The First State like Formations on Ukraine’s territory

There was increased disintegration of the primitive communal system among the tribes that lived in what is the present territory of the Ukraine during the period when iron was discovered and put to use (the first millennium B.C.), which contributed towards the development of agriculture and stock-breeding, handicrafts and trade. Implements made of iron turned out to be more durable and convenient and progressively superseded stone, copper, and bronze tools. The use of iron tools enhanced the productivity of labour which contributed towards expanding production and exchange and led to individual groups of people amassing wealth in their hands and, in consequence, towards inequality of property relations and social stratification. That produced the conditions for the exploitation of man by man, for class division, and for the emergence of a State-organization.

The opening period of civilization was one of division of labour, exchange, commodity production, the appearance of money, merchants and money-lenders, the emergence of private land ownership, and slave labour as the dominant form of production. The hallmarks of a class-divided society were a new form of family – monogamy; a detached couple as an economic unit; the State as the machinery for the dominant class to subdue the masses; the growing contrast between town and countryside; exploitation of man by man and the class struggle.

The Early Iron Age and civilization of the pre-Slavonic tribes are dated the 9th to the first half of the 7th century B.C. when the first settlements of crop-farming and stock-breeding tribes appeared in the middle of the Dnieper Valley. Their sites have been found in the Cherkassy, Podolia, Volyn, Sumy, and Sub Carpathian provinces, and elsewhere.

It was arable farming that progressively gained prominence, along with stock-breeding, in the husbandry of the pre-Slavonic tribes. They had bronze replaced by iron as material from which to make more durable and dependable implements. The use of iron revolutionized both the econo­mic and military activities of the pre-Slavs.

Late in the first millennium B. C, the pre-Slavs built defense ramparts up to 10 meters high and scores or even hundreds of kilometers long, along the Dnieper tributaries south of Kyiv. Those structures were called Serpent Ramparts and were designed to defend their territories in the case of nomad attacks from the south. Remains of Serpent Ramparts can still be traced along the Ros, Sula, Stugna, Trubezh, Vita, Krasnaya and other rivers. Similar structures, called Trayan Ramparts, have also been discovered in the Dniester Valley.

According to ancient Greek historian and geographer Herodotus (484-420 B.C.), there was a pre-Slavonic community of Skolots dwelling in the Dnieper Valley. They had advanced techniques of land cultivation and stock-breeding, handicrafts and military art. They put up defense ramparts and fortresses along the borderline separating them from the nomad tribes of the South. The federation of the Skolot tribes of the Dnieper Valley represented an early State-organization, which confronted the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, and the Greek city-states on the Northern Black Sea shore. Skolotian tribes traded in grain with Greek city-states and defended their territory against nomad incursions. The story about a fabulous smith who had forged a plough and harnessed the Serpent to pull it attested to the existence of arable farming and the use of iron. The material culture of the pre-Slavs attained a relatively high level.

The tribes historically known as Cimmerian lived in areas north of the Black Sea, occupying the region that stretched from the Dniester estuary all the way to the Don, and also the Kerch Peninsula and the Northern Crimea, late in the second and early in the first millennium B. C.

The Cimmerians were sedentary tribes. Land cultivation was their major occupation. Besides, they bred cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs. Some tribes roamed the steppe north of the Black Sea. The Cimmerians were also engaged in iron and non-ferrous metal smelting, spinning and weaving, carving and pottery.

The capital of the Cimmerian State-organization, Cimmerick must have been lying in the proximity of the Dniester estuary. Their Czars set up large mounted detachments and made armed attacks against neighboring countries, like Urartu, Phrygia, and Media. Cimmeria broke up under the onslaught of a more powerful federation of Scythian tribes.

The Scythians were an ancient people who lived on the Northern Black Sea shore in the seventh to the third century B.C. Having come from the hinterland of Asia, the Scythians dislodged the Cimmerians, subjugating or assimilating the rest of the local population.

A powerful State emerged in a vast area between the Don and the Dniester, following the unification of Scythian tribes. Its capital has been discovered to have been sited near the town of Kamenka-Dneprovskaya of Zaporozhye Region. The settlement was well protected by earthen ramparts. Some remains of bloomeries and forge hearths were discovered on its site (the Scythians extracted iron from what are known today as the Krivoi Rog ore fields). The territory of Scythia was subdivided into a number of provinces – "nomes", inhabited by Scythian and local tribes.

The Scythian slave State guarded the interests of the rich and the nobility and kept the common people in submission. Slavery in Scythia differed somewhat from ancient slavery: it was only the prisoners of war that became slaves. Yet Scythian commoners were also subject to the wealthy nobility.

