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200
Occurrence of an ancient slavic civilization
The first people of Russia, as far back as we can account (ca 7th c. BC), were the Scythians. Scythia was the region to the north and northwest of the Black Sea. Mount Caucasus, is where Prometheus, of Greek legend, was bound. The people called themselves Skoloti; is was the Greeks who named their three primary clans, "Scythians." The Scythians were of Iranian (Mesopotamian) descent and considered barbarians by the Greeks. -
210
creation story civilization
Every civilization or group has its own creation story. It seems to be human nature to need to know where you came from. This is true of the Scythians. Legend and oral tradition holds that the Scythians came from the three sons of Targitaus, a supernatural being who lived around the Black Sea. The three sons ruled the region jointly until one day when a plow, battle ax, cup and yoke fell from the sky in a ball of fire. The youngest son, Colaxais, was the only one of the three able to touch these -
300
Way of life
These ancient people were excellent horsemen and warriors. They managed to repel Alexander the Great's army, as well as the Persian invasion of Darius' troops. The setting was the 5th century BC. The Greek historian, Herodotus (ca. 485-425 BC) wrote extensively about the Scythians. They fade from history by ca. 200 BC.
It is safe to say that the Scythians were mysterious and feared in their time, and with good reason. A male warrior dominated society, they had this unsavory habit of using the bo -
400
Way of life
The Scythian men, typically, had several wives. Excavation of burial sites overwhelmingly supports this. When a Scythian died, his eldest son or a brother would inherit his wives as their own. This practice was not at all unusual. Known as a levirate marriage, the widow would marry her late husband's brother or closest male next of kin. The reason was to keep the wealth and heirs in the immediate family. -
500
Way of life of ancient Slavs
Natural cradle of eastern Slavic people of the Russian state was Eastern European plain. Its open spaces, landscapes, soil and climatic conditions, river basins determined not only the formation of dominant economic and cultural complexes, population settlements but also the formation of ethnic and state frontiers according to results of armed political conflicts and colonization processes. -
adoption of Christianity
To the middle of the first millenium AD there were steady economic and cultural complexes located in woods, forest-steppes and steppe zones of Eurasia; the process of ethnogeny developed actively. To VI - VII centuries the final stage of eastern slavs allocation from common pro-Slavonic unity began.
The transformation of eastern Slavic cultural and ethnic community into local independent civilization was connected with the adoption of Christianity by prince Vladimir in 988.
