slavic "explosion"

[Conrad]

I have read the thread on Sorbs and other West Slavic tribes and would like to ask a related question.

I have long wondered about the reasons behind the Slavic expansion from the area of Belarus and the Carpathians.

One factor may be the use of a large variety of food sources, but how could they expand so fast as to be found from Denmark to the Black sea and from the Adriatic sea to the Volga in less than 700-1000 years?

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Traditional history books say it was because the Germanic tribes that had previously inhabitated the areas between Elbe and Vistula had left for the west, and the Slavs migrated into the land, absorbing those Germanic elements left behind.

I suppose what happened was that the Germanic migration groups were composed of the wealthier and better equipped people (the warrior elite and their clans, so to say), and the ones who were left behind lacked the leadership to resist the newly arriving Slavic groups. They either also packed up and went west, or accepted to be ruled by the newcomers. Since AFAIK there are no sources that speak of wars or large-scale invasions in the period, one has to assume that the whole process of Slavic migration caused not nearly as much upheaval as the Germanic migrations into the Roman sphere.

I find it hard to imagine how any part of the Germanic inhabitants would remain and not resist the newcomers... when the reverse process happened in the 9th to 12th century (Germans migrating into the Wendish lands) there was quite a lot of bloodshed. But then again, the Slavic immigration into the Balkans during the same period also happened pretty quietly at first... which IIRC led some scholars to come up with the idea that the Slavs themselves had no organization comparable to that of the Langobards, Goths or Franks, and instead cooperated with the nomad groups of the Avars, and even develop a kind of symbiontic relationship with the socially much different steppe warriors.

What's pretty well proven is that the Balkan Slavs arrived in small groups, and weren't even seen as a threat (or perceived at all as a political factor) by the Byzantines at first. I don't know what to make of that with regard to their migration into central Europe, though.

I don't know what to make of the old Slavs at all, actually... they must have been a strange people, subordinating themselves to all kinds of other nations, and politically much less organized than any of the other migration waves of antiquity. Were they some sort of agrarian hippie communards? Underdeveloped pagan savages, lured out of their forest hideouts and mud huts by the promise of easy life as someone else's serf? Or was there simply no one who recorded their war deeds and the names of their kings?

 

[Conrad]

My own hypothesis is that they were more widespread than one might think.

Slavic languages have plenty of "Gothic" loanwords, or they have East Germanic loan words, such as "knjaz" (prince) from *kuningaz (king) and "grad" from "gard". A Russian professor told me that it is mostly impossible to tell what is a Viking loan word in Russian from what is an old Gothic loan word.

Maybe a lot of the "East Germanic territories" were really Slavic but with a Germanic warrior aristocracy. When the Germanic aristocracy had left to terrorize the Roman Empire instead, the Slavs got the upper hand, spread and prospered.

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Hm, okay. But why, then, did the Slavs remain so unnoticed? If they were indeed ruled by high-tech, well organized Germanic warrior castes, how comes the Slavs that appear on the stage in the Balkans and then in the time of Charlemagne are such conspicuously unorganized, low-tech bands? Why didn't the memes for empire building and making your mark in history dissipate to the Slavs?

I can't imagine that the rather large Germanic groups would have ruled over indigenous sedentary populations without spreading their memes and giving inspirations to the ambitious local elites. From all I know, the Germanic warrior caste must have been fairly large, they fielded armies for the Huns and the hosts that invaded the Roman empire were fairly large - not small groups that would have been able to rule the east without having an impact on the Slav political and cultural memes.

And most perplexing to me is the question: Why did the Germanic people pack up and leave at all?? How can a dominant ethnic group leave its territory, conduct epic campaigns and build an empire in the west, but leave behind a land from which all traces of its existence soon disappear? And leave behind an area in which their influence totally disappears, as well as any trace of a political organization? Shouldn't the part that is left behind prosper all the more, without the population pressure that led to the exodus in the first place? And shouldn't the Slavs either take up arms to overthrow their opressors, or diffuse into the ruling class and in short oder make itself noticed among the nations of the world?? They spread, yes, and probably prospered, too, by their own standards. But how comes they (the Wendes, Sorbs, Obodrites etc) were victimized so badly later on and outright colonized like Aborigines and pgymies??

