What are the tribes. Tribes of the Slavs

The most distant periods of history have been little studied, there are only archeological data that can not cover the whole complex of interaction and development of the human race. But historical science can provide exhaustive answers to questions about what tribes are, how they emerged.

Formation of races

The first civilizational centers appeared in the southeast of our planet (Egypt, India, China, Mesopotamia), and it is no coincidence. There is a comfortable climate and favorable lands, allowing to receive a significant surplus product, and all this, in turn, led to complication of relations and the formation of large alliances, prototypes of states.

However, until the appearance of such a whole human race was a primitive herd. As the number of people increased, differences arose, which were related to the fact that people developed new areas for life. This inevitably affected the diversity of the human species.

The Southerners acquired those racial features that we can still see today in the Australoid and Negroid race. The masses of people who inhabited the sand and taiga areas, acquired their unique features. Today we can observe them from the Mongoloid race. And the Caucasians who settled Europe, also have their own characteristics.

Ethnic and linguistic features

What are the tribes? This is quite a legitimate question. It would seem that the answer is simple: it is a group of related communities of people or just a group of people, it all depends on how interrelated these groups are. But the formation of tribes is more complex.

Originally there were several large associations of ancient people, each of which represented different linguistic and cultural elements, and even within these more or less common groups there was a significant difference in linguistic and household characteristics.

The largest language family is the Indo-European, it gave rise to many tribes, and those subsequently to the peoples of Europe and Asia.

Tribes of Africa come from three linguistic groups: the Niger-Kordofan, Khoisan and Nilo-Saharan, except for the Arabs, who belong to the Semito-Hamit.

Subsequently, the carriers of these language families spread throughout Africa, and only the north of the continent later becomes Arabic.

The largest tribal community

Indo-Europeans, as the name suggests, occupied the vast territories of Eurasia. It is believed that the ancestral home of the tribes of this group is the region of South-Eastern and Central Europe. The economic life of the tribes of this community was represented by agriculture and cattle breeding, metallurgy is closer to the third millennium of a great level of development.

The growing number of Indo-European tribes leads to their resettlement, part followed west and south, the other moved to the east and north of the continent. Occupying the whole of Europe, the Indo-Europeans did not stop and rushed further east, up to the Urals, in the south, the territory of modern India becomes the extreme point of the spread of this association.

In the course of these global migration movements, the unity of the group began to disintegrate. This happens in 4-3 millennium BC. It is from this environment that the ancient tribes of the Slavs are distinguished, although at this stage they can be designated as Proto-Slavs.

Formation of national units

Similar processes were going on in other communities of people, in the vast steppe areas of Asia, the Altai and Turkic tribes were formed. Having an idea of what the tribes are and where they lived, we can assume the kind of their occupation.

As for the aforementioned Turkic-Altai tribes, it becomes clear that the basis of their economy was nomadic cattle breeding. Those groups that inhabited the fertile land were mainly engaged in agriculture. Among them are the tribes of the Slavs. Their homeland is the middle course of the Vistula, Elbe and Oder rivers. From there they settled in southern, eastern and western Europe. There they gave rise to three groups of Slavs: Eastern (Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian), Western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and southern (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, etc.).

However, this happened much later. According to archeology and other sources, in the first millennium BC. E. First Slavs were first separated from the general group of Germans, and then from the Balts.

Fight for a place under the sun

It is clear that such mass migrations of large groups of people could not do without conflicts. The war of the tribes was a phenomenon no less frequent than resettlement and agriculture. The most successful in this case nomadic tribes. They were more adapted to the deprivations and conduct of hostilities, because their existence depended on this.

Slavs in this respect experienced the whole waves of successive nomadic raids: at first they were Cimmerians and Scythians, Sarmatians came to replace them, and then - a huge mass of Huns. This continued until they created their own fighting squads.

However, the time from the VI century BC. E. And until the 8th century AD - it is an incessant war of tribes of different origin for the most favorable living conditions. This period is also known for the active formation of tribal alliances.

Inter-tribal groups

Since we have touched the Slavs, we will consider, by their example, the formation of powerful tribal groupings, the last step on the road to the creation of statehood. The main written source on the history of that period is the Tale of Bygone Years.

According to the information given in this certificate, the Slavic tribes and their associations existed on the order of 15. A small community was part of a larger tribe. Which of them was the most developed economically and politically? The chronicle says that these are glades living on the plains in the area of the modern city of Kiev.

Another tribal association, standing close to the level of development to the glades, was the Ilmen Slovenes. These two tribal groupings, which consisted of closely related groups, set the tone for the further development of all Eastern Slavs. Identical processes took place in other tribes. The strongest ethnic units and developed included less influential neighbors, forming an intertribal union.

The universal historical process

Indeed, it is the meadow and the ilmen Slovenes that formed two competing political centers - Kiev and Novgorod. These capitals of tribal unions will later be confronted in the battle for supremacy in Russia.

If you look at other historical examples, you can see the Burgundians and Gascon in France in the struggle for domination in a single state. In general, this process is universal.

Nor is the exception of the tribes of Africa, where sharp rivalry led to the formation of vast state formations, but the characteristic feature of the development of these processes here was their transience and great variability, in view of the early civilizational influence of Egypt and the Middle Eastern empires. That's what the tribes are, their influence on further ethnic self-identification in brief.