Notes for a class discussion

CONTENTS

 

Practical Class 2 Origins of Ukrainian culture                                     2

 

Practical Class 3 Culture of Kievan Rus’                                         22

 

Practical Class 4 Renaissance influences in Ukrainian culture                        34

 

Practical Class 5 The phenomenon of Ukrainian baroque                        42

 

Practical Class 6 Rival strategies in Ukrainian culture of the late XVIII- mid-XIX centuries                                                                                                                      51

 

Practical Class 7 Ukrainian culture on the path of national revival (1850s-1921)   66

 

Practical Class 8 Ukrainian culture in the USSR                                           97

 

 

 Practical Class 2

Origins of Ukrainian Culture

1. Mythology as a form of culture.

2. Pre-Slavic Cultures on Ukrainian lands.

3. Pre-Christian culture of ancient Slavs.

 

Notes for a class discussion

1. Myth (Gr. mythos – story, narration) was the primal worldview based on emotional and imaginative comprehension of the world. It was generated by human fear of unknown natural phenomena, diseases, death. So far as people could not explain real causes of many phenomena they had endowed them with supernatural character. Myth explained natural phenomena, the origins of the world and humans. It satisfied human urge towards cognition, defined patterns of conduct, transmitted collective experience from generation to generation and assured sustainability for society. Myths shaped models and standards of human conduct. Myths were told side by side with rituals, thus people could listen to narrations and experience them every time as commemoration of the events from the myth. Mythological consciousness was the first integrating form of culture. Mythology as the embodiment of the integrity of human being and nature was reflected almost in all spheres of primal life: archaic consciousness did not distinguish the soul and the body, a thought and a feeling, an individual and a group. Myth was the first form of human cultural activity. It contained preliminary forms of arts, science, philosophy, and religion.

Integrating forms of religious experience were totemism – a system of beliefs in kinship with animal or plant; animism (from Lat. anima – soul) – a system of beliefs in existence of souls in animals, plants, rocks, thunder, in close link of spiritual and material worlds, and integrating of humans and non-humans; fetishism (from Lat. facticius – artificial) – a system of beliefs in supernatural powers of a man-made objects, like amulets and talismans.

Mythology of Indo-European peoples, the main population of Ukrainian lands, contained some features that were common for all of them. The World Tree was one of the most symbols of Indo-Europeans. The World Tree was an oak tree, which symbolized three levels of the universe: its crown represented the sky, the realm of heavenly deities; its roots represented the underworld, the realm of the dead; and the trunk was the middle of the universe and represented the world of people and nature. Also Indo-Europeans had the cult of Mother-Goddess and supported the idea of bilateral arrangement of the world (good-evil, black-white, beautiful-ugly).

2. In 1908 the very first archeological remains at the territory of Ukraine (ca 18 000 BC) were discovered at Mazine site on the Desna, near Novgorod Siverskyi. Archeological excavations exposed “Paleolithic Venues” – mammoth bone carved female torsos, which were the symbols of fertility.

The first civilization at the territory of Ukraine was Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, discovered at the Romanian village Cucuteni and at Ukrainian Trypillia near Kiev in 1884 and 1896, correspondently The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, also known as Cucuteni culture (from Romanian), Trypillian culture (from Ukrainian) or Tripolie culture (from Russian), is a late Neolithic archaeological culture which flourished between ca. 5500 BC and 2750 BC, from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions in modern-day Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, encompassing an area of more than 35,000 km² (13,500 square miles). At its peak the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe, some of which had populations of up to 15,000 inhabitants.

One of the most notable aspects of this culture was that every 60 to 80 years the inhabitants of a settlement would burn their entire village. The reason for the burning of the settlements is a subject of debate among scholars; many of the settlements were reconstructed several times on top of earlier ones, preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. One example of this, at the Poduri, Romania site, revealed a total of thirteen habitation levels that were constructed on top of each other over a period of many years.

