Who are the Slavs? - Citations and Sources

[Soldier of Macedon]

Lupche, Lubitsa, etc

It's a native name that is, in all likelihood, related to our language.

[TrueMacedonian]

551 AD: Jordanes, Getica, 34-35.

Quote:
........beginning at the source of the Vistula, the populous race of the Venethi dwell, occupying a great expanse of land. Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes. The abode of the Sclaveni extends from the city of Noviodunum and the lake called Mursianus to the Danaster, and northward as far as the Vistula. They have swamps and forests for their cities. The Antes, who are the bravest of these peoples dwelling in the curve of the sea of Pontus, spread from the Danaster to the Danaper, rivers that are many days' journey apart.

More from Jordanes' work;

[TrueMacedonian]

[TrueMacedonian]

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/nestor.html

The Chronicle of Nestor

[from Walsh] The earliest written records of Rus seem to date from the 11th century. The most authoritative, complete and earliest of the Chronicles to have survived is The Lavrentyesky Spisok, dating from 1377 and so called after the Monk Lawrence who copied it, The second oldest is called Ipatsky Spisok, after the Ipatsky Monastery where it was found. The main part of both these Chronicles is an historical compilation, "The Tale of By-gone Years" which was long thought to be the work of the Monk Nestor and was known as The Chronicle of Nestor. It is now generally held to be a compilation of the work of many men.


THE BEGINNINGS. Let us begin our story. After the flood the three children of Noah: Sem, Cham, and Japhat divided the world among them. Sem occupied the East: Cham, the middle part; and Japhat received the North and the Southwest. In the portion belonging to Japhat there lived the Russian, the Chuder,, and many other people.

After the fall of the tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues, the sons of Japhat occupied the countries of the West and North. From the descendants of Japhat came those who took the name of Slavs. They established themselves near the Danube in the countries of the Egri and the Bulgars. Some of these Slavs were scattered over the earth, and they have taken the names of those places where they established themselves, for example, those who populated the frontiers of Moravia call themselves Moravians; others, Czechs. The Serbs and the Kroats are also Slavs. Among those Slavs who lived along the Dnieper, some took the name of Poles, others that of Dreviliens (because they lived in the forest) others that of Dregovich (who established themselves between the Pripet and the Dvina) thus the language of the Slavs was dispersed. As to the alphabet, that was not born until later.

[osiris]

i am convinced the slavs are the thracians and probably illyrians renamed at some point in roman history. there is no other logical explanation of their supposed emergence at the smae time as the thracians and illyrians disappeared lets not forget that one titos proposed names for sfry was illyria

[Bratot]

In the Arabian and Persian Middle Age sources we find rich information about many peoples of the Eastern Europe: about the Burtases, Khazars, Bulgars, Sakaliba, Badjanaks, Madjars, Ruses, Visu, Üra, and others. All of the ethnonyms, except for Sakaliba, are taken by the Arabs and Persians from the peoples of the Eastern Europe, only the ethnonym Sakaliba is in this respect not too clear.

Per the V.V.Bartold's supposition, the ethnonym Sakaliba (singular saklab) is probably borrowed by the Arabs from the Greek sklaboi or sklabenoi, which means Slavs [Bartold V.V., 1963, 870], he also gives a probable another etymology: it is from the Persian sek 'dog' + leb 'lip' (Gardizi), this etymology is also comes because the son of Japhet Saklab was suckled by the dog milk [Ibid, 871]. And then V.V.Bartold notes that Kirgizes for their "red hair and a white skin" are called "offsprings of Sakaliba" … apparently, the Slavs (i.e. Sakaliba) were subjects of the Bulgars [Ibid]. It is difficult to imagine that Ibn-Fadlan calls Almas Shilka, the malik of the Bulgars, also the malik of the Bulgars' subjects, i.e. the Slavs. Therefore the opinion propagated in the traditional Türkology that Sakaliba are Slavs does not sustain a criticism.

Turning to the Arabian sources, the Arabian word Saklab (singular) or Sakaliba (plural) designates blond or red-haired people, it is invariably emphasized Sakaliba red (or reddish) color of hair or red (reddish) coloring of their skin [Ibid, 870]. The dictionary by Ashraf ibn Sharaf al-Muzakkir Alfarug, composed in the 1404-1405 in India under a title "Danish-name-yi Kadar-Khan" ("Kadar-Khan Book of knowledge") noted that Saklab

...

In other sources, rarely used, the wrod Saklab comes from a region in Estern Europe - ancient Sarmathia:

[TrueMacedonian]

Here's something weird I found.




