Alternative Linguiatics - The Slavic Expansion

The Slavs acted on the world stage rather late, when the other Indo-European peoples created known in the history of advanced states and cultures on new places of their settlement. For the first time the Slavs clearly appeared in historical sources soon after 500 AD, and in the thirties, it was regularly reported on the invasions of the Slavs in the north of the Lower Danube (POHL WALTER. 2002: 96). The reason for this delay was the location of the Slavic Urheimat in the north-western edge of the whole Indo-European territory and their continued migration towards the Baltic Sea and the Lower Vistula. The invasion of the Huns in Eastern Europe at the end of the 4th mill resulted in the movement of the local population and the Slavs took part in this "Great Migration of Peoples".

However, historians have repeatedly noted that the large-scale expansion of the Slavs in all directions – to the Balkans, to the shores of the Oder and Elbe, the Western Dvina and the Volga River was peaceful and almost invisible to contemporaries, and, obviously, was the consequence of their large number, which determined the assimilation of the local population in Slav mass. Although, in fairness, it should be noted that the Slavs were assimilated themselves among the population of a higher culture, as it was the, for example, in Greece, or later in Germany. The Slavs behaved more aggressively in the Balkans, and this obviously can be explained by the fact that they were acting in alliance with the Avars, and under their supremacy. Indirect evidence of the latter may be known the passage about the treatment of the Obrs (Avars) to the Slavs in the Chronicle. Nevertheless, the disappearance of the Avars without a trace may be explained by their assimilation among the Slavs.

Prior to this large-scale movement of masses of people, at least during the Zarubintsy culture, the Slavic tribes did not descend below the river Tyasmina. But even in the Tyasmine and north of it, the first Zarubintsy sites were quickly, that is in the end of the 1st cen Ad, replaced by the Chernyakhiv culture of the other, according to Yu. Kukharenko, ethnicity than Zarubintsy folk (KUKHARENKO Yu.V. 1960: 299). Initially, this culture was considered by Soviet archaeologists doubtless the Slavic, but over time many of them came to the conclusion that its formation on polyethnical basis (VYNOKUR I. S., TYMOSHCHUK B.O. 1977: 24, 25). For example, the V. Sedov said that it was formed by creators of the Zarubintsy culture, German settlers from the Polish Pomerania (the Wielelbark culture), and the remnants of the local Scythian and Sarmatian population (SEDOV V.V., 1990-1: 84). Other scholars have tried hard to prove a genetic continuity of the Zarubintsy, Chernyakhiv, and later Slavic cultures. Attempts to improve the ranking of the ancient Slavic culture due to more developed neighbor ones is a consequence of zaideologizovannosti historical science, and serious historians do not always dare to object to certain complex for politicians. With harsh criticism of such views advocated Tretyakov, who believed unequivocally the Chernyakhiv culture as Germanic and obviously was right (TRET'YAKOV P.N., 1982: 10-15). It is advisable to bring the views of the Tretyakov verbatim:

Quite a different character had early medieval Slavic culture, which creators have never been so closely connected with the world of ancient civilizations. If their agricultural production, perhaps only slightly inferior to Chernyakhiv culture, all other industries – metallurgy and metalworking, pottery, bone processing, etc. – differed significantly primitiveness without going beyond the elementary techniques for home craft (Ibid: 14-15).

The fact that the Slavs relatively late mastered metallurgy and metalworking is confirmed by folk beliefs and customs. The world ritual practice widely used metals, particularly iron , but the metals appear in the customs of the Slavs rarely, and if it happens, it just shows that they are of great value. For example, before our time, the Russian and Ukrainian there have ban of the byruing of the deceased together with metal objects, and finding a horseshoe portends happiness. Other people also, for example, among the Germans it was customary to put into the grave with the dead man and his weapons. It is clear that the value of metal objects was significantly reduced at advanced metallurgy.