The culture was initially named after the village of Cucuteni in Iaşi County, Romania, where the first objects associated with it were discovered. In 1884 the Teodor T. Burada, a scholar from the nearby city of Iaşi, visited the tell (a hill or mound formed by long-term human occupation) located next to the village of Cucuteni where he unearthed fragments of pottery and terracotta figurines. After Burada had shown his findings to other academics in Iaşi a team, including Burada, the poet Nicolae Beldiceanu and archeologists Grigore Butureanu, Dimitrie C. Butculescu and George Diamandi, decided to carry out further explorations of the site, and subsequently began the first archeological excavations at Cucuteni in the spring of 1885. The findings of this initial work were announced in articles written in 1885 by Beldiceanu and in 1889 by Butureanu. Then in 1889 two of the Romanian scholars travelled to Paris to present the Cucuteni findings at international conferences: Butureanu at the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology and Diamandi at a meeting of the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris.

Simultaneously, around 1887, (possibly 1893 or 1896), the Czech archaeologist Vicenty Khvoika uncovered the first of close to one hundred Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements in Ukraine. Khvoika announced this discovery at the 11th Congress of Archaeologists in 1897, which is considered the official date of the discovery of the Trypillian culture in Ukraine. In 1897 similar objects were excavated in the village of Trypillia (Ukrainian: Трипiлля) in Kiev Oblast, Ukraine. As a result, this culture became identified in Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian publications as the 'Tripolie' (or 'Tripolye'), 'Tripolian' or 'Trypillian' culture. Excavation and study of these Ukrainian sites began in earnest in 1909.

Later scholars came to recognize that Romanian 'Cucuteni' and Ukrainian 'Trypillian' sites belonged to the same archaeological culture, usually known in the English-language as the 'Cucuteni-Trypillian' or 'Cucuteni-Tripolye' culture. Though older terms such as 'Cucuteni', 'Trypillian', or 'Tripolie' are still frequently used, they are now considered synonyms.

Geography

Members of this culture belonged to tribal social groups, scattered over an area of southeast Europe encompassing territories in present-day Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. The important physical features of the land were rolling plains, river valleys, the Black Sea, and the Carpathian Mountains, which were covered by a mixed forest in the west, that gave way to the open grasslands of the steppes in the east. The climate during the time that this culture flourished has been named the Holocene climatic optimum, and featured cool, wet winters and warm, moist summers. These conditions would have created a very favorable climate for agriculture in this region.

As of 2003, about 3000 sites of Cucuteni-Trypillian culture have been identified. J. P. Mallory reports that the "…culture is attested from well over a thousand sites in the form of everything from small villages to vast settlements consisting of hundreds of dwellings surrounded by multiple ditches."

Settlements

In terms of overall size, some of Cucuteni-Trypillian sites, such as Talianki (with a population of 15,000 and covering an area of some 450 hectares – 1100 acres) in the province of Uman Raion, Ukraine, are as large as (or perhaps even larger than) the more famous city-states of Sumer in the Fertile Crescent, and these Eastern European settlements predate the Sumerian cities by more than half of a millennium.

Archaeologists have uncovered an astonishing wealth of artifacts from these ancient ruins. The largest collections of Cucuteni-Trypillian artifacts are to be found in museums in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania, including the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Archaeology Museum Piatra Neamţ in Romania. However, smaller collections of artifacts are kept in many local museums scattered throughout the region.

These settlements underwent periodical acts of destruction and re-creation, as they were burned and then rebuilt every 60–80 years. Some scholars have theorized that the inhabitants of these settlements believed that every house symbolized an organic, almost living, entity. Each house, including its ceramic vases, ovens, figurines and innumerable objects made of perishable materials, shared the same circle of life, and all of the buildings in the settlement were physically linked together as a larger symbolic entity. As with living beings, the settlements may have been seen as also having a life cycle of death and rebirth.

The houses of the Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements were constructed in several general ways:

Wattle and daub homes.

Log homes, called (Ukrainian: площадки ploščadki).

Semi-underground homes called Bordei.

