slavs and their military affairs are little known to the general public; for a long time they were in the shadow of the Germanic peoples who lived in these areas, as well as the nomadic peoples who lived in the Danube.
Origin
The Kiev chronicler in the "ethnographic" part of the "Tale of Bygone Years" wrote:
“After a long time, the Slavs settled down the Danube, where now the land is Hungarian and Bulgarian. From those Slavs, the Slavs dispersed throughout the land and were nicknamed by their names from the places on which they sat. So some, having come, sat down on the river by the name of Morava and were nicknamed Morava, while others called themselves Czechs. And here are the same Slavs: White Croats, and Serbs, and Horutans. When the Volokhs attacked the Danube Slavs, and settled among them, and oppressed them, these Slavs came and sat on the Vistula and were called Lyakhs, and from those Poles came the Poles, other Poles - lutichi, some - Mazovians, others - Pomorians”.
For a long time, this story of the chronicle was considered decisive in the picture of the settlement of the Slavic tribes, today, on the basis of archaeological data, toponymy, but especially philology, the Vistula River basin in Poland is considered the ancestral home of the Slavs.
The Slavic language belongs to the Indo-European language family. The question of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans is still open. Anatolian, Greek, Armenian, Indo-Iranian and Thracian languages independently separated from the Proto-Indo-European language, while the Italic, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic and Germanic proto-languages did not exist. They constituted a single commonality of the ancient European language, and their separation took place in the course of resettlement across the territory of Europe.
In the literature, there is a dispute about whether there was originally a Balto-Slavic linguistic community or there were long-term contacts between the ancestors of the Slavs and Balts, which influenced the proximity of the languages. Recent studies indicate that, firstly, the Proto-Slavs had contacts only with the Western Balts (the ancestors of the Prussians), and secondly, they initially had contacts with the Proto-Germanic tribes, in particular, with the ancestors of the Angles and Saxons, which is recorded in the vocabulary of the latter … These contacts could only take place on the territory of modern Poland, which confirms the localization of the early Proto-Slavs in the Vistula-Oder interfluve.
This territory was their European ancestral home.
The first historical evidence
For the first time, messages about the Vendians or Slavs appear on the pages of Roman manuscripts at the beginning of our millennium. So, Gaius Pliny the Elder (23 / 24-79 AD) wrote about the fact that Sarmatians and Veneti lived among other peoples in the east of Europe. Claudius Ptolemy (died 178 AD) pointed to the bay, calling it the Venedian, now, presumably the Gulf of Gdansk in Poland, he also writes about the Venedian mountains, possibly the Carpathians. But Tacitus [Gaius Cornelius Tacitus] (50s - 120 AD) argues as follows:
“I really don’t know whether the Pevkins [Germanic tribe], Wends and Fenns can be attributed to the Germans or the Sarmatians … The Wends have adopted many of their customs, for for the sake of plunder they prowl through the forests and mountains, which only exist between the Pevkins and the Fenns. However, they can rather be counted among the Germans, because they build houses for themselves, wear shields and move on foot, and moreover with great speed; all this separates them from the Sarmatians, who spend their whole lives in a cart and on horseback. " [Tacit. G.46].
The early name of the Slavs
As we have already said, the ancient authors, like the ancient peoples, at the turn of the millennium, called the ancestors of the Slavs “Wends”. Many researchers believe that in antiquity this term defined not only the Slavs, but all the tribes of the Slavic-Baltic language group, since for the Greeks and Romans this land was distant and information about it was fragmentary, and often simply fabulous.
This word has survived in Finnish and German, and today they call the Luga Sorbs or Western Slavs - Wendel or Wende. Where did it come from?
Perhaps, some researchers believe, this was the self-name of some of the first tribal groups moving from the Vistula River basin to the west and north, to the area inhabited by the Germans, and, accordingly, the Finnish tribes.
Other authors believe that this was the name of a non-Slavic tribe, as discussed below.
By the VI century. “Wends” were clearly localized in the north of Central Europe, in the west they went beyond the borders of the Oder, and in the east - to the right bank of the Vistula.
