When the Balts were divided into three groups. The origin of the Balts and the territory of their residence
If the Scythian-Sarmatians are far from the Slavs in language, does it mean that there is someone closer? You can try to solve the mystery of the birth of the Slavic tribes by finding their closest relatives in language.
We already know that the existence of a single Indo-European parent language is beyond doubt. Approximately in the III millennium BC. e. from this single proto-language, various groups of languages gradually began to form, which in turn eventually divided into new branches. Naturally, the carriers of these new related languages were various related ethnic groups (tribes, unions of tribes, nationalities, etc.).
The studies of Soviet linguists, carried out in the 70-80s, led to the discovery of the fact of the formation of the Proto-Slavic language from the Baltic language array. There are a variety of judgments about the time at which the process of separation of the Proto-Slavic language from the Baltic took place (from the 15th century BC to the 6th century AD).
In 1983, the II conference "Balto-Slavic ethno-linguistic relations in historical and areal terms" was held. It seems that this was the last such a large-scale exchange of views of the then Soviet, including the Baltic, linguist historians on the topic of the origin of the Old Slavic language. The following conclusions can be drawn from the abstracts of this conference.
The geographical center of the settlement of the Balts is the Vistula basin, and the territory occupied by the Balts extended to the east, south, and west of this center. It is important that these territories included the Oka basin and the Upper and Middle Dnieper to the Pripyat. The Balts lived in the north of Central Europe before the Wends and Celts! The mythology of the ancient Balts bore a clear Vedic connotation. Religion, the pantheon of gods almost coincided with the ancient Slavic ones. In the linguistic sense, the Baltic linguistic space was heterogeneous and was divided into two large groups - western and eastern, within which there were also dialects. The Baltic and Proto-Slavic languages contain signs of a great influence of the so-called "Italic" and "Iranian" languages.
The most interesting mystery is the relationship between the Baltic and Slavic languages with the so-called Indo-European proto-language, which we, forgive me, linguists, will henceforth call the Proto-Language. The logical scheme of the evolution of the Proto-Slavic language seems to be approximately as follows:
Proto-language - Proto-Baltic - + Italian + Scythian-Sarsmatian = Old Slavic.
This scheme does not reflect one important and mysterious detail: the Proto-Baltic (aka “Balto-Slavonic”) language, having formed from the Proto-language, did not stop contacts with it; these two languages existed for some time at the same time! It turns out that the Proto-Baltic language is a contemporary of the Proto-language!
This contradicts the idea of continuity of the Proto-Baltic language from the Proto-language. One of the most authoritative specialists on the problems of the Proto-Baltic language V.N. Toporov put forward the assumption that "the Baltic area is a" reserve "of ancient Indo-European speech." Moreover, the PRABALTSKY LANGUAGE IS THE ANCIENT PROTO-LANGUAGE OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS!
Together with the data of anthropologists and archaeologists, this may mean that the Pra-Balts were representatives of the "catacomb" culture (the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC).
Perhaps the ancient Slavs are some kind of southeastern variety of the Proto-Balts? No. The Old Slavic language reveals continuity precisely from the western group of the Baltic languages (west of the Vistula!), and not from the neighboring eastern one.
Does this mean that the Slavs are the descendants of the ancient Balts?
Who are the Balts?
First of all, “Balts” is a scientific term for the related ancient peoples of the Southern Baltic, and not a self-name. Today the descendants of the Balts are represented by Latvians and Lithuanians. It is believed that the Lithuanian and Latvian tribes (Cursians, Letgola, Zimegola, villages, Aukshtaits, Samogitians, Skalves, Nadruvs, Prussians, Yatvingians) developed from more ancient Baltic tribal formations in the first centuries of the 1st millennium AD. But who were and where did these older Balts live? Until recently, it was believed that the ancient Balts were the descendants of the late Nealitic cultures of polished battle axes and corded ceramics (the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC). This opinion is contradicted by the results of research by anthropologists. Already in the Bronze Age, the ancient South Baltic tribes were absorbed by the “narrow-faced” Indo-Europeans who came from the south, who became the ancestors of the Balts. The Balts were engaged in primitive agriculture, hunting, fishing, lived in weakly fortified settlements in log houses or mud-smeared houses and semi-dugouts. Militarily, the Balts were inactive and rarely attracted the attention of Mediterranean writers.
It turns out that we have to return to the original, autochthonous version of the origin of the Slavs. But then where does the Italian and Scythian-Sarmatian component of the Old Slavic language come from? Where do all those similarities with the Scythian-Sarmatians that we talked about in previous chapters come from?
Yes, if we proceed from the initial goal at all costs to establish the Slavs as the oldest and permanent population of Eastern Europe, or as the descendants of one of the tribes that moved to the land of the future Russia, then we have to get around the numerous contradictions arising from anthropological, linguistic, archaeological and other facts of the history of the territory in which the Slavs reliably lived only from the 6th century AD, and only in the 9th century the state of Rus was formed.
In order to try to more objectively answer the riddles of the history of the emergence of the Slavs, let's try to look at the events that took place from the 5th millennium BC to the middle of the 1st millennium AD on a wider geographical area than the territory of Rus'.