Now Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jovius) gives another account here;




Translation;

or another and this band Jannissary the phalanx with which Macedonian Alexander the Great subdued throughout the Levant, and seems to them as successors of the Turkish empire are still followers of the military discipline of the ancient kings of Macedonia.

If anyone has a full translation of Paulus Jovius (Paolo Giovio) book(s) please post it.

[Onur]

Here's something weird I found.

Thats not a surprise to me because i know that the majority of Janissary soldiers was coming from today`s Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania and most of these people was speaking a Slavic language. Also as i noted several times here b4, Janissary system was not something like post 19th century assimilation. The stories you read like "kidnapping newborn christian babies and raising them as Turks" was not true. Choosing Janissary soldiers was a strict business. Young boys was getting selected around 16 years of age and all of their family and birth records was getting recorded very precisely. Ofc they had to learn Turkish but no one was forbidding them to speak their mothertongue. I already believe most of christian people in Balkans already had at least basic Turkish knowledge in that era, up `till 20th century.

I mean, whats the point to forbid someone to speak his mothertongue in a country where people speaks dozen of different language? They only required to be muslim and this was explained in old Ottoman archive documents like, it was something necessary to form an unity among them and Ottomans believed that they would never fight to death for if they wouldn't be muslims.

Now Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jovius) gives another account here;

or another and this band Jannissary the phalanx with which Macedonian Alexander the Great subdued throughout the Levant, and seems to them as successors of the Turkish empire are still followers of the military discipline of the ancient kings of Macedonia.

I don't know that if this Janissary system is based on the era of Alexander but the article says that the historian wrote this in 1531 and Suleiman the Magnificent was the sultan at that time(the one who tried to capture Vienna to destroy Hapsburg Empire). It`s very well known that the Suleiman had an admiration for Alexander the Great. He knew the history of Alexander and he tried to recreate and realize the vision of Alexander to create a one and only Empire to rule all the world. Thats why he wanted to end the reign of Hapsburg Empire by capturing Vienna.

[TrueMacedonian]

Thats not a surprise to me because i know that the majority of Janissary soldiers was coming from today`s Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania and most of these people was speaking a Slavic language. Also as i noted several times here b4, Janissary system was not something like post 19th century assimilation. The stories you read like "kidnapping newborn christian babies and raising them as Turks" was not true. Choosing Janissary soldiers was a strict business. Young boys was getting selected around 16 years of age and all of their family and birth records was getting recorded very precisely. Ofc they had to learn Turkish but no one was forbidding them to speak their mothertongue. I already believe most of christian people in Balkans already had at least basic Turkish knowledge in that era, up `till 20th century.

I mean, whats the point to forbid someone to speak his mothertongue in a country where people speaks dozen of different language? They only required to be muslim and this was explained in old Ottoman archive documents like, it was something necessary to form an unity among them and Ottomans believed that they would never fight to death for if they wouldn't be muslims.







I don't know that if this Janissary system is based on the era of Alexander but the article says that the historian wrote this in 1531 and Suleiman the Magnificent was the sultan at that time(the one who tried to capture Vienna to destroy Hapsburg Empire). It`s very well known that the Suleiman had an admiration for Alexander the Great. He knew the history of Alexander and he tried to recreate and realize the vision of Alexander to create a one and only Empire to rule all the world. Thats why he wanted to end the reign of Hapsburg Empire by capturing Vienna.

Onur I do know that the East Roman (Byzantine) empire had a similar system as the jannissary one. And most of those Christians from the Byzantine draft system came from Macedonia.

Here's something from 1797 - http://www.macedoniantruth.org/2008/...k-whaley-1797/

[I of Macedon]

The early Slavs in Bohemia and Moravia: a response to my critics

Florin Curta

2009

I wrote The Making of the Slavs more than ten years ago in a rush of urgency and optimism. The urgency came from the strident discrepancy between interpretations of various categories of sources
and from the then current state of research.....

Common Slavic spread across Eastern Europe, historians
imagined a migration from the Pripet marshes on the present-day border between Belarus and Ukraine to the Lower Danube, across which the Slavs are known from written sources to have crossed into
the Balkans. However, archaeologists could not provide sufficient (or even positive) evidence of any such migration from north to south. Nor is there any evidence of such a migration in any of the sixthcentury
sources pertaining to the early Slavs. Procopius of Caesarea and the author of the Strategikon clearly placed them in the Lower Danube region and did not think of them as coming from anywhere
else. Nonetheless, archaeologists in Poland, former Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia interpreted as Slavic archaeological assemblages dated to the sixth or seventh century and found in
their respective countries, despite the lack of any firm evidence from the written sources that any Slavs lived in those territories around AD 600.

it has by now become clear that in order to make any progress the research on the early Slavs needs to distance itself from the practice of repeating the stereotypes embedded in late antique ethnography.
Meanwhile, new approaches to the archaeology of ethnicity have also transformed our understanding of the relation between material culture and group identity...

