Dnieper Balts

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Map of the Dnieper river basin

The Dnieper Balts were a subgroup of the

ancient Iranians, the Scythians.[1]

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

History

In the early 20th century, the Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga showed that essentially all names in the upper Nemunas and upper Dnieper basins were Baltic.[2] 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), demonstrated that more than a thousand names in the Dnieper basin were of Baltic origin, due to their morphology and etymology.[3]

The former ethnic Balticness of the

late Bronze Age, the Balts lived in territories from what is now the western border of Poland to the Ural Mountains.[5] However, some propose a smaller territory of Baltic inhabitation from the Vistula in the west to at least as far as Moscow in the east and as far south as Kyiv.[6]

Ancient history

Baltic archeological cultures (in purple) at the end of 3rd century to beginning of 4th century between Slavic (in brown) and Finno-Ugric archeological cultures (in green)

Various archeological monuments and the prevalence of Baltic

Pamariai, (Late) Narva, and (Late) Nemunas cultures.[7] The earliest of them is the Pamariai culture, which covered only a narrow part of the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea.[8]

During the Bronze (c. 2nd to 1st millennium BC) and Iron (c. 1st millennium BC to 1st millennium AD) Ages, in the lands to the east and south of modern-day Lithuania and Latvia, there were 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.[9]

In the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, the aforementioned Baltic cultures 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 BC.[10]

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.[9]

Slavic invasion

Eastern Europe at the end of 9th century to beginning of 10th century with the last remaining Dnieper Baltic inhabited area around the modern-day Moscow cut off from the rest of the Baltic people by Krivichs

In the middle of the 1st millennium, Slavs began to invade the Baltic territory of the Dnieper 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.[4] 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.[4] By the early 9th century, only small numbers of Slavs had gone into Upper Dnieper and the majority were still Balts, with the Slavs mostly settling near Gnezdovo.[11]

Some researchers believe that after the

Eastern Galindians remained undestroyed by the eastern Slavs.[2]

The Lithuanian professor Zigmas Zinkevičius writes that:

It is thought that the Dnieper 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

See also: Bear worship

According to some researchers, the pagan religion of the Dnieper Balts included the veneration of pillars with bear heads.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Zinkevičius 2022.
  2. ^ a b Gimbutas 1963, p. 28.
  3. ^ Gimbutas 1963, p. 29.
  4. ^ a b c d e Toporov 1972.
  5. ^ Fortson 2004, pp. 378–379.
  6. ^ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 49.
  7. ^ Girininkas 2009, pp. 196–197.
  8. ^ Girininkas 2009.
  9. ^ a b c Vitkūnas & Zabiela 2017, p. 25.
  10. ^ Vitkūnas & Zabiela 2017, p. 36.
  11. ISBN 978-1-317-87224-5
    .
  12. ^ 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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