Germans. Indo-European Migration

© Andrey Tikhomirov, 2019

ISBN 978-5-0050-8980-9

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The formation of the ancient Indo-Europeans in the Southern Urals – Black Sea

Modern archaeological research proves that the homeland of the Indo-Europeans is the region of the Southern Urals, where they formed as a single language group.

Communities are created, first on the basis of common origin – childbirth, and as marketable products increase, a large family community is formed, consisting of phratry, i.e. several genera. Then the neighboring community in the form of a tribe, the next step – the union of tribes, leading, in turn, to the formation of the people, and then the state. But for any community, a community of interests is also necessary, in this case, the protection of metallurgists and their products. So there were settlements of ancient metallurgists, and in particular, the Arkaim culture of the South Urals. Similar settlements were found in Europe, in Germany near Dresden and Leipzig, as well as in Austria and Slovakia, under the age of 7 thousand years. After the end of natural resources, the settlements were “closed”, the ditches were filled up, and the remains of the dwellings were burned.

The country of cities is the conditional name of the territory in the Southern Urals, within which ancient cities and fortified settlements of the Sintash culture of the Middle Bronze Age (about 2000 BC), one culture were found.

Settlements were discovered in the 70s – 80s. XX century. One of the first archaeological complexes found was an ancient settlement on the Sintashty River (a tributary of Tobol), due to which the settlement itself was named after the South Ural River. Soon after the discovery of other cities, archaeologists began to use the term “Sintashta culture.” This “country” is located in the Chelyabinsk region, Orenburg region, Bashkortostan and northern Kazakhstan. Cities are located on the territory with a diameter of 350 km.

All settlements are united by a similar type of structure, the organization of urban infrastructure, construction materials, and the existence time. As well as the same topographic logic. Fortifications are clearly visible in aerial photographs. After 4,000 years, the skeletons of cities clearly appear against the backdrop of the natural landscape, plowed fields. There comes an awareness of the skill of the engineers who designed and created such system cities. The cities themselves were most suitable for life. Firstly, they provided protection from external enemies, and secondly, in the cities premises were made for the life and work of artisans, saddlers, potters, and metallurgists. Inside the cities there is a storm sewer that takes water out of the settlement. Near the cities burial grounds were organized, animal pens were built. All fortified settlements were made in three different forms: round (8—9 pieces); oval (about 5); rectangular (about 11). The term “country” appropriately characterizes this location of cities. In addition to the fact that all the fortified settlements were built on a compact territory at the same time, in the same style and using the same engineering solutions, similar materials, other unifying properties are visible.

On the vast territory of the steppes in the ancient era to the west of the Urals, the tribes of the so-called Srubnaya lived, and to the east of the Andronovo culture, the latter covering the region from the Urals to Altai and the Yenisei. Andronovites, who spoke one of the dialects of the ancient Iranian language (Indo-European group), raised cattle and small cattle, horses, were engaged in fishing. In the southern Urals, traces of floodplain agriculture have been identified. Andronovo society was considered rather backward and archaic, as evidenced, in particular, by the poverty of their burials. In the grave, along with the deceased, they usually placed pottery, bronze jewelry, less often tools and weapons.

According to Videvdat (the first book of the Avesta, a collection of sacred books of the ancient Iranian religion, a kind of Iranian continuation of the Vedas), the ancestral home of the ancient Iranians is Airyanem Vaejah (Avest. Airyanem Vaejah, “Aryan space”). This country is described as the endless plain through which the beautiful river Daitya (Vahvi-Datiya) flows.

Indo-European tribes moved from east to west and, like a snow falling from a mountain, they swept away everything in their path, taking in those who joined their tribes. Their ancestral home, where they formed as a single language group, were the steppes of the Black Sea region – the Southern Urals.

Indo-European areas of Kentum (blue) and Satem (red). The estimated initial area of satelliteisation is shown in bright red. Kentum-satem division is called isogloss in the Indo-European language family, related to the evolution of three rows of dorsal consonants reconstructed for the Pra-Indo-European language (PIE), * k-W (labio-velar), * k (velar), and * k; (chamber). The terms come from the words meaning the numeral “hundred” in the representative languages of each group (Latin centum and Avestan satem).