I preferred to look at the Danube limes as a complex interface. Instead of a great flood of Slavs coming out of the Pripet marshes, I envisaged a form of group identity, which could arguably be called ethnicity and emerged in response to Emperor Justinian’s implementation of a fortification project on the Danube frontier and in the Balkans. The Slavs, in other words, did not come from the north, but became Slavs only in contact with the Late Roman frontier.

To claim, as Naďa Profantová does, that I accept, cum grano
salis, the concept of Slavdom (slovanství) for the eighth and ninth centuries, is therefore a regrettable misunderstanding of my main arguments and a serious conceptual confusion...

First, I have been struck over the years by the obstinate efforts of several Czech historians and archaeologists to make the Slavs appear in those territories as early as the sixth, if not the late fifth century, despite the obvious absence of any solid evidence in support of such views (Ondrouch 1964; Zeman 1968; Váňa 1971;
Klanica 1987; Třeštík 1996; Galuška 2000). Advocating an early presence of the Slavs may well have initially been an attempt to show that there were Slavs in Bohemia and Moravia before the migration
of the Avars into Pannonia, a point confirmed by Profantová’s decision to endorse the idea of a Slavic settlement of Bohemia before 568, even though she also admits that written sources cannot support
that position (Profantová 2009, 312). Second, I was equally puzzled by the many inconsistencies in the archaeological discourse about the so-called “Prague type” of pottery, which many continue to regard as typically Slavic. In Profantová’s case, this creates contradictions that can be very disconcerting. No one likes to be made aware of inconsistencies, least of all as they bear on one’s fundamental
principles or most firmly entrenched beliefs. More commonly, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, one tries to concede a few points without abandoning the fundamental thrust of one’s
arguments. Yet one can seldom sustain such a position for too long, while at the same time avoiding ridicule. In practice, problems creep up on one’s very attempt to find justification...

Profantová argues that neither she, nor Gabriel Fusek (or Michał Parczewski) ever assumed that the handmade pottery of the so-called Prague type was recognized as “Slavic” by early medieval users in Slovakia, Poland, or Moravia (Profantová 2009, 306). She immediately insists, however, that those who produced and used that pottery in those areas must have been the Slavs, who are otherwise mentioned in sources considerably later than the date commonly accepted for the culture “with the Prague-type pottery” (Profantová 2009, 306–307).6 If no contemporary sources inform us about how the “Slavs” viewed the so-called Prague-type pottery and whether or not they regarded it as a symbol of their ethnic identity, why then call this pottery Slavic in the first place?

Felix Biermann defends the migrationist model and the idea that the Slavic ethnogenesis took place somewhere in northwestern Ukraine and southern Belarus, within the territory of the Kiev culture (Biermann 2009, 339)8. He insists that both archaeology and linguistics support that idea. Leaving aside the dubious assumption associating the archaeological assemblages in the region
in question to the Slavic ethnogenesis, Biermann seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that we actually have no evidence whatsoever, either archaeological or linguistic, to support the idea that the Slavs in Bohemia and Moravia were immigrants from northwestern Ukraine and southern Belarus. In other words, before any attempt at ethnic attribution of the archaeological assemblages invoked in
support of the migrationist model, it is first necessary to validate that model as a plausible alternative.


We cannot simply assume a migration in order to explain cultural change, without some factual basisfor that assumption. Unfortunately, what we know about the archaeology of migrations otherwise
documented in the historical record does not square at all with the archaeological evidence from sixthtoseventh-century assemblages in either Ukraine (at the departing point) or Bohemia (at arrival; for
the archaeology of early medieval migrations, see the pertinent remarks of Bierbrauer 1993; Klein
1999; Barbiera 2005; Härke 2007).