The Chernyakhiv culture certainly belonged to the Goths. This concept was born in the early twentieth century in German historiography, but Soviet scientists controverted it one way or another for ideological reasons (VYNOKUR I. S., TYMOSHCHUK B.O. 1977: 18-19). The Goths settled in the northern Black Sea Region from Poland and founded here their own state, which witnessed the historical sources and can not resist any doubt. If the Cherniahiv culture did not belong to the Goths, then what did? Another well-known culture, corresponding to the time of stay of the Goths in the Ukraine, just does not exist, but the Goths could not leave behind any cultural traces. Attempts to link with the Goths some archaeological sites, such as, for example, Ditinetsky burial ground are untenable because they are very small to bind them with large population of the Goths. In the early first millennium BC population between the Dnieper and Dniester rivers was very colorful. On the Lower Dnieper they were descendants of Cimmerian, Scythian, Sarmatian tribes, and descendants of the Greek cities of the Black Sea Region. There were also Germanic tribes of Bastarnae, the Celts which destroyed Olbia in the middle of the 1st cen AD. Somewhat before, the Celts had their settlements in the Upper Dniester, which is witnessed by the discovery of Celtic sites near the village of Bovshev. The Low Dniester was populated by the Thracians (the Lipetsk culture). The Goths, obviously, displacing most of the local Scythian and Sarmatian population of the Dnieper, occupied large areas on the right bank:

The Chernyakhiv ancient artefacts cover vast territorial space. South-western border of their spread area is the lower reaches of the Danube and Transdunubia. They reach reach the left bank of the Dnieper on east and northeast, up to the Riverlands of the rivers Vorskla and Seym. Northern boundary Chernyakhiv culture was the Ukrainian Polesie Ukraine and southern one was the land of the Northern Black Sea Coast (Ibid: 19)

Having set in motion by the current Indo-European tradition of right-bank Slavic tribes predominantly moved westward or stayed on the old places, and the left-bank ones, except for the ancestors of modern Russian, crossing the Dnieper moved towards the Balkans. In this motion, the Slavs were briefly detained over the Danube, but, according to Procopius of Caesarea, in the middle of the 5th century they made the first foray into Illyria. According to place names the Slavs first compact settled Western and partly North-western Bulgaria (GEORGIEV VLADIMIR, 1960: 75), so we can assume that most of the Slavs moved into the Balkans through the Carpathian Mountains, but not along the shore of the Black Sea. This move is consistent with the speading maps of two types of Slavic clayware – Prague-Korchak and Kolochin-Penkov ones which can be found at reputable historians (BARAN V.D. 1978; SEDOV V.V. 1979; TRET'YAKOV P.N. 1982). It should be noted that Slavic pottery was undeniably more primitive in form than the claywareof the Chernyakhiv culture, although their findings overlap stratigraphically as excavations in the Transnistrian village Bakota and elsewhere have shown (VYNOKUR I. S., TYMOSHCHUK B.O., 1977: 40).

One can see on the map that the pottery of the first group (Prague-Korchak type) is spread over a vast area of territory between the Elbe and Saale to the Dnieper and captures all the territory of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the central and southern Poland, the Polesie. The rottery of the second group is spread in Moldova, Wallachia, Dobruja, and south of the Danube in Bulgaria. Here, there are also sites of the first group, but much less frequently. This ceramic of Kolochin-Penkov type, which is common in the middle reaches of the river Sula, Psel and Vorskla. The pottery identical in the form to the Slavic pottery of the second group is found Chernigov Desna area and Kursk Seym area. It should be noted that if there are in the western regions areas wich represent two types of pottery, then the eastern areas have no such confusion. This indicates that the Slavs, beginning a great migration southward and westward, had two large streams which are crossed, some time after the beginning of the movement. This feature allows trace the origins of migration of both groups of Slavs in the reasonable expectation that the first type of pottery was left by the ancestors of today's Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, and pottery of the second group was by the ancestors of the southern Slavs. The Slavs being representative of the first group of the pottery had such source is the territory south of the Pripyat River, ie the common Urheimat of the Czechs and Slovaks. Southern Slavs (the second group) began to move from the banks of the rivers Desna, Seym, and Sula, that is there, where we put the ancestors of the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians.