The actual name "Slavs" appears in sources in the 6th century. at Jordan and Procopius, when both authors could really get to know the representatives of this people. Procopius of Caesarea, being the secretary of the commander Belisarius, more than once himself observed and described the actions of the Slavic warriors.
There is also an opinion that if the word "Wends - Veneti" was colloquial, then the "Sklavins" or "Slavs" had a book origin, such as the term "dew".
There is no exact answer about where this name came from. Until the nineteenth century. it was believed to be derived from the word "glory" (gloriosi). Another version, which also circulated until the 19th century, suggested a connection between the word "Slav" and "slave", a term identical in many European languages.
Modern theories suggest two solutions to this issue. The first connects it with the places of the initial stay of the Slavs, people living along the rivers. Making it from the word "flow, water flows", from here: the rivers Sluya, Slavnitsa, Stawa, Stawica.
The overwhelming majority of researchers are followers of another theory, they believe that the ethnonym comes from “word” - verbosi: to speak, “speak clearly”, “people who speak clearly”, unlike “Germans” - they cannot speak, dumb.
We meet it in the names of tribes and modern peoples: Novgorod Slovenia (Ancient Rus), Slovaks (Slovakia), Slovenes (Slovenia and other Balkan countries), Slovinians-Kashubs (Poland).
Early Slavs and Celts
In the south of the Vistula-Oder interfluve, the ancient Slavs (Pshevorskaya archaeological culture) had the first contacts with the Celts migrating to these territories.
By this time, the Celts had reached great heights in the development of material culture, which was reflected in the archaeological culture of La Tène (La Tène settlement, Switzerland). The Celtic society of Europe at this time can be defined as "heroic", with the cult of leaders and heroes, squads and the militarization of all life, consisting of clans grouped into tribes.
The Celts made an outstanding contribution to the history of metallurgy in Europe: entire blacksmith production complexes were discovered by archaeologists.
They mastered the technology of welding, hardening, made a great contribution to the production of iron tools, and, of course, weapons. A significant fact of the development of Celtic society is the process of urbanization, by the way, it is with it that archaeologists associate a new important moment: from the middle of the II century. BC NS. no military equipment is recorded in Celtic burials.
We know the large Celtic cities of Alesia (97 hectares), Bibracta (135 hectares) and Gergovia (Clermont) (75 hectares) and others.
Society is moving to a new stage, in the conditions of the accumulation of wealth, when weapons lose their symbolic significance. It was during this period that one of the waves of Celtic migration reached the upper reaches of the Vistula in Central Europe in the II century. BC e., from this moment began the time of interaction of the early Slavs and Celts. From this period, the Przeworsk archaeological culture began to form.
The Przeworsk archaeological culture is associated with the early Slavs, although signs of both Celts and Germans are found on its territory. Archaeological monuments provide a lot of material about the development of material culture, artifacts testify to the emergence of military affairs among the Slavs at the turn of the millennium.
An important factor of interaction was the process of the influence of the Celts, who are at a higher level of development, on the spiritual culture of the Slavs, which was reflected in religious buildings and burial rites. At least, what can be judged today is very likely. In particular, in the construction in a later period of the pagan temple of the Western Slavs in Arkona, on the island of Rügen, historians find features of Celtic religious buildings. But if weapons disappear in the graves of the Celts of central Europe, then on the periphery of the Celtic world they remain, which is perfectly understandable within the framework of military expansion. And the Slavs began to use the same rite.
The participation of the Celts in the formation of the Przeworsk culture led to the first great division in the history of the Slavs: into the southern (central Europe) and northern (Powisle). The movement of the Celts in Central Europe, quite possibly accompanied by a military expansion to the Vistula region, forced some of the local tribes to begin moving to the Dnieper region. They go from the Vistula and Volyn zone to the upper Dniester zone and especially to the Middle Dnieper. This movement, in turn, caused an outflow of the Baltic tribes (Zarubinskaya archaeological culture) that lived here to the north and east.
Although some archaeologists associate the Zarubinskaya culture with the Slavs.
It was during this period that the western neighbors of the ancient Slavs began to call them “Venets”. And here, too, there is a Celtic trace.
