Origin of tribes. What is a tribe? Ancient and modern tribes

The Slavs are perhaps one of the largest ethnic communities in Europe, and there are numerous myths about the nature of their origin.

But what do we really know about the Slavs?

Who the Slavs are, where they came from, and where their ancestral home is, we will try to figure it out.

Origin of the Slavs

There are several theories of the origin of the Slavs, according to which some historians attribute them to a tribe permanently residing in Europe, others to the Scythians and Sarmatians who came from Central Asia, and there are many other theories. Let's consider them sequentially:

The most popular theory is the Aryan origin of the Slavs.

The authors of this hypothesis are the theorists of the “Norman history of the origin of Rus',” which was developed and put forward in the 18th century by a group of German scientists: Bayer, Miller and Schlozer, for the substantiation of which the Radzvilov or Königsberg Chronicle was concocted.

The essence of this theory was as follows: the Slavs are an Indo-European people who migrated to Europe during the Great Migration of Peoples, and were part of some ancient “German-Slavic” community. But as a result of various factors, having broken away from the civilization of the Germans and finding itself on the border with the wild eastern peoples, and becoming cut off from the advanced Roman civilization at that time, it fell so far behind in its development that the paths of their development radically diverged.

Archeology confirms the existence of strong intercultural ties between the Germans and the Slavs, and in general the theory is more than respectable if you remove the Aryan roots of the Slavs from it.

The second popular theory is more European in nature, and it is much older than the Norman one.

According to his theory, the Slavs were no different from other European tribes: Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Gepids, Getae, Alans, Avars, Dacians, Thracians and Illyrians, and were of the same Slavic tribe

The theory was quite popular in Europe, and the idea of the origin of the Slavs from the ancient Romans, and Rurik from the Emperor Octavian Augustus, was very popular with historians of that time.

The European origin of peoples is also confirmed by the theory of the German scientist Harald Harmann, who called Pannonia the homeland of Europeans.

But I still like a simpler theory, which is based on a selective combination of the most plausible facts from other theories of the origin of not so much the Slavic, but the European peoples as a whole.

I don’t think I need to tell you that the Slavs are strikingly similar to both the Germans and the ancient Greeks.

So, the Slavs, like other European peoples, came from Iran after the flood, and they landed in Illaria, the cradle of European culture, and from here, through Pannonia, they went to explore Europe, fighting and assimilating with the local peoples, from whom they came acquired their differences.

Those who remained in Illaria created the first European civilization, which we now know as the Etruscans, while the fate of other peoples depended largely on the place they chose for settlement.

It’s hard for us to imagine, but virtually all European peoples and their ancestors were nomads. The Slavs were like that too...

Remember the ancient Slavic symbol that fit so organically into Ukrainian culture: the crane, which the Slavs identified with their most important task, exploration of territories, the task of going, settling and covering more and more new territories.

Just as cranes flew into unknown distances, so the Slavs walked across the continent, burning out forests and organizing settlements.

And as the population of the settlements grew, they collected the strongest and healthiest young men and women and sent them on a long journey, as scouts, to explore new lands.

Age of the Slavs

It is difficult to say when the Slavs emerged as a single people from the pan-European ethnic mass.

Nestor attributes this event to the Babylonian pandemonium.

Mavro Orbini by 1496 BC, about which he writes: “At the indicated time, the Goths and Slavs were of the same tribe. And having subjugated Sarmatia, the Slavic tribe was divided into several tribes and received different names: Wends, Slavs, Ants, Verls, Alans, Massetians... Vandals, Goths, Avars, Roskolans, Polyans, Czechs, Silesians....”

But if we combine the data of archaeology, genetics and linguistics, we can say that the Slavs belonged to the Indo-European community, which most likely emerged from the Dnieper archaeological culture, which was located between the Dnieper and Don rivers, seven thousand years ago during the Stone Age.

And from here the influence of this culture spread to the territory from the Vistula to the Urals, although no one has yet been able to accurately localize it.

Around four thousand years BC, it again split into three conditional groups: the Celts and Romans in the West, the Indo-Iranians in the East, and the Germans, Balts and Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe.