The Germanic nations invaded the Roman empire and set up empires that lasted for hundreds of years, fusing with the culturally much superior locals and showing great adaptability. The Slavs on the other hand migrated over immense distances without making any noise at all. They moved into the land from which the people who inscribed their names in the history books further west came, but picked up none of their warlikeness, their new Christian culture or even their old culture. How comes? Some part of the picture must be missing here.

The German 19th century historians (Felix Dahn and his ilk) had their own explanations for this, but I think they were full of crap. To me, little of the supposed pre-history of the Slavs, Germanics and of central Europe in general makes any sense at all... why do people leave their land, and why were cultures so different despite close neighbourship over centuries? What were the social factors behind all of this?

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Okay I did some googling... now I know that there was indeed an 'empire' in the central european lands, the Kingdom of Samo. (Some guy from Gaul who in 630-something came to Bohemia as a merchant, helped the locals throw off the Avar yoke and was elected king over a confederacy of Slavic tribes. Talk about an unexpected career! Married 12 women and had around 40 kids with them, upset the Franks to the point where they sent three armies to teach him humility, but defeated them in detail...) But apparently he had no successor, and for 150 years after his death there doesn't appear to have been any political organization. That sheds some light but doesn't explain much to me... sounds like some bright guy had one hell of a blast on an extended business trip, but the episode triggers more questions than it answers.

 

[unmerged(24857)]

I've read a theory concerning Slavs in Bohemia (I am not much interested in this time span, so I do not know much about the rest of the Europe)...

Before them (~4-5th cent. AD) there was German tribe of Markomans (sp?) in Bohemia.. this tribe is somewhat documented in Roman sources. But Markomans somehow disapear from the land (dunno why. High casualties from wars? Relocated by Rome? Migrated?) and almost empty country is occupied by newcoming Slavs during 5-6th century.
Why did they come? Not sure, maybe they were pushed by nomadic tribes like Avars. The theory says that the co-existence between Avars and Slavs ranged from cooperation (incl. joint raids on Byzantinum) to open hostility. Another possiblity is population boom in their motherland - the land was unable to feed them, so some of the Slavs went west.

I can't explain why this movement (and Slavic origins) are not documented, why the Slavs appear out of nowhere and inhabitate large portion of Europe. They probably came from the vast steppes in Russia - far from the Rome and other sources of our known written history.

As for Samo and his empire... this happened some time after Slavic colonisation of Bohemia (and surroundings) - tens, maybe hundred years.

Okay I did some googling... now I know that there was indeed an 'empire' in the central european lands, the Kingdom of Samo. (Some guy from Gaul who in 630-something came to Bohemia as a merchant, helped the locals throw off the Avar yoke and was elected king over a confederacy of Slavic tribes. Talk about an unexpected career! Married 12 women and had around 40 kids with them, upset the Franks to the point where they sent three armies to teach him humility, but defeated them in detail...) But apparently he had no successor, and for 150 years after his death there doesn't appear to have been any political organization. That sheds some light but doesn't explain much to me... sounds like some bright guy had one hell of a blast on an extended business trip, but the episode triggers more questions than it answers.

This is quite accurate AFAIK... after Samo, it is believed that his empire crumbled into highly decentralized tribal society and the tribes of Bohemia were united after afformentioned 150 years.

 

[unmerged(14689)]

My own hypothesis is that they were more widespread than one might think.

Slavic languages have plenty of "Gothic" loanwords, or they have East Germanic loan words, such as "knjaz" (prince) from *kuningaz (king) and "grad" from "gard". A Russian professor told me that it is mostly impossible to tell what is a Viking loan word in Russian from what is an old Gothic loan word.

I always figured the root of the word "grad" was an ancient Indo-European one and not so much a Germanic one. It's core meaning would have been something along the lines of "territory with protected borders", which in Church Slavonic became "grad" (now, Leningrad, i.e. city of Lenin and Volgograd, i.e. city on the Volga) and in modern Russian "gorod" (=city). In Dutch we still have the word "gaard", in English "garden". As you see, the "protected borders" are a wall in medieval Russian, a fence in the West.

 

[Conrad]

Karl Martel, I agree that it is a weak hypothesis.

A second explanation may be that Eastern Europe was more ravaged and pillaged than one might think.

Nomadic tribes may have conducted a war of ethnic cleansing due to which the Germanic tribes saw fit to move southwest, and/or move in alliance with the Huns.

