How our ancestors lived. Eastern Slavs in antiquity

We all know that the Slavs played an important role in the formation of the states of Eastern Europe. This group of kindred peoples, the largest on the continent, has similar languages and similar customs. Its population is about three hundred million people.

Eastern Slavs in antiquity: resettlement in Europe

Our ancestors were a branch of the Indo-European family of peoples, which, during the Great Migration, scattered throughout Eurasia. The closest relatives of the Slavs are the Balts, who settled in the territories of modern Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. Their neighbors were the Germans in the south and west, the Scythians and Sarmatians in the east. In ancient times, the Eastern Slavs passed through Eastern and Central Europe, where the first cities of Ukraine and Poland were founded in the interfluve of the Dnieper and Vistula rivers. Then they overcame the foothills of the Carpathians, settling along the banks of the Danube and on the Balkan Peninsula. The great territorial remoteness of the Proto-Slavs made its own adjustments to their language, customs and culture. Therefore, the group was divided into three branches: western, southern and eastern.

Eastern Slavs in antiquity

This branch of our forefathers occupied a vast territory. From the Ladoga and Onega lakes to the Black Sea coast, from the Oka and the Volga to the Carpathian mountains, they plowed the land, ordered trade, and built temples. In total, historians name fifteen tribes of the Eastern Slavs. The Finno-Ugric tribes peacefully coexisted with them - our ancestors were not distinguished by excessive belligerence, but preferred to maintain good relations with everyone.

Activities of the Eastern Slavs

Our ancestors were farmers. They skillfully wielded a plow, a sickle, a hoe, a plow with a share. The steppe inhabitants plowed virgin lands, in the forest zone, trees were first uprooted, and ash was used as fertilizer. The gifts of the land were the basis of the diet of the Slavs. Millet, rye, peas, wheat, barley, buckwheat, oats were used for baking bread and for cooking cereals. Also industrial crops were grown - flax and hemp, from the fibers of which threads were spun and fabrics were made. People were especially fond of domestic animals, since each family raised cattle, pigs, sheep, horses, and poultry. Together with the Slavs, cats and dogs lived in their homes. Hunting, fishing, bee-keeping, blacksmithing and pottery were developed at a very high level.

Religion of the Pre-Slavs

Before Christianity came to the Slavic lands, paganism reigned here. In ancient times, the Eastern Slavs worshiped a whole pantheon of gods who personified the forces of nature. Svarog, Svarozhich, Rod, Stribog, Dazhdbog, Veles, Perun had their places of worship - temples where idols stood and sacrifices were made. The dead were burned at bonfires, and mounds were poured over the ashes placed in a pot. Unfortunately, the Eastern Slavs in antiquity did not leave written evidence about themselves. The famous Velesov book raises doubts among researchers about its authenticity. However, archaeologists find a large number of household items, weapons, remnants of clothing, jewelry, and cult things. They can tell about the life of our ancestors no less than chronicles and legends.

15.02.2014

The ancient Slavs, whose manners and customs formed the cultural basis of most of the Eastern European peoples, once stood out from the large Indo-European group of tribes. In ancient times, this vast community of people settled throughout Eurasia, giving rise to many famous peoples. So, and the ancient Slavs, once united from among the Indo-Europeans, leading a single economic structure, similar in language and social structure. During 4-6 centuries BC. the Slavs took part in the great migration of peoples, as a result of which they colonized the lands of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, subsequently dividing into three branches of the Slavs - Western, Eastern and Southern.