In the Avesta, the god Ahura Mazda (an extremely knowledgeable priest) advises the legendary immaculate king of the ancient Aryans (Indo-Europeans) Yime to create a giant fence – Varu, and there, for this fence put “the seed of all the males and females that are greatest on this earth, and the seed of all genera cattle, and the seed of all plants. And to do everything in pairs, while people are in Var … " The legendary Vara consisted of 3 circles, enclosed one in another. From the extreme 9 passages were conducted, from the middle – 6, from the internal – 3. And on this territory fenced off from evil winds, Yima built 18 streets, and created a window above the top – something like a chimney for smoke. The patron of forging in the Slavic pagan pantheon was the blacksmith god Svarog (Sanskrit. “Svarga” – heaven). The image of Svarog is close to the Greek Hephaestus and Prometheus.

The sun – Yes-God – in Slavic mythology was thought of as the son of Svarog. The ancient Slavic god – Dazhdbog – the bearer of happiness, most likely symbolizes rain, for example, in Slovak dažď (read “dazhd”) – rain. “Wind is blowing” is the analogy of a man who blows from his mouth. “Blind rain” means it is raining and the sun is shining, and so it turns out that it is as if the rain “does not see” and goes where the sun is shining. In the Christian folk calendar, Svarog turned into saints Kozma and Demyan – patrons of blacksmithing and marriage. The very presence of the gods – the patrons of forging – indicates the antiquity of its origin. With the word “Svarog”, the word “Swastika” (Skt.) Is idiomatically similar – a cross with ends bent at right angles, one of the oldest ornamental motifs found among the peoples of India, China, Japan, where the swastika sign also had religious significance. Compare also the Slavic words “cook”, “welding”. In the steppes of the Urals-Altai, forging has already reached significant development among the Scythian tribes of the Northern Black Sea Region (7—4 centuries BC), as well as among the Sarmatians and Slavs known in the 4th – 6th centuries. under the name of ants. In the 10—11 centuries. iron and steel products in Russia were widespread and had diverse applications. The ancient metallurgists usually concentrated in their hands both the smelting of iron from the swamp ore, the so-called “cooking” of iron, and the manufacture of various iron products, as well as the forging of copper, tin, silver and gold, especially in jewelry. A hearth was used, where clods of swamp ore from above and below were covered with coal, which was ignited and heated to the desired temperature. The molten iron flowed to the bottom of the hearth and formed a viscous mass (crits). The blacksmith took it with pincers and then, forging it with a hammer on the anvil, gave the product the desired shape, knocked slags from the surface and reduced the porosity of the metal. The development of iron led to a significant leap in development. In addition, deposits of tin and copper, and their alloy of bronze, in the habitat of the ancient Indo-Europeans were practically absent, they were imported from other territories. Iron ores were more widespread than copper and tin, iron ores were formed in large quantities under the influence of microorganisms in swamps and stagnant water bodies. And the area of distribution of the ancient Indo-Europeans was precisely characterized by an abundance of lakes and wetlands. Unlike copper and tin, in ancient times iron was mined everywhere from brown iron ore, lake, swamp and other ores. A prerequisite for the widespread use of iron metallurgy was the use of a raw-cheese process, in which reduction of iron from ore was achieved at a temperature of 900 degrees, while iron was melted only at a temperature of 1530 degrees, to produce iron by a raw-iron method, the ore was crushed, calcined over an open fire, and then in pits or small clay foci where charcoal was laid and air was blown by bellows, iron was restored. A scream formed at the bottom of the furnace (compare Krishna from Sanskrit, lit. – “dark, black”, one of the revered gods in Hinduism). – a lump of porous, pasty and heavily contaminated iron, which then had to be subjected to repeated hot forging.

