Slavic tribes on the territory of Russia in the X century.

The end of Igor's war with Byzantium and the exchange of peaceful embassies favored the fact that the first accurate data about Slavic tribes and cities appeared in Byzantine sources. In the Notes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, information about Russia was recorded from the words of the Byzantines who traveled with an embassy to Kyiv, or the ambassadors of the Rus, who arrived in Constantinople in 944 to conclude a peace treaty. The emperor's work describes in most detail the journey through the Dnieper rapids, which was associated with mortal risk. The Notes reproduced the Scandinavian (Russian) and Slavic names of most of the rapids. According to linguists, the Slavic names of the rapids were less distorted in the Byzantine record than the Scandinavian ones. This indicated that the compilers of the Notes used Slavic sources of information. The knowledge of the person who provided the imperial officials with information about Russia was limited mainly to the Kyiv district. Of the seven Slavic cities named in the Notes, four were located in Southern Russia. Their names (Kyova, Chernigoga, Vusegrad and Vyatichiv) are rendered more accurately, while the names of two cities outside the Kyiv region are distorted beyond recognition (Melinisky and Teliutsy). The last name is not decipherable at all. Among the Slavic tribes are named Kriviteins (Krivichi), Lendzanins (Lendzyans) and Derevlenins (Verviaans, Drevlyans). About these tribes, the author of the Notes received more detailed information and therefore mentions them twice. In addition to them, the northerners (severii), druguvits (dregovichi) and ultins (street) are named. The names of the tribes of Slovenes, Polochans, Vitichs, Volhynians, Tivertsy, who lived far from Kyiv, do not appear in the Notes. The compilers of the Notes showed great awareness of Kyiv and the Kyiv region. However, in the Byzantine list of Slavic tribes there are no meadows that lived in Kyiv itself. At the same time, the authors of the Notes narrate about certain Lendzyans who are absent from The Tale of Bygone Years. There is an assumption about the identity of these tribes. As established in the literature, the word "Ledzyane" reproduces the self-name of the Poles (lendjane; Russian Lyadsky, Poles). The word "meadow" has the same meaning. The name of the glades of the Greater Poland lands and the glades from the Kyiv district coincide. Noteworthy is the order in which the tribes are listed in the Notes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The Lendzyans are mentioned in one case next to the Krivichs, and in the other - next to the streets and Drevlyans. If the neighbors of the Lendzians were the Krivichi (on the one hand), the Drevlyans and the Ulichi (on the other), this means that they lived in precisely those places that, according to the annals, were occupied by the glade and the Radimichi. This small tribe also remained unknown to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, as well as the Glade tribe. It can be assumed that the small tribes of the Polyans and Radimichi were fragments of a large tribe that remained united in the middle of the 10th century, but disintegrated in the 11th-12th centuries. A reflection of this fact was the recollection of the common ancestors and the common origin of the tribes, recorded by the chronicler. "Radimichi bo and Vyatichi," Nestor argued, "from the Poles: byasta bo 2 brothers in Lyasekh - Radim and the other Vyatko, and the gray-haired Radim came to Syezha, and was nicknamed Radimichi, and Vyatko was gray-haired with his family on Ots, from him he was nicknamed Vyatichi". Radom was one of the oldest cities in Poland. The words "Radim" and "Radimichi" correlate with this toponym.

The inhabitants of Kyiv considered themselves glades, which determined the attitude of the chroniclers to this tribe: "Men are wise in terms of meaning, I have become a clearing, from them there is a clearing in Kyiv to this day." Wise meadows had the custom of "meek and quiet", relatives "great shame imeh" had a "marriage custom". On the contrary, Radimichi, Vyatichi and their neighbors "live in the forest, like any other animal, eating everything unclean and shameful before the fathers ...". The obvious partiality of judgment put Nestor in a difficult position. If he admitted that the Polans have common ancestors with the Radimichi and Vyatichi, then the reasoning about the special wisdom and virtues of the Polans would lose ground. It becomes clear why the chronicler decided to pass over in silence the question of the origin of the glades, although the problem of the origin of this tribe and its first prince Kyi was one of the most topical. The Poles, wrote Nestor, settled on the Vistula, and "from those Poles they called themselves a clearing"; "the same is true of the Slovenes who came and gray-haired along the Dnieper and swung across the clearing, and the friends of the Drevlyans, gray-haired in the forests"; "to glades who lived in the mountains," etc. Explaining that the Drevlyans got their name because they lived in the forest, the chronicler left the reader in complete ignorance of why the future people of Kiev, having settled "on the mountains," began to be called "glades." Having named on one page the Polish glades and the Kyiv glades, the learned scribe did not explain what relations these tribes had with each other. Meanwhile, the name of the Wielkopolska Plyakhs-Polyany strictly correlated with the name of the Kyiv Lendzyan-Polyakhs-Polyany. The name Kiowa (Arabic Kuyavia) is close to the toponym Kuyavia in Poland. In the agreement of the Kyiv prince Igor in 944, one of the senior Kyiv "archons" (kings) bore the name Volodislav, characteristic of the Polans.