The only tribe which may not have suffered were the Slavs who early on accepted the domination of these nomads.

 

[Conrad]

I always figured the root of the word "grad" was an ancient Indo-European one and not so much a Germanic one. It's core meaning would have been something along the lines of "territory with protected borders", which in Church Slavonic became "grad" (now, Leningrad, i.e. city of Lenin and Volgograd, i.e. city on the Volga) and in modern Russian "gorod" (=city). In Dutch we still have the word "gaard", in English "garden". As you see, the "protected borders" are a wall in medieval Russian, a fence in the West.

I think that if it was an Indo-European word, the forms in Slavic should be more different from the Germanic "gard". I don't have the works of reference at hand, but, I'll check it out and come back to it later.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

And most perplexing to me is the question: Why did the Germanic people pack up and leave at all??

Um, . . . 'cause they were pushed?

How can a dominant ethnic group leave its territory, conduct epic campaigns and build an empire in the west, but leave behind a land from which all traces of its existence soon disappear?

'Cause pastoral-nomadic types tend not to sit around building stuff?

On the empire-building stuff, it, um, more or less fell into their hands. I am not aware they built much of anything, inasmuch as they inherited stuff that was already there. If the Roman Empire had been overrun by Slavs or Eskimoes or Aborigines & pigmies, pretty much the same thing would have happened. I mean, there is a reason they call it the dark ages, y'know.

And leave behind an area in which their influence totally disappears, as well as any trace of a political organization? Shouldn't the part that is left behind prosper all the more, without the population pressure that led to the exodus in the first place?

If it was population pressure that 'caused them to move.

Besides, keep in mind these are tribes -- connected by kinship, not land. If one moves, all move.

And shouldn't the Slavs either take up arms to overthrow their opressors, or diffuse into the ruling class and in short oder make itself noticed among the nations of the world??

Shouldn't everybody everywhere take up arms & overthrow their oppressors? Everyone doesn't.

They spread, yes, and probably prospered, too, by their own standards. But how comes they (the Wendes, Sorbs, Obodrites etc) were victimized so badly later on and outright colonized like Aborigines and pgymies??

Why/where did the Svebians, Heruli, Gepidae, Burgundians, Alemanni, Vandals & Alans disappear off to? Why didn't they "rise up against their oppressors"? And they were within the Roman Empire and had access to all its attendant structures. They had less of an excuse.

The Germanic nations invaded the Roman empire and set up empires that lasted for hundreds of years, fusing with the culturally much superior locals and showing great adaptability. The Slavs on the other hand migrated over immense distances without making any noise at all. They moved into the land from which the people who inscribed their names in the history books further west came, but picked up none of their warlikeness, their new Christian culture or even their old culture. How comes? Some part of the picture must be missing here.

Oh, come on. The Franks, Goths & Lombards were neighbors of the Romans, the most advanced civilization then extant in the area.

The Abdorites, Sorbs & Carantanians were neighbors of Saxons, Thuringians & Bavarians, still half-savages themselves. What would they have taught them? To worship trees instead of stones?

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Karl Martel, I agree that it is a weak hypothesis.

A second explanation may be that Eastern Europe was more ravaged and pillaged than one might think.

Nomadic tribes may have conducted a war of ethnic cleansing due to which the Germanic tribes saw fit to move southwest, and/or move in alliance with the Huns.

The only tribe which may not have suffered were the Slavs who early on accepted the domination of these nomads.

That sounds like a reasonably hypothesis. Interestingly, just a few days ago I read an article about how the decline of agriculture in eastern Germany caused a drastic change to many landscapes... among other things, the article said that abandoned fields (entirely abandoned, and not just used for hay) revert to dense bush and grass land within only a few years, and become forested quite rapidly. Deforesting larger areas is one hell of a strenous job. So maybe the human-nature relationship played a role in the abandonment of settlements in eastern Europe as well... if the Germanic tribes abandoned their fields in the course of the migrations within a short timespan, and the Slavs didn't arrive immediately, then maybe the landscape dynamic could be the factor explaining why the areas and their inhabitants disappeared from the stage for several hundred years. Maybe the Slavs did not "inherit" cultivated land and empty villages, where the plow still lay in the barn next to the old wagon wheel, and the roads through the forests were still passable, a landscape ready to sustain civilized lifestyle and support kingdoms and rich nobilities. Rather, they entered into land where settlements had been grouped as clusters between large primeval forests, where the cultivated regions had quickly reverted to forests and where roads and villages had virtually disappeared under dense overgrowth.