Some Cucuteni-Trypillian homes were two-storeys tall, and evidence shows that the members of this culture sometimes decorated the outsides of their homes with many of the same red-ochre complex swirling designs that are to be found on their pottery. Most houses had thatched roofs and wooden floors covered with clay.

 Diet

Cucuteni-Trypillian sites have yielded substantial evidence to prove that the inhabitants practiced agriculture, raised domestic livestock, and hunted wild animals for food. Archaeological evidence also indicates that primitive plowing was done by the farmers of the Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements. Cultivating the soil, tending livestock, and harvesting the crops were probably the main occupations of most of the members of this society. There is also evidence that they may have raised bees. Although wine grapes were cultivated by these people, there is no solid evidence to date to prove that they actually made wine from them. The cereal grains were ground and baked as unleavened bread in clay ovens or on heated stones in the hearth fireplace in the house.

The archaeological remains of animals found at Cucuteni-Trypillian sites indicate that the inhabitants practiced animal husbandry. The remains of dogs have also been found. Archaeologists have uncovered both the remains as well as artistic depictions of the horse in Cucuteni-Trypillian sites. However, whether these finds were of domesticated or wild horses is a matter of some debate.

In addition to farming and raising livestock, members of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture supplemented their diet with hunting. They used traps to catch their prey, as well as various weapons, including the bow-and-arrow, the spear, and clubs. To help them in stalking game, they sometimes disguised themselves with camouflage.

Ritual and religion

Some Cucuteni-Trypillian communities have been found that contain a special building located in the center of the settlement, which archaeologists have identified as sacred sanctuaries. Artifacts have been found inside these sanctuaries, some of them having been intentionally buried in the ground within the structure, that are clearly of a religious nature, and have provided insights into some of the beliefs, and perhaps some of the rituals and structure, of the members of this society. Additionally, artifacts of an apparent religious nature have also been found within many domestic Cucuteni-Trypillian homes.

Many of these artifacts are clay figurines or statues. Archaeologists have identified many of these as fetishes or totems, which are believed to be imbued with powers that can help and protect the people who look after them. These Cucuteni-Trypillian figurines have become known popularly as Goddesses, however, this term is not necessarily accurate for all female anthropomorphic clay figurines, as the archaeological evidence suggests that different figurines were used for different purposes (such as for protection), and so are not all representative of a Goddess. There have been so many of these figurines discovered in Cucuteni-Trypillian sites that many museums in eastern Europe have a sizeable collection of them, and as a result, they have come to represent one of the more readily-identifiable visual markers of this culture to many people.

One of the unanswered questions regarding the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture is the small number of artifacts associated with funerary rites. Although very large settlements have been explored by archaeologists, the evidence for mortuary activity is almost invisible. Making a distinction between the eastern Tripolye and the western Cucuteni regions of the Cucuteni-Trypillian geographical area, American archaeologist Douglass W. Bailey writes:

There are no Cucuteni cemeteries and the Tripolye ones that have been discovered are very late.

The discovery of skulls is more frequent then other parts of the body, however because there has not yet been a comprehensive statistical survey done of all of the skeletal remains discovered at Cucuteni-Trypillian sites, precise post excavation analysis of these discoveries cannot be accurately determined at this time. Still, many questions remain concerning these issues, as well as why there seems to have been no male remains found at all. The only definite conclusion that can be drawn from archeological evidence is that in the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, in the vast majority of cases, the bodies were not formally deposited within the settlement area.

Technological developments

At its height, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture would have been one of the most technologically-advanced societies on earth, producing woven textiles, exquisitely-fine and beautifully-decorated ceramics, and a wide variety of tools and weapons, as well as developing large-scale salt production, new house construction methods, and agricultural and animal husbandry techniques.