We already know that the ancestral home of Ukrainians was in the area between the rivers Pripyat and the Berezina. They remained there, apparently, to the Great Migration caused by the invasion of the Huns at the end of the 4th cent. BC. When the ancient ancestors of today's southern and western Slavs began to leave their homelands, their place at once wasoccupied by settlers from the left bank of the Lower Pripyat, Berezina and Sozh. And again the same Ethno-Generating Areas began to form Old Ukrainians tribes of Dulebs, Drevlians, Polans, and Severians. The Dulebs populated area between the Bug and the Sluch, they were called also Volynians, since this area has previously called Volhynia.

The Polans populated area between the rivers Teteriv, Ros’, and Dnieper. Consonance between the names of the Polans and the Poles, of course, is no coincidence when you consider that the homeland of the Poles was in the neighborhood on the left bank of the Pripyat River. First, these two Slavic branches have a common ethnonym, which the Poles have preserved until now. True, the ethnonyms of the Polans and Poles area are perplexing as they are like Sl pole “field” but their homelands are located in forest areas. However, the explanation could be that. The Urheimat of the Greeks was also been – on the left side of the flow of Pripyat. The Greek word φυλον means "a clan, tribe". Self-names of different peoples like “people”, “folk”, “tribe” are numerous, so this explanation may have right to exist.

The Severians were living on the banks of the Desna and Seym. L. Niederle outlines their range mainly in the area between the Desna and Sula (NIDERLE LUBORЪ, 1956: 159).They populated the right bank of the Desna up to the river Snov, where began the land of the Radimiches, one of the two ancient tribes of Southern Russians (the other was the tribe Viatiches). Consequently, some of the old Ukrainian tribes crossed the Dnieper above the Desna and then moved to the south-east till the Vorskla, while the Radzimiches, remaining on the left flank, came to the Seym. The tribal name of the Severians can be compared with several ethnonyms, including Serb, Sabir, Savar, and with a large nest of words in different languages which have a sense of "a neighbor, friend, brother" – Ukr. siaber, Blr. siabr, Serb. sebar, in Rus. sieber, Lit. sebras, Mord. shabra, Alb. sember, etc. Perhaps all these words origin from the shorted OGmc *nähwa-gabur, as was discussed previously, but for us it is important that the settlements of the Severians covered the area of the Serbs. Already P. J. Šafárik and L. Niederle believed that the two ethnonym are related and this relationship has a real reason, as they are bound to the same territory. The Serbo-Croat area is divided by the River Snov into two approximately equal halves, so it is possible that the Serbian and Croatian dialects began to form even on the common homeland of the Serbs and Croats. The origin of the tribal names of Croats also can be considered as the effect of substrate left by previous Iranian population. In this regard, the following passage in the article by R. Novaković has particular interest:

The left by the Proto-Ukrainians their Urheimat was occupied by the Belarusian tribe Dregoviches, which gradually occupied all the territory on the right bank of the Dnieper between the Pripyat and Western Dvina, as the tribe of the speakers of North-Russian dialect also left their ancestral home and moved away northward to the headwaters of West Dvina, the Volga and further along the river Lovat to Lake Ilmen. Assimilating on this large area various local Baltic and Finnish ethnic groups, the Slavs were divided into separate tribes of the Kriviches, Polochans, and Novgorod Slovenes. Following the Kriviches, the Dregoviches penetreted to the north-east of Belarus spreading the Bantserov culture that has replaced the Dnieper-Dvina one, created by the Balts. The assimilation of the Balts by the Slavs was as always peaceful and continued even in XII – XIII century (ZVERUGO Ya.G., 1990: 32-33).