And around the 1st millennium BC, the Slavic language appeared.

Archeology, however, insists that the Slavs are carriers of the “culture of subklosh burials,” which received its name from the custom of covering cremated remains with a large vessel.

This culture existed in the V-II centuries BC between the Vistula and the Dnieper.

The ancestral home of the Slavs

Orbini sees Scandinavia as the original Slavic land, referring to a number of authors: “The descendants of Japheth, the son of Noah, moved north to Europe, penetrating into the country now called Scandinavia. There they multiplied innumerably, as St. Augustine points out in his “City of God,” where he writes that the sons and descendants of Japheth had two hundred homelands and occupied the lands located north of Mount Taurus in Cilicia, along the Northern Ocean, half of Asia, and throughout Europe all the way to the British Ocean."

Nestor calls the homeland of the Slavs the lands along the lower reaches of the Dnieper and Pannonia.

The prominent Czech historian Pavel Safarik believed that the ancestral home of the Slavs should be sought in Europe in the vicinity of the Alps, from where the Slavs left for the Carpathians under the pressure of Celtic expansion.

There was even a version about the ancestral home of the Slavs, located between the lower reaches of the Neman and Western Dvina, and where the Slavic people themselves were formed, in the 2nd century BC, in the Vistula River basin.

The Vistula-Dnieper hypothesis about the ancestral home of the Slavs is by far the most popular.

It is sufficiently confirmed by local toponyms, as well as vocabulary.

Plus, the areas of the Podklosh burial culture already known to us fully correspond to these geographical characteristics!

Origin of the name "Slavs"

The word “Slavs” came into common use already in the 6th century AD, among Byzantine historians. They were spoken of as allies of Byzantium.

The Slavs themselves began to call themselves that in the Middle Ages, judging by the chronicles.

According to another version, the names come from the word “word”, since the “Slavs”, unlike other peoples, knew how to both write and read.

Mavro Orbini writes: “During their residence in Sarmatia, they took the name “Slavs”, which means “glorious”.

There is a version that relates the self-name of the Slavs to the territory of origin, and according to it, the name is based on the name of the river “Slavutich”, the original name of the Dnieper, which contains a root with the meaning “to wash”, “to cleanse”.

An important, but completely unpleasant version for the Slavs states that there is a connection between the self-name “Slavs” and the Middle Greek word for “slave” (σκλάβος).

It was especially popular in the Middle Ages.

The idea that the Slavs, as the most numerous people in Europe at that time, made up the largest number of slaves and were a sought-after commodity in the slave trade, has a place to be.

Let us remember that for many centuries the number of Slavic slaves supplied to Constantinople was unprecedented.

And, realizing that the Slavs were dutiful and hardworking slaves in many ways superior to all other peoples, they were not just a sought-after commodity, but also became the standard idea of a “slave.”

In fact, through their own labor, the Slavs ousted other names for slaves from use, no matter how offensive it may sound, and again, this is only a version.

The most correct version lies in a correct and balanced analysis of the name of our people, by resorting to which one can understand that the Slavs are a community united by one common religion: paganism, who glorified their gods with words that they could not only pronounce, but also write!

Words that had a sacred meaning, and not the bleating and mooing of barbarian peoples.

The Slavs brought glory to their gods, and glorifying them, glorifying their deeds, they united into a single Slavic civilization, a cultural link of pan-European culture.

Scientists disagree. On the one hand, tribes are a relic of the past, and modern ethnic associations are not considered tribes in the historical sense. However, in the modern world there are still a number of political unions that meet the basic criteria of a tribe.

Interpretation of the term

There is no common understanding of what a tribe is. Researchers give several definitions.

A tribe is a community that is defined by common traits common to all members, such as language, origin, traditions, and customs.
Tribe - political alliances with a belief in a common bond, an association of several groups of peoples of different origins. As a rule, they have their own history, a certain legend of the appearance of the tribe.
A tribe is a type of ethnic community, a special social organization of society before division into classes. In their original form, tribes arise simultaneously with clans.