Researchers expressed surprise that the tiny tribe of Polyans played such an outstanding role in the history of Russia. In fact, a small tribe could hardly survive, much less subdue the much more powerful tribes that surrounded it and occupied vast territories. According to Nestor, the glades were "offended" by their closest neighbors - the Drevlyans, a tribe by no means large. Notes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus explain the matter. Until the middle of the X century. Polyan, Radimichi, and, probably, Vyatichi retained belonging to a single tribe of Lendzyan, which was not inferior in number and power to the union of Krivichi or Ilmen Slovenes. The Norman conquest hastened the disintegration of this tribe. The Lendzyans who lived in the Dnieper region submitted to the Rus, while the Vyatichi remained under the rule of the Khazars for a long time. Old tribal ties were destroyed in the Slavic lands, which were mastered by the Normans in the first place. These lands were also the first to undergo Christianization.

Konstantin Porphyrogenitus described in detail the polyudie of the Rus. In this description, there are no clearings and radimichi. The Rus did not go to the Lendzyans (Polyany, Radimichi) in polyudie for the reason that the Lendzyans' lands in the Dnieper region became their habitat, while the Vyatichi still remained tributaries of the Khazars.

Nestor was an educated monk, a talented and conscientious writer. His description of the life and customs of the ancient Slavs was by no means fiction. The chronicler only followed the impressions of contemporary life. By the beginning of the XII century. Kyiv glade not only received baptism, but also imbued with the Christian spirit, while their former tribesmen Radimichi and Vyatichi still remained pagans. In the middle of the X century. the Lendzyans throughout the entire territory from Kyiv to the lands of the Radimichi beyond the Dnieper and the Vyatichi on the Oka remained pagans. Only after the adoption of Christianity did the differences between the capital and the periphery come out.

The legend about the Polish origin of the glades was known to Nestor. But the topic of the day dominated him - friction between the Christian capital and the pagan outskirts, disputes over whose volost - Kyiv or Novgorod - was ancient, "who in Kyiv began first to reign", etc. Answering all these questions, the Kyiv chronicles outlined the legend of Kiev . The chronicle story about the three brothers, the founders of Kyiv, apparently, was based on a folklore plot. Three brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoriv sailed and sat on three mountains (Kievskaya Gora, Shchekovitsa and Horivitsa), while their sister Lybid sat under the mountain on the Lybed River. The legend about the brothers - the founders of a city or a state can be found in the folklore sources of many countries. The Kyiv chroniclers did not fail to inform about the origin of Rurik, Radim, Vyatko, etc., and kept silent about the origin of the ancestor of all Kyivans - the first Kyiv prince. This greatly reduces the historical value of the legend of Kiya.

Great Migration

The first people on the territory of Russia - 100 thousand years ago. The first colonies founded by the Greeks appeared in the 7th-5th centuries. BC e. In the 5th century BC e. most of these colonies united in the Bosphorus kingdom, which existed until the 2nd century BC. e.

To the north of the Greeks lived the Scythians - nomads.

On the territory of Azerbaijan in the 4th century BC. e. the Scythian kingdom was formed. In the 3rd century they were driven out to the Crimea. They were defeated by the Goths (German tribes).

A new wave of nomads, the Sarmatians, rushed from the east because of the Don. In the 3-7 centuries. n. e. in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples on the territory of the Northern Black Sea region, and later between the Volga and the Danube, Hunnic tribes or Huns poured in, coming out of the steppes of Transbaikalia and Mongolia.

In the 5th century AD e. they reached the borders of northern France. After their defeat by the Gallic tribes, they return back, where they completely dissolve among the Turkic tribes.

In the 6th century, Turkic tribes reappeared from the borders of Mongolia, which in the middle of the 6th century formed the Turkic Khaganate, the territory of which stretched from Mongolia to the Volga.