I do not quite understand why Profantová wants to set up “Slavdom” and ethnicity in oppositionto one another, or why it should be necessary to dissociate my notion of ethnicity from that of Reinhard
Wenskus, Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl. I wrote: “ethnicity is now currently employed torefer to a decision people make to depict themselves or others symbolically as bearers of a certain
cultural identity” (Curta 2008d, 647). Profantová disagrees, but in doing so she seems to neglect the fact that Walter Pohl (whom she mistakenly believes to be a German, instead of an Austrian historian)
embraced a very similar concept of ethnicity: “a negotiated system of social classification,” the objective features of which may be seen as “symbols, explained by myths or traditions.” Pohl explains that
“to make ethnicity happen, it is not enough just to be different. Strategies of distinction have to convince both insiders and outsiders that it is significant to be different, that it is the key to an identity that should be cherished and defended” (Pohl 1998, 21–22).24 Again, the impression the informed reader gets from comparing such statements to Profantová’s claims that the “Vienna school” (to which, of course, she annexes Dušan Třeštík) has a better, or even different theoretical grip on what ethnicity is and how it works, is that she has not truly read the works she cites in support of her arguments and that, as a consequence, her understanding of the issue at stake is rather limited. This is why her example of American suburban men preparing the barbecue cannot serve as an argument in favor of the idea that the Prague-type pottery was not a symbolic manifestation of ethnic identity (Profantová 2009, 326).

It remains unclear what, if anything, does Naďa Profantová know about American men or suburbs, but barbecue is definitely not the daily food of the average American. Preparing the barbecue is a highly
“public” performance – in front of the extended family, of friends, of work colleagues or fellow employees – and as such it reinforces a particular stereotype of American culture, “man-as-provider.”
The Prague-type pottery, with the probable exception of clay pans, most likely participated in no such “public” displays of skill and resources since, as Profantová correctly points out, that pottery was
produced and used within the household. Having missed this important point, Profantová is therefore incapable of understanding that if it was not used to “show off,” the Prague-type pottery could not
have been ethnically specific, i.e., used to mark ethnic boundaries.25 Profantová is equally confused

...about the issue of language. She pontificates that Common Slavic is not an invention of the linguists, but the very language the Slavic gentes (sic) spoke between the sixth and the ninth century. But what
do we really know about the language spoken by the Sclavenes mentioned in early Byzantine sources? Procopius tells us that the Sclavenes and the Antes had “the same language, an utterly barbarous
tongue” (Wars VII 14.26). This Profantová interprets to mean that all Slavs had only one language, namely Common Slavic. There is, however, no mention in Procopius of what was the language that
both Sclavenes and Antes spoke: the only adjective modifying the noun “tongue” is “barbarous.” This is unusual for Procopius, who always uses the noun “language” or “tongue” together with some
ethnic attribute, i.e., always mentions a language of some kind: Latin, Gothic, Armenian, Phoenician, Persian, or Greek.26 That Procopius had knowledge of at least some of those languages is beyond any
doubt.27 By contrast, nothing suggests that he knew the linguistic value of “barbarous,” when applied to the language spoken by Sclavenes and Antes. To claim that the language referred to by Procopius was what we now call (Common) Slavic is an over-interpretation. All that Procopius tells us is that,
to his ears, the language that both Sclavenes and Antes spoke was “utterly barbarous.” This is to be read as an ethnic stereotype: “barbarians cannot speak but barbarous languages.” Similarly, to think
of all Slavs as having common gods and rituals, and preferring certain names such as Perun and Svarog (Profantová 2009, 325) is to built theories on thin air, for not a single shred of evidence exists
of any such things for the sixth and seventh century.

On a broader front, Felix Biermann takes me to task for denying that language constituted a unifying element (verbindendes Element) for the early Slavs, in much the same way as the “culture with Prague-type pottery” represented the material expression of a Slavic model of economic and daily life (Biermann 2009, 340). While this seems overdrawn – language may be a “unifying element”
without necessarily being a marker of ethnic boundaries, as in the case of linguae francae – it is certainly true that I abstained from any extensive discussion of how we can map what we know about
the spread of Common Slavic onto the conclusions of archaeological studies pertaining to the so-called Prague culture and how both could relate to the Slavs (Sclavenes) known from written sources. The
reason is very simple: we actually have no firm basis for more than speculations about the linguistic spread of (Common) Slavic given the lack of any relevant information in that respect. Unlike Biermann
(2009, 341), I simply do not see how one could learn anything about the “linguistic community” from an examination of the archaeological remains of the Prague culture. Biermann’s position in this
respect is doubly flawed, because he fails to recognize that such an approach is ultimately based on the assumptions that Slavic was spoken (only) by Slavs and that the bearers of the Prague culture were
the Slavic-speaking Slavs. Needless to say, both assumptions are unwarranted. There is no conceptual overlap between the archaeological and linguistic notions of “Slavs” and so far no way to link the material culture and linguistic developments. Biermann believes that Slavic was spoken in the early Middle Ages in the northern regions of East Central and in Eastern Europe, but cannot point to any shred of evidence in support of his beliefs. Similarly, scholars assume that the Sclavenes mentioned by Procopius of Caesarea as living in the lands to the north from the Lower Danube spoke what we now call Common Slavic. But that is simply an assumption: we actually have no idea what was the language that they spoke, for nothing survives from that language