Screaming iron was notable for its softness, but already in ancient times a method was discovered for obtaining harder metal by hardening iron products or cementing them, that is, calcining in bone coal for the purpose of carbonization. The forge – furnace for the production of iron in the cheese-making process was a shallow pit in the ground, to which air from bellows was fed using clay tubes, which we observe in ancient reconstructions of Arkaim, Quintana, Goloring and other villages. Subsequently, these construction schemes began to be considered sacred and they were reproduced in various cruciform variations, including in the form of a swastika, primitive domnica looked like cylindrical structures made of stones or clay, narrowed upwards, hence the appearance of a swastika, a cross with ends bent at right angles. From below, channels were arranged where clay nozzle tubes were inserted, leather furs were attached to them, with their help air was pumped into the furnace. These designs resembled various types of crosses, which were later deified in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity.

The North Indian city of Varanasi (the name Var is mentioned in the name of the city, appeared around the 7th century BC), also known as Benares, is still the place of pilgrimage of the Hindus, there is also a mass cremation of the dead. The corpses of believers are burned in plain sight. In antiquity it was also in the vars: priests with horns on their heads and with wings behind their backs burned the dead people – that’s the prototype of hell. The deceased themselves wanted this, since it was believed that with fire they would immediately go to heaven to the gods.

The oldest books of the Veda and Avesta (compare: the Slavic words “to know” and “news”) are actually the primary basis for most of the religions that exist today. The oldest part of the Avesta Ghats are also called (Ghats) – mountains on the Hindustan Peninsula in India (Western and Eastern Ghats), as well as the old Russian word “ghat” – flooring made of logs for passage, passage through a swamp, swamp. Ghats – the steps of the embankment in Varanasi, descending to the Ganges, the bodies of the dead are burned there. All these words are of the same origin.

The cross was revered in pre-Christian cults. His images were discovered during archaeological excavations in different parts of the globe, in particular, in South America and New Zealand. It was established that he served as an object of worship of other nations as a symbol of fire, which was originally obtained by friction of two crossed sticks, a symbol of the sun and eternal life. Already in antiquity, in order to reduce the melting point of metallurgists, they began to use fluorites (fluorspar, fluorites come in different colors: violet, yellow, green, rarely colorless) and could receive steel at a temperature of 1100 – 1200 degrees, instead of 1530—1700 degrees, which allowed us to spend less fuel (wood or coal) during steelmaking, getting very durable iron products.

Germanic peoples

The names “Germanic”, “Germanic”, “Germany” come from the Latin language: Germanicus – Germanic; Germani – Germans, numerous tribes living between the Rhine, Danube, the Vistula and the North Sea; Germania – Germany, a territory east of the Rhine, inhabited by Germanic tribes. Which, in turn, going back to such Latin words as: germane – frankly, sincerely; germanitas (germanus) – brotherhood, close kinship, kinship; germanus (germen) – native, real, genuine; germen – kidney, sprout, germ, descendant; germino (germen) – let sprouts grow.

The self-name of the Germans comes from the ancient German word “people” – Thiuda. Almost all neighbors call Germans not by name, but according to one of the Germanic tribes: Italians – tedesco (from the “Teutons”), French – allemagne (from the “Alemans”), Finns – Saksa (from the “Saxons”), Slavs call Germans Germans, according to the well-known version of the word “dumb”.

The Austrians occurred as a result of the Germanization of the Slavs. The Slavs created the state of Samo around 623. After its collapse, the Slavs created a principality in Carinthia (Horutania), the inhabitants of which lived on farms. In the middle of the 8th century, the Slavs who fought against the Avars became dependent on the Bavarians, then the Franks, and after the collapse of the Carolingian empire in 843, these lands, together with Bavaria, were transferred to the kingdom of the East Franks, the future Germany, which, apparently, and they called these territories “Austria” – “eastern empire”, from Ost – “east” and Reich – “empire”.

The ancestral home of Germanic and Romance languages was attributed to the west of Russia. An international team of scientists (including specialists from St. Petersburg and Samara) has found new genetic confirmation of the mound hypothesis of the emergence of Indo-European languages. The authors published the results of their research in the journal Nature, and briefly can be found on the University of Adelaide website. In their work, scientists report that at least some of the Indo-European languages in Europe arose as a result of mass migration of proto-language speakers from the European territory of modern Russia. In particular, as a result of such migration, the Baltic-Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages most likely arose. Experts came to this conclusion by analyzing the genomes of 94 people who lived 3—8 thousand years ago in Europe. Genetics have found that, starting from 4.5 thousand years ago, approximately 75 percent of people in Central Europe had ancestors from the steppes of Russia. These representatives of the culture of string ceramics turned out to be the ancestors of people of another culture – the pit, who lived on the territory between the Dnieper and the Volga. This may mean confirmation of the hypothesis that the culture of string ceramics arose either under the influence of the pit, or its representatives were strongly influenced by the previous one. Scientists also note that people of the pit culture could spread to Europe the most relevant technology for that time, in particular, movement with the wheel.