One of the hypotheses proceeds from the fact that the ethnonym "Veneta" was the self-name of the Celtic tribes that lived in Powisle, but when they clashed with the Germans at the beginning of our era, they retreated to the lands of the northeast and southeast of modern Poland, where they conquered the Proto-Slavs and gave them their name: "Wends" or "Veneti".
Other authors believe that this was the name of a non-Slavic tribe that migrated to the south, and by this name the neighbors began to call the ancestors of the Slavs who remained here.
Armament of the Slavs in the early period
Tacitus, as we see, told us little, but this information is invaluable, since we are talking primarily about the Slavs as a sedentary people who do not live like Sarmatians in carts, but build houses, which is confirmed by archaeological data, as well as that their weapons are similar to those of their western neighbors.
Among the Slavs, like most of the tribes that lived in the forest-steppe zone and embarked on the path of historical development, the main type of weapon was spears, which, naturally, owe their origin to sharpened sticks. Given the early contacts with the Celts, whose society was at a higher stage of material development, the influence in weapons is obvious here. It was even reflected in the funeral rite, when weapons or any piercing and cutting tools were damaged. This is what the Celts did when burying male warriors.
Diodorus Siculus, (80-20 BC) wrote:
“… They [the Celts. - V. E.] fight with a long sword, which is worn hanging on an iron or copper chain to the right thigh … width - slightly less than dipalesta (15, 5 cm)”. [Diodorus Siculus "Bibliotheca Historica" V. 30.3., V.30.4.]
During the period of early contacts with the Celts, the Slavs actively use Celtic long and narrow spearheads with a well-defined edge.
Later, in the early Roman period, the Slavic spears had points with a short leaf blade, and in the late Roman era - with a short diamond-shaped or leaf-shaped point, with a rib extending over a part of the sleeve.
Very early, which is unusual for the forest-steppe zone, the Slavs began to use spurs, an attribute of ammunition, which the Iranian-speaking steppe horsemen of Eastern Europe did not have at that time. In the burial grounds of the Przeworsk culture, not only spearheads are found, but also spurs. Thus, the ancestors of the Slavs began early enough to use horses in combat. Perhaps it was only a means of delivery for a warrior, as happened with many other forest peoples, for example, later, the Scandinavians. But the presence of spurs, which had a tetrahedral or cylindrical spine, most likely speaks of the need to control the horse, and most likely during a horse attack.
Tacitus wrote that the Slavs used a shield; from archaeological finds, we know that the umbons of these shields were conical with a long thorn or with a cylindrical neck ending in a hollow thorn. What sizes or parameters were the shields, one can only assume, perhaps they were the same as those of neighboring peoples. Probably, they were made of improvised material - wood, possibly covered with leather for reliability, an umbon was attached to them. The shield handle was riveted through and through. In the umbons, the influence of not only the Celts, but also the ancient Germans is easily visible, and through them the influence of the Romans in terms of material culture spread to the entire barbarian world of Europe.
The Slavs, as can be assumed, have not yet reached the stage of metal processing when it would ensure the mass production of tools or high-tech weapons. They are extremely rare, but they used swords and Saxons.
Swords, of course, were incredibly expensive weapons, and the presence of the Saxon in the weapons of the early Slavs again tells us about the Germanic influence. This is a wide single-edged sword with the same manufacturing technology as a sword.
Several samples of expensive scabbards or their fetters have come down to us. They testify to the high status of their owners. Of particular interest are the sheaths of the sword from the Grinev burial ground (Ukrainian Griniv), a village in the Pustomytovsky district of the Lvov region of Ukraine (Upper Dniester region).
The obverse is decorated with an openwork cast bronze plate depicting different scenes: a bear with prey, a griffin, two figures, possibly a hero and a goddess, and, finally, a horseman with a small shield and a spear. Such decoration of weapons is associated with Celtic, and possibly with Roman influence, and was common in Central Europe in the last centuries BC. NS.
According to archaeological sources, we cannot say that the Proto-Slavs used bows and arrows in the war, or their arrows were without metal tips. Arrowheads are scarcely found in burials from this era. Neighboring Germanic and Celtic peoples poorly used this weapon, and the influence of nomadic cultures was felt only on the southeastern border of the settlement of the early Slavs.
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