Characteristics of an established tribe

Understanding what a tribe is is largely helped by the criteria by which an ethnic association is considered such:

the presence of a separate territory, delimited from the territory of other tribes by a natural boundary;
certain economics;
mutual assistance of fellow tribesmen, community of actions, for example, collective hunting, gathering;
a single tribal language;
tribal self-name;
self-awareness of oneself as a collective unit;
the presence of common rituals and traditions observed by the tribe.

History of origin

What is a tribe and when was it formed?

Archaeologically, the emergence of tribes was recorded only in the Mesolithic, during the period of the end of their formation as social and ethnic communities.

Unlike the following types (such as nationality and nation), a tribe is based on the same origin of the clans included in it, on the ties of consanguinity between all its members. It is the bond of consanguinity that unites two or more clans that makes them a tribe.

Developed tribes at the end of the era of the primitive communal system already had tribal self-government, which consisted of a tribal council and two leaders - civil and military. Over time, stratification by property develops in the tribe, rich and poor families and tribal nobility appear, and the role of military leaders grows. In later forms, tribal organizations are preserved in class society, where they are intertwined with slaveholding and sometimes capitalist relations (for example, the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, the Bedouins of North Africa, etc.).

Ancient tribes

The concept of “ancient tribes” is very complex and multifaceted. On the one hand, they lived in the past, and on the other, peoples who preserved the way of life that was formed many centuries ago.

The way of life of the ancient tribes was formed gradually. In the early Neolithic period, crafts appeared, which became a prerequisite for the emergence of the city. The people who united the community were called priests. At the head of the tribe was a military leader. For a long time, the ancient tribe preserved its traditional way of life, defending it even in collisions with developed civilizations.

Modern tribes

In modern society there are still tribes that have preserved the ancient way of life. Most of them are located in Africa, South America, the Indonesian islands, as well as on the islands of the Philippine archipelago and in the Amazon jungle. Communication with such tribes requires special behavior in a certain culture. You should take into account the fact that among these nationalities you can pay with your life for any mistake in behavior. It is necessary to remember that in these cultures the following values are paramount: decency in personal life, modesty, courage, fearlessness, the ability to endure physical suffering with dignity, chastity and modesty.

The most famous tribes

The most famous ancient tribes are:

Slavs;
Drevlyans;
anta;
Scythians;
Varangians;
Goths;
Hottentots;
Celts;
Teutons;
Khazars;
Pechenegs;
Cumans;
Huns;
nomads;
nomads;
romances;
Phoenicians;
Moors.

Here are some modern tribes that exist today:

Surma people.
Pervi tribe.
Ramapo.
Brazilian.
Tribes of New Hawaii.
Sentinelese.

As we see, the tribe (its definition is ambiguous) as an ancient form of existence has almost not survived. And those unions that tourists discover are more likely ethnic communities than tribes from a historical point of view.

Rus' that was-2. Alternative version of history Maximov Albert Vasilievich

ORIGIN OF PEOPLES

RACES AND PEOPLES IN EUROPE

It was back in the Stone Age that the process of disintegration of the single Indo-European community began. The Indo-Europeans, who now inhabit Europe, both Americas, Australia and part of Asia, speaking dozens of languages, several thousand years ago formed a single linguistic community.

There is still no exact localization of the Indo-European ancestral home. There are several different versions of its whereabouts. The most substantiated version is considered to be the location of the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans in the area of lakes Van and Urmia, on the border of Turkey with Iran. From here, the ancient Indo-Europeans went through the Balkans to Europe and only after that moved further east, colonizing new lands and assimilating the local autochthonous population. This is evidenced by the fact that, according to linguists, there were no designations for the flora and fauna of Central Asia in the Proto-Indo-European language (hence the conclusion that the early Indo-Europeans could not have lived in Central Asia). The opinion that the Indo-Europeans were the original inhabitants of Europe, more precisely, its north, also does not stand up to criticism, if only because the Indo-European languages do not have a common term for the sea and the name for amber.

In European languages, substrates of non-Indo-European origin were discovered by linguists only in the marginal territories of Europe, which indicates a very successful “cleansing” of the assimilation process.