Gradually, almost the entire population of Eastern Europe (the steppe part) underwent Turkization. In the forest-steppe zone, the Slavic component and the Finno-Ugric one are established. The Iranian-speaking ethnic group, the Alans, lives in the Central Caucasus. In the Western Ciscaucasia in the 6th century, the Bulgars occupied a dominant position.

After the collapse of the Turkic Khaganate in the 80s of the 6th century, the state of Great Bulgaria was formed here, which existed until the first third of the 7th century: it collapsed under the blows of the Khazars. After the collapse, part of the population went to the southwest (the Balkan Peninsula), where the state of Danube Bulgaria was formed. The other part went to the North Caucasus (modern Balkars). Another part moved to the northeast, to the region of the Middle Volga and Kama, where the state of Volga Bulgaria was formed. The Bulgars are considered the ancestors of the modern Chuvash, partly Tatars, Mari, Udmurts.

Great Migration of Nations - code name the totality of ethnic movements in Europe in the 4th-7th centuries, which destroyed the Western Roman Empire and affected a number of territories in Eastern Europe. The prologue of the Great Migration of Nations was the movement of Germanic tribes (Goths, Burgundians, Vandals) at the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 3rd centuries. to the Black Sea. The immediate impetus for the Great Migration of Nations was the mass movement of the Huns (since the 70s of the 4th century). In the VI-VII centuries. Slavic (Sklavins, Antes) and other tribes invaded the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire.

The great migration of peoples and the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs.

1st century AD e. Tacitus spoke of the Wends, who lived in the regions of the West. Poland, Zap. Belarus and Western Ukraine. Under the Wends, scientists understood the people unknown to the ancient world, who lived outside the borders of the state.

4th century BC e. - 7th century BC e. - The Great Migration of Nations due to the cold snap.

Origin of the Eastern Slavs.

The origin of the Eastern Slavs is complex scientific problem, the study of which is difficult due to the lack of sufficiently complete written evidence about the area of ​​their settlement and economic life. It is reliably known that our ancestors in the I - VI centuries. n. e. occupied vast areas of Central and Eastern Europe. In the writings of ancient authors - Pliny the Elder and Tacitus (I century AD) - Wends are reported living between the Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. Many modern historians see in the Wends the ancient Slavs, who still retain their ethnic unity and occupy approximately the territory of present-day South-Eastern Poland, as well as Volhynia and Polissya.

Byzantine historians of the 6th century. were more attentive to the Slavs, who, having grown stronger by this time, began to threaten the Empire. Jordan elevates the contemporary Slavs - the Wends, the Sklavins and the Antes - to the same root and thereby fixes the beginning of their separation, which took place in the 6th-8th centuries. tribes, as well as interaction with the multi-ethnic environment in which they settled (Finno-Ugrians, Balts, Iranian-speaking tribes) and with which they contacted (Germans, Byzantines). It is important to consider that in the formation of the three branches of Slavdom - eastern, western and southern - representatives of all groups recorded by Jordan took part. The most valuable information about the Slavs is given to us by the "Tale of Bygone Years" (PVL) of the monk Nestor (beginning of the 12th century). He writes about the ancestral home of the Slavs, which he places in the Danube basin. (According to the biblical legend, Nestor associated their appearance on the Danube with the "Babylonian pandemonium", which, by the will of God, led to the separation of languages ​​​​and their "scattering" around the world). He explained the arrival of the Slavs to the Dnieper from the Danube by the attack on them by their militant neighbors - the "Volokhovs".

The second route of the Slavs' advance into Eastern Europe, confirmed by archaeological and linguistic material, passed from the Vistula basin to the area of ​​Lake Ilmen. Nestor tells about the following East Slavic tribal unions: the meadows, who settled in the Middle Dnieper "in the fields" and therefore were nicknamed so; the Drevlyans who lived from them to the north-west in dense forests; northerners who lived to the east and northeast of the meadows along the Desna, Sula and Seversky Donets rivers; Dregovichi - between Pripyat and the Western Dvina; Polotsk - in the basin of the river. Cloths; Krivichi - in the upper reaches of the Volga and Dnieper; Radimichi and Vyatichi, according to the chronicle, descended from the genus "Poles" (Poles), and were brought, most likely, by their elders - Radim, who "came and sat down" on the river. Sozh (a tributary of the Dnieper) and Vyatko - on the river. Oka; Ilmen Slovenes lived in the north in the basin of Lake Ilmen and the river. Volkhov; Buzhans or Dulebs (since the 10th century they were called Volynians) in the upper reaches of the Bug; white Croats - in the Carpathians; Uchi and Tivertsy - between the Dniester and the Danube. Archaeological data confirm the boundaries of the settlement of tribal unions indicated by Nestor.