The ancestors of the Russians speaking South Russian dialect, the Viatiches and Radimiches, moved mainly eastward, herewith the Viatiches as the first came into contact with Mordvins and other Finno-Ugric tribes that were assimilated by the Slavs for centuries already in historical times. Ancient Finnish substratum wass largely influenced the racegenesis and ethnogenesis of the Russian people (ALEKSEYEV V.P., 1974-2). You can also trace the impact of the Finnish language and substratum wich was studied by many experts(VEENKER W., 1967; KIPARSKI V., 1969; BIRNBAUM HENRIK, 1990; ANIKIN A.E. 1990). The southern dialect of Russian and Mordvinian languages (Erzya and Moksha) have much mutual borrowings, but it is interesting that the Ukrainian and Mordvinian languages also have some lexical correspondences. For example, Moksha rohams exactly corresponds to Ukr. rohkati "to grunt" and Erzya riamigams "to chew" is semantically and phonetically close to the Ukrainian. remigati "to ruminate". However, the Ukr remigati is borrowed from Romanian rumega "chewing gum" , which, in turn, has Latin roots (Latin rumigare "same"). On the other hand, the Finno-Ugric languages have also similar words, although phonetically more remote from Mordvinian: Komi römidztyny, Udm. zhomystyny "to chew the cud". They have a match in Old Ind romanthah "rumination". However, the Ukrainian and Mordvinian words are most similar phonetically, so it is conceivable that Mordovians borrowed the word from the ancestors of the Ukrainians, but as it was got for the last remains not clear. The Russian language has no similar words, so Mordvinian -Ukrainian lexical correspondences can be explained by the fact that the Proto-Ukrainins moving eastward, as Viatiches did, reached the the territory of Mordvins and came into direct contact with them. The determination of the relative time of this contact can be made ny Mordvinian word šivets "a cobbler". Phonetics of words responds well to PSl. šъvьcь, therefore, borrowing occurred before the fall of reduced vowels.

There were violent events in the steppes of the Ukraine in the middle of І mill. AD and it is almost impossible to restore their course. When the Hunnian empire has been broken up after Atilla’s death, the aggressive tribes of the nomads of the different ethnic origin began to roll as a wave after a wave here, conducting struggle between themselves and with the previous newcomers for pastures and the convenient ways for extortionate attacks to the provinces of Byzantium, to Transcaucasia and Central Europe. Historical chronicles have kept for us the names of Avars, Acacirs, Barsils, Bulgars, Cutrigurs, Savirs, Saragurs, Khazars, and many others. They were mainly Turkic tribes, the deal from them stayed here since Scythian times, and the part has come from the Kazakh steppes later. However, how we have seen, the ancestors of the modern Magyars, Alans, Iranian tribes of Ossets and Kurds had to stay here. Maybe, the part of those Slavs which moved to the Balkans has lagged behind the tribesmen and stay in the steppes, going to the nomadic way of life. In short, these times require special research, but it is obvious that in such conditions the bulk of Slavs from the Middle Dnepr country could not occupy the southern steppe open spaces, as there was an opportunity to move west- and eastward.

The moving of the Slavs should go since the certain time continuously so, that any area was not left empty, h.e. particular tribes are always remaining in contact among themselves during the movement. Moving westward, the Ukrainians followed the Poles and Slovaks, and they proceeded their movement also when the Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, having no opportunity for moving further, have stopped on this territory which they is occupied by them now. Therefore some deal of the Ukrainian people stratified on the Poles and Slovaks. In such way it can be explained that Ukrainians have seized rather wide spaces far behind the river San and behind the Carpathian mounts in days of the Kiev Rus'. Yevhen Tymchenko determined the boundary of the Ukrainian settlements along the Danube and the Prut up to the city of Chernovtsy, further westward to the city of Siget on the Tysa (now Sigetul-Marmatiei in Romania) and along the southern hill-sides of the Carpathian mountains up to the river Poprad, then northward by the river Dunayets up to the town of Tarnow and further to the city of Bialsk Podlaski in Poland. In the north, the frontier between Ukrainians and Belorussians was the Pripyat from its tributary Yaselda" (TYMCHENKO Ye. 1930). Approximately so the boundaries of the Ukrainian ethnographic territory were determined also by Reinhold Trautman (TRAUTMAN REINHOLD. 1948: 153). It is necessary to pay attention that the frontiers between particular Slavic areas were not precise if they did not go on natural boundaries. Movement eastward, the Ukrainians, undoubtedly, reached the Don, and, probably, the Volga, but definition of east frontier of this first Ukrainian colonization is complicated by the latest Ukrainian resettlements on the Sloboda Ukraine and in the Volga region