This, in particular, is indicated by the fact that wheeled vehicles and domesticated horses appeared in Europe about 5—6 thousand years ago. It is believed that the first people came to Europe from Africa about 45 thousand years ago. About eight thousand years ago, there was a second wave of migration, and Europe was populated by farmers from the Middle East. The third stage of migration, described by scientists, occurred 5—6 thousand years ago from the territories of the European part of modern Russia and Ukraine, and it is with him, according to scientists, that the origin of a number of languages of modern Europe should be associated. The work of scientists confirms the so-called mound hypothesis of the origin of Indo-European languages. Archaeologists and linguists who adhere to it believe that the speakers of the Indo-European proto-language lived on the territory of modern Russia and Ukraine between the Volga and the Dnieper. Supporters of the second most popular hypothesis, the Anatolian, connect the emergence of the Indo-European language family with the migration of people from the territory of modern Turkey (ancient Anatolia) eight thousand years ago. Scientists note that their study allows us to understand how the main Indo-European languages were distributed in Europe 5—6 thousand years ago. However, it does not say anything about the origin of the southern languages of this family, in particular Greek. Now scientists are hoping to understand how the migration of the speakers of the proto-language (proto-languages) and its connection with the Indo-European languages of the Caucasus, Iran and India were organized.

Most characteristic of the end of the 1st millennium BC. e. – the first half of the first millennium A.D. e. archaeological sites in the form of large burial-free burial grounds with various rites of burials: corpses and corpses. The remains after the burning were enclosed in an urn, the corpses were laid in the ground without an urn. So cemeteries were formed, which, as already mentioned above, have been called by archaeologists the name of “fields of burial urns”, or “fields of burials”. In the XIX century. scientists argued about who owned the burial fields discovered in Central Europe – Slavs, Germans, Thracians, or Celts (Indo-Europeans). Such a statement of the question was in itself incorrect, since the rite of burial in the fields of burial urns belonged not only to the tribe, but to all of the tribal masses listed above.

The Czech archaeologist and historian Lubor Niederle, supporting the opinion of P. Schafarik and other Czech and Polish archaeologists, indicated that we can speak of Slavic affiliation only of those monuments of burial fields that are within the limits of the settlement of the ancient Slavic tribes supposed by written sources.

This point of view of L. Niederle regarding the ethnicity of carriers of the culture of the burial fields of Central Europe was confirmed in subsequent works by archaeologists. Polish scholars who studied the culture of the living areas on the territory of Poland, came to the conclusion that the archaeological culture was carried by the Wends, since its territory basically coincides with the territory allotted to the western group of these tribes Pliny, Tacitus and Ptolemy.

Burial fields east of the upper reaches of the Dniester were discovered only at the end of the 19th century. by the famous Russian archaeologist V.V. Khvoika, who examined them in the territory of the Middle Dnieper. The study of the very first monuments of this culture allowed V.V. Khvoika to claim that they belong to the ancient Slavs. The work of V.V. Khvoika was continued by Soviet archaeologists who unearthed and studied many new settlements and burial grounds for the culture of burial fields, which are now known to more than 400. These excavations showed that not only the Middle, but also the Upper Dnieper in the first half of the 1st millennium was settled by Slavic tribes that buried their dead in burial fields and significantly different lifestyles from neighboring tribes – Celts, Thracians and others who had a similar custom of burial. At the same time, it became known that the Slavic tribes of the Dnieper are very close to the Slavic tribes of Hanging. Inside this single massif of Slavic tribes, some local differences are observed, which gave archaeologists the basis to talk about several archaeological cultures. This is the Oksyv culture in the Lower Hanging, the Przeworsk culture in the basin of the Middle and Upper Vistula. The latter is close to the Zarubinets culture of the Slavic tribes of the Middle and Upper Dnieper.