Taking into account the different anthropological composition of the ancient Indo-Europeans in their new territories, one should make an unambiguous conclusion about the presence of a significant number of local population in comparison with the newcomers - Indo-Europeans, who, joining the local tribes, passed on to them their culture, language and impulse for further settlement. However, not all of the local population assimilated. The fact is that back in the second millennium BC, tribes of... Negroids lived on the territory of Western Europe. However, this did not affect the modern appearance of Europeans. The remains of blacks, even in common burial grounds mixed with white people, are also found in Eastern Europe. Most likely, from the east, a wave of settlers of the Caucasian race, but not yet Indo-Europeans at that time, simply displaced the local Negroid population, first to the west of Europe, and then to Africa. But a certain number of the Negroid local population nevertheless joined the alien tribes. It is enough to recall Tacitus, his observation in the biography of Agricola that among the Celts there were dark people with curly hair who were residents of Britain. It is known that Negroids began to populate South Africa only at the turn of our era, displacing the local autochthonous population - the Khoisan race, classified as Mongoloids.

The issue related to the pigmentation of Negroids is very complex and confusing. On the one hand, the skin darkens in the sun, on the other hand, the black color actively absorbs solar radiation, which in the African heat creates extremely difficult conditions for its owners. A reasonable question arises: why are representatives of the Khoisan race, living in Africa, not black, but brown? Finally, the Indians, inhabitants of the tropical regions of South America, are also not black, although there is as much solar radiation there as in Africa. Hence the question: how much did solar radiation influence the formation of black skin color in Negroids?

The local, non-Indo-European population of Central and Southern Europe was most likely brachycephalic, that is, had so-called short heads. Brachycephalics include Ugrians, European Turks, Albanians, Basques, ancient Etruscans, and partly Slavs, that is, residents of the outskirts of Europe, including its mountainous regions. Brachycephals are distinguished by dark eyes and hair. Dolichocephals, i.e. long-headed, include the Germans, Celts, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Indians, Jews and Arabs. But the last two peoples are Semites, and the dolichocephals themselves differ markedly from each other in racial type, which, on the one hand, confirms the heterogeneity of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and on the other hand, forces us to take into account local natural conditions, as well as assimilation processes.

When considering the extent to which climatic conditions influence the formation of pigmentation characteristics in people, it is worth remembering what Boris Pilnyak wrote after excavating an ancient Volga German cemetery: “The current type of German is necessarily dark-haired - the hair of the dead is preserved in the graves - the wheaten hair of northerners. One hundred and sixty years of German Trans-Volga region, steppe heat and steppe frosts, Asian elements have recolored the Germans and changed their anthropological type.”

If you think about these words, you immediately remember the description of the Finno-Ugric Vesi, who lived in the north of Russia, whose ancestors in ancient times came from the depths of Asia: their nose is wide, snub and flattened, they themselves have a slant, very high cheekbones, but at the same time “never You will meet among them a man with dark eyes.”

From the dolichocephaly of the peoples listed above, we can conclude that the ancient Indo-Europeans had long heads. By the way, skulls from ancient Slavic burials overwhelmingly also have an elongated shape, and ancient historical documents describe the Slavs as fair-haired - fair-haired or blond people with light eyes.

From the book Course of Russian History (Lectures I-XXXII) author

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For many centuries, scientists have been breaking their spears, trying to understand the origin of the Russian people. And if research in the past was based on archaeological and linguistic data, today even geneticists have taken up the matter.

From the Danube

Of all the theories of Russian ethnogenesis, the most famous is the Danube theory. We owe its appearance to the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years”, or rather to the centuries-old love of domestic academics for this source.

The chronicler Nestor defined the initial territory of settlement of the Slavs as the territories along the lower reaches of the Danube and Vistula. The theory about the Danube “ancestral home” of the Slavs was developed by such historians as Sergei Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky.
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky believed that the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathian region, where an extensive military alliance of tribes arose led by the Duleb-Volhynian tribe.

From the Carpathian region, according to Klyuchevsky, in the 7th-8th centuries the Eastern Slavs settled to the East and Northeast to Lake Ilmen. The Danube theory of Russian ethnogenesis is still adhered to by many historians and linguists. The Russian linguist Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev made a great contribution to its development at the end of the 20th century.