It is known about the occupations of the Eastern Slavs that, mastering the vast forest and forest-steppe spaces of Eastern Europe, they carried with them an agricultural culture. In addition to slash and fallow agriculture from the 8th century. in the southern regions field arable farming, based on the use of a plow with an iron plowshare and draft cattle, is gaining ground. Along with animal husbandry, they were also engaged in their usual trades: hunting, fishing, beekeeping. Crafts are developing, which, it is true, have not yet separated from agriculture. Special meaning for the fate of the Eastern Slavs will have international trade, developing both on the Baltic-Volga route, along which Arab silver entered Europe, and on the route "from the Varangians to the Greeks", connecting the Byzantine world through the Dnieper with the Baltic region.

Theories of the emergence of the Slavs:

Autochthonous (Slavs have always lived in this territory);

Migration (resettlement of the Slavs).

4th century BC e. - Danube. The pre-state was the State of Germanarich (the leader is ready), but other peoples were also part of it. This power existed under an agreement with Rome, collapsed at the end of the 4th century, as a result of the invasion of Rome by the HUNS (headed by Attila). Obviously, the Slavic tribes participated in this raid.

6th century - Jordan (Alanian historian of Ossetia) began to talk about Ants and Sklavins. He refers them to the Wends. Antes in the 6th century constantly attacked the possessions of Byzantium. V. set the Avars tribe on them - the Ants were defeated. After that, Wiz defeated the Avars.

7th century - the division of the Slavs into southern, western and eastern.

8-9 centuries - there are unions of tribes - the Drevlyans and the glades. Everyone has temporary leaders - princes, squads, cities and a national assembly - veche.

The northern center of the Slavs is Novgorod (Slovene).

The southern center of the Slavs is Kyiv (glade).

The question of the origin of the Slavs was raised in the Middle Ages. In The Tale of Bygone Years (XII century), the monk Nestor expressed the idea that the Danube and the Balkans were originally the territory of the settlement of the Slavs, and then the Carpathian region, the Dnieper and Ladoga.

According to the "Bavarian Chronicle" (XIII century), the ancestors of the Slavs were the ancient Iranian-speaking peoples - the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans.

The beginning of the scientific development of the question of the origin of the Slavs dates back to the first half of the 19th century, when the Czech scientist P. Safarik, after analyzing the information about the Slavs from ancient authors and the Gothic historian Jordan, put forward a hypothesis according to which the Carpathian region was the ancestral home of the Slavic peoples.

Studies by linguists in the first half of the 19th century showed that the Slavic languages ​​belonged to the Indo-European language family, on the basis of which it was suggested that there was an Indo-European community that included the ancestors of the Germans, Balts, Slavs and Indo-Iranians, which, according to the Czech historian L. Niederle, broke up at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. The Balto-Slavic community that emerged as a result of this disintegration in the 1st millennium BC was divided into the Baltic and Slavic.

The Russian historian and philologist A. A. Shakhmatov believed that such an Indo-European community existed in the Baltic Sea basin. At first, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians and Thracians who went south left it, and then the Slavs separated from the Balts, who settled in the 2nd century AD, after the departure of the Germans from the Vistula, in the rest of Eastern Europe.

In the first half of the 20th century, foreign and domestic archaeologists made an attempt to clarify which archaeological cultures can be considered Proto-Slavic and what territory the Slavs occupied in different stages historical development.

According to P. N. Tretyakov, the culture of the Corded Ware tribes, who moved at the turn of 3-2 millennia BC from the Black Sea and Carpathian regions to Central Europe as well as to the north and east.

The following cultures were actually Slavic: between the Vistula and the Dnieper - Tshciniec (3rd quarter of the 2nd millennium BC), on the territory of Poland - Lusatian (XIII-IV century BC) and Pomeranian (VI-II century BC), on the Vistula - Przeworsk, in the Middle Dnieper - Zarubinets (both - the end of the 1st millennium BC).

In the II-IV centuries, as a result of the movement of the Gothic tribes to the south, the territory occupied by the Slavs was cut into two parts, which led to the division of the Western and Eastern Slavs. Having taken part in the great migration of peoples, the Slavs at the end of the 5th century, after the collapse of the power of the Huns, also settled in the south of the European continent.

Some chronological clarifications of the origin of the Slavic peoples were made by modern American researchers (G. Treger and X. Smith), according to whom, in the 2nd millennium BC, the ancient European unity broke up into the ancestors of southern and western Europeans (Celts and Romanesque peoples) and northern Europeans (Germans , Balts and Slavs). The northern European community collapsed in the 1st millennium BC, when the Germans first emerged from it, and then the Balts and Slavs.