If the traces of the Germanic settlements indeed disappeared quickly, that would go some ways to explain why Slavic and Germanic societies, despite living on the same land barely a hundred years apart, were so vastly different. If, as you suggest, there were indeed extermination campaigns by the Huns against the sedentary germanic populations in the period 300-400 AD, the complete abandonment of settlements may not seem so unlikely. And an almost complete abandonment of settlements and cultivated land would explain why the Slavs, arriving slowly over the course of 150 years, founded a very different kind of society than the previous inhabitants of the land.

Thinking about this, I wonder what really went on during the period of Hun domination. They really didn't leave much behind in the way of written records, but from what I've read they dominated pretty much everything between the Baltic and the Black Sea for around a hundred years. Nomad-Peasant wars can get really nasty really quick... if what happened in central Europe was only half as nasty as what happened in Darfur and in Mongol-dominated Hungary, that might explain why entire nations picked up and left.

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Um, . . . 'cause they were pushed?

Well, I do find it hard to imagine how a sedentary people (the Germanic people were sedentary) can pick up and leave its homeland, where they have villages, cultivated land, fortresses and all that. I can see half the nation leaving due to famine (as happened in Ireland) but a people in its entirety? It must have taken something drastic, and the old stuff about how Huns running amok in the southern Ukraine caused Vandals along the upper Elbe to pack up and leave doesn't make much sense to me.

On the empire-building stuff, it, um, more or less fell into their hands. I am not aware they built much of anything, inasmuch as they inherited stuff that was already there. If the Roman Empire had been overrun by Slavs or Eskimoes or Aborigines & pigmies, pretty much the same thing would have happened. I mean, there is a reason they call it the dark ages, y'know.

Oh come on! They were not nearly as "dark" as the word "dark ages" implies. Roman civilization continued pretty much as it had before, only the taxes were lower and there was no humongeous government any more. Historians, theologists and poets continued to write Latin chronicles, poems and books like before, the bishops ran their cities like before, and the peasants worked for Latin landholders, like before. They can't have been all that uncivilized, or more would have broken down. It's true that the majority of roads, aquaeducts and palaces decayed as time went by (because no one took care of them) but the invaders had been pretty careful not to tear down too many of them in the first place.

Why/where did the Svebians, Heruli, Gepidae, Burgundians, Alemanni, Vandals & Alans disappear off to? Why didn't they "rise up against their oppressors"? And they were within the Roman Empire and had access to all its attendant structures. They had less of an excuse.

Well, it's true that they disappeared. The Suebians ended up in the remote corner of Spain and got 0wned by their neighbours. The Heruli and Gepidae probably took the brunt of the fighting under their Gothic overlords, AFAIK what was left of the Gepides disappeared into Vallachia and diffused into the population there. The Vandals were pretty much wiped out by the Byzantines in Africa. The Alemanni remained in Germania, though, and today's Schwaben and Alsatians and the German-speaking part of Switzerland is descended from them. Neither of them went without a fight, and those that weren't down to a few ten thousand before their last stand continued to make a living. Maybe their bellicosity contributed to them making enemies, but it also contributed to their legacy. BTW, the Burgundians lasted for quite a while, and the rump of their realm was absorbed rather peacefully after the last war with the Franks.

Oh, come on. The Franks, Goths & Lombards were neighbors of the Romans, the most advanced civilization then extant in the area.

The Abdorites, Sorbs & Carantanians were neighbors of Saxons, Thuringians & Bavarians, still half-savages themselves. What would they have taught them? To worship trees instead of stones?

The Goths had been living in the Ukraine until around 375, which was not exactly in the neighbourhood of any noteworthy civilization. Yet they were able to make themselves lords over Italy, Spain and Aquitaine a hundred years later. The Bavarians and Thuringians may have been no spearheads of civilization (they still aren't, those Ossis and Lederhosen wearers ) but they became Christianized rather quickly and played a role within the Frankish empire. The Moravians also organized themselves into a larger state quickly once the Franks (mostly using Bavarian troops) started encroaching upon their borders.

