Dniepr Balts

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Map of the Dnieper river basin Dnipro Basin River Town International.png
Map of the Dnieper river basin

The Dniepr Balts, a subgroup of the Eastern Balts, are Baltic tribes that lived in the Dnieper river basin, who had lived there from before Ancient history until the Late Middle Ages. By the 10th-13th centuries, they were partly destroyed, partly assimilated by the Slavs. [1] To the north and northeast of the Dniepr Balts were the Volga Finns, and to the southeast and south were the ancient Iranians, the Scythians. [1]

Contents

The Dniepr Balts were studied by many researchers, such as the famous Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga, the German linguist Max Vasmer, the Russian linguists Vladimir Toporov, Oleg Trubachyov and others. [1]

History

The Dniepr Balts did not leave any writings. In 1962, the Russian linguists Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov, in their work, the "Linguistic analysis of the hydronyms of the Upper Dnieper region" (Russian : Лингвистический анализ гидронимов Верхнего Поднепровья), reported that they had found about 800 names of Baltic origin in the Dnieper basin.

The former ethnic Balticness of the Dnieper basin is indisputable. [1] [2] [3] This is evidenced by numerous archaeological finds, as well as hydronyms. [1] For example, the hydronyms Yauza, Khimka  [ ru ] and Moskva, are of Baltic origin according to the linguist Vladimir Toporov. [4]

Ancient history

Various archeological monuments [5] and the prevalence of Baltic hydronyms indicate that by the end of the Neolithic period (c. 3rd to 2nd Millenium B.C.), there were several closely related, at least hypothetically Baltic, cultures in Central and Eastern Europe. These were the Pamariai, (Late) Narva, (Late) Nemunas cultures. The earliest of them is the Pamariai culture, which covered only a narrow part of the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea.

During the Bronze (c. 2nd to 1st Millenium B.C.) and Iron (c. 1st Millenium B.C. to 1st Millenium A.D.) Ages, in the lands to the east and south of modern-day Lithuania and Latvia, there were undoubtedly Baltic (Late) Narva and the Brushed Pottery cultures (the areas of these two cultures included the east of present-day Lithuania and Latvia), the Dnieper-Daugava culture  [ lt ], Milograd, Yukhniv  [ lt ] and the later Dyakovo cultures.

In the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D., the aforementioned Baltic cultures of the Dnieper, Daugava and Oka basins transformed into the Kolochin, Tushemlia  [ lt ] and Moshchiny cultures, which existed until the 8th-10th centuries. This transformation was due to the strong influence of the culture of the Western Balts (of the Zarubintsy culture), which moved from the territory of what is now Poland deep into the Dnieper basin as early as the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.

Moshchiny culture is considered to be the ancestor of the Eastern Galindians, who lived in the lands near Moscow and within the Protva river basin.

Slavic invasion

In the middle of the 1st millennium, Slavs began to invade the Baltic territory of the Dniepr Balts along the Dnieper and its tributaries. [1] In the 7th century, the Slavs, that previously only lived in Right-bank Ukraine, started invading the Baltic lands in the eastern Dnieper basin. Since the 7th and 8th centuries, the linguistic and cultural Slavicisation of Dnieper Balts was accelerated by the conversion of the multilingual tribes living in Ruthenia to Eastern Orthodoxy. Some researchers believe that after the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988, part of the Dnieper Balts retreated westwards and eventually merged with Lithuanians and Latvians. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the majority of the Dnieper Balts were separated from the other Balts living in the west by Slavic migrants moving north on the Dnieper banks. In the 11th and 12th centuries, almost all the Dnieper Balts, except the Eastern Galindians, were assimilated by the eastern Slavs.

The Lithuanian professor Zigmas Zinkevičius writes that:

It is thought that the Dniepr Balts, just as the other Balts living to the east from present-day Lithuania and Latvia, had an important influence on the Slavs who moved to these lands and the formation of East Slavic as a separate linguistic group. [1]

Religion

According to some researchers, the pagan religion of the Dnieper Balts included the veneration of pillars with bear heads. [6]

Related Research Articles

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Zarubintsy culture

The Zarubintsy or Zarubinets culture was a culture that from the 3rd century BC until the 1st century AD flourished in the area north of the Black Sea along the upper and middle Dnieper and Pripyat Rivers, stretching west towards the Southern Bug river. Zarubintsy sites were particularly dense between the Rivers Desna and Ros as well as along the Pripyat river. It was identified around 1899 by the Czech-Ukrainian archaeologist Vikentiy Khvoyka and is now attested by about 500 sites. The culture was named after finds of cremated remains in the village of Zarubyntsi on the Dnieper.

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Moshchiny culture

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zinkevičius 2022.
  2. ↑ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 49.
  3. ↑ Fortson 2004, pp. 378–379.
  4. ↑ Toporov 1972.
  5. ↑ Girininkas 2013.
  6. ↑ Tretyakov, P.N. (1970). Славяне и Балты в Верхнем Поднепровье в середине и третьей четверти I тыс. н.э. [Slavs and Balts in the Upper Dnieper region in the middle and third quarter of the 1st millennium AD] (in Russian). pp. 52–67. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014.

Sources

See also

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