The historian and ethnographer L. Gumilyov believed that in this process not only the separation of the Slavs from the Germans took place, but also their union with the German-speaking Rus, which allegedly happened during the settlement of the Dnieper region and the area of ​​\u200b\u200bLake Ilmen by the Slavs.

Thus, the question of the origin of the Slavs is so complex and confusing that it is hardly possible to present a true picture of the distant past due to the lack of written sources of that time.

HISTORY OF UKRAINE

To be continued.

At the beginning of the first millennium before new era on the territory of modern Ukraine was the first of the historical peoples - the Cimmerians, who belonged to the Thracian (Thracian - in Bulgarian) tribes. The Scythians replaced the Cimmerians in the 7th century BC. We find the first mention of them in the Greek historian Herodotus, who himself sailed on a ship up the Dnieper and traveled along the Black Sea steppes. The Greeks at that time colonized the North Black Sea coast. There were colonies of Tyre (at the mouth of the Dniester, which they called Tiras - modern Tiraspol), Olbia (at the mouth of the Dnieper), Chersonesos (near modern Sevastopol), Theodosia (Feodosia), Ponticapaeum (modern Kerch), Tanais (at the mouth of the Don), Phanagoria and others.
AT ancient sources it is mentioned that the Scythians drove cattle through the then shallow Kerch Strait.
For 4 millennia, the level Sea of ​​Azov did not decrease by more than ten and did not rise by more than one meter, compared with the current situation. In ancient times, the Kerch Strait was called the Cimmerian Bosporus, that is, the "bull ford of the Cimmerians." Parts of the buildings of the ancient cities of Olbia, Chersonese, Phanagoria and others are currently at the bottom of the sea.
The ancient Greeks called the Sea of ​​Azov "Meotis limine" - "the lake of the Meots", the people who lived on its shores (the Cimmerians only crossed the ford). The Romans gave it the ironic name "Palus Meotis" - "Swamp of the Meotians".
The Cimmerians left the historical arena in the 7th century BC. They lived on a territory whose borders ran along the northern shores of the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Danube to Chisinau, Kyiv, Kharkov, Novocherkassk, Krasnodar and Novorossiysk. The geographer also wrote about them ancient world Strabo.
Despite the fact that different tribes lived in these places, the Greeks called them all Scythians (sketes). The lands of these tribes stretched from the Danube to the Don. The Scythians were divided into nomads (on the left bank of the Dnieper) and grain growers (on both banks of the Dnieper), who sowed grain for sale. Actually Scythian written sources have not been preserved, they are available only among the Greeks, Arabs and Romans. The Scythians called themselves Skolots. This name, according to Herodotus, meant "king".
The Scythians worshiped the sky god named Patsay (compare with the surname Russian cosmonaut- Patsaeva). In 630 BC, they went on campaigns to Assyria, Media, to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, to Egypt. The Egyptian pharaoh Psametikh I bought them off. Then they returned to Mesopotamia, from where they were expelled by King Cyaxares. The Scythians lasted in history for 500 years.

The Eneolithic (Copper Age) and Neolithic period is represented by the Trypillia, Srednestog and a number of other cultures.

The Bronze Age period is characterized by Pit, Catacomb, Srubnaya, Belogrudovskaya culture and a number of other archaeological cultures.

Scythians, an Iranian-speaking people from Central Asia, in the 7th century. BC e. ousted the Cimmerians from the Ukrainian steppes. Around the same period, the Greeks began to establish the first colonies in the Northern Black Sea region. It is believed that the Scythians created the first state on the territory of modern Ukraine. Around 200 BC e. The Scythians are driven out by the Sarmatians. In the 3rd century A.D. e. from the north-west, the Goths migrated to the territory of Ukraine, who here create their own kingdom of Oyum - the second public education on the territory of Ukraine. The Chernyakhiv archaeological culture on the Right Bank and in the Black Sea region, which existed at the turn of the II-III - the turn of the IV-V centuries, is also closely associated with the Gothic era.

In 375, the Goths were defeated by the Huns, who came from the depths of Asia, and moved beyond the Danube, to the Roman Empire, where they eventually created their own kingdoms. The power of the Huns, having suffered several defeats of the Romans and allies, quickly loses its strength and disintegrates.