After leaving the steppes of the Southern Urals – Black Sea region, the ancient Germans lived on the territory located mainly between the North Sea, the Rhine, Danube and Laba (Elba), as well as in the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The original residence of the Germans in Europe was South Scandinavia, Jutland and the coast of the Baltic and North Seas between Weser and Oder.

Germanic peoples, like other nationalities, evolved by the gradual unification of small tribes into tribal unions and later by the merger of the latter in the nationality. During the VI – I centuries. BC e., gradually moving south, they occupied the territory of modern Germany right up to the Rhine; some tribes, of which the Trevers subsequently played the largest role, crossed the Rhine and established themselves on its left bank. In South Germany, the Sueva, Markomannians and Quads settled most closely in contact with the Celts, with whom they partially mixed.

The Germans formed as a result of the mixing of several races and later mixed with various ethnic groups (Slavs, Celts, Finno-Ugrians, Romanesque peoples, etc.). Until the middle of the 1st century the information of the Greeks and Romans about the Germans was rather scarce. The very name of the Germans, who was originally called the Tungra tribe and which was then appropriated by the Celts to all German tribes, was unknown to ancient authors for a long time. The Germans were divided around the beginning of our era into the Eastern (Goths, Burgundians, Vandals, etc.), Western (Suevs, Hutts, Cherusks, Angles, Saxons, Batavs, Killings, Markomanes, etc.) and Northern (Svions, etc.). Sources for the study of the social system of the Germans are, on the one hand, the data of archeology, comparative linguistics, ethnography, and on the other, the works of ancient authors, especially the Notes on the Gallic War (mid 1 century BC) Julius Caesar, who was directly confronted with the Germans during the conquest of Gaul, and the works of the Roman historian Tacitus – “Germany” (98 AD, the manuscripts called “On the origin and habitat of the Germans”), “Annals” (c. 116 AD) and “Stories” (between 104 and 109 gg.). The Germans of Caesar’s time were already sedentary farmers, but from time to time they abandoned the lands occupied by them and transferred to others. Agricultural machinery was at a low level – a shift agriculture system dominated, requiring large areas of land, arable land was rapidly depleted and changed every 1—2 years. The Germans cultivated rye, oats, barley, and wheat. A large role in economic life was played by cattle breeding and hunting. The Germans at that time did not have private ownership of land: the villages were inhabited by clans, jointly owning the land and collectively cultivating it. By this time, the patriarchal clan had already been replaced by the previously prevailing matriarchal one.

In the 6th century BC e. the merchants of Massalia knew the Tilangian tribe living on the Upper Rhone, later known as the German Tulling tribe. In the middle of the 4th century The massali traveler Pithaeus, in search of the most convenient route to Britain, where lead was mined, and to the Baltic states, from where amber was exported, visited some areas inhabited by the Germans. According to him, north of Britain was land, which he considered an island and called Thule, but which, invisibly, was the west coast of Norway. Pythaeus said that it was inhabited by people engaged in agriculture and collecting honey, from which he made a special drink. Pithaeus also wrote about the island of Abal off the coast of the North Sea, possibly modern Helgoland, and about the Teutons living in the vicinity of this island, in Western Jutland, also one of the Germanic tribes. In the III century. BC e. German Gesat, which means spearmen, served as mercenaries from the Italian Celts, and then from the Romans.

The leaders, elders, and officials mentioned by Caesar were in fact constituted of elected military leaders and the clan nobility. Independent tribes occasionally united into short-lived unions for common military enterprises, during which military leaders were elected; they led a squad that disintegrated at the end of the war. At this time, wars were a frequent occurrence among the Germans, since the extensive farming system and the significant role of cattle breeding created a constant need for new arable land and pastures, which led to the struggle for land between individual tribes. The supreme power in the tribe belonged to an irregularly convened popular assembly. In peacetime, the tribe did not have common leaders, there were only elders of certain divisions of the tribe, who sent mainly judicial functions.