“phoney Chilbudios” (Procopius of Caesarea, Wars VII 14. 32–35) – who, although of Antian origin, spoke Latin fluently – suggests that bilingualism was not only possible, but relatively frequent in
the early Middle Ages, which completely undermines Biermann’s idea of a one-to-one relationship between language and ethnicity. Much like today, a Slav could speak Latin without being Roman.
Conversely, we have incontrovertible evidence of non-Slavs, primarily Avars and Lombards, speaking Slavic. The “communication area,” which Biermann assumes to be the basis for the linguistic and
cultural uniformity of the early Slavs clearly comprised other ethnic groups as well. Just like Avars and Lombards could speak Slavic, the sunken-floored building with stone oven in a corner and the
handmade pottery believed to be of Prague type can appear on sites and in archaeological assemblages in Hungary and Italy, which have nothing to do with the Slavs, but instead have been associated with
the Lombard and Avar polities. How did language (Slavic, in this case) spread to those non-Slavic
environments?

Whether or not one accepts Biermann’s idea of a “Lauffeuerprinzip” (Biermann 2009, 341), it is important to note that he, like Profantová, simultaneously defends two opposite points of
view.

On one hand he believes the migrationist model to be the most plausible of all, on the other hand he thinks he can explain similarity between things Slavic in Eastern, Southeastern, and East Central
Europe as “a mirror of an interrelated communication and then linguistic area” (“als Spiegel eines untereinander verwandten Kommunikations- und dann auch Sprachraums zu deuten”: Biermann
2009, 339, 341). If migration is the driving engine between the transformations taking place in Eastern Europe during the early Middle Ages, how was it possible for a language initially spoken within the
Urheimat (wherever that may be) to remain basically the same in those areas to which the migrants moved, with no major dialectal differences developing between the sixth and the ninth century? If,
on the contrary, we should envisage a vast communication area, how did in fact a speaker of Slavic (a Slav, if you wish) from, say, Bohemia communicate with one in present-day Ukraine or Bulgaria,
in order for him or her to learn about “new things” in those remote areas and change his or her own accordingly?29 Felix Biermann provides no answers to those questions and does not seem to be aware
of the deeper implications of his contradictory position. As a matter of fact, early medieval authors did not define the Slavs on the basis of either language or material culture. Neither Procopius of Caesarea,
nor the author of the Strategikon had any interest in Common Slavic or pottery, be that of the Prague type or not. To classify and recognize the Slavs, Byzantine authors used criteria other than those which
Biermann, in the early twentieth-first century, would like us to consider: “Wenn die Klassifikation als Slawen weder sprachlich noch archäologisch zu begründen wäre, was haben die Byzantiner mit der Begrifflichkeit ‘Slawen’ dann genau ‘gemacht’ bzw. erzeugt?” (Biermann 2009, 340).

There is a more basic issue here. Biermann rightly focused upon my insistence on a correct interpretation of the written sources. That insistence had two purposes: it was strategic, in that I argued
against the “text-driven archaeology” practiced by advocates of the culture-historical approach; and it was more specifically historiographical, in that I warned against taking the sources at face value, as ethnographic reports from the field. Neither Profantová nor Biermann likes this stance. The latter sees my unwillingness to reproduce the stereotypes of ancient ethnography as a selective reading of the sources (Biermann 2009, 344). Biermann then casts his own proposal in a manner that makes his choice pretty clear: Fredegar’sWendish account is not an “ethnogenetic myth,” but a reliable report of what actually happened. This is of course no novel idea. Sixty years ago, Gerard Labuda (1949, 91–92) similarly believed Fredegar to be a completely reliable source, which one needed to take at face value. The problem, however, with adopting such an approach is that it does not in fact support the common views on Samo and the “first Slavic state” upheld since Labuda’s time by both historians
and archaeo-logists

Moreover, according to Pleterski, linguistic continuity from the early
Slavs to the modern day justifies using words in modern Slavic languages to reconstruct the house culture of the early Slavs, which is otherwise not documented in the written sources. This is a highly
dubious assumption. Just imagine what would mean to reconstruct the house culture of the ancient Greeks on the basis of the modern Greek language! Or, closer to home, what it would mean to reconstruct
the Roman house culture on the basis of the Romanian vocabulary pertaining to the house.39