And what I originally meant was that I found it strange how a people can so quickly seize such a large land as the Slavs did (pretty much everything between Baltic and Aegean Sea) and yet remain so low-profile and hard to trace for a hundred and more years.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Well, I do find it hard to imagine how a sedentary people (the Germanic people were sedentary) can pick up and leave its homeland, where they have villages, cultivated land, fortresses and all that.

They had fortresses? Where?

I guess I am not as amazed as you are. Perhaps our imaginations are running on different lines. I am guessing when you imagine, say, a Gothic village, you might be projecting a smaller-sized but solidly-built little Medieval villages where generations have lived for eons.

I, on the other hand, imagine old Germanic villages were pretty similar to the kind that can still be found in the African bush south of the Sahara -- sparse, rudimentarily-built, easy to dismantle & disappear without a trace. And I'm also talking sedentary, not nomadic. Sub-Saharan Africa too had massive migrations of sedentary peoples back & forth.

So, no, I'm not shocked. I've seen large patches of nothing where reasonably-sized villages once stood just a few years earlier. Where did they go? War, economics, etc. No trace left? No, nothing at all. (Of course, the African bush has a voracious appetite and eats up abandoned land relatively quickly, but still.)

So, keeping the African analogy in mind, no, I am not surprised at all. Unless they're into building stone monuments or house foundations (which they probably weren't), they're not bound to leave a trace. Or rather, the only trace a tribal nation has of its past are its oral histories. And these oral histories will get erased once they are defeated & enslaved by another.

Keep in mind the only reason we know of the Qadi, Marcomanni, Gepidae, Svebians, Vandals, Alans, etc. is not what they left behind (they left nothing), but simply because they come up in the oral histories of the tribes who defeated them and those victorious tribes lasted long enough (or were close enough to the Empire) for a Roman-educated chronicler set their oral histories to paper.

I suspect the same is true of the Slavs. They too probably have as exciting a history with as much "achievement" as any Germanic tribe. Except they were too far from Rome/defeated too soon to get their stories recorded on time.

I can see half the nation leaving due to famine (as happened in Ireland) but a people in its entirety? It must have taken something drastic, and the old stuff about how Huns running amok in the southern Ukraine caused Vandals along the upper Elbe to pack up and leave doesn't make much sense to me.

Well, during the Mfecane, the Zulus sent many a sedentary African tribe moving wholesale across southern Africa. There are tribes now living as far north as the upper Zambezi & even in the Congo which, not so long ago, lived down around the Orange & Limpopo rivers. If the Zulus can force such large-scale migrations simply by warfare, why not the Huns?

Oh come on! They were not nearly as "dark" as the word "dark ages" implies. Roman civilization continued pretty much as it had before, only the taxes were lower and there was no humongeous government any more. Historians, theologists and poets continued to write Latin chronicles, poems and books like before, the bishops ran their cities like before, and the peasants worked for Latin landholders, like before. They can't have been all that uncivilized, or more would have broken down. It's true that the majority of roads, aquaeducts and palaces decayed as time went by (because no one took care of them) but the invaders had been pretty careful not to tear down too many of them in the first place.

If I exaggerated in one direction, you seem to exaggerate in the other. It was not simply a few aqueducts & roads disappearing.

The Goths had been living in the Ukraine until around 375, which was not exactly in the neighbourhood of any noteworthy civilization. Yet they were able to make themselves lords over Italy, Spain and Aquitaine a hundred years later. The Bavarians and Thuringians may have been no spearheads of civilization (they still aren't, those Ossis and Lederhosen wearers ) but they became Christianized rather quickly and played a role within the Frankish empire. The Moravians also organized themselves into a larger state quickly once the Franks (mostly using Bavarian troops) started encroaching upon their borders.

Well, the Goths couldn't have been very "advanced" if they didn't leave anything behind in the Ukraine (except that itsy-bitsy little principality of Theodoro in the Crimea, obscurely forgotten until the 15th C.)

At any rate, the Ukraine is not that far. There's a highway betweeen Thrace & Ukraine (it's called the Black Sea ). And remember the Visigoths were Arians before they began moving west. That must mean they must have had subtantial contact with Roman exiles/missionaries while hanging out there.