So, in the V-VI millennium BC. e. in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, India, the cities of the first authentically known civilizations develop. At the same time, in the basin of the lower Danube, the “Vinchanskaya” (“Terteriyskaya”) culture was formed, associated with the civilizations of Asia Minor. The marginal part of this culture was the "Bug-Dniester", and later the "Trypillian" culture on the territory of the future Rus. The area from the Dnieper to the Urals at that time was inhabited by tribes of early pastoralists who still spoke the same language. Together with the "Vinchan" farmers, these tribes were the ancestors of the modern Indo-European peoples.
At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, from the Volga region to the Yenisei, up to the western borders of the Mongoloid settlement, a “pit” (“Afanasyevskaya”) culture of nomadic cattle breeders appeared. By the second quarter of the III millennium BC. e., "pits" spread to the lands inhabited by Trypillians, and by the middle of the III millennium BC, they pushed them to the west. "Vinchans" in the III millennium BC gave rise to the civilizations of the Pelasgians and Minoans, and by the end of the III millennium BC - the Mycenaeans.
To save your time, I omit the further development of the ethnogenesis of European peoples in the III-II millennia BC.
It is more important for us that by the 12th century BC, the Cimmerians, who were part of the Aryans, or who were their descendants and successors in Asia, come to Europe. Judging by the distribution of South Ural bronze throughout Eastern and Northern Europe during this period, a vast territory was subject to the influence of the Cimmerians. Many late European peoples owe the Aryan part of their blood to the Cimmerians. Having conquered many tribes in Europe, the Cimmerians brought them their mythology, but they themselves changed, adopted the local languages. Later, the Germans who conquered the Gauls and Romans spoke in a similar way in the Romance languages. The Cimmerians who conquered the Balts after some time began to speak Baltic dialects and merged with the conquered tribes. The Balts, who settled in Europe with the previous wave of migration of peoples from the Urals and the Volga, received from the Cimmerians the first portion of the "Iranian" component of their language and Aryan mythology.
Around the 8th century BC Wends came from the south to the areas inhabited by the western pra-Balts. They brought a significant part of the "Italic" dialect into the language of the Prabalts, as well as the self-name - Wends. From the 8th to the 3rd century BC. e. waves of migrants from the west passed one after another - representatives of the "Lusatian", "Chernolesskaya" and "Zarubenets" cultures, oppressed by the Celts, that is, the Etruscans, Wends and, possibly, the western Balts. So the "western" Balts became "southern".
Both archaeologists and linguists distinguish two large tribal formations of the Balts on the territory of the future Rus': one in the Oka basin, the other in the Middle Dnieper. It was they that the ancient writers could have in mind when speaking of neurons, disputes, aists, skolots, villages, gelons and boudins. Where Herodotus placed gelons, other sources at different times called Galinds, Goldescythians, goluntsev, golyad. So the name of one of the Baltic tribes that lived in the Middle Dnieper can be established with a high probability.
So, the Balts lived on the Oka and in the Middle Dnieper. But after all, these territories were under the dominion of the Sarmatians (“between the Pevkinns and the Fenns” according to Tacitus, that is, from the Danube to the lands of the Finno-Ugric peoples)! And Peutinger's tables assign these territories to the Wends and Venedo-Sarmatians. This may mean that the southern Baltic tribes were in a single tribal alliance with the Scythian-Sarmatians for a long time. The Balts and Scytho-Sarmatians were united by a similar religion and an increasingly common culture. The power of the weapons of the Kshatriya warriors provided farmers, cattle breeders, fishermen and forest hunters from the Oka and the upper reaches of the Dnieper to the shores of the Black Sea and the foothills of the Caucasus with the possibility of peaceful labor and, as they would say today, confidence in the future.
At the end of the 3rd century, the Goths invaded Eastern Europe. They managed to conquer many tribes of the Balts and Finno-Ugric peoples, to seize a gigantic territory from the shores of the Baltic to the Volga and the Black Sea, including the Crimea.
The Scythian-Sarmatians fought for a long time and cruelly with the Goths, but still they were defeated, such a heavy defeat, which had not yet happened in their history. It’s not just that the memory of the events of this war remained in the Tale of Igor’s Campaign!
If the Alans and Roxolans of the forest-steppe and steppe belt could escape from the Goths by retreating to the north and south, then the “royal Scythians” from the Crimea had nowhere to retreat. Most quickly they were completely destroyed.
The Gothic possessions divided the Scythian-Sarmatians into southern and northern parts. The southern Scythian-Sarmatians (Yasi, Alans), to whom the leader Bus, known from the Tale of Igor's Campaign, also belonged, retreated to the North Caucasus and became vassals of the Goths. There was a monument-tombstone of Bus, erected by his widow and known to historians of the 19th century.
The northern ones were forced to go to the lands of the Balts and Finno-Ugric peoples (Ilmers), who also suffered from the Goths. Here, apparently, a rapid merger of the Balts and Scythian-Sarmatians began, which were owned by a common will and necessity - liberation from Gothic domination.
It is logical to assume that the majority of the new community were numerically Balts, so the Sarmatians who fell into their midst soon began to speak the South Baltic dialect with an admixture of "Iranian" dialect - the Old Slavic language. The military-princely part of the new tribes for a long time was mainly of Scythian-Sarmatian origin.