Otherwise, in his attempt to attribute to the Slavs in the Balkans an exclusive “cooking culture,” Pleterski places the origins of that culture in the seventh and eighth centuries and concludes that, since
it had no local traditions, that culture must be attributed to the people who called themselves “Slavs” Pleterski 2009, 335). Leaving aside the fact that no evidence exists of anyone in the seventh- or eighthcentury Balkans calling him- or herself Slav, Pleterski completely ignores the fact that very similar phenomena appeared in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in parts of the Mediterranean region, which were never settled by Slavs. Significant changes in eating, and therefore cooking practices in
southern Italy have been detected through detailed studies of pottery morphology and faunal assemblages
(Arthur 2007).

Most relevant in this respect is the significant correlation between open ceramic forms (casseroles, bowls) and faunal assemblages dominated by sheep and/or goat, as opposed to the correlation between closed forms (tall and narrow pots) and cattle- or pig-dominated faunal assemblages. Casseroles and open cooking pots serve to cook food through water evaporation and braising,
the end result being a relatively dry dish, to which various sauces may be added. By contrast, closed cooking pots are intended primarily for greater heat and water retention, through stewing and boiling,
generally leading to the production of semi-liquid, porridge-like foods. Unlike foods produced in casseroles, those made in closed cooking pots require comparatively less control, as they may be left
by the oven gate to break down the fats, as well as to tenderize the meats and vegetables and to render them more digestible and palatable. Pork and beef are ideally prepared in tall and narrow pots, in which such meats may be long cooked in water until tender and until all tapeworms are killed, a method far safer and efficient than roasting. Because of its great nutritional and organolectic properties, the

Moreover, much like in Eastern Europe, clay pans appear in the region of Alicante and Murcia at the same time as the disappearance of wheel-made pottery and the shift in pottery morphology from open to
closed forms. Much like in Eastern Europe, the combination of bread baking on an open fire by means of clay pans and porridge-like foods served in pots represents a radical departure from previous
eating practices. This opens the possibility of treating the similar changes taking place in Eastern Europe not as a result of the Slavic migration, much less of a specifically Slavic “cooking culture,”
but of radical changes in diet, themselves an indication of dramatic social and economic changes (Wickham 2005, 749–751). In other words, Pleterski’s “cooking culture” is not a matter of ideology
(Pleterski 2009, 334), but of infrastructure.

Biermann’s problem is not that, should my hypothesis prove to be right, there would be no way to re-examine the problems of the Prague culture. The true reason for his fears is elsewhere, namely in that, should the current chronology of the Prague culture be rejected either by a re-examination of its foundations (Curta 2008d) or by means of dendrochronology, there would be no support any more for the theoretical framework on which Biermann’s entire set of scholarly assumptions is based. If I say that there was no migration of the Slavs – either to the Lower Danube or to Bohemia – from the Pripet marshes or from western Ukraine, I am not referring only to the absence of any indication of such a migration in the written sources (Biermann’s touchstone for any historical interpretation), but also to the lack of any archaeological evidence. For migration to take place, the area from which the migration is said to have begun must have witnessed a considerable decrease of population, at least equivalent to the number of people believed to have moved out of the area and into other regions, such as Bohemia.

...number continued to grow throughout the seventh
and eighth centuries. If, as it seems likely, conditions in the supposed Urheimat were favorable to a population growth, why would anyone want to leave it for the distant lands of Bohemia or southern
Poland? So far, no answer was offered to this question by any advocate of the migrationist model, from Kazimierz Godłowski to Felix Biermann.41 Nor can any explanation be apparently found for
the lack of any significant similarity between the pottery found in assemblages securely dated to the late fifth or early sixth century in Bukovina or Ukraine and the earliest assemblages with pottery of
the so-called Prague type found in Bohemia. Naďa Profantová believes Kozly to be the earliest datable assemblage in Bohemia (Profantová 2009, 320 fig. 9). However, a quick comparison between the
pottery found in the house 10 excavated in Kodin together with a fifth-century crossbow fibula of the Prague type (Rusanova – Timoshchuk 1984, 22 and 48; 74 fig. 14: 5–12 and 14) and the pottery from
Kozly (Zeman 1976, 125–126; 125 fig. 5) reveals substantially different types of vessels, with rim and
lip variations

No artifacts or assemblages have so far been found to support
the idea of contacts with Bukovina and western Ukraine, much less a migration from those regions. Divested of earlier prejudices, while taking on board all one can learn via the “literary turn,” new
interpretations of the history of the early Slavs can now be put forward. Likewise, the broadening of the network of comparisons for the archaeological evidence from assemblages excavated in Bohemia and Moravia will undoubtedly illuminate many economic and social aspects pertaining to sixth- and seventh-century communities in Central and East Central Europe. We can now begin to think about new ways in which to open a dialogue between historians and archaeologists. In the interest of that conversation, though, it is important that we do not abandon a critical position in relation to the evidence, whether historical or archaeological. The immediate benefits of that position should be plain, unless one is determined to have it otherwise.

