The Original Homeland oe the Slavs
Among the first historical accounts to define the original homeland of the Slavs is the early medieval Rus' Primary Chronicle. It states that the Slavs first ‘settled beside the Danube, where the Hungarian and Bulgarian lands now lie,’ that is, along the middle and lower Danube valley, from the Pannonian Plain to the Black Sea.
This view was accepted for many centuries, but later was replaced by the so-called Sarmatian theory, which considered the Slavic homeland to be on the Don River, thereby placing the Slavs in close relationship with the Iranian Scythians and Sarmatians. In the nineteenth century, scholars began to argue that the original Slavic habitat was cither in the Carpathian Mountains or farther north, along the marshes of the Pripct River. Today, four views are current.(1) The Czech archaeologist Lubor Niedcrlc (1902) defined the Slavic homeland as centered in northwestern Ukraine, encompassing the upper Vistula and Buh valleys, the Pripct Marshes, and Right Bank Ukraine bounded by the Dnieper River in the east and the crest of the Carpathians in the south.
(2) The Slavic linguist Max Vasmer (1941) fixed the Slavic homeland somewhat farther east, centering it in north-central Ukraine where the Pripet and Desna Rivers meet the Dnieper. This territory includes, in the west, the Pripet Marshes and Right Bank as far as the upper valley of the Southern Buh River, and, in the cast, the region of the upper Donets' and upper Don valleys.
(3) Several interwar and postwar Polish archaeologists - Jan Czckanowski, Tadeusz Lehr-Splawinski, Leon Kozlowski, Jozef Kostrzewski, and Tadeusz Sulimirski - argued that the original Slavic homeland coincides with the area of the so-called Lusatian culture, which, on the evidence of archaeological finds, they identified as having been located between the Elbe River in the west and the Buh River in the east, and as spreading from the crest of the Carpathians northward all the way to the Baltic Sea.
This territory coincides largely with the present-day boundaries of Poland.(4) Post-World War II Soviet archaeologists (Petr N. Tret'iakov, Boris Rybakov), joined by Polish (Konrad Jazdzewski) and Czech archaeologists (Jan Filip, Jiff Horak, and ZdenSk Vana), argued that the area of Lusatian culture was only one part of the Slavic homeland, and the westernmost one at that, and that the territory should therefore be extended eastward as far as the lower Desna and Seim Rivers.
Whereas their emphases may differ slightly, modern scholars seem to maintain the common premise that the original homeland of the Slavs was north of the Carpathian Mountains and north of the line that divided the mixed foreststeppe from the open steppe. This territory extended from the upper reaches of the Oder River in the west across to the middle Vistula, Buh, Pripet, middle
Dnieper, and Desna Rivers in the cast; in contemporary terms, it was made up of north-central and western Ukraine, southwestern Belarus, and south-central and southeastern Poland.
The migrations of the Slavs
By the middle of the first millennium âñå, the Slavs had begun to move slowly in various directions from their original homeland. This gradual process of outward migration was to last a millennium. It was especially pronounced toward the south, into the middle Dniester and Southern Buh valleys of southwestern Ukraine. The Slavs and, for that matter, other peoples were drawn to Ukraine because of its natural wealth and the possibility for trade with the Greek and, later, Roman cities along the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
It was inevitable that the Slavs would come into contact with the nomadic and semi-sedentary civilizations that held sway over Ukrainian territory. This was the case with the Scythians, who after 750 âñå controlled the steppe area north of the Black Sea. It is more than likely that the agriculturalists and certain that the so- called ‘ploughmen’ of Scythian society were at least to some degree made up of Slavs.