Salt Works

What may well be the world's oldest saltworks was discovered at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamt County, Romania. Archaeological evidence indicates that salt production began there as long ago as 6050 BC., making it perhaps the oldest known saltworks in the world.^[ Evidence based on discoveries in Solca, Cacica, Lunca, Oglinzi, and Cucuieţi, indicates that the people of the Precucuteni Culture were extracting salt from the salt-laden spring-water through the process of Briquetage. First, the brackish water from the spring was boiled in large pottery vessels, producing a dense brine. The brine was then heated in a ceramic briquetage vessel until all moisture was evaporated, with the remaining crystallized salt adhering to the inside walls of the vessel. Then the briquetage vessel was broken open, and the salt was scraped from the shards.

The salt extracted from this operation may have had a direct correlation to the rapid growth of this society's population soon after its initial production began. Salt from this operation probably played a very important role in the Neolithic economy of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture through its entire duration.

Ceramics

One of the most recognizable aspects of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture is the incredible pottery that its people produced. Borrowing from the Linear Pottery culture, the Cucuteni-Trypillian potters made improvements, mastering the modeling and temperature control of the manufacturing process, and decorating the clayware with a genuine and well-developed aesthetic sense of artistry.

There have been a seeming countless number of ceramic artifacts discovered in various Cucuteni-Trypillian archaeological sites over the years, which include pottery in many shapes and sizes, statues and figurines of both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic patterns, tools, implements, weights, and even furniture. It would be impossible to imagine this culture without its ceramic objects.

Textiles

The lavishly-decorated pottery suggests that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture created textiles that were exceedingly beautiful. climate in the region is not conducive to the preservation of the textiles, and as a result, no examples of preserved textiles have yet to be found. However, there are textile impressions commonly found etched into pottery shards before firing that clearly show that woven fabrics were prevalent in Cucuteni-Trypillian society. Additionally, there is evidence in the form of ceramic weights that would have been used to weight down the warp threads during weaving to substantiate that primitive looms were used by this culture.

Weapons and tools

Many tools, weights, and accessories have been found at the Cucuteni-Trypillian sites. Among these artifacts are clubs, harpoons, spear and arrow points for use in hunting and fishing, made from an assortment of materials, including stone, bone, antler, wood, leather, clay, sinew, straw, and cloth. Towards the end of this culture's existence, a number of copper weapons and tools began to appear. However, there has been only a very few weapons found that were designed for defense against human enemies. The implications of this seem to lead to the conclusion that the inhabitants of this culture lived with very little threat from possible enemy attack for almost 3000 years.^[34]

Throughout the 2750 years of its existence, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture was fairly stable and static, however, there were changes that took place. This article addresses some of these changes that have to do with the economic aspects. These include the basic economic conditions of the culture, the development of trade, interaction with other cultures, and the apparent use of barter tokens, an early form of money.

Members of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture shared common features with other Neolithic societies, including:

An almost nonexistent social stratification

Lack of a political elite

Rudimentary economy most likely a subsistence or gift economy

Pastoralists and subsistence farmers

Earlier societies of hunter gatherer tribes had no social stratification, and later societies of the Bronze Age had noticeable social stratification, which saw the creation of occupational specialization, the sovereign state, and social classes of individuals who were of the elite ruling or religious classes, full-time warriors, and wealthy merchants, contrasted with those individuals on the other end of the economic spectrum who were poor, enslaved, and hungry. In between these two economic models (the hunter gatherer tribes and Bronze Age civilizations) we find the later Neolithic and Eneolithic societies such as the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, where the first indications of social stratification began to be found. However, it would be a mistake to overemphasize the impact of social stratification in the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, since it was still (even in its later phases) very much an egalitarian society. And of course, social stratification was just one of the many aspects of what is regarded as a fully-established civilized society, which began to appear in the Bronze Age.

Like other Neolithic societies, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture had almost no division of labor. Although this culture's settlements sometimes grew to become that largest on earth at the time (up to 15,000 people in the largest), there is no evidence that has been discovered of labor specialization. Every household probably had members of the extended family who would work in the fields to raise crops, go to the woods to hunt game and bring back firewood, work by the river to bring back clay or fish, and all of the other duties that would be needed to survive. Contrary to popular belief, the Neolithic people experienced considerable abundance of food and other resources. Since every household was almost entirely self-sufficient, there was very little need for trade. There were, as is mentioned elsewhere in this article, certain mineral resources that, because of limitations due to distance and prevalence, did form the rudimentary foundation for a trade network that towards the end of the culture began to develop into a more complex system, as is attested to by an increasing number of artifacts from other cultures that have been dated to the latter period.