The Scythians were reputed to be fine warriors, which was particularly manifested during their war with the Persian King Darius I in 514-513 B.C., who, with a big army under his command, crossed the Danube to invade the steppe north of the Black Sea. The Scythians joined forces with neighboring tribes, the Sarmatians, Geloni, and Budini. However, even that united front proved inadequate to the hostile onslaught, and the Scythians began to retreat, wearing out the invaders. The force Darius had under his command, extenuated by the ineffective march through the whole of Scythia, had to leave the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Scythians had thus earned the reputation of being invincible. In 331 B.C., they smashed up a 30,000-strong force of Zapirion (a Greek military commander of the times of Alexander the Great), which had invaded their lands.

The Scythians created a material culture, which absorbed the achievements of the local tribes and enriched itself by emulating the advanced civilizations of the ancient Orient, the Caucasus, Greece and Rome. Their grave-side statues of stone have come down to us through the centuries. Scythian handicraftsmen carved female images of sirens on bone plates as well as scenes of Scythian warriors fighting monsters, and often portrayed animals (deer, horses, or snakes) on their shields, and everyday scenes of warriors and nobles on bowls. Scythians idolized heavenly bodies (like the sun, the moon, stars, and comets) and natural phenomena (thunder, lightning, wind, rain or snow).

The presence of Scythians on the Northern Black Sea shore had a certain impact on the economy, social order, material culture, and ideological concepts of the neighboring pre-Slav population of the Dnieper country.

The exacerbation of internal contradictions, unending extenuating wars against the ancient city-states as well as the Sarmatian tribes caused the Scythian State to decline economically and politically. Their Eastern neighbors – Sarmatian tribes settled the Northern Black Sea shore during the great migration of peoples from East to West at the junction of the archaic and early-Slavonic epochs and dominated that region from the second half of the third century B.C. to the third century A. D. Sarmatia occupied an area from the Danube estuary all the way to the Volga. Just like the Scythian State-organization, it developed as one of slavedom as time went on.

The Sarmatians were engaged in rather advanced stock-breeding. Besides, they had many other pursuits, like smithery, bronze casting, leather tanning, woodworking, spinning, weaving, the making of felt and ceramic articles, all kinds of weapons, clothes and footwear, and adornments. The Sarmatians carried on fairly brisk trade, notably, with Greek city-states. Their important commercial centre was the town of Tanais in the Don estuary where goods were shipped from other countries across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Sarmatia played a notable role in the international relations of the States situated in the area of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. For several centuries, Sarmatians exercised a positive influence on the life-style and culture of the local populations and those of neighboring Slavonic tribes, economies and public life of the ancient cities north of the Black Sea.

The Sarmatians prayed to different gods (as those of fertility and war), and worshipped the sun and fire. Deified objects and events were carved on Sarmatian articles of bone and metal (combs, ear-rings, and statuettes).

Sarmatia ceased to exist owing to Gothic and Hunnish invasions; her population was assimilated by other communities, the Slavs, in particular.

Greek colonization, which developed far and wide on the shore of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea played a certain part in the history of the Northern Black Sea shore peoples.

City-states cropped up on the Northern Black Sea shore: as Tyre (in the Dniester estuary), Olvia (in the mouth of the Bug Lagoon), Theodosia (Eastern Crimea), Panticapaeum (presently Kerch), Phanagoria (in the Taman Peninsula), Chersones (near present-day Sevastopol), to mention just a few.

The main role in the economies of Olvia and other city-states was played by handicraft industry and trade, while agriculture, stock-breeding and fishing were subsidiary occupations. State power in that slave-holding republic belonged to a popular assembly, however, civil rights were enjoyed only by the freemen of the city; the slaves and the women had no political rights at all. Power was virtually in the hands of a restricted group of slave-holding nobility.

Outstanding among the ancient slave States in that region was the Kingdom of Bosporus, which had arisen as an amalgamation of about a score of Hellenic cities on the Kerch and Taman Peninsulas. Its economic backbone was advanced agriculture, fruit-growing and grape-growing, using slave labour of local origin.

The slave city-states on the Black Sea shore (7th century B.C. to 4th century A.D.) lived under various forms of government: monarchy, aristocratic or democratic republic, but their class essence remained identical – the slaves were granted no rights and remained an oppressed class.

Complex internal social and political contradictions and adverse external factors (like Roman and Hunnish invasions) led to the decline of the once prosperous ancient cities.

So it was big tribal conglomerations of the Early Iron Age, like Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians, as well as ancient city-states that played a considerable role in the historical process on the territory of South-East Europe. Their relationship with local tribes in the economic, political and cultural fields contributed towards the social development of the local communities. The Slavonic tribes, which had emerged in the Dnieper Valley, assimilated the achievements of material and mental production by their predecessors and contemporaries and used them in the process of creating their own culture.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1407