The subordinate position of the Slavs at first was maintained under the Sarmatians, who displaced the Scythians after 250 âñå.Information about the Slavs on Ukrainian territory during the Sarmatian era comes from the sixth-century Goth and Byzantine historians Jordanes and Procopius. They were the first writers to describe the Slavs in any detail. Jordanes divided them into three groups: (1) the Venedi, living along the Baltic Sea and the lower valleys of the Elbe, Oder, and Vistula Rivers; (2) the Antes, living along the Black Sea between the Prut and the Southern Buh Rivers; and (3) the Sclaveni, living north of the Danube, in both Moravia and the Carpathian Basin as well as in Walachia and Moldavia. The second of these groups, the Antes, are of particular interest with respect to the developments in Ukraine.
The Antes
Because of the limited and conflicting written evidence (in contrast to Jordanes, Procopius does not classify the Antes as Slavs) and the inconclusive nature of archaeological data, there remains much controversy about the Antes. It is agreed that their presence derives from the Sarmatian era. The most important Sarmatian tribe on Ukrainian territory were the Alans, and one group of the Alans were known as the Antes. It seems that after their arrival in the Ukrainian steppe during the first two centuries ce, the Alanic Antes (like other Sarmatian tribes of Iranic origin) began to organize the Slavic and other tribes living in their midst. Initially centered on lands between the Prut and the lower Dniester Rivers during the fourth century ce, the Antean power base moved progressively northward: first to the upper valley of the Southern Buh; then, in the fifth and sixth centuries, to Volhynia; and later to the middle Dnieper region. Eventually, as they moved farther north beyond the open steppe into the more heavily Slavic-populated areas, the name Antes came to be used for the upper echelons as well as the Slavs under their control.
At the same time, the Slavs themselves gradually replaced the original group of Irano-Alanic conquerors and military elite from whom they had acquired the Antean name.By the fourth century ce, the Antes had evolved into a powerful tribal league with effective military units. Their reputation as a potent fighting force was still evident in the sixth century, when Jordanes described them as ‘the bravest of these peoples dwelling in the curve of the Sea of Pontus [Black Sea], spread from the Dniester to the Dnieper.’1 The Antes were able to undertake successful raids against the Byzantine Empire and to resist the Goths, who after 250 ce had established a power base in the Crimea and southern Ukraine. It is from the Gothic- Antean conflicts that descriptions of powerful military leaders like the fourthcentury Antean ‘king’ Boz have come down to us.
The fifth century marked the apogee of Antean power on Ukrainian territories. At that time, the Antes were able to fill a power vacuum that had been left in the region west of the Dnieper River. This occurred after the Gothic supremacy in the area was undermined by the Huns in the late fourth century during the latter’s westward advance across Ukraine toward the Pannonian Plain beyond the Carpathian Mountains. Within the Antean sphere, based in north-central and northwestern Ukraine, a sedentary civilization consisting of numerous villages in which agriculture and cattle breeding were the primary occupations came into being.
The sedentary Antes also established several hill forts, known as horodyshcha or horody, where artisans produced metalwares and pottery. Remnants of these items have been uncovered by archaeologists, who describe their findings as belonging to what they call the Cherniakhiv and Pen'kivka cultures. Among the more important of the fortified centers were Volyn' in the far west and Kiev along the middle Dnieper, from which the Antes carried on a brisk local and international trade reaching the markets of the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Whereas the existence of the Antes somewhere on Ukrainian territory between the third and seventh centuries is recognized, the nature of their society and the extent of their rule remain a source of controversy. Some scholars believe the Antes were Slavic or partly slavicized tribal groups who from time to time were able to join together to create tribal leagues with their own military forces. Others suggest that the Antean tribal league evolved into ‘statehood,’ which would make them the creators of one of the earliest Slavic states. Francis Dvornik even speaks of an Antean ‘empire’ stretching virtually the full extent of the original Slavic homeland from the Oder River in the west to the upper Donets' and Oka Rivers in the east. Most writers, however, limit the Antean sphere to the East Slavs: nonSoviet Ukrainian authors (Hrushevs'kyi, Polons'ka-Vasylenko) consider them creators of the first Ukrainian state; Soviet authors (Grekov, Rybakov) see them as an indigenous Slavic group who formed the first East Slavic state, based in the sixth