The process of formation of the Slavic tribes took about 100 years during the life of 3-4 generations. The new ethnic community received a new self-name - "Slavs". Perhaps it was born from the phrase "sva-alans". “Alans” is apparently the common self-name of a part of the Sarmatians, although the Alans tribe itself also existed (this phenomenon is not uncommon: later, among the Slavic tribes with different names there was a tribe actually “Sloven”). The word "sva" - among the Aryans meant both glory and sacredness. In many Slavic languages, the sounds "l" and "v" easily pass into each other. And for the former Balts, this name in the sound of “word-Vene” had its own meaning: Veneti, who know the word, have a common language, as opposed to the “Germans”-Goths.
The military confrontation with the Goths continued all this time. Probably, the struggle was carried out mainly by guerrilla methods, in conditions when cities and large settlements-centers of the weapons craft were captured or destroyed by the enemy. This also affected the armament (darts, light bows and shields woven from rods, the absence of armor) and the military tactics of the Slavs (attacks from ambushes and shelters, feigned retreats, luring into traps). But the very fact of continuing the struggle in such conditions suggests that the military traditions of the ancestors were preserved. It is hard to imagine how long the struggle of the Slavs with the Goths would have continued and how the struggle of the Slavs with the Goths could have ended, but hordes of the Huns broke into the Northern Black Sea region. The Slavs had to choose between a vassal alliance with the Huns against the Goths and a fight on two fronts.
The need to submit to the Huns, who came to Europe as invaders, was probably met by the Slavs ambiguously and caused not only intertribal, but also intratribal disagreements. Some tribes broke up into two or even three parts, fighting on the side of the Huns or the Goths, or against both. The Huns and Slavs defeated the Goths, but the steppe Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region remained with the Huns. Together with the Huns, the Slavs, whom the Byzantines still called the Scythians (according to the testimony of the Byzantine author Priscus), came to the Danube. Following the Goths retreating to the northwest, part of the Slavs went to the lands of the Venets, Balts-Lugians, Celts, who also became participants in the emergence of a new ethnic community. This is how the final basis and territory of the formation of the Slavic tribes was formed. In the VI century, the Slavs appeared on the historical stage already under their new name.
Many scientists divide the Slavs of the 5th-6th centuries linguistically into three groups: western - Wends, southern - Slavs and eastern - Ants.
However, Byzantine historians of that time see in the Sklavins and Antes not ethnic formations, but political tribal unions of the Slavs, located from Lake Balaton to the Vistula (Sklavina) and from the mouth of the Danube to the Dnieper and the Black Sea coast (Antes). The Ants were considered "the strongest of both tribes." It can be assumed that the existence of two unions of Slavic tribes known to the Byzantines is a consequence of intertribal and intratribal strife on the "Gothic-Hunnic" issue (as well as the presence of Slavic tribes remote from each other with the same names).
The Sklavins are probably those tribes (Milings, Ezerites, Sever, Draguvites (Dregovichi?), Smolene, Sagudats, Velegezites (Volynians?), Wayunites, Berzites, Rhynkhins, Krivetins (Krivichi?), Timochan and others), which in In the 5th century they were allies of the Huns, went with them to the west and settled north of the Danube. Large parts of the Krivichi, Smolensk, Severyans, Dregovichi, Volhynians, as well as Dulebs, Tivertsy, Ulichi, Croats, Polans, Drevlyans, Vyatichi, Polochans, Buzhans and others who did not submit to the Huns, but did not take the side of the Goths, made up the Antian Union, who opposed the new Huns - the Avars. But in the north of the Sklavins, the Western Slavs, little known to the Byzantines, also lived - the Venets: other parts of the once united tribes of the Polyans, Slovenes, as well as Serbs, Poles, Mazurs, Mazovshans, Czechs, Bodrichi, Lyutichi, Pomeranians, Radimichi - the descendants of those Slavs who once left parallel to the Hun invasion. From the beginning of the VIII century, probably under pressure from the Germans, the Western Slavs partially moved to the south (Serbs, Slovenes) and east (Slovenes, Radimichi).
Is there a time in history that can be considered the time of the absorption of the Baltic tribes by the Slavs, or the final merger of the southern Balts and Slavs? Eat. This time is the 6th-7th centuries, when, according to archaeologists, there was a completely peaceful and gradual settlement of the Baltic villages by the Slavs. This was probably due to the return of part of the Slavs to the homeland of their ancestors after the capture of the Danube lands of the Slavs and Antes by the Avars. Since that time, the “Wends” and Scythian-Sarmatians practically disappear from the sources, and the Slavs appear, and they act exactly where the Scythian-Sarmatians and the disappeared Baltic tribes “listed” until recently. According to V.V. Sedov "it is possible that the tribal boundaries of the early ancient Russian tribes reflect the peculiarities of the ethnic division of this territory before the arrival of the Slavs."
Thus, it turns out that the Slavs, having absorbed the blood of very many Indo-European tribes and nationalities, are still to a greater extent the descendants and spiritual heirs of the Balts and Scytho-Sarmatians. The ancestral home of the Indo-Aryans is Southwestern Siberia from the Southern Urals to the Balkhash region and the Yenisei. The ancestral home of the Slavs is the Middle Dnieper, the Northern Black Sea region, Crimea.
This version explains why it is so difficult to find one single ascending line of the Slavic ancestry, and explains the archaeological confusion of Slavic antiquities. And yet - this is only one of the versions.
The search continues.
