Chapter I. AN ANCIENT UKRAINE'S HISTORY

1. A primitive society on the territory of Ukraine

The origin of human society in what is the territory of the Ukraine today has its roots reaching deep into the hoary past when man, having broken away from the animal kingdom, began to make and use implements, think, and communicate through the medium of speech. Primitive people had a common economy and were grouped in primeval herds, clans and tribes.

The primitive communal system which had the Early Stone (Palaeolithic), the Middle Stone (Mesolithic), the Later Stone (Neolithic), Brazen – Stone (Aeneolithic), the Bronze and the early Iron Ages as its landmarking stages, prepared society for higher forms of civilized life.

Primitive men appeared in what is the present territory of the Ukraine about one million years ago in the Palaeolithic Age. They lived in herds and made primitive implements – pikes, hackers, scrapers and the like, gathered edible fruits, berries, roots, insects, shellfish, etc. The urgency of communication in their daily round led them to develop articulate sound speech.

Primitive men used natural caves as their makeshift or fixed abodes, constructed shelters and clothed themselves in animal skins. They used the flame of the fires caused by thunderstorms to keep themselves warm, cook their food and defend themselves from beasts of prey.

Having learned to produce flame by friction, primitive men became less dependent on natural conditions and obtained a greater opportunity to inhabit large areas. The settlement sites discovered on the banks of the Dnieper, Dniester, Seversky Donets, and Southern Bug were found to contain stone hackers, split flints, cutting and scraping devices, and other primitive implements.

The primeval herds had no family yet as a social unit, for human social relations were still at their lowest level.

The Later Palaeolithic Age, which lasted for over 30,000 years (from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago), saw the progressive improvement of stone and wood implements. Animal bones and horns, particularly mammoth tusks, were also used for the purpose, which indicates that hunting was now man's principal business. Another one – fishing, appeared later on. Hunting and fishing were male occupations whereas women were engaged in gathe­ring activities.

The development of production and social patterns shaped the human being of a contemporary physical type – Homo sapiens. The largest stations have been discovered in the area of Radomyshl in Zhitomir province, Pushkarev and Mezin in Chernigov province, Gontsy in Poltava province, Dobranochevka in Kiev province, and in a number of places in the Crimea and the Sub-Carpathians.

Explorations of the Mezin, Radomyshl, Crimean and other settlements made it clear that primitive people were familiar with embryonic ele­ments of fine arts, as engraving, modeling and ornament-making. Primitive people developed just as primitive superstitions like animism, hunting magic or belief in resurrection.

The Mesolithic stage (10,000-6,000 years B. C.) was one of further achievements in the development of human society. Hundreds of stations dating from those times have been discovered in the Crimean, Odessa, Zaporozhie, Dnipropetrovs’k and other regions of the Ukraine. Men hunted in those days with flint-tipped spears for wild animals: reindeer, elk, ox, horse, and bear, wolf, boar and fox, as well as for steppe and water fowl. They went on devising more sophisticated implements, made of wood, bo­nes and flint as well as earthenware to keep food in. Kindred clans began to merge into tribes as a form of ethnic community and organization.

The primitive communal system reached the peak of its progress in the Neolithic period (6000-4000 B.C.) when humanity learned more advanced modes of activity – stock-breeding and agriculture along with the traditional occupations like hunting, fishing and fruit and berry gathering.

Close on 500 Neolithic settlements and makeshift stations have been discovered in what is today the territory of the Ukraine. They were found in the valleys of the Dnieper, Seversky Donets, Southern Bug, Dniester, Desna, Pripyat, Vorskla, Psel, Sula and other rivers. People domesticated wild animals, first pigs and oxen and then sheep and goats and, later on, horses. Agriculture, that is, the growing of cereals, like wheat, barley, millet, rye, oats and vetch, originated in the Early Neolithic. Yet the traditional economy, as hunting, fishing and gathering, continued to feature strongly in tribal life, improved as time went on. Fish, in particular, was caught with nets, fishing-rods, and other devices. The boat was invented.

The technology of tool-making, like grinding, drilling and sawing, advanced during the Neolithic period; there appeared axes, chisels, adzes, stone knives, arrow- and spear-heads, sickles with stone inserts, grain millers, spinning and weaving tools.

As tribes appeared in the territory of the Ukraine, the primitive community was organizing itself as a clan and tribal system. It was being form­ed of ethnic groups whose tribes developed their cultural and economic links. People lived in primeval matriarchal clan communes, which had male work progressively dominating the reproductive forms of activity – stock-breeding and agriculture as well as hunting.

Religious notions became more sophisticated: they now included some elements of animism, fetishism, primeval magic, totemism, etc. People believed in the other life, in magic incantations, revered fire, rivers, and all kinds of natural phenomena. Applied and fine arts made notable headway.