After the invasion of the Huns, the hegemony over the current territory of Ukraine at the end of the 5th century passes to the Slavic tribes of Antes and Sclavins, represented respectively by the Penkovskaya (also partially Kolochinsky) and Prague-Korchak archaeological cultures. Soon the left-bank part of the territory of Ukraine with Tavria becomes dependent on the Khazar Khaganate (Saltovo-Mayak archaeological culture).

The northwestern regions of Ukraine are currently considered the most likely place for the origin of the Slavs.

At the end of the first millennium, the Slavic tribes on the territory of Ukraine included the Polans, Drevlyans, Northerners, Buzhans, Tivertsy, Ulichs, Volynians and others.

About 200 peoples live on the territory of Russia. The history of some of them goes back to distant millennia BC. We found out which indigenous peoples of Russia are the most ancient and from whom they originated.

Slavs

There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs - someone refers them to the Scythian tribes from Central Asia, someone to the mysterious Aryans, someone to the Germanic peoples. Hence the different ideas about the age of the ethnos, to which it is customary to add a couple of extra millennia “for solidity”.

The first who tried to determine the age Slavic people, was the monk Nestor, taking the biblical tradition as a basis, he began the history of the Slavs with the Babylonian pandemonium, which divided humanity into 72 peoples:

From the point of view of archeology, the first culture that can be called Proto-Slavic was the so-called culture of podkloshy burials, which got its name from the custom of covering cremated remains with a large vessel, in Polish “flare”, that is, “upside down”. It originated between the Vistula and the Dnieper in the 5th century BC. To some extent, we can assume that its representatives were Proto-Slavs.

Bashkirs

The Southern Urals and the adjacent steppes, the territories where the Bashkir ethnos was formed, have been an important center for the interaction of cultures since ancient times. The archaeological diversity of the region confuses researchers and writes down the question of the origin of the people in a long list of "mysteries of history".

To date, there are three main versions of the origin of the Bashkir people. The most "archaic" - Indo-Iranian says that the main element in the formation of the ethnos were the Indo-Iranian Sako-Sarmatian, Dakho-Massaget tribes of the early Iron Age (III-IV centuries BC), the place of settlement of which was the Southern Urals. According to another, Finno-Ugric version, the Bashkirs are the "siblings" of the current Hungarians, since they together descended from the Magyars and the Yeni tribe (in Hungary - the Eno). This is supported by the Hungarian tradition, recorded in the 13th century, about the path of the Magyars from the East to Pannonia (modern Hungary), which they did in order to seize the inheritance of Attila.

Based on medieval sources, in which Arab and Central Asian authors equate Bashkirs and Turks, a number of historians believe that these peoples are related.

According to the historian G. Kuzeev, the ancient Bashkir tribes (Burzyan, Usergan, Baylar, Surash and others) emerged on the basis of the Turkic early medieval communities in the 7th century AD and subsequently mixed with the Finno-Ugric tribes and tribal groups of Sarmatian origin. In the XIII century, nomadic Kypchakized tribes invaded Historical Bashkortostan, which formed the appearance of modern Bashkirs.

The versions of the origin of the Bashkir people are not limited to this. Fascinated by philology and archeology, public figure Salavat Gallyamov put forward a hypothesis according to which the ancestors of the Bashkirs once left ancient Mesopotamia and through Turkmenistan reached Southern Urals. However, in the scientific community, this version is considered a "fairy tale."

Marior Cheremisy

The history of the Finno-Ugric people of the Mari begins at the beginning of the first millennium BC, along with the formation of the so-called Ananyin archaeological culture in the Volga-Kama region (VIII-II centuries BC).

Some historians identify them with the semi-legendary Fissagetes, an ancient people who, according to Herodotus, lived near the Scythian lands. Of these, the Mari subsequently stood out, settled from the right bank of the Volga between the mouths of the Sura and Tsivil.

During the early Middle Ages, they were in close interaction with the Gothic, Khazar tribes and Volga Bulgaria. The Mari were annexed to Russia in 1552, after the conquest of the Kazan Khanate.

Saami

The ancestors of the northern Saami people, the Komsa culture, came north in the Neolithic era, when these lands were freed from the glacier. The Saami ethnos, whose name is translated as "land" itself, has its roots in the carriers of the ancient Volga culture and the Dauphine Caucasoid population. The latter, known in the scientific world as the culture of reticulated ceramics, inhabited in the II-I millennium BC a wide territory from the middle Volga region to the north of Fennoscandia, including Karelia.