[George S.]

Is history of a people important?

Is history of a people important?



By Risto Stefov

rstefov@hotmail.com

November 21, 2010



There are people out there, Macedonians included among them, who believe that history is not important for people to carry on with their lives; so why would it be important for countries?



Perhaps you are right if you are secure in your life and never have to answer any questions, go anywhere, or do anything. But the moment you start looking for a job or want to apply for a passport or want to cross a border into another country you will find that history is important. A resumé defines your past experience which is part of your academic and working history. A passport identifies you by your name, place of birth, etc., which are also part of your history and so on.



Like a person, a country too is an entity with its own characteristics; name, location, geography and history. A country, like a person, cannot exist without history unless it was just created today. Even if that were the case, it must have been created from something which in itself has a past, a history.



Before getting deeper into our subject, for those who still believe that history is not a requirement for a country to exist and function normally, why do you suppose so many countries have invested so much in writing their history? If history is not important why do you think the Greeks have invested so much effort in writing and defending their history? If history is not important why then do the Greeks so pompously use history to deny Macedonia and the Macedonian people their right of existence?



History is important, very important to a country more so than to a person, and I am not talking here about a “national myth” type of history like the Greeks have developed for themselves but a collective memory of a people that includes as much as possible of their experience. Some of it, like what happened in Neolithic times, may have to be extrapolated but nonetheless must be based on available factual information and not purely based on embellished myths.



Then how do a people like the Macedonians know their history, which has roots extending many millenniums back before their own lives?



Well, as events take place nowadays they are recorded and with the passing of time are summarized and kept in libraries. In earlier times important information was passed on orally from generation to generation, some being incorporated into songs, poems, odes, stories, parables, etc., so that it could be easier memorized and passed on.



To properly construct history, corroborating information from as many sources as possible must be obtained. One such source might be data collected from analyzing material finds like tombs, artifacts, relics and inscriptions; the type of information that can be derived from archeological research. Another source might be a body of literature derived from stories, legends, myths, folklore, poems, songs, etc., passed down from generation to generation. Other sources may include linguistic analysis, anthropology and nowadays the study of genetics.



Since the emergence of the Republic of Macedonia in the 1990’s, research in the field of archeology has increased dramatically, which will serve as a new source of information or as a corroborating source of information for the Macedonian peoples’ history. Also, new Macedonian literature and publications are slowly emerging and in time will provide more sources to validate the Macedonian peoples’ history.



I am often asked by my readers “are we Macedonians descendents of the Slavs” or “are we descendents of the ancient Macedonians”?



The simplest answer I can give you is that we are who we are, a product of our environment! We are a little bit of everyone who set foot in Macedonia! Unlike the Greeks who pretend to be direct descendents of the ancient Greeks, we are the sum of all people, whoever they may have been, who ventured into and remained in Macedonia.



Yes, we are the descendents of the ancient Macedonians and yes we are the descendents of all the other people who settled in Macedonia. But for the life of me, how can we be “Slavs” the descendents of something based on linguistics? The word “Slav” is a reference to a person who speaks a dialect of the Slavic language. This includes all the different people numbering in the hundreds of millions living from the bottom of the Balkans all the way to the top of Siberia.



Saying that Macedonians are “Slavs” is the same as saying everyone who speaks “English”, numbering perhaps over a billion people worldwide, are English! Is that even possible? Is England, a small Island in the Atlantic Ocean, even capable of producing such a vast population in a span of only two to three centuries since it became an empire?



Sorry to disappoint you but only the English from England are English. The rest of us who speak English are not English at all! But we are definitely English speakers! We Macedonians admit that we are “Slav speakers” but you will find it difficult to convince many of us that because we speak a Slavic language we are somehow “ethnic Slavs” related to the Inuit of Siberia who also happen to speak a Slavic language!



I have heard many Macedonian stories that say Macedonians are the “children” of Alexander the Great but have yet to hear a single story that claims we are “ethnic Slavs” and have come from somewhere outside of Macedonia! There is no folklore that I know of that claims we Macedonians are not indigenous to Macedonia and that we come from somewhere else! Only our enemies make such claims!