Resettlement of the tribes of the ancient Slavs

For the first time, the Byzantine chronicles of the 6th century AD began to mention the Slavic people, speaking mainly about the tribes that lived in the Balkans, and thanks to Nestor the chronicler we today know the tribes and lands of the Eastern Slavs. The settlement of the tribes was as follows:

The Krivichi lived in the upper reaches of the Volga, Dnieper and Western Dvina and further north;
Glades lived in the Middle Dnieper region, on the territory of modern Kiev;
Tivertsy and Uliches in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, Bug and the mouth of the Danube River;
Vyatichi in the upper reaches of the Oka and downstream;
Slovene in the lands from Volkhov to Ilmen;
Dregovichi inhabited Polesie, from Pripyat to Berezina;
Drevlyans, on the banks of Teterov and near the river Uzh;
Radimichi between Iput and Sozh;
Northerners near the Desna;
Duleby, they are Volynians, Buzhany lived in Volhynia;
Croats on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains.

The life of the ancient Slavs

Numerous excavations and scientific works helped to clarify the life, customs and traditions of the Slavs. It became known, for example, that for a long time the ancient Slavs did not depart from the traditions of the patriarchal way of life and the communal-clan system. Families united into clans, and those into tribes. Respected elders were in charge of public life, who convened a veche (council) to resolve all important issues. Time brought the isolation of family activities, and the tribal structure gradually passed into the communal way of life (rope).

The Slavs were a sedentary people and were engaged in agriculture, plowed the fields with a plow drawn by oxen and horses, harvested useful plants and perfectly mastered various trades - hunting, fishing, and also raised some livestock and owned crafts. The Slavs were very active in the extraction of wax and honey - beekeeping.

It is believed that the development of trade gave impetus to the emergence of cities among the ancient Slavs. Many tribes began to have their own centers. Ilmene built Novgorod, the meadows - Kiev, the mother of Russian cities, the northerners - Chernigov, Radimichi - Lyubech, and Smolensk was founded by the Krivichi. Slavic settlers settled in settlements - villages along the banks of the rivers that fed the Slavs and served to move along the water. In the cities, military squads invariably appeared, in which the Slavic soldiers united, and the Princes became the head of the troops. The nascent power gradually gained more and more influence, becoming sovereign rulers in their lands. For example, the Varangians Askold and Dir founded a principality in Kiev, Rurik reigned in Novgorod, and Rogvolod reigned in Polotsk.

Religion of the ancient Slavs

The ancient Slavs, whose manners and customs, as well as ideas about the world, were pagan, deified nature, deceased ancestors and believed in the existence of all kinds of gods. The Slavs called the sky Svarog, the celestial phenomena of which, were considered his children, svarogichi. For example, Perun, svarozich, was a thunderer and enjoyed great respect among the Slavs. In addition to possessing lightning and thunder, he was the god of war, patronizing Slavic warriors. The Sun and Fire were revered for their strength, life-giving or destructive. For example, the kind Dazhbog bestowed light and warmth, and the angry Khors could burn out crops and nature with heat and fire. Stribog ruled over the winds.

Our ancestors attributed dominion over all natural phenomena and processes to the divine will, trying to win the favor of the gods with various sacrifices and holidays. Magi, wizards - Slavic priests, knew how to recognize the will of the gods, and possessed religious authority in their tribes. Moreover, everyone who wished could make a sacrifice to the gods himself. At a later time, the Slavs began to create numerous idols from the processed wood, which served as representations of their gods. Christianity, adopted in the 10th century by Prince Vladimir, was engaged in the eradication of paganism in Russia for many years, and, nevertheless, the faith and traditions of the Slavs have survived to this day, in the form of folklore, folk signs and all kinds of holidays.
Video: Slavic Holidays

The original place of settlement slavs usually consider the Carpathian region, from where they spread to the north, south and northeast and divided into 3 groups: eastern or Russian, western (Chekho-Moravians, Poles and Polabian Slavs) and southern (Bulgarians and Serbs).

During the 7th - 9th centuries, the Slavs formed separate states - Czech, Moravian, Polish, Bulgarian, Russian, and somewhat later Serbian. The stories of Western European, Byzantine and Arab writers who knew the Slavs, chronicle news, as well as oral traditions and songs, preserved from the times of paganism, give us an idea of the life and religion of the Russian pagan Slavs. The Slavs lived a generic way of life. They were divided into several small tribes that lived separately from one another.