Toward the end of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture's existence (from roughly 3000 B.C. to 2750 B.C.), copper traded from other societies (notably, from the Balkans) began to appear throughout the region, and members of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture began to acquire skills necessary to use it to create various items. Along with the raw copper ore, finished copper tools, hunting weapons and other artifacts were also brought in from other cultures. This marked the transition from the Neolithic to the Eneolithic, also known as the Chalcolithic or Copper Age. Bronze artifacts began to show up in archaeological sites toward the very end of the culture. The primitive trade network of this society, that had been slowly growing more complex, was supplanted by the more complex trade network of the Proto-Indo-European culture that eventually replaced the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture.

Decline and end

There continues to be a debate among scholars regarding how the end of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture took place. It begins with the influential Kurgan hypothesis (also theory or model), proposed by Marija Gimbutas in 1956, which focuses on early Indo-European origins. This theory combined archaeology with linguistics, and postulated that the people of an archaeological Kurgan culture (a term grouping the Pit Grave culture and its predecessors) in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Gimbutas proposed the theory that the expansions of the Kurgan culture was a series of essentially hostile military conquest undertaken by the patriarchal, warlike Kurgan culture over the peaceful, matriarchal cultures of "Old Europe", a process visible in the appearance of fortified settlements and hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains:

"The process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical, transformation. It must be understood as a military victory in terms of successfully imposing a new administrative system, language, and religion upon the indigenous groups."

The Kurgan Hypothesis holds that this violent conquest would have taken place during the Third Wave of Kurgan expansion, between 3000-2800 B.C.

However, in the 1980s another theory, using more current archaeological evidence as support, appeared that contradicted Gimbutas' Kurgan Hypothesis. In 1989 Irish-American archaeologist J.P. Mallory published a groundbreaking book called In Search of the Indo-Europeans, in which he used the data from archaeological sites in the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture's region to demonstrate that part of the Kurgan culture (which he refers to by their more accepted name of Yamna culture) established settlements throughout the entire Cucuteni-Trypillian culture's area, and that these two cultures lived side-by-side for over 2000 years of their existence before the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture finally ended. Artifacts from both cultures are found within each of their respective archaeological settlement sites, attesting to an open trade that took place between them.^] Additionally, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture sites during this entire period indicate that there were no weapons found, nor were there indications of violent killings of people that would be commonplace if there had been warfare or raiding taking place. The conclusion that Mallory reached was that there was a gradual transformation that took place, instead of a violent conquest.

Finally, in the 1990s and 2000s, another theory regarding the end of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture emerged based on a devastating climatic change that took place at the end of their culture's existence that is known as the Blytt-Sernander#Sub-Boreal phase. Beginning around 3200 B.C. the earth's climate became colder and drier than it had ever been since the end of the last Ice age, resulting in the worst drought in the history of Europe since the beginning of agriculture. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture relied primarily on farming, which would have collapsed under these climatic conditions in a scenario similar to the Dust Bowl of the American Midwest in the 1930s.

According to The American Geographical Union, "The transition to today's arid climate was not gradual, but occurred in two specific episodes. The first, which was less severe, occurred between 6,700 and 5,500 years ago. The second, which was brutal, lasted from 4,000 to 3,600 years ago. Summer temperatures increased sharply, and precipitation decreased, according to carbon-14 dating. This event devastated ancient civilizations and their socio-economic systems."

 However, the neighboring Yamna culture people were pastoralists, and were able to maintain their survival much more effectively in drought conditions. This has led some scholars to come to the conclusion that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture ended not from a violent military conquest, nor a gradual assimilation, but as a matter of survival, converting from agriculture to pastoralism, and becoming integrated into the Yamna culture.