Yes, we are Scythians!

One of the most vehement opponents of the Norman theory of the formation of Russian statehood, Mikhail Lomonosov, leaned toward the Scythian-Sarmatian theory of Russian ethnogenesis, which he wrote about in his “Ancient Russian History.” According to Lomonosov, the ethnogenesis of the Russians occurred as a result of the mixing of the Slavs and the “Chudi” tribe (Lomonosov’s term is Finno-Ugric), and he named the place of origin of the ethnic history of the Russians between the Vistula and Oder rivers.

Supporters of the Sarmatian theory rely on ancient sources, and Lomonosov did the same. He compared Russian history with the history of the Roman Empire and ancient beliefs with the pagan beliefs of the Eastern Slavs, finding a large number of similarities. The ardent struggle with the adherents of the Norman theory is quite understandable: the people-tribe of Rus', according to Lomonosov, could not have originated from Scandinavia under the influence of the expansion of the Norman Vikings. First of all, Lomonosov opposed the thesis about the backwardness of the Slavs and their inability to independently form a state.

Gellenthal's theory

The hypothesis about the origin of Russians, unveiled this year by Oxford scientist Garrett Gellenthal, seems interesting. Having done a lot of work studying the DNA of various peoples, he and a group of scientists compiled a genetic atlas of migration of peoples.
According to the scientist, two significant milestones can be distinguished in the ethnogenesis of the Russian people. In 2054 BC. e., according to Gellenthal, trans-Baltic peoples and peoples from the territories of modern Germany and Poland migrated to the northwestern regions of modern Russia. The second milestone is 1306, when the migration of Altai peoples began, who actively interbred with representatives of the Slavic branches.
Gellenthal's research is also interesting because genetic analysis proved that the time of the Mongol-Tatar invasion had virtually no effect on Russian ethnogenesis.

Two ancestral homelands

Another interesting migration theory was proposed at the end of the 19th century by Russian linguist Alexei Shakhmatov. His “two ancestral homelands” theory is also sometimes called the Baltic theory. The scientist believed that initially the Balto-Slavic community emerged from the Indo-European group, which became autochthonous in the Baltic region. After its collapse, the Slavs settled in the territory between the lower reaches of the Neman and Western Dvina. This territory became the so-called “first ancestral home”. Here, according to Shakhmatov, the Proto-Slavic language developed, from which all Slavic languages originated.

Further migration of the Slavs was associated with the great migration of peoples, during which at the end of the second century AD the Germans went south, liberating the Vistula River basin, where the Slavs came. Here, in the lower Vistula basin, Shakhmatov defines the second ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, according to the scientist, the division of the Slavs into branches began. The western one went to the Elbe region, the southern one - divided into two groups, one of which settled the Balkans and the Danube, the other - the Dnieper and Dniester. The latter became the basis of the East Slavic peoples, which include the Russians.

We are locals ourselves

Finally, another theory different from migration theories is the autochthonous theory. According to it, the Slavs were an indigenous people inhabiting eastern, central and even part of southern Europe. According to the theory of Slavic autochthonism, Slavic tribes were the indigenous ethnic group of a vast territory - from the Urals to the Atlantic Ocean. This theory has quite ancient roots and many supporters and opponents. This theory was supported by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr. He believed that the Slavs did not come from anywhere, but were formed from tribal communities living in vast territories from the Middle Dnieper to Laba in the West and from the Baltic to the Carpathians in the south.
Polish scientists - Kleczewski, Potocki and Sestrentsevich - also adhered to the autochthonous theory. They even traced the ancestry of the Slavs from the Vandals, basing their hypothesis, among other things, on the similarity of the words “Vendals” and “Vandals”. Of the Russians, the autochthonous theory explained the origin of the Slavs Rybakov, Mavrodin and Greeks.

Where did they come from? The answer to this question was obtained by chance, when the kinship of the languages of the Hungarians and a number of peoples of the Far North of Russia was discovered. It’s hard to believe, but nomadic reindeer herders came to Europe, becoming one of the most distinctive peoples of the Old World.