These tribes were as follows: Ilmen Slavs - on the shores of Lake Ilmen, Krivichi - along the upper reaches of the Western Dvina, Volga and Dnieper, Dregovichi - between Pripyat and Western Dvina, Radimichi - on the banks of the Sozh, Vyatichi - on the Oka, northerners - on the Desna and Seim, the Drevlyans - on the Pripyat, the glade - along the middle course of the Dnieper, the Buzhanians - along the Bug, the Tivertsy and Uchiha - along the Dniester and the Prut, the White Croats - in today's eastern Galicia.

Each of these small tribes consisted of separate clans, living separately and owning a special part of the land, which was possible with the sparsely populated and vast lands occupied by the Slavs. Each clan was ruled by an ancestor (elder, prince) and jointly owned all the ancestral real estate until, over time, a separate family property was formed. For matters concerning an entire tribe, all its clans came together at a general meeting - veche, and the right to vote belonged only to the ancestors. Mutual strife of childbirth manifested itself in the evenings.

The Slavs lived sedentary, engaging in agriculture, cattle breeding, hunting, fishing and beekeeping; they also carried on an exchange trade with their neighbors. Their dwellings were simple wooden huts, built in safe places - in forests, near rivers, swamps and lakes. They also had cities, consisting of the same huts and surrounded by a rampart or fence, where their veche meetings took place and where they defended themselves in the event of an enemy attack.

The Slavs were distinguished by their tall stature, a ruddy face, light brown hair and gray eyes; these people were strong, sturdy, enduring. For food they ate animals, fish and birds, millet, buckwheat, milk; honey served as a favorite drink; the clothing consisted of linen dress and animal skins; weapons were spears, arrows, darts, swords and shields. Peaceful in relation to neighboring peoples, they often argued among themselves. In wartime, the Slavs knew how to bravely defend themselves and used various military tricks. Of their pagan customs are remarkable the customs of bloody revenge and hospitality; valuing freedom above all else, after a certain period of time they released their captive slaves.

Their family life was based on the obedience of the younger members of the clan to the ancestor, children to the father; after the death of the father, power over young children passed to the mother. Their marriage customs were threefold: the bride was abducted (abducted) or bought, the marriage was concluded by mutual consent; there were cases of polygamy. Although the Slavic woman was in complete obedience to her husband and performed heavy housework, she was very attached to her husband and, according to some reports, after his death, she voluntarily went to be burned along with his corpse.

Not understanding the forces and phenomena of nature, but realizing their strong influence on the success of agriculture, the Slavs worshiped them as good and evil gods (see the articles Russian paganism and Slavic mythology). So they idolized the sun under the name of Dazhdbog or Khors, thunder and lightning under the name of Perun, who was considered at the same time the god of war and enjoyed special veneration, Volos or Veles, who, being at first a solar god, later became the patron saint of agriculture, the defender of trade, the guardian of the herds, the inspirer of singers and guslars, and the wind under the name of Stribog. In addition to the main gods, the Slavs had many minor ones: goblin, mermaids, water and brownies (souls of deceased ancestors). They honored their gods with holidays that consisted of animal and even human sacrifices, prayers, fortune telling and ending with a feast and games. The main holidays were in honor of the sun god: Kolyada or the birth of the sun around our Christmas, Red Hill in Fomin week, Semik on Thursday 7 weeks after Easter, and Kupala on the night of June 23-24.