First people of Ukrainian lands with their authentic self name were Cimmerians (IX-VII BC). The first mention on them in literature traces back to Homer’s “Odissey”, which refers to “the land of Cimmerians” on the northern coast of the Black Sea and in Crimea. Also Herodotus (V BC) mentioned them.

Cimmerians were nomadic people of Indo-European origins. Their language is regarded as related to Iranian. Their culture is identified with the Iron Age in Ukrainian lands. Archeological remains testify the existence of elaborated, well-arranged burial rituals, that allow to mention the existence of religious believes. They believed in afterlife, had a cult of the Mother Goddess, cult of fertility (плодородие) (common for all Indo-European tribes).

According to Herodotus, Cimmerians were expelled (вытеснены) from the steppes by the Scythians.

It was in VII BC when Scythians invaded to Northern Black Sea areas and Caspian steppes. They were ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists and belonged to the Indo-European language family.

Much of the information about Scythians comes from Herodotus. Archeological remains are represented by excavations of burial mounds (курганы) in Ukraine and South Russia.

When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor in present-day Romania and Bulgaria from a Greater Scythia that extended eastwards for a 20-day ride from the Danube River, across the steppes of today's East Ukraine to the lower Don basin. The Don, then known as Tanaïs, has served as a major trading route ever since. The Scythians apparently obtained their wealth from their control over the slave-trade from the north to Greece through the Greek Black Sea colonial ports of Olbia, Chersoneses, Cimmerian Bosporus. They also grew grain, and shipped wheat, flocks, and cheese to Greece.

Archaeological remains of the Scythians include kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art), gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human sacrifices. Mummification techniques have aided in the relative preservation of some remains.

Large burial mounds (some over 20 metres high), provide the most valuable archaeological remains associated with the Scythians. They dot (усеивать) the Ukrainian and south Russian steppes, extending in great chains for many kilometers along ridges and watersheds. From them archaeologists have learned much about Scythian life and art.

Scythians lived in confederated tribes, a political form of voluntary association which regulated pastures and organized a common defence against encroaching neighbors for the pastoral tribes of mostly equestrian herdsmen. While the productivity of domesticated animal-breeding greatly exceeded that of the settled agricultural societies, the pastoral economy also needed supplemental agricultural produce, and stable nomadic confederations developed either symbiotic or forced alliances with sedentary peoples — in exchange for animal produce and military protection.

Herodotus relates that three main tribes of the Scythians descended from three brothers, Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais. Herodotus also mentions a royal tribe or clan, an elite which dominated the other Scythians. As far as we know, the Scythians had no writing system.

Scythian contacts with craftsmen in Greek colonies along the northern shores of the Black Sea resulted in the famous Scythian gold adornments that feature among the most glamorous artifacts of world museums. "Greco-Scythian" works depicting Scythians within a much more Hellenic style date from a later period, when Scythians had already adopted elements of Greek culture.

Scythians had a taste for elaborate personal jewelry, weapon-ornaments and horse-trappings. They executed Central-Asian animal motifs with Greek realism: winged gryphons attacking horses, battling stags, deer, and eagles, combined with everyday motifs like milking ewes.

The religious beliefs of the Scythians were the combination of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism (attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts), Trypillian agrarian and later pastoralic mythologies, and the influence of Greek mythology. Foremost in the Scythian pantheon stood Tabiti – the god of light and fire. Their religion was close to state religion.

In II BC Scythians were assimilated by Sarmathian tribes - also Iranian people, which represent nomadic steppe culture. Sarmatian society was hierarchical. There was an aristocratic warrior elite, and the real work was done by the limigantes or slaves. The tribe was still nomadic, roaming over the steppes on horseback or in covered wagons, the kibitkas. Like the Scythians to whom they were closely related, the Sarmatians were highly developed in horsemanship and warfare. Their administrative capability and political astuteness contributed to their gaining widespread influence.

The Scythian gods were those of nature, while the Sarmatians venerated a god of fire to whom they offered horses in sacrifice.

