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According to Herodotus, Cimmerians were expelled (âûòåñíåíû) from the steppes by the Scythians.

It was in VII BC when Scythians invaded to Northern Black Sea areas and Caspian steppes. They were ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists and belonged to the Indo-European language family.

Much of the information about Scythians comes from Herodotus. Archeological remains are represented by excavations of burial mounds (êóðãàíû) in Ukraine and South Russia.

When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor in present-day Romania and Bulgaria from a Greater Scythia that extended eastwards for a 20-day ride from the Danube River, across the steppes of today's East Ukraine to the lower Don basin. The Don, then known as Tanaïs, has served as a major trading route ever since. The Scythians apparently obtained their wealth from their control over the slave-trade from the north to Greece through the Greek Black Sea colonial ports of Olbia, Chersoneses, Cimmerian Bosporus. They also grew grain, and shipped wheat, flocks, and cheese to Greece.

Archaeological remains of the Scythians include kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art), gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human sacrifices. Mummification techniques have aided in the relative preservation of some remains.

Large burial mounds (some over 20 metres high), provide the most valuable archaeological remains associated with the Scythians. They dot (óñåèâàòü) the Ukrainian and south Russian steppes, extending in great chains for many kilometers along ridges and watersheds. From them archaeologists have learned much about Scythian life and art.

Scythians lived in confederated tribes, a political form of voluntary association which regulated pastures and organized a common defence against encroaching neighbors for the pastoral tribes of mostly equestrian herdsmen. While the productivity of domesticated animal-breeding greatly exceeded that of the settled agricultural societies, the pastoral economy also needed supplemental agricultural produce, and stable nomadic confederations developed either symbiotic or forced alliances with sedentary peoples — in exchange for animal produce and military protection.

Herodotus relates that three main tribes of the Scythians descended from three brothers, Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais. Herodotus also mentions a royal tribe or clan, an elite which dominated the other Scythians. As far as we know, the Scythians had no writing system.

Scythian contacts with craftsmen in Greek colonies along the northern shores of the Black Sea resulted in the famous Scythian gold adornments that feature among the most glamorous artifacts of world museums. "Greco-Scythian" works depicting Scythians within a much more Hellenic style date from a later period, when Scythians had already adopted elements of Greek culture.

Scythians had a taste for elaborate personal jewelry, weapon-ornaments and horse-trappings. They executed Central-Asian animal motifs with Greek realism: winged gryphons attacking horses, battling stags, deer, and eagles, combined with everyday motifs like milking ewes.



The religious beliefs of the Scythians were the combination of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism (attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts), Trypillian agrarian and later pastoralic mythologies, and the influence of Greek mythology. Foremost in the Scythian pantheon stood Tabiti – the god of light and fire. Their religion was close to state religion.

In II BC Scythians were assimilated by Sarmathian tribes - also Iranian people, which represent nomadic steppe culture. Sarmatian society was hierarchical. There was an aristocratic warrior elite, and the real work was done by the limigantes or slaves. The tribe was still nomadic, roaming over the steppes on horseback or in covered wagons, the kibitkas. Like the Scythians to whom they were closely related, the Sarmatians were highly developed in horsemanship and warfare. Their administrative capability and political astuteness contributed to their gaining widespread influence.

The Scythian gods were those of nature, while the Sarmatians venerated a god of fire to whom they offered horses in sacrifice.

Sarmatian female warriors may have inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons. An early matriarchal form of society was later replaced by a system of male chieftains and eventually by a male monarchy.

Evolving burial customs offer an insight into the progress of the Sarmatian social structure. Early graves held only the remains of the deceased. The somewhat later inclusion of personal objects with the body followed the emergence of class differences. As society became more complex and affluent, more treasures were included with the corpse, until in the final period burial costumes and even jewelry were added to the ritual. Horse trappings and weapons of the Sarmatians were less elaborate than those of the Scythians, but they nonetheless evidenced great skill.

Sarmatian art was strongly geometric, floral, and richly coloured. Jewelry was a major craft, expressed in rings, bracelets, diadems, brooches, gold plaques, buckles, buttons, and mounts. Exceptional metalwork was found in the tombs, including bronze bracelets, spears, swords, gold-handled knives, and gold jewelry and cups.

Great Migration period and dominant role of tribes of Huns, Goths, Turks, and Slavs had changed greatly the map of Eurasia.

3. In the I–V AD the Chernyakhov zone was the cultural space of different peoples interaction: Scytho-Sarmatians, Germanic, and early Slavs. People of Chernyakhov culture built semi-subterranean dwellings, which later would be typical for Slavs. Developed crafts are represented by remains of pottery, metal work. Burial goods testify the existence of well-developed religious beliefs.

In the Great Migration period the leading role of tribes of Turks, Huns, Goths, and Slavs changed seriously the map of Europe. The roots of what might be called Ukrainian civilization or a Ukrainian nation therefore are to be found in the origins of the Slavic peoples or, more precisely, the eastern Slavs.

The Slavic people belong to Indo-European language family. Since the V AD they inhabited most of Central and Eastern Europe and expanded towards Balkans, Alps and the Volga. Information about cultural life of Early Slavs is obscure as written records are few and unreliable. The Antes federation of tribes was the first unity of Eastern Slavs. One of the Antes tribes was the Polianians, who in 482 AD founded the city of Kiev, named in honor of Kyi, the Polianian prince.

Most scholars adhere to the view that the Slavs, composed of various tribes, originally inhabited lands near the Carpathian Mountains in modern-day Poland and western Ukraine. From there, particularly in the seventh century c.e. , they spread out in all directions, moving into new lands (e.g., the Balkans, modern Russia) as colonists. As they migrated, their language evolved into three subgroups: western Slavic (from which Polish and Czech developed); south Slavic (a precursor to languages such as Serbian and Bulgarian), and east Slavic (the root of Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian).

In the case of Ukraine, the history of the earliest Slavic peoples is obscure, as there are few written records about them. According to some accounts, including that of the Russian Primary Chronicle (sometimes rendered as the Tale of the Bygone Years ), compiled in the early twelfth century, the Slavs (like the aforementioned Scythians) are descendents of Noah’s third son Japheth, who received the northern and western sectors of the earth after the flood. Less mythic is the more archaeological-based contention that the Antes tribal federation was the first eastern Slavic culture. Controversies continue, however, about whether the Antes were native to the region or immigrants, whether they are truly Slavic (i.e., some suggest they were more Gothic or Germanic), and the time period of their emergence, which is dated in some accounts as early as the second century c.e . One of the largest of the Antes tribes was the Polianians, who, according to a legend in the Russian Primary Chronicle, in 482 c.e. founded the city of Kiev (Kyïv in Ukrainian), which allegedly took its name from Kyi, a Polianian prince. Some believe that the Polianians had a literate culture, a sort of pre-Cyrillic alphabet that predated the codification of the Cyrillic alphabet by Saints Cyril and Methodius in 863. There is no direct evidence for this contention, but there is more solid basis to claim that the Polianians had contact with the Greek Byzantine Empire centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and were familiar with Christianity.

The decentralized Antes federation was defeated in 602 by the Avars, a Turkic tribe that would rule over much of East-Central Europe. Eastern Slavic culture and identity, such as it was, survived, however, and the Avar Empire fell in the early 800s. Eventually, several of the eastern Slavic tribes in more southerly regions fell under the control of the Khazars, a Turkic people. Farther to the north, the Varangians, a Scandinavian people, held sway over numerous tribes of eastern Slavs. Dominated by outsiders, the Slavic lands in presentday Ukraine were, in the middle of the ninth century, “an economic, cultural, and political backwater.”


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 942


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