Mermaids emerge from the water in front of Trinity. Painting by K. Makovsky on the theme of Russian pagan subjects. 1879

The Russian pagan religion did not reach such a development as among other peoples (for example, among the Greeks); it consisted in direct worship of the forces and phenomena of nature, but the personification of these forces and phenomena, their representation in certain images, the Russian Slavs did not have. The Russian Slavs also did not have public service to the gods, temples and priests; each ancestor was at the same time a priest, and family members prayed at home mainly to the patron of the family - the housekeeper. Although they stood out from among the people Magi and sorcerers, who mainly knew pagan prayers and conspiracies, were engaged in fortune-telling and were respected for that, but they did not have the meaning of priests. Believing in the afterlife, the Slavs represented it as a continuation of the earthly one; the dead were burned or buried in their graves and performed a feast on them, i.e. feast in conjunction with different games. A monument to this pagan life of the Slavs remains folk poetry - conspiracies, slander, omens, proverbs, riddles, songs, fairy tales, epics, which are passed from ancient times from mouth to mouth and are still preserved among the people.

Our ancestors - the Slavs - lived in ancient times, when the world around us looked completely different from what it is now. There were no cities or large settlements - the territory of modern Russia was completely covered with dense forests, in which there were many wild animals. We will find out, according to the presented plan, what was the life and life of the ancient Slavs.

Who are the Slavs

The Slavs represent a large group of different peoples and tribes that belong to the same language family. This means that they all speak, albeit in different, but very similar languages.

It was the language that became the feature by which all Slavs were conditionally divided into 3 main groups:

western;
oriental;
southern.

Consider the lifestyle of the ancient Slavs belonging to the eastern group. Currently, it includes Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.

The settlements of the Eastern Slavs consisted of several tribes, and each tribe, in turn, included several large clans. A genus is several families that lived together and shared a common life.

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Rice. 1. Settlements of the ancient Slavs.

Our ancestors settled along the banks of large rivers: the Dnieper, Don, Volga, Oka, Western Dvina. Depending on the place of residence, the Eastern Slavs were called differently:

glade - those who lived in the fields;
Drevlyans - settled among the "trees";
Dregovichi - the inhabitants of the forests, which got their name from the word "dryagva", which means bog, swamp.

The clothes of the ancient Slavs were very simple. The man put on trousers, a long linen shirt and a wide belt. Women's clothing is a simple long dress embellished with embroidery. In the summer, both men and women did without shoes, and in the cold season they wore primitive leather boots. Jewelry was worn only on the most solemn occasions.

Rice. 2. Clothes of the ancient Slavs.

Main occupations

The life of our ancestors was difficult and full of dangers. In difficult conditions, only the strongest, strongest people survived, who from childhood were accustomed to hard incessant work.

Women traditionally cooked food, spun yarn, sewed, and looked after the household. They also spent a lot of time in vegetable gardens, raising poultry and small ruminants. Many of them knew a lot about medicinal herbs and practiced medicine. Women and children also picked mushrooms, wild berries and nuts.

In the spring, when food supplies were running low, people survived on the young shoots and leaves of the quinoa, which often replaced bread. In times of famine, bread was baked from this plant.

Men's work required remarkable physical strength and endurance. The main occupations of men were:

Hunting ... There were many different animals in the forests, but it was not so easy to track down and kill them with ancient weapons.
Fishing ... The Slavs caught only large river fish, using harpoons for these purposes.
Borticulture - collection of wild honey, which was used as food and medicine. The name of this activity comes from the word "bort" - the hollow of a tree in which wild forest bees lived.

The main joint activity of the ancient Slavs was agriculture.

Since our ancestors lived in difficult times, when endless attacks and military clashes were commonplace, the safety of the home came first.

Deep holes were dug around the settlements, earthen embankments were erected, and a thick palisade was erected. To do this, it was necessary to cut down a tree, chop off all its branches and twigs, hew, sharpen and burn on fire. And for the picket fence, more than one hundred such prepared trees were required. They were buried deep in the ground, and placed very tightly next to each other. Such a fence turned out to be very strong and could stand for a long time.

The floors in the houses were about one meter below ground level. The walls were built from the trunks of young trees. The roof was also made of such poles, on which layers of straw were laid. Small windows were cut through the walls, and in the cold season they were plugged with straw or branches. It is not surprising that such a dwelling was always cool, dark and damp.