And what I originally meant was that I found it strange how a people can so quickly seize such a large land as the Slavs did (pretty much everything between Baltic and Aegean Sea) and yet remain so low-profile and hard to trace for a hundred and more years.

Again, not so strange in my mind.

 

[pithorr]

Absolutely right, Abdul. I share your point in 100%. I must sadly say that Karl is quoting typical 19th century German school of historiography, particuralrly biased on Slavic people. Traditional stereotype: civilized fine Germans vs. wild pathetic Slavs. This way Race of Lords has got a natural law to subdue worthless tribes in the east... Germans used it to excuse and enable future Drang Nach Osten once again, executed in 1940s by Nazis...
In the matter fact original organization of German and Slavic tribes was probably very similar each other. When we look through their panteons of gods we can even see more similarities. Both groups rather did not have written history, but Germanics found themselves closer to antic civilization to just absorb its achievements earlier...
Karl please try to notice that in 900s SUDDENLY appeared well organized, strong Slavic kingdoms (Croatian, Bohemian, Polish, Kievian, Bulgarian - even in 800s, Serbian etc.) able to stand even with HRE (Polish King Boleslaw used to kick Heinrich II ass for twenty years in the beginning of 1000s for instance) or seize core Roman territories (Croatians and Bulgarians). How did they emerged? Organized by savage tribes living on trees or maybe landed from the outer space ?

Why did Germanic people move west? Well, maybe pushed by Huns, Sarmatians, Scythians, someone else or all them together , maybe just because tribes were travelling in that era (even sedentary ones as Germanics and... yes, Slavs, when the soil became sterile of primitive cultivation methods).
I think rather about first option - isn't it stange that all those groups used to abandon most valuable (considering conterporary criteria) lands of today Ukraine with most fertile soils of whole Europe?

 

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Absolutely righ, Abdul. I share your point in 100%. I must sadly say that Karl is quoting typical 19th century German school of historiography, particuralrly biased on Slavic people to excuse and enable future Drang Nach Osten, executed in 1940s by Nazis...
In the matter fact original organization of German and Slavic tribes was probably very similar each other. When we look through their panteons of gods we can even see more similarities. Both groups rather did not have written history, but Germanics found themselves closer to antic civilization to just absorb its achievements earlier...

Sorry if I came across as looking down on Slavic history. Sadly I have no good books about central European ancient and pre-history, and have no idea what such might be. I do have a couple of books about the migrations of Germanic tribes and they basically deal in great detail with the history of those peoples as they came into the Roman world but barely at all with their previous histories. (The books are the Fischer Weltgeschichte volumes on the dark ages, the early medieval age and the Byzantine Empire, plus an old book by Felix Dahn titled "Die Völkerwanderung" which would fall exactly under the typical 19th century German school of historiography you mentioned. Drenched in national-chauvinist rhethoric, but at least it bothers to talk about the details of what these nations did, i.e. when did who go where and where did he come from... who was their leader and how was he related to the other leaders...)

If you know affordable (10-25€) books about the Germanic-Slavic interaction and the transformation from tribes to kingdoms in central Europe (~300AD to 800AD) I'd be happy to read them. I did a little looking on Amazon, and books about Slavic pagan mythology and early history seem to be horribly expensive rarities.

Karl please try to notice that in 900s SUDDENLY appeared well organized, strong Slavic kingdoms (Croatian, Bohemian, Polish, Kievian, Bulgarian - even in 800s, Serbian etc.) able to stand even with HRE (Polish King Boleslaw used to kick Heinrich II ass for twenty years for instance) or seize core Roman territories (Croatians and Bulgarians). How did they emerged? Organized by savage tribes living on trees or maybe landed from outer space ?

I know that there was a Polish kingdom under Boleslaw Chrobry which ruled pretty much everything between Dresden and Galicia. And the book about the Byzantine empire has a pretty good section (~30 pages) dealing with the Bulgarian empires - their establishment, their interaction with the Byzantines and their culture. What I don't have is something that tells the story of how the familiar constellation of the middle ages (around 1000, when the kingdoms that basically were the predecessors to the modern-day nations were established all over Europe) came about.

Why did Germanic people move west? Well, maybe pushed by Huns, Sarmatians, Scythians, someone else or all them together , maybe just because tribes were travelling in that era (even sedentary ones as Germanics and... yes, Slavs, when the soil became sterile of primitive cultivation methods).
I think rather about first option - isn't it stange that all those groups used to abandon most valuable (considering conterporary criteria) lands of today Ukraine with most fertile soils of whole Europe?