Yes, Macedonians have referred to themselves as “Slavs” instead of “Slav speakers” and yes, believing our neighbours’ propaganda, some Macedonians have erroneously referred to themselves as “Slavs” in an ethnic sense. But this is most probably because some Macedonians don’t know their own history! This is yet another reason why history or knowledge of one’s own history is so important! If we don’t know our own history then how can we claim to be who we are? Most importantly, if we don’t know our own history how can we prevent others from expropriating it, from stealing it from under us?



Macedonian history does not begin with the ancient Macedonians or with the so-called phantom “Slavs” showing up in Macedonia in the 6th century AD. Macedonia and the Macedonian people have a much deeper and wider history that spans from the time people set foot on that part of our planet to today. But there are only a few periods of Macedonia’s history that are remarkable and most memorable for the Macedonian people and those periods took place when the Macedonians themselves were masters of their own destiny and their own country. The most remarkable and therefore most memorable of all time was the ancient era (about 800 BC to 168 BC) when Macedonians were the rulers of Macedonia.



During those times Macedonians not only had a great country of their own, but they expanded it into an Empire that spanned over three continents and lasted three centuries. So yes, modern Macedonians do have something to identify with and yes ancient Macedonia and the ancient Macedonians are a part of the modern Macedonian heritage which belongs to every Macedonian alive today.



Is history important to Macedonia and the Macedonian people? I would say YES! In fact, in view of what Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania are doing to Macedonia today with all their blackmail and denials, I would say history for Macedonia and the Macedonian people today is far more important than ever before! History contains clues and evidence necessary to not only define who the Macedonians are but to also expose the crimes committed against the Macedonian people by their neighbours and their patrons!



We had a Macedonian National Rebellion taking place in 1903 with aims of creating a Macedonian state and ten years later in 1913 we have Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria snatching Macedonia out of the Macedonian peoples’ hands.



Had Macedonian authorities paid a bit more attention to history they would have avoided entering the so-called “name negotiations” with Greece because they would have known that Macedonia never belonged to Greece. They would have also known by what means Greece acquired Macedonian territories and would have pointed that out to the world. Perhaps these Macedonians too thought history did not matter and was not important enough to bring it up at the negotiation table.



If we continue to ignore history we will continue to make mistakes, something we cannot afford to do.

[George S.]

very interesting article.

[Onur]

Is history of a people important?

By Risto Stefov
rstefov@hotmail.com
November 21, 2010

This is very well written article and the parts about history is so true.

AFAIK, transforming the name of a branch of languages aka "Slav" to an ethnicity started with the Russian manipulations in Bulgaria after 1860s. They tried to give an ethnic sense to the speakers of Slavic languages, mainly for the newborn Bulgars, to be able to create some kind of unity between Russians and Bulgars. And then later times, this tag has been branded to Macedonians too but for other purposes, mostly by Greeks.

[Sovius]

This passage really stood out for me:

Saying that Macedonians are “Slavs” is the same as saying everyone who speaks “English”, numbering perhaps over a billion people worldwide, are English! Is that even possible? Is England, a small Island in the Atlantic Ocean, even capable of producing such a vast population in a span of only two to three centuries since it became an empire?

The same could be said of European speakers of the "Germanic" languages. Dreeva Bay, Norway?

The Prague Conference of 1848 occurred a bit earlier than the 1860’s. Pan-Slavicism, like other revisionist movements during the 1900’s that centered around nationalistic re-interpretations of anthropological evidence and historical narratives, effectively blurred its participants understanding of history and those who would follow by merging a number of different peoples who spoke very similar languages into one collective, abstract entity with no real tangible historical connections by assuming a common, almost biblical origin for all these many different ethnic groups and nation states, more commonly known as the 6th Century Slavic Migration Myth (theory). The term Sklavene, which Slav is purportedly based on, was a slang word originally used for Northern Thracian populations by Roman loyalists during the 6th Century AD. It came to take on meanings that no longer reflected its original usage. There’s no such thing as a Slav, only people who either believe they are Slavs or people who have been socially conditioned to view other people as Slavs.

[kykypajko]

my take on this is that slav is a language group. not a country nor people.

for example do we say latin-italian, latin-cuban, latin-mexican and insinuate that they're all one in the same? besides language alone doesn't determine nationality, how would you explain serbocrotain. same language, two different people. also many scandavian languages are very similar and mutually intelligible, yet i never hear swedes calling norway their country

sadly our academic establishment at UKIM does little to clear up this misconception