According to the historian I. Manyukhin, having mixed with the Volga tribes, they formed the ancient Sami historical community from three related cultures: late Kargopol in Belozerye, Kargopol and Southeast Karelia, Luukonsaari in Eastern Finland and Western Karelia, Kjelmo and "Arctic", in northern Karelia, Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Kola Peninsula.

Along with this, the Sami language arises and the physical appearance of the Lapps (the Russian designation of the Sami) is formed, which is inherent in these peoples today - short stature, widely planted Blue eyes and blond hair.

Probably, the first written mention of the Saami dates back to 325 BC and is found in the ancient Greek historian Pytheas, who mentioned a certain people "Fenni" (finoi). Subsequently, Tacitus wrote about them in the 1st century AD, talking about the wild people of the Fenians living in the region of Lake Ladoga. Today, the Saami live in Russia on the territory of the Murmansk region in the status of the indigenous population.

peoples Dagestan

On the territory of Dagestan, where the remains of a human settlement dating back to the 6th millennium BC are found, many peoples can boast of their ancient origin. This is especially true for the peoples of the Caucasian type - the Dargins, the Laks. According to the historian V. Alekseev, the Caucasian group was formed on the same territory that it now occupies on the basis of the most ancient local population of the Late Stone Age.

Vainakhi

The Vainakh peoples, which include the Chechens (“Nokhchi”) and the Ingush (“Galgai”), as well as many peoples of Dagestan, belong to the ancient Caucasian anthropological types, as the Soviet anthropologist prof. Debets, "the most Caucasian of all Caucasians." Their roots should be sought in the Kuro-Araks archaeological culture that lived on the territory North Caucasus in the 4th early 3rd millennium BC, as well as in the Maikop culture, which settled in the foothills of the North Caucasus in the same period.

Mentions of the Vainakhs in written sources are found for the first time by Strabo, who in his "Geography" mentions certain "Gargarei" living in the small foothills and plains of the Central Caucasus.

In the Middle Ages, the formation of the Vainakh peoples was strongly influenced by the state of Alania in the foothills of the North Caucasus, which fell in the 13th century under the hooves of the Mongol cavalry.

Yukagirs

The small Siberian people of the Yukaghirs (“people of the Mezlota” or “ distant people”) can be called the most ancient in Russia. According to the historian A. Okladnikov, this ethnos stood out in the Stone Age, approximately in the 7th millennium BC, east of the Yenisei.

Anthropologists believe that this people, genetically isolated from their closest neighbors - the Tungus, is the oldest layer of the autochthonous population of polar Siberia. Their archaism is also evidenced by the long-preserved custom of matrilocal marriage, when, after marriage, the husband lives on the territory of his wife.

Until the 19th century, numerous Yukaghir tribes (Alai, Anaul, Kogime, Lavrentsy and others) occupied a vast territory from the Lena River to the mouth of the Anadyr River. In the 19th century, their numbers began to decline significantly as a result of epidemics and civil strife. Some of the tribes were assimilated by the Yakuts, Evens and Russians. According to the 2002 census, the number of Yukagirs was reduced to 1509 people.

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Ancient historians were sure that on the territory Ancient Russia live warlike tribes and "people with dog heads." A lot of time has passed since then, but many mysteries of the Slavic tribes have not yet been solved.

Northerners living in the south

The tribe of northerners at the beginning of the 8th century inhabited the banks of the Desna, the Seim and the Seversky Donets, founded Chernigov, Putivl, Novgorod-Seversky and Kursk.
The name of the tribe, according to Lev Gumilyov, is due to the fact that it assimilated nomadic tribe Savirs, who in ancient times lived in Western Siberia. It is with the Savirs that the origin of the name "Siberia" is also associated.

Archaeologist Valentin Sedov believed that the Savirs were a Scythian-Sarmatian tribe, and the toponyms of the northerners are of Iranian origin. So, the name of the river Seim (Seven) comes from the Iranian śyama or even from the ancient Indian syāma, which means "dark river".

According to the third hypothesis, the northerners (northers) were immigrants from the southern or western lands. On the right bank of the Danube lived a tribe with that name. It could easily be "moved" by the Bulgars who invaded there.

The northerners were representatives of the Mediterranean type of people. They were distinguished by a narrow face, an elongated skull, were thin-boned and nosy.
They brought bread and furs to Byzantium, back - gold, silver, luxury goods. Traded with the Bulgarians, with the Arabs.
The northerners paid tribute to the Khazars, and then entered the union of tribes united by the Novgorod prince Prophetic Oleg. In 907 they participated in the campaign against Tsargrad. In the 9th century, the Chernigov and Pereyaslav principalities appeared on their lands.