A bad neighbourhood, I suppose. Good soil but right next to the Asia-Danube highway. Too much noise from the heavy traffic...

 

[Conrad]

I always figured the root of the word "grad" was an ancient Indo-European one and not so much a Germanic one. It's core meaning would have been something along the lines of "territory with protected borders", which in Church Slavonic became "grad" (now, Leningrad, i.e. city of Lenin and Volgograd, i.e. city on the Volga) and in modern Russian "gorod" (=city). In Dutch we still have the word "gaard", in English "garden". As you see, the "protected borders" are a wall in medieval Russian, a fence in the West.

I have been doing some checking and "grad" should be a borrowing from Germanic languages.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the Germanic gard is derived from the I-E root *gher. In Slavic languages gh became z and so the words can't be derived from the same I-E root.

It is probably a borrowing from a time when the Proto-Slavs were ruled by Germanic tribes such as the Goths.

 

[unmerged(10416)]

They had fortresses? Where?

I guess I am not as amazed as you are. Perhaps our imaginations are running on different lines. I am guessing when you imagine, say, a Gothic village, you might be projecting a smaller-sized but solidly-built little Medieval villages where generations have lived for eons.

I, on the other hand, imagine old Germanic villages were pretty similar to the kind that can still be found in the African bush south of the Sahara -- sparse, rudimentarily-built, easy to dismantle & disappear without a trace. And I'm also talking sedentary, not nomadic. Sub-Saharan Africa too had massive migrations of sedentary peoples back & forth.

Hm. I hadn't thought about it that way.

So, no, I'm not shocked. I've seen large patches of nothing where reasonably-sized villages once stood just a few years earlier. Where did they go? War, economics, etc. No trace left? No, nothing at all. (Of course, the African bush has a voracious appetite and eats up abandoned land relatively quickly, but still.)

So, keeping the African analogy in mind, no, I am not surprised at all. Unless they're into building stone monuments or house foundations (which they probably weren't), they're not bound to leave a trace. Or rather, the only trace a tribal nation has of its past are its oral histories. And these oral histories will get erased once they are defeated & enslaved by another.

In some cases they survive. The Nibelungenlied, the oral history of the short-lived Burgundian kingdom from the 5th century, was passed on in a transformed way (kind of as a fairy tale but the historical characters and important story twists were still there) even though the tribe itself was heavily decimated by the Huns, deported to modern-day Burgundy and then later on conquered by the Merowingians.

Keep in mind the only reason we know of the Qadi, Marcomanni, Gepidae, Svebians, Vandals, Alans, etc. is not what they left behind (they left nothing), but simply because they come up in the oral histories of the tribes who defeated them and those victorious tribes lasted long enough (or were close enough to the Empire) for a Roman-educated chronicler set their oral histories to paper.

I suspect the same is true of the Slavs. They too probably have as exciting a history with as much "achievement" as any Germanic tribe. Except they were too far from Rome/defeated too soon to get their stories recorded on time.

If there are such stories, I'd love to read them. I think the old fairy tales and legends that people keep give good insight into the way they live and perceive their history. I've bookmarked this book on Amazon and will buy it once it is released.

At any rate, the Ukraine is not that far. There's a highway betweeen Thrace & Ukraine (it's called the Black Sea ). And remember the Visigoths were Arians before they began moving west. That must mean they must have had subtantial contact with Roman exiles/missionaries while hanging out there.

There were Aryan missionaries travelling the area east of the Rhine in the late 3rd and early 4th century. The Goths converted around 300AD, there are still a couple of old bibles in Gothic script from that era, the oldest from 350AD. I don't know though if the Roman exiles themselves did the long trip east or if a group of Roman-educated converts brought the faith back east.

 

[Brownbeard]

i was always under the impression that the moto of both germanic and slavic migrations was 'run for your lives the dogheads* are coming!'