Sarmatian female warriors may have inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons. An early matriarchal form of society was later replaced by a system of male chieftains and eventually by a male monarchy.

Evolving burial customs offer an insight into the progress of the Sarmatian social structure. Early graves held only the remains of the deceased. The somewhat later inclusion of personal objects with the body followed the emergence of class differences. As society became more complex and affluent, more treasures were included with the corpse, until in the final period burial costumes and even jewelry were added to the ritual. Horse trappings and weapons of the Sarmatians were less elaborate than those of the Scythians, but they nonetheless evidenced great skill.

Sarmatian art was strongly geometric, floral, and richly coloured. Jewelry was a major craft, expressed in rings, bracelets, diadems, brooches, gold plaques, buckles, buttons, and mounts. Exceptional metalwork was found in the tombs, including bronze bracelets, spears, swords, gold-handled knives, and gold jewelry and cups.

Great Migration period and dominant role of tribes of Huns, Goths, Turks, and Slavs had changed greatly the map of Eurasia.

3. In the I–V AD the Chernyakhov zone was the cultural space of different peoples interaction: Scytho-Sarmatians, Germanic, and early Slavs. People of Chernyakhov culture built semi-subterranean dwellings, which later would be typical for Slavs. Developed crafts are represented by remains of pottery, metal work. Burial goods testify the existence of well-developed religious beliefs.

In the Great Migration period the leading role of tribes of Turks, Huns, Goths, and Slavs changed seriously the map of Europe. The roots of what might be called Ukrainian civilization or a Ukrainian nation therefore are to be found in the origins of the Slavic peoples or, more precisely, the eastern Slavs.

The Slavic people belong to Indo-European language family. Since the V AD they inhabited most of Central and Eastern Europe and expanded towards Balkans, Alps and the Volga. Information about cultural life of Early Slavs is obscure as written records are few and unreliable. The Antes federation of tribes was the first unity of Eastern Slavs. One of the Antes tribes was the Polianians, who in 482 AD founded the city of Kiev, named in honor of Kyi, the Polianian prince.

Most scholars adhere to the view that the Slavs, composed of various tribes, originally inhabited lands near the Carpathian Mountains in modern-day Poland and western Ukraine. From there, particularly in the seventh century c.e., they spread out in all directions, moving into new lands (e.g., the Balkans, modern Russia) as colonists. As they migrated, their language evolved into three subgroups: western Slavic (from which Polish and Czech developed); south Slavic (a precursor to languages such as Serbian and Bulgarian), and east Slavic (the root of Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian).

In the case of Ukraine, the history of the earliest Slavic peoples is obscure, as there are few written records about them. According to some accounts, including that of the Russian Primary Chronicle (sometimes rendered as the Tale of the Bygone Years), compiled in the early twelfth century, the Slavs (like the aforementioned Scythians) are descendents of Noah’s third son Japheth, who received the northern and western sectors of the earth after the flood. Less mythic is the more archaeological-based contention that the Antes tribal federation was the first eastern Slavic culture. Controversies continue, however, about whether the Antes were native to the region or immigrants, whether they are truly Slavic (i.e., some suggest they were more Gothic or Germanic), and the time period of their emergence, which is dated in some accounts as early as the second century c.e. One of the largest of the Antes tribes was the Polianians, who, according to a legend in the Russian Primary Chronicle, in 482 c.e. founded the city of Kiev (Kyïv in Ukrainian), which allegedly took its name from Kyi, a Polianian prince. Some believe that the Polianians had a literate culture, a sort of pre-Cyrillic alphabet that predated the codification of the Cyrillic alphabet by Saints Cyril and Methodius in 863. There is no direct evidence for this contention, but there is more solid basis to claim that the Polianians had contact with the Greek Byzantine Empire centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and were familiar with Christianity.