The Aeneolithic stage (4000-3000 B.C.) was a further qualitatively new period in the development of the primitive communal system. Primitive hoe tilling was superseded by more productive cultivating techniques. Sheep breeding and stud farming began to develop. Appreciable progress was made in handicraft industry: copper was used along with stone to make implements.

The tribes of the so-called Trypillya culture (4000-2000 B.C.) – named after the Trypillya Village in Kiev province – played the leading role in the most of what is the present Ukraine. Trypillya culture spread into the areas lying on either side of the Dnieper, Bug, Dniester, in Volyn and the Sub-Carpathian provinces. One of the early Trypillyan settlements was discovered at the Luka Vrublevetskaya village in Chmielnicki province.

Trypillyan tribes developed for a long time, retaining the particular aspects of their material and mental culture. Husbandry and stock-breeding were their principal occupations for a long period of time. Hunting, fishing and gathering receded into the background. Primitive ox-drawn ploughs (ralos) were used for arable tillage, and so were hand-operated stone and horn hoes. In the cultivated plots of land, the Trypillyans sowed bailey, wheat, and millet, and grew vegetables; they reaped them with flint-tipped horn or wooden sickles. Grain was ground with hand millers. Stock-breeding was increasingly prominent in the Trypillyan economy. They raised cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats. Horses had already been domesticated but were little, used as draught animals.

Trypillyans made implements as well as household articles and decorations of stone, bone, horn, clay, and brazen: flint scrapers, knives, cutters, drills, adzes, axes, hammers, hoes, sinkers, brazen awls, hooks, beads, etc. Utensils were modeled by hand and burned in special furnaces-hearths; pots, plates, bowls, amphorae, pitchers were decorated with ornaments, sometimes portraying animals, birds, human beings and everyday scenes. Implements began to be made with a bow drill carrying a flint bore, a new mechanical device invented in the Aeneolithic period. People lived mostly in ground abodes made of wood and clay and roofed with straw. Trypillyan tribes had some barter trade with the population of the Mediterranean through which they obtained copper axes, knives, daggers, fishing hooks, awls, household utensils and decorations.

The people of the Trypillyan culture had some specific superstitions, too, connected with their occupations: the worship of land fertility, deification of the forces of Nature, forests, rivers, and lakes.

The Aeneolithic period saw the matriarchal commune being progressively replaced by the patriarchal neighboring (rural) commune. Male work in stock-breeding and land cultivation and in hunting gradually supplanted female work which was now mostly confined to house-keeping and, partly, gathering activities. The social and economic development of pri­mitive societies led to the formation of intertribal agglomerations, which occupied large areas and had their own economic and political structure, and a common culture.

The Bronze Age was the next phase in the history of human society. That was the time when implements began to be made of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) – the first man-made metal: solid and sharp axes, chisels, sickles, knives, awls, daggers, pikes for wooden arrows and spears, as well as bracelets, finger-rings, hairpins, hooks, pendants, pots, bowls, cups and so on and so forth. The invention of bronze stimulated productive activity. In the Ukraine, just as everywhere else for that matter, the Bronze Age (second millennium to the early first millennium B. C.) was one of sweeping development of stock-breeding and agriculture, with cattle-raising tribes breaking away from crop-farming tribes.

Stock-breeders began to use wheeled transport – open and hooded carts of wood, which were essential for their nomad life. Both land-tilling and stock-breeding nomads used the yoke to harness a pair of bullocks – their main draught animals. The tribes that dwelt on the banks of the Seversky Donets treated copper ore, which was mined there. They invented bridles for horses, which they rode. Weaving and pottery gained considerable currency.

There were at least ten most ancient cultures in evidence during the Bronze Age. Their carriers were different groups of tribes that inhabited the territory of the Ukraine. That was a pointer to population growth and cultural advance conditioned by economic growth and progress of intertribal relations.

The development of stock-breeding and agriculture, handicrafts and barter wrought appreciable change in the fabric of society. Men came to play the main role in business life. Their status was progressively consolidated through patriarchal clan relations with kinship and inheritance on the father's line. The family, built up of several generations of relatives on the paternal side, became the economic backbone of the communes. It was storing up, little by little, the wealth that the family heads had amassing in their hands. The separation of the family as a productive unit and the appearance of ownership increased the inequality of property relations, giving rise to a rich top crust of clan and tribal nobility – patriarchs, elders, and chiefs. The chiefs made captive slaves and, then, their own poor tribesmen work for them.

The Bronze Age saw the continued development of ancient religious concepts, such as animism, fetishism, magic, and totemism, the worship of ancestors, of the sun, rain, wind, and animals. Little by little, all of those creeds built up to produce a religion. Economic activity and social relations found themselves reflected in fine arts: rock inscriptions, drawings on the walls of grottoes and caves and in pottery, as well as in the making of human and animal statuettes.

The primitive communal order in the territory of the present Ukraine was an important period of its history. Productive work, social thinking, and communication of the members of the classless society became the driving force of its progress. So humanity reached the stage of class-divided society equipped with a considerable stock of experience.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1445