Rice. 3. Dwellings of the ancient Slavs.

What have we learned?

When studying the report on the topic "Life of the ancient Slavs" according to the 4th grade curriculum of the world around us, we learned what kind of life our distant ancestors led. We found out who belonged to the Slavs, where and how they lived, how they dressed, ate, and built their dwellings.

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Assessment of the report

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A long time ago, in the lands of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus lived tribes calling themselves Slavs.

The Slavs referred themselves to: glades, Drevlyans, northerners, Krivichi, Vyatichi, etc. And one of the tribes, who lived on the shores of Lake Ilmen and the Volkhov River, called itself simply - Slavs.They are our ancestors.

The Slavs lived in childbirth, i.e. had family ties among themselves. The chief among the relatives was called the prince. All controversial issues and disagreements between the clans were resolved at a general meeting called "veche".

To secure their own kind of raids by warring tribes, the Slavs, as a rule, settled in places surrounded by steep slopes or ravines, along rivers. The ancient Slavs surrounded their settlements with a palisade. The logs that were used for the construction of the stockade were carefully hewn and burned in a fire. When they were deeply dug into the ground, the logs fit tightly together in such a way that there was not the slightest gap between them. Such a fence stood for a long time and was extremely strong. Therefore, such settlements were called "cities", from the word "fence", i.e. fence off settlements. The main occupation of the ancient Slavs was agriculture, beekeeping, fishing, fur trade and hunting.

The ancient beliefs of the Slavs are also interesting.

The Slavs believed that God is one, but manifests himself in many faces. The three main essences of God, the three forces on which the universe rests, were called Reality, Nav and Rule. Rule is a stellar law, the same for the entire Universe. This is the highest law of Being, World and development. Reality is subject to the Law of Rule, i.e. the world revealed by the Almighty, born by the Rod. And the world of Navi is the spiritual, posthumous, the world of ancestors and gods. The Slavs themselves called themselves "Orthodox", i.e. glorifying Rule. On their temples (places of religious worship), they sang the glories of the gods, i.e. sang hymns to the gods. Even a round dance was at that time a religious sacrament. He personified the Great Colo - the Wheel of Existence, which had to revolve relentlessly. Until now, in the Russian language there is an expression "to live by the truth", i.e. live according to the laws of Rule.

The cuisine of the ancient Slavs

The cuisine of the ancient Slavs was not very diverse. Basically, they prepared jelly, kvass, cabbage soup, porridge. Even the saying “cabbage soup, but porridge is our food” has come down to our times. At that time, our ancestors did not know potatoes, so cabbage and turnips were the main ingredients for cabbage soup. Pies were baked mainly on holidays, like pancakes. The word "pancake" comes from the more ancient word "mlyn", i.e. from ground grain. At that time, pancakes were mainly baked from buckwheat flour, and instead of yeast, hops were added to the dough. The pancakes made in this way were loose, spongy. They absorbed oil and sour cream well. Therefore, they were served together. As a rule, the first pancake was given to the birds, because the ancient Slavs believed that the souls of their ancestors sometimes flew to their descendants in the form of birds. The first baked pancake was a memorial. Baking pancakes for funerals is still considered a Russian tradition.

After the adoption of Christianity in Russia, many thousand-year-old traditions were forgotten, but many are still alive. They remained in the form of proverbs and sayings, ancient holidays and fairy tales. Maybe that's why the Russian people still bake pancakes and guess at Christmas time. We are still more willing to celebrate Shrovetide and bake pancakes than fast and celebrate Christmas. We still have Santa Claus in Veliky Ustyug, and Snegurochka, his granddaughter, amuses children at the New Year's holiday. In remote villages, some grandmothers, washing their great-grandchildren in the morning, still say: “Water, water, wash your granddaughter's face. To make the cheeks redden, to make the eyes shine, to make the mouth laugh, to bite the tooth. "

How we want our children to know about the cultural traditions of our ancestors.