Do you_
Balts
Balts - peoples Indo-European origin, speakers of the Baltic languages who inhabited in the past and inhabit today the territory of the Baltic from Poland and Kaliningrad area up to Estonia. According to historical dialectology, already in the end of the II millennium BC. The Balts were divided into three large dialect- tribal groups: western, middle and Dnieper. The last of them, according to Sedov V.V., is represented archaeological cultures- Tushemlinsko-Bantserovskaya, Kolochinskaya and Moschinskaya. In the IV-III centuries BC. there were differences between the Western Balts (Prussians, Galinds, Yotvingians) and Eastern (Curshians, ancestors of Lithuanians and Latvians). By the VI-VIII centuries. include the division of the Eastern Balts into those participating in ethnogenesis Lithuanians (Zhmudins, otherwise Samogitians, Lithuania proper - Aukshtaits, as well as Nadruvs, Skalvs), from one century, and who became ancestors contemporary Latvians (Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Latgalians), etc.
In the 1st millennium, the Baltic tribes inhabited the territory from the southwestern Baltic to the Upper Dnieper and the Oka basin. Economy: agriculture and cattle breeding. The first written references to the Balts are found in the essay "On the origin of the Germans and the location of Germany" (lat. De origine, moribus ac situ Germanorum) Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus ( 98 ), where they are called estia (lat. aestiorum gentes). Later, the Balts under different names were described in the writings of the Ostrogothic historian Cassiodorus ( 523 ), Gothic historian of Jordan 552 ), the Anglo-Saxon traveler Wulfstan ( 900 ), North Germanic archbishop's chronicler Adam of Bremen ( 1075 ). Ancient and medieval sources called them Aistami-Aestii. Jordan placed them in the vast expanses of Eastern Europe from the Baltic coast to the Lower Don basin. The name Balts (German Balten) and the Baltic language (German baltische Sprache) as scientific terms were proposed in 1845 German linguist Georg Nesselmann ( 1811-1881 ), professor university in Königsberg. Old Russian chronicles conveyed the names of a number of separate tribes of the Balts (Lithuania, Letgola, Zemigola, Zhmud, Kors, Yatvingians, Golyad and Prussians).
Starting from the VI century. seep into their territory Slavs, and in the VIII-IX centuries. begins the process of Slavicization of the Dnieper Balts, which ended in the XII-XIII centuries. Western Balts in Russia were called Chukhons. TO 983 applies hike Vladimir against the Lithuanian tribe of the Yotvingians and for some time taking possession of the river routes along the Neman. Some of the Baltic peoples were destroyed during the expansion of the German knights, some were assimilated by the end of the 16th century. 17th century or dissolved in ethnogenesis modern peoples. Currently, there are two Baltic peoples - Latvians and Lithuanians.
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Pagan idol from the South Baltic coast (Mecklenburg land). A wooden figurine made of oak was discovered during excavations in 1968 in an area near Lake Tolenskoye. The find is dated to the 13th century.
| Golyad - a Baltic tribe, possibly Lithuanian in origin, is mentioned in Russian chronicles - centuries. Inhabited the basin of the Protva River, the right tributary of the Moscow River, and after the mass resettlement of the Eastern Slavs in this area in the 7th-8th centuries. it turned out m. Vyatichi And Krivichi, which, capturing the lands of the golyad, partly killed it, partly drove it to the northwest, and partly assimilated it. Even in the XII century. the golyad is mentioned in chronicles reporting under 1147 that Prince of Chernigov Svyatoslav Olgovich by order Suzdal prince Yuri Dolgoruky went with a squad to Golyad. Some researchers they identify the golyad with the Galinds mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century, who lived in Mazovia, in the region of the Masurian Lakes. Part of this country was later called Galindia. | msimagelist>
Clothes of the Baltic tribes of the X-XII centuries.