Vyatichi and Radimichi - relatives or different tribes?

The Vyatichi lands were located on the territory of the Moscow, Kaluga, Orel, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tula, Voronezh and Lipetsk regions.
Outwardly, the Vyatichi resembled the northerners, but they were not so nosey, but they had a high bridge of the nose and blond hair. The "Tale of Bygone Years" indicates that the name of the tribe came from the name of the ancestor Vyatko (Vyacheslav), who came "from the Poles."

Other scientists associate the name with the Indo-European root "ven-t" (wet), or with the Proto-Slavic "vęt" (large) and put the name of the tribe on a par with the Wends and Vandals.

Vyatichi were skilled warriors, hunters, collected wild honey, mushrooms and berries. Cattle breeding was widespread slash-and-burn agriculture. They were not part of Ancient Russia and more than once fought with the Novgorod and Kyiv princes.
According to legend, Vyatko's brother Radim became the ancestor of the Radimichi, who settled between the Dnieper and Desna in the territories of the Gomel and Mogilev regions of Belarus and founded Krichev, Gomel, Rogachev and Chechersk.
Radimichi also rebelled against the princes, but after the battle on Peschan they submitted. Chronicles mention them in last time in 1169.

Krivichi - Croats or Poles?

The passage of the Krivichi is not known for certain, who since the 6th century lived in the upper reaches of the Western Dvina, Volga and Dnieper and became the founders of Smolensk, Polotsk and Izborsk. The name of the tribe came from the ancestor of Kriv. Krivichi differed from other tribes tall. They had a nose with a pronounced hump, a well-defined chin.

Anthropologists attribute the Krivichi to the Valdai type of people. According to one version, the Krivichi are the migrating tribes of white Croats and Serbs, according to another, they come from the north of Poland.

The Krivichi worked closely with the Varangians and built ships on which they went to Constantinople.
The Krivichi became part of Ancient Russia in the 9th century. The last prince of the Krivichi Rogvolod was killed with his sons in 980. Smolensk and Polotsk principalities appeared on their lands.

Slovenian vandals

Slovenes (Itelmen Slovenes) were the northernmost tribe. They lived on the shores of Lake Ilmen and on the Mologa River. Origin unknown. According to legend, their ancestors were Sloven and Rus, who founded the cities of Slovensk (Veliky Novgorod) and Staraya Russa even before our era.

From Slovene, power passed to Prince Vandal (known in Europe as the Ostrogoth leader Vandalar), who had three sons: Izbor, Vladimir and Stolposvyat, and four brothers: Rudotok, Volkhov, Volkhovets and Bastarn. The wife of Prince Vandal Advind was from the Varangians.

Slovene now and then fought with the Vikings and neighbors.

It is known that the ruling dynasty descended from the son of Vandal Vladimir. The Slavs were engaged in agriculture, expanded their possessions, influenced other tribes, engaged in trade with the Arabs, with Prussia, with Gotland and Sweden.
It was here that Rurik began to reign. After the emergence of Novgorod, the Slovenes began to be called Novgorodians and founded the Novgorod Land.

Russ. A people without a territory

Look at the map of the settlement of the Slavs. Each tribe has its own lands. Russians are not there. Although it was the Rus who gave the name to Russia. There are three theories of the origin of the Russians.
The first theory considers the Rus to be Varangians and relies on The Tale of Bygone Years (written from 1110 to 1118), it says: “They drove the Varangians across the sea, and did not give them tribute, and began to rule themselves, and there was no truth among them , and generations stood up against generations, and they had strife, and began to fight with each other. And they said to themselves: "Let's look for a prince who would rule over us and judge by right." And they went across the sea to the Varangians, to Russia. Those Varangians were called Rus, as others are called Swedes, and others are Normans and Angles, and still others are Gotlanders, and so are these.

The second says that the Rus are a separate tribe that came to Eastern Europe earlier or later than the Slavs.

The third theory says that the Rus are the highest caste of the East Slavic tribe of the Polyans, or the tribe itself, which lived on the Dnieper and on the Ros. “The meadows are even more called Rus” - it was written in the “Laurentian” chronicle, which followed the “Tale of Bygone Years” and was written in 1377. Here, the word "Rus" was used as a toponym and the name Rus was also used as the name of a separate tribe: "Rus, Chud and Slovene", - this is how the chronicler listed the peoples who inhabited the country.
Despite the research of geneticists, disputes around the Rus continue. According to the Norwegian researcher Thor Heyerdahl, the Varangians themselves are descendants of the Slavs.