The decentralized Antes federation was defeated in 602 by the Avars, a Turkic tribe that would rule over much of East-Central Europe. Eastern Slavic culture and identity, such as it was, survived, however, and the Avar Empire fell in the early 800s. Eventually, several of the eastern Slavic tribes in more southerly regions fell under the control of the Khazars, a Turkic people. Farther to the north, the Varangians, a Scandinavian people, held sway over numerous tribes of eastern Slavs. Dominated by outsiders, the Slavic lands in presentday Ukraine were, in the middle of the ninth century, “an economic, cultural, and political backwater.”

Slavic mythology

Unlike Greek or Egyptian mythology, there are no first-hand records for the study of Slavic mythology. Despite some controversial theories, it cannot be proven that the Slavs had any sort of writing system before Christianisation; therefore, all their original religious beliefs and traditions were likely passed down orally over generations, and potentially forgotten over the centuries following the arrival of Christianity. Before that, sparse records of Slavic religion were mostly written by non-Slavic Christian missionaries who were uninterested in accurately portraying pagan beliefs. Archaeological remains of old Slavic Cult images and shrines have been found, though little can be yielded from them without proper knowledge of their contexts, other than confirming existing historical records. Fragments of old mythological beliefs and pagan festivals survive up to this day in folk customs, songs, and stories of all the Slavic nations.

Written sources

There are no known written accounts of Slavic mythology predating the fragmentation of the Proto-Slavic people into Western, Eastern, and Southern Slavs, with the possible exception of a short note in Herodotus’ Histories, mentioning a tribe of Neuri in the far north, whose men, Herodotus claims, transform themselves into wolves for several days each year. Some researchers have interpreted this through the Slavic folk belief in werewolves, whilst others believe that Herodotus actually referred to ancient Slavic carnival festivals, when groups of young men roamed the villages in masks, sometimes referred to as vucari (wolf-humans). The identification of "Neuri" with Proto-Slavs remains controversial, however.

The first definitive reference to the Slavs and their mythology in written history was made by the 6th century Byzantine historian Procopius, whose Bellum Gothicum described the beliefs of a South Slavic tribe that crossed the Danube heading south in just two days. According to Procopius, these Slavs worshipped a single deity, who crafted lightning and thunder. Though not named explicitly, it can be deduced this is a reference to the deity known as Perun in later historic sources, as in many Slavic languages today (Polish 'piorun' for example). Perun simply means "thunder" or "lightning bolt". He also mentions the belief in various demons and nymphs (i.e. vilas), but does not mention any other names.

The Slavic Primary Chronicle is a major work with many valuable references to the pagan beliefs of Eastern Slavs. The chronicle treats the history of the early Eastern Slavic state. Even though the manuscript was compiled at the beginning of the 12th century, it contains references to and copies of older documents, and describes events predating the Baptism of Kiev. Two deities, Perun and Veles/Volos, are mentioned in the text of the early 10th century peace treaties between pagan rulers of East Slavs and Byzantine Emperors. Later, Nestor the Chronicler describes a state pantheon introduced by Prince Vladimir in Kiev in 980 CE. Vladimir's pantheon included Perun, Hors, Dažbog, Stribog, Simargl, and Mokosh. The Hypatian Codex of the Primary Chronicle also mentions Svarog, compared to Greek Hephaestus. Also very interesting are the passages in the East Slavic epic The Tale of Igor's Campaign referring to Veles, Dažbog, and Hors. The original epic has been dated to the end of the 12th century, although there are marginal disputes over the authenticity of this work.

The Indo-European custom of communal feasts was known as bratchina (from brat, "brother") in Kiev Rus, as slava ("glorification").

Statues of several Slavic deities were discovered in 1848, on the banks of the Zbruch river, a tall stone statue was found, with four faces under a single stone hat.

The remains of several Slavic shrines have been discovered. Some archeological excavations on the cape of Arkona on Rügen island have uncovered vestiges of a great temple and a city, identified with those described by Saxo. In Novgorod, at the ancient Peryn skete, archeologists discovered the remains of a pagan shrine likely dedicated to Perun. The shrine consisted of a wide circular platform centred around a statue. The platform was encircled by a trench with eight apses