*the popular ancient term for mongols and huns since they used to scar their children(cut of their cheeks) so that they look more horrible when they grow up... although i'm not sure if its fact or myth but its interesting

if i remember correctly germanic conquest of roman territories(early invasions like the markomans excluded) ussually began when germanic refugees rebelled against unfair treatment and high taxes from roman overlords. ie. goths in moesia or wherever.

as for slavs... off to greener pastures. croatian mythology states that the iranian component of future croatian nation left areas northeast of persia and moved westward(probably due to mongol raids and drought), met with proto-slavs in the steppes of eastern ukraine and the two components merged into a tribal alliance with elements of both cultures but recognizably slavic, the name and basic national symbols have been kept to this day(red-white crest and three-layered weave)... then to polish-lithuanian border, then down to krakow where the mythical white-croatian kingdom was formed, and after the avaric siege of constantinople migrated towards nowadays southern croatia and western bosnia-hercegovina...

anyway, archeologic data shows that during the first century post migration croats lived apart from avars and first wave of slavic immigrants and during a century of combat croats managed to wipe out all avaric settlements in croatia and drive them permanently out.

after that its two centuries of struggle against franks and byzantines which resulted with the birth of independent croatian state in late 9.ct

so... first a showdown with the avars, and then getting rid of the two european superpowers... not all that bad

it is quite natural that there are almost no archeologic remains of either old germanic or slavic settlements, both were not in stone, but wood country, and nature erases all thats not carved into stone. 150 years ago there was a village 5km upstream from where i live, it was move to the opposite side of the river to avoid floods... nowadays it is a dense forest/swamp, i only found out about it from a history book. one would never guess that there was ever civilization at that spot

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as for slavic mythology... it is very similar to germanic with the main difference being ragnarok. there is no ragnarok in slavic mythology, all gods are different degrees of good and evil is personified in the incarnations of chernobog, his dragon form chert, evil giants, and morana*/baba yaga... mistress of winter, all other evil derives of their spawn

*i'm not sure if other slavic nations use this name for her too. morana is when baba yaga takes the form of a beautiful black haired woman with claws and sharp fangs whose kiss turnes girls into sex crazed nymphos(like moenadae) and she eats the souls of hot young men while in their sleep(like cthulhu meets jenna jameson) as winter wanes she starts to repent for her wickedness and then her evil is no longer lethal

svarog is equivalent to wotan and perun to thor. perun later became dominant and is today called st.ilias. pagan slavic and germanic are as related as greek and roman. only minor variations. human sacrifice was almost non present, unlike celts and illyrians.

as for slavic mythology books... very rare. try googling a few sites. but those are mostly focus on national interpretations of slavic myths(mostly russian versions). there is one croatian slavic mythology, but i don't think it was ever translated into other languages... but it borders soft-core porn so... it is not all that scientific source. but perunika, the wife of perun is hot.

 

[pithorr]

A bad neighbourhood, I suppose. Good soil but right next to the Asia-Danube highway. Too much noise from the heavy traffic...

Yeeeah, indeed, unfortunetely this traffic has been increasing till 20th century...

 

[Conrad]

as for slavic mythology... it is very similar to germanic with the main difference being ragnarok. there is no ragnarok in slavic mythology, all gods are different degrees of good and evil is personified in the incarnations of chernobog, his dragon form chert, evil giants, and morana*/baba yaga... mistress of winter, all other evil derives of their spawn

In principle, I agree with this since both Germanic and Slavic religions were "nature religions" derived from an earlier Proto-Indo-European religion. The similarities must have outweighed the differences, and I know that the Vikings who settled in Kiev readily worshiped Slavic gods.

Concerning this good vs evil structure I guess the Slavs borrowed this from Christianity, because in Germanic mythology there was no obvious good vs evil structure, unless you translate good with "upholding order" and evil with "the enemies of this order".

The Germanic gods were not interested in an abstract concept of "goodness", they were more interested in protecting the world they had created. Odin and Thor did bad things, and even Loki did good things (usually after having done bad things).

svarog is equivalent to wotan and perun to thor. perun later became dominant and is today called st.ilias. pagan slavic and germanic are as related as greek and roman. only minor variations. human sacrifice was almost non present, unlike celts and illyrians.

I agree with the Perun=Thor part, since you can easily compare them. Concerning human sacrifice, I think we can state that it happened on a regular basis among the Germanic tribes. I live only a few km from a place where nine men were sacrificed every nine years by the Swedish kings.

Here a difference is that the Germanic tribes did not sacrifice virgins (what a horrible waste) to the gods, although they did have a form of suttee.