The beginning of the 1st millennium AD in Eurasia was marked by the invasion of the Huns and a significant cold snap, which marked the beginning of the Great Migration of Peoples. The wave of movement was also picked up by the Ugric ethnic group, which inhabited the territories on the border of the southern taiga and forest-steppe of Western Siberia, from the Middle Urals to the Irtysh region - the proto-Ugrians. From those who went north came the Khanty and Mansi, and those who moved west to the Danube were the ancestors of the Hungarians, or Magyars, as they call themselves - the only representatives of the Finno-Ugric language family in Central Europe.

Relatives of the Magyar

The very names of the Mansi and Magyars come from the common root “Manse”. Some scientists believe that the words “Voguls” (an outdated name for the Mansi) and “Hungarians” are consonant variants of the same name. Gathering, hunting and fishing - this is what the ancestors of the Magyars, Mansi and Khanty did. The vocabulary associated with the last two activities has been preserved in the Hungarian language ever since. Basic verbs, words describing nature, family ties, tribal and community relations are also of Ugric origin. It is curious that the Hungarian language is more similar to Mansi than to Khanty. The first two languages turned out to be more resistant to borrowings from others and retained more of their ancestor language.

The mythology of the Hungarians, Khanty and Mansi also shows common features. They all have an idea of dividing the world into three parts: in the Khanty-Mansi myths these are the air, water and earthly spheres, and in the Hungarian ones - the upper (heavenly), middle (earthly) and lower (underground) worlds. According to Magyar beliefs, a person has two souls - a soul-breath and a free soul-shadow, which can leave a person and travel, the same existence is mentioned in Mansi myths, with the difference that in total men can have 5 or 7 souls, and for women - 4 or 6.

Neighbors of the Hungarians, their influence on culture

Moving along the Volga region, the ancestors of the Hungarians met on their way the Scythians and Sarmatians - peoples of Iranian origin who taught them cattle breeding, agriculture and metal processing - copper, bronze and subsequently iron. It is very likely that the proto-Hungarians in the second half of the 6th century were members of the Western Turkic Khaganate and, together with the Turkic people, actively participated in Central Asian and Iranian politics. Iranian motifs and themes can be traced in Hungarian mythology and fine arts, and in Hungarian chronicles, Persia is often mentioned as the country where the “relatives of the Magyars” live. Arminius Vambery, a famous Hungarian traveler and orientalist, searched for them while traveling in Central Asia and Iran in the second half of the 19th century.

Having mastered cattle breeding in the steppes east of the Southern Urals, the ancestors of the Magyars led a nomadic lifestyle, and hunting and farming began to play a supporting role in the economy. Probably, after the uprising of part of the Ugric tribes against the Turkic Khaganate, by the end of the 6th century, the proto-Hungarians appeared on the territory of modern Bashkortostan, in the Lower Kama basin, the Southern Cis-Urals, and partly on the eastern slopes of the Urals. Presumably in this area was Great Hungary (Hungaria Magna) - the ancestral home of the Hungarians, which is mentioned in the report of the medieval monk-diplomat Giovanni Plano Carpini and in the Hungarian chronicle “Gesta Hungarorum”. Some researchers locate Greater Hungary in the North Caucasus, others believe that it did not really exist, because in the Middle Ages scientists were inclined to look for the ancestral homeland of all peoples. The first, most widespread version is supported by the discovery of the Bayanovsky burial ground in the lower reaches of the Kama.

Russian and Hungarian archaeologists examined it, found in it similarities with the burials of Hungarians of the 9th-10th centuries, as well as objects of clearly Hungarian origin, and believe that the finds speak of the common ancestors of the population of the Cis-Urals and European Hungarians. Similar tribal names of the Bashkirs and Hungarians and the same geographical names in Bashkiria and Hungary confirm the former proximity of these peoples.