| Samogitians - (Russian and Polish Zhmud), an ancient Lithuanian tribe, the main population of Samogitia, one of the two main branches of the Lithuanian people. The name comes from the word "žemas" - "low" and denotes Lower Lithuania in relation to Upper Lithuania - Aukštaitija (from the word - "aukštas" - "high"), which was most often called simply Lithuania in the narrow sense of the word. | msimagelist>|
| Zemgaly - (Zemigola, Zimegola), an ancient Latvian tribe in the middle part of Latvia, in the basin of the river. Lielupe. IN 1106 Semigallians defeated the Vseslavich squad, killing 9 thousand soldiers | msimagelist>
Semigallian and Ukstait women's jewelry
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Wolin figurine. Bronze. 9th century Baltic Slavs
Language - Latgalian (considered the Upper Latvian dialect of the Latvian language), does not have an official status, but according to Law about language state preserves and develops the Latgalian language as a cultural and historical value. According to various sources, the number of Latvian residents who consider themselves Latgalians ranges from 150 to 400 thousand. Human, but the calculations are complicated by the fact that officially there is no Latgalian nationality in Latvia. Most of them have the nationality "Latvian" in their passports. Religion: the majority of believers are Catholics. The Latgalians are considered descendants of the Latgalians. msimagelist>
Medieval costume of the Baltic townspeople
| Lithuania, Lithuanians - a Baltic tribe mentioned in the list of peoples in the Primary Chronicle. After the rise of Moscow in the XIV-XV centuries. Lithuania supplied Moscow grand dukes a large number of immigrants noble and even princely origin with retinues and servants. Lithuanians in the Moscow service formed special shelves Lithuanian system. Folk tales about Lithuania were the most frequent in Pskov region, which is associated with numerous skirmishes and military campaigns of Lithuania against Rus'. Chronicle sources also mention ancient Lithuanian settlements in the basin of the river. Okie. They speak the Lithuanian language of the Baltic group of the Indo-European family. The main dialects are Samogitian (Lower Lithuanian) and Aukstaitian (Upper Lithuanian). Writing from the 16th century on a Latin graphic basis. | msimagelist>
Prussians and Crusaders
| The Selons are an ancient Latvian tribe that lived until the 15th century. and occupied by the XIII century. territory in the south of modern Latvia and a neighboring area in the northeast of modern Lithuania. Today the territory belongs to the Jekabpils and Daugavpils regions. | msimagelist>|
| The Sembi are a North Prussian tribe. | msimagelist>|
| The Skalves are a Prussian tribe. | msimagelist>
Clothes of Estonian peasants
| Yatvingians - an ancient Prussian Baltic-speaking tribe, ethnically close to the Lithuanians. They lived from the 5th century. BC e. to the end of the XIII century. in the area of m. the middle course of the river. Neman and the upper course of the river. Narew. The territory occupied by the Yotvingians was called Sudovia. The tribe of courts (zudavs) was first mentioned by Tacitus (II century BC). The first mention of the ethnonym "Yatvyag" is found in Russian-Byzantine treaty 944. The Yatvingians were engaged in agriculture, dairy farming, beekeeping, hunting and fishing. were developed and crafts. In the 10th century, after the formation of the Old Russian state, campaigns began Kyiv(e.g. Yaroslav the Wise) and other princes on the Yotvingians ( 983 , 1038 , 1112 , 1113 , 1196 ). In 11 40-11 50 as a result of campaigns Galician-Volyn and the Mazovian princes, the Yotvingians were subordinate to Galicia-Volyn Rus and Mazovia. However, in 1283 captured the territory of the Western Yotvingians Warband. IN 1422 all of Sudovia became part of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The unwritten language of the Yotvingians belonged to the Baltic group of the Indo-European language family. The Yatvingians participated in the ethnogenesis of the Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian nations. | msimagelist>
archaeological culture Archeology
Beginning of Russian history. From ancient times to the reign of Oleg Tsvetkov Sergey Eduardovich
Balts
During their settlement in the ancient Russian lands, the Eastern Slavs also found here some Baltic tribes. The Tale of Bygone Years names among them the Zemgolu, the Letgolu, whose settlements were located in the Western Dvina basin, and the golyad, who lived on the banks of the middle Oka. Ethnographic descriptions of these tribes from the period of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages have not been preserved.
Archaeological excavations show that the Balts, who settled on the lands of ancient Rus', were descendants of tribes, carriers of the Corded Ware culture. In particular, this is indicated by copper bells from the Baltic burials, similar to those found in the North Caucasus. In ancient times, the cultural development of the Balts and Slavs took place more or less synchronously, so that by the VIII-IX centuries. they were approximately at the same stage of material culture.
Finds in Baltic burials and settlements - iron bits, stirrups, copper bells and other parts of horse harness - suggest that the Balts were warlike riders. The famous Lithuanian cavalry later played an important role in the military history of Eastern Europe. According to the surviving news, the Yotvingians, a tribe that lived in Western Polissya, in Podlasie and partly in Mazovia, stood out with special militancy. Believing in the transmigration of souls, the Yotvingians did not spare themselves in battle, did not take flight and did not surrender, preferring to die along with their families. The Belarusians have preserved the proverb: “He looks like a yatving”, that is, a robber.
The type of Baltic dwelling for the period of the early Middle Ages is difficult to establish. Apparently it was a log cabin. Even in the sources of the XVII century. a typical Lithuanian house is described as a structure made of spruce logs, with a large stone oven in the middle and no chimney. In winter, cattle were housed in it along with people. The social organization of the Baltic tribes was characterized by clan association. The head of the clan had absolute power over the rest of the relatives; the woman was completely excluded from public life. Agriculture and animal husbandry were firmly rooted in the household, but the main sectors of the economy were still hunting and fishing.
Close contacts between the Balts and the Slavs were facilitated not only by a significant linguistic proximity, but also by the kinship of religious ideas, which is explained by the Indo-European origin of both, and also partly by the Venetian influence. In addition to the cult of Perun, common to both peoples was the veneration of the forest spirit - goblin (Lithuanian likshay) and the funeral rite - cremation. But the Baltic paganism, in contrast to the Slavic, was of a more archaic and gloomy nature, expressed, for example, in the worship of snakes and ants and the widespread use of witchcraft, divination and sorcery. The late Kiev Chronicle reports that the Lithuanian prince Mindovg (XIII century), even after the adoption of Christianity, secretly worshiped pagan deities, among whom was such an exotic figure as Diverkis, the god of the hare and the snake.
The Balts apparently owed their much stronger adherence to paganism, compared to the Slavs, to the existence of an influential priestly estate among them - the Vaidelots, who kept secular power under their control and transferred the idea of intertribal unity from the political sphere to the spiritual, presenting it as allegiance to traditional deities. Thanks to the dominance of the Vaidelots, the customs of the Baltic tribes were thoroughly imbued with a religious principle. For example, the custom, according to which the father of the family had the right to kill his sick or crippled children, was sanctified by the following theological maxim: “Servants of the Lithuanian gods should not groan, but laugh, because human calamity causes sorrow to gods and people”; on the same basis, children with a clear conscience sent their aged parents to the next world, and during a famine, men got rid of women, girls and female babies. Adulterers were given to be devoured by dogs, as they outraged the gods, who knew only two states - marriage and virginity. Human sacrifices were generally not only allowed, but also encouraged: “Whoever in a healthy body wants to sacrifice himself, or his child, or household, to the gods, he can do it without hindrance, because, sanctified through fire and blessed, they will have fun with the gods." The high priests themselves, for the most part, ended their lives by voluntary self-immolation to appease the gods.
According to anthropological data, the western Krivichi find the closest proximity to the Balts. However, direct mixing seems to have played an insignificant role in the Russification of the Baltic population. The main reason for its dissolution in the ancient Russian nationality was the higher military-political organization of the Eastern Slavs, expressed in the rapid development of their state structures (principalities) and cities.
This text is an introductory piece.
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From the book Russian Secret [Where did Prince Rurik come from?] author Vinogradov Alexey EvgenievichFirst, about relatives: Balts and Venets Thus, the relationship with the Baltic ethnic groups is the cornerstone of philological reconstructions of the Slavic ancestral home. There is no doubt that even now, of all the Indo-European languages, it is Lithuanian and
author Gudavičius Edvardas2. Indo-Europeans and Balts in the territory of Lithuania a. Corded Ware culture and its representatives Few anthropological data allow only a very general characterization of Caucasoids who lived on the territory of Lithuania from the end of the Paleolithic to the late
From the book History of Lithuania from ancient times to 1569 author Gudavičius Edvardasb. Balts and their development before the beginning of ancient influence Around the 20th century. BC in the areas of the Primorsky and Upper Dnieper cord culture, an ethnic group was revealed that speaks the dialects of the Baltic proto-language. In the Indo-European language family, the Slavs are closest to the Balts. They, the Balts and
author Trubachev Oleg NikolaevichLate Balts in the Upper Dnieper After such a brief, but as specific as possible characterization of the Balto-Slavic language relations, naturally, a look at their mutual localization is also concretized. The era of the developed Baltic language type finds the Balts,
From the book To the origins of Rus' [People and language] author Trubachev Oleg NikolaevichSlavs and Central Europe (the Balts do not participate) For the most ancient time, conditionally - the era of the mentioned Balto-Balkan contacts, apparently, we must talk about predominantly Western relations of the Slavs, in contrast to the Balts. Of these, the orientation of the Proto-Slavs in connection with
From the book To the origins of Rus' [People and language] author Trubachev Oleg NikolaevichThe Balts on the Amber Road As for the Balts, their contact with Central Europe, or rather with its emanations, is not primary; lower reaches of the Vistula. Only conditionally
author Tretyakov Petr NikolaevichSlavs and Balts in the Dnieper region at the turn and at the beginning of our era 1So, in the last centuries BC, the population of the Upper and Middle Dnieper regions consisted of two different groups that differed significantly from each other in character, culture and level of historical
From the book At the origins of the ancient Russian people author Tretyakov Petr NikolaevichSlavs and Balts in the upper Dnieper region in the middle and third quarter of the 1st millennium AD. e 1 Until recently, the question of the Zarubintsy tribes as ancient Slavs, raised for the first time seventy years ago, remained debatable. This is due to the fact that between
From the book Starazhytnaya Belarus. Polatsk and Novagarodsk periods author Yermalovich MikolaSLAVES AND THE BALTS It was self-evident that the Masavians and the non-Adnazarian Slavs swept to the territory of the Baltas and could not but migrate and their own ethnic revolution. Menavita at the hour of the passage of the Slavs to the territory of Belarus and a patch of their sumesnaga life from the Balts and pachynaets
A funny thesis lives and roams through publications: "Earlier, the Lithuanians lived almost to Pripyat, and then the Slavs came from Polesie and forced them out beyond Vileyka."[A good example is the classic work of Professor E. Karsky "Belarus" V.1.]
Taking into account the area of the Republic of Belarus (wholly lying in the area of the Baltic hydronyms - the names of water bodies), the genocide of the "Lithuanians" was 20 times larger than the extermination of the Indians in Jamaica (the area was 200/10 thousand km2). And Polissya until the 16th century. on the maps they depicted the sea of Herodotus.
And if you use the terms of archeology and ethnography, the thesis looks even funnier.
For starters, what time is it?
Until the 5th century AD - "striped pottery culture". The terms "antes", "wends", "boudins", "neuri", "androphages", etc. correspond.
In the 4th-6th centuries AD - "Bantser (Tushemly) culture". The terms "Krivichi", "Dregovichi", etc. correspond.
"The final stage of the Przeworsk and Chernyakhov cultures corresponds in time to the collapse of the Roman Empire [5th century AD] and the beginning of the "great migration of peoples". ... Migration mainly affected the emerging princely retinue estate. Thus, the Slavic cultures of V-VII centuries should be considered not as a direct genetic development of the Przeworsk and Chernyakhov cultures, but as an evolution of the culture of the population. "
Sedov V.V. "The problem of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs in the archaeological literature of 1979-1985."
* For reference - the "proto-Slavic country" Oyum (Chernyakhov culture), which lay from the Black Sea to Polissya, was founded as a result of the migration of German Goths to Iranian-speaking Scythia. Hoods (gudai), from the distorted Goths (Gothi, Gutans, Gytos) - in Lietuva, an archaic name for Belarusians.
"It is not possible to single out the local Baltic and alien Slavic ethnic components in the composition of the population of the Bantser (Tushemla) culture. In all likelihood, a cultural Slavic-Baltic symbiosis was formed in the area of this culture with a common house-building, ceramic material and funeral rituals. It can be assumed that time Tushemla culture was the initial stage of the Slavicization of the local population.
Sedov V. V. "Slavs. Historical and archaeological research"
Anthropologists believe that the autochthonous population within the Republic of Belarus remained constant within 100-140 generations (2000-3000 years). In Soviet anthropology, there was such a very neutral term - "Valdai-Upper Nedvinsk anthropological complex", which practically coincides with the map of M. Dovnar-Zapolsky.
* For reference - the term "Slavicized Lithuanians" is already more than a hundred years old. And yes, in the XIX-XX centuries. the reverse process began - and "Kozlovskys" became "Kazlauskas" (the most common surname in Lietuva).
"The most important ethnographic features of the Slavic cultures of the 5th-7th centuries are stucco ceramics, funeral rites and house-building ... Life on the settlements of the early Iron Age is completely dying out, the entire population is now concentrated on open settlements, shelters with powerful fortifications are emerging."(c) V.V. Sedov.
That is, "Slavism" is a transition from a dugout to a kind of city and developed crafts. Probably, by the 9th-10th century - the beginning of the formation of the Polotsk principality on the "path from the Varangians to the Greeks" - a common language - "Koine" was formed. We are not talking about migration comparable to the campaign of the Hungarians from the Urals to the Danube.
The "acceptance of Slavism" and the displacement of local dialects by the common Koine language could stretch for centuries. Back in the 16th century. Herberstein in "Notes on Muscovy" described contemporary Samogits (who did not accept "Slavism") as follows -
"The Samogites wear bad clothes... They spend their lives in low and, moreover, very long huts... It is their custom to keep cattle, without any partition, under the same roof under which they live... They blow up the earth not with iron , but a tree."
That. "Slavs" and "ancient tribes" are a bit from different categories of the concept. And the claims of our northern neighbor for all "pre-Slavic heritage" are slightly exaggerated and a little groundless.
Artist: Shiberin Yuri 12 "V"
The arrival of the Indo-Europeans and the ethnogenesis of the Balts (Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, late 3rd - mid 1st millennium BC)
During the late Neolithic period, agricultural and pastoral tribes began to move from south to north into the forest zone. Researchers consider them Indo-Europeans. They spread first to the territory of Lithuania, then went north - to Latvia and Estonia, reaching Finland, and in the east - the Oka and Volga basins.
The influence of the culture of the Indo-Europeans can be judged from the inventory of the studied settlements. In the Late Neolithic sites in Šventoji, ceramics have a different character than before: these are flat-bottomed vessels of various sizes, decorated with a corded ornament, sometimes with a spruce pattern. Clay contains a lot of grus. Bones of pigs, large and small domestic cattle, wooden hoes, flint arrowheads of triangular and heart-shaped shapes were also found here. Consequently, these people were already engaged in agriculture along with hunting and fishing.
Polished flint and stone axes, stone maces, stone, horn and wooden hoes are typical for this period. More than 2,500 such items have been found in 1,400 places in Lithuania. The fields were cleared of trees and shrubs with axes, and the soil was cultivated with hoes. The distribution of these finds throughout the territory of Lithuania is evidence of its denser and more even settlement in the 2nd-1st millennium BC. e.
Along with polished stone products, people began to use metal - bronze. Bronze items came to the territory of Lithuania in the 17th-16th centuries. BC e. through tribal ties. The oldest metal product known in Lithuania is a dagger with a hilt, discovered in the vicinity of Velyuony (Yurbark region). Similar daggers were then common in the territories of present-day Western Poland and northern German lands.
At first, metal products were brought ready-made, but later bronze began to be processed on the spot. Battle axes, spearheads, daggers, short swords were made from imported metal ingots or broken products. The first metal jewelry also appeared: pins with a spiral head, neck torcs, bracelets and rings. Since bronze or copper was received only for exchange, items made from them were rare and expensive. Only about 250 bronze items of that time have been found on the territory of Lithuania. Along with bronze tools, stone tools continued to be used everywhere. In this era, weakly hatched pottery gradually spread.
In addition to settlements of the Bronze Age, archaeologists also know funerary monuments - large burial mounds with concentric stone crowns. In the 2nd millennium BC. e. in such barrows the dead were buried unburnt, later - burnt, often in an earthenware urn. Apparently, at this time there was a cult of ancestors.
Already in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the process of assimilation by Indo-Europeans of the inhabitants of the southern part of the Narva-Neman and Upper Neman cultural areas, the ancestors of the Balts (sometimes they are called pra-Balts) arise.
At the end of the Neolithic - the beginning of the Bronze Age, the territory between the Vistula and the lower Daugava (Western Dvina) gradually stands out as a separate cultural area with characteristic features of material culture and funeral rites.
The Corded Ware culture groups that penetrated further north were assimilated by the Finno-Ugric tribes or partially returned to the south. Thus, in the Eastern Baltic in the Bronze Age, two regions arose: the southern - Indo-European-Baltic and the northern - Finno-Ugric. The territory of Lithuania is part of a large area inhabited by the Balts, between the Vistula in the south and the Daugava in the north, the Baltic Sea in the west and the Upper Dnieper in the east.
The development of the productive forces led to the disintegration of the primitive communal system and the transition to a class society. This process took place throughout almost the entire first millennium AD. e. It is characterized not only by archaeological finds, but also by the first, albeit fragmentary, written sources. The first written information about the inhabitants of the Eastern Baltic.
The first reliable written evidence about the people who inhabited the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea comes from ancient authors. Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) in Natural History tells that during the time of Emperor Nero, a Roman horseman was sent to the distant shore of the Baltic Sea to decorate the upcoming gladiator games for amber, who delivered enough of it to decoration of the entire amphitheater. The Roman historian Cornelius Tatius (55-117 AD) in his work “Germania” reports that on the right bank of the Suebian Sea live Aistian or Aestian tribes who are engaged in agriculture, although they have little iron products. The Estians collect amber on the sea coast, deliver it to merchants in an unprocessed form, to their amazement, receive a payment. Claudius Ptolemy (90-168 AD) in the work "Geography" mentions the Galinds and Sudins living in the far north of European Sarmatia, which, apparently, can be identified with the Baltic tribes of the Galinds and Suduvs known from later written sources (Yatvingians). This information testifies to the trade of the Romans with the inhabitants of the Eastern Baltic and the fact that part of the Balts (Aestia) tribes was already known to the ancient world.
A later author, the Gothic historian Cassiodorus (6th century AD), mentions that in the early 6th century, the Aestian ambassadors visited the Ostrogoth king Theodoric, offered their friendship and presented him with a gift of amber. In the 6th century Jordan. Retelling the Gothic legends, he writes that the king of the Ostrogoths Germanaric (351-376 AD) defeated the peaceful tribes of the Aestians.
Unions of the Baltic tribes.
On the territory of Lithuania, tribal unions, known from written sources, formed in the middle and in the second half of the first millennium AD. e. in the process of disintegration of primitive society. The anthropological composition of the population of Lithuania by the beginning of the second millennium was quite homogeneous. The main anthropological type is a dolichocranial Caucasoid with a wide and somewhat elongated face, of medium height. Tribal unions were territorial-political formations and included smaller related tribes. In these unions there were territorial units - "lands" with economic and administrative centers. Linguists suggest that it was in the fifth-sixth centuries that the process of separating individual East Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latgalian, Zemgalian, Curonian) from the common East Baltic parent language was completed. Archaeological materials - a characteristic set of decorations and a funeral rite - allow us to outline a number of ethno-cultural areas that can be identified with the territories of tribal unions.
To the east of the Šventoji River and the middle reaches of the Nemunas (Nemunas) there is an area of burial mounds with earthen mounds, in which burials with cremation predominate since the sixth century. The grave inventory consists of a few ornaments (with the exception of pins), common iron narrow-bladed axes and spearheads, and sometimes horse skeletons. These are burial monuments of Lithuanians.
To the west - in the central part of Lithuania (in the basin of the Nevėžys River and in northern Zanemanje) - ground burials are widespread, in which burials with cremation predominate from the sixth to seventh centuries. The grave inventory is not numerous, weapons are few. By the end of the first millennium, the custom had spread to bury an unburnt horse with a richly decorated bridle next to the owner who had been burned. This is the ethno-cultural area of the Aukstaits.
In the southern part of Zanemanya and south of the Merkis River, barrows are encountered, largely made of stones. Burials with cremation, often in urns, a few grave goods characterize the monuments of the Yotvingians-Suduvs.
In the basins of the Dubysa, Jura and upper Venta, ground burials are widespread, where burials with corpses took place until the end of the tenth century. Burnings are a small part. There are a lot of bronze ornaments in the burials, in the male burials there is often a skull of a horse, and sometimes only items of horse harness as a symbolic burial. Only towards the end of the first millennium, the horse was sometimes buried with the owner. These burial monuments belong to Samogitians.
On both banks of the Neman, in its lower reaches, there are ground burial grounds, where the rite of burial in the middle of the first millennium is gradually replaced by cremation. A lot of metal, including women's head ornaments, and original pins were found. These burials were left by the Skalvians.
The burials of the Curonians, Semigallians and villages, who lived on the northern outskirts of Lithuania, in the southern and western parts of Latvia, are also determined according to the corresponding signs.
Consequently, it is possible to single out 8 cultural-ethnic regions of separate unions of the Letto-Lithuanian tribes. Only the tribes of Lithuanians, Aukstaits and Samogitians lived exclusively on the territory of Lithuania. Villages, Semigallians and Curonians also lived in southern Latvia; Skalva - and in the territory of the present Kaliningrad region; part of this region and the northwestern region of Poland were inhabited by kindred Prussian tribes, and the Yatvingian tribes also lived on the western outskirts of Belarus. Slavic, Prussian and Yatvingian settlements mixed here.