Expansion and migration of the Magyars

In the 6th-7th centuries, the Magyars gradually migrated to the west, to the Don steppes and the northern shore of the Sea of Azov, where they lived next to the Turkic Bulgars, Khazars, and Onogurs. Partial mixing with the latter gave the Magyars another name for the ethnic group - Hungarians, this is especially noticeable in the Latin Ungari, Ungri, English Hungarian(s) and other European languages, and the Russian language borrowed the Polish węgier. On the new land - Levedia (named after the outstanding leader of one of the Hungarian tribes), the Hungarians recognized the power of the Khazar Kaganate and participated in its wars. Under the influence of new neighbors, the structure of society, legal norms and religion gradually became more complex. The Hungarian words “sin”, “dignity”, “reason” and “law” are of Turkic origin.

Under pressure from the Khazars, the territory of residence of the Magyars shifted to the west, and already in the 820s they settled on the right bank of the Dnieper, where they used to be. About 10 years later, the Hungarians left the power of the Khazar Khaganate, and by the end of the 9th century they gradually settled in the steppes between the Dnieper and Dniester.

They named their new homeland Atelkuza - in Hungarian Etelköz means “between the rivers”. The Magyar tribal union took part in the Byzantine wars. In 894, the Hungarians and Byzantines launched a crushing attack on the Bulgarian kingdom on the Lower Danube. A year later, when the Magyars went on a long campaign, the Bulgarians, led by Tsar Simeon I, together with the Pechenegs, struck back - they ravaged Atelkuza and captured or killed almost all the young women. The Hungarian warriors returned and found their lands devastated, their pastures occupied by enemies, and only a small part of the entire people remained. Then they decided to leave these lands and move to the Danube, where the Roman province of Pannonia had previously been located, and later the center of the Hunnic Empire.

The direction was not chosen by chance, because, according to Hungarian legend, the blood of the Huns flows in the Magyars. Perhaps there is some truth in it, because after the defeat of the troops remaining after the death of Attila, the remaining Huns, led by his son, settled in the Northern Black Sea region and lived there as a separate nation for about two hundred years, until they were completely assimilated with the local residents. It is likely that they could have intermarried with the ancestors of modern Hungarians.

As stated in the Hungarian chronicles of the Middle Ages, the Magyars went to the Danube region to take away the legacy of their leader Almos, descended from Attila. According to legend, Yemesha, Almos's mother, dreamed that she was impregnated by the mythical bird Turul (from the Turkic "hawk") and predicted to the woman that her descendants would be great rulers. Thus the name Almos was given, from the Hungarian word “àlom” - sleep. The exodus of the Hungarians occurred during the reign of Prince Oleg and was noted in 898 in ancient Russian chronicles as a peaceful departure through the Kyiv lands to the west.

In 895-896, under the leadership of Arpad, son of Almos, seven Magyar tribes crossed the Carpathians, and their leaders concluded an agreement on an eternal union of tribes and sealed it with blood. At that time, there were no major political players on the Middle Danube who could prevent the Hungarians from taking possession of these fertile lands. Hungarian historians call the 10th century the time of finding the homeland - Нonfoglalas. The Magyars became a settled people, subjugated the Slavs and Turks who lived there and mixed with them, because they had practically no women left.

Having adopted much of the language and culture of the local residents, the Hungarians still did not lose their language, but, on the contrary, spread it. In the same 10th century, they created a writing system based on the Latin alphabet. Arpad began to rule in his new homeland and founded the Arpadovich dynasty. The seven tribes that came to the Danube lands numbered 400-500 thousand, and in the 10th-11th centuries 4-5 times more people began to be called Hungarians. This is how the Hungarian people appeared, who founded the Kingdom of Hungary in the year 1000. In the 11th century, they were joined by the Pechenegs, expelled by the Polovtsians, and in the 13th century - by the Polovtsians themselves, who fled from the Mongol-Tatar invasion. The Paloce ethnic group of the Hungarian people are their descendants.

In the 90s of the 20th century, genetic studies were carried out to search for the ancestors of the Hungarians, which showed that the Hungarians are a typical European nation, taking into account some distinctive features of the inhabitants of the north of Hungary, and the frequency of a group of genes characteristic of peoples speaking Finno-Ugric languages, among the Hungarians it is only 0.9%, which is not at all surprising, considering how far fate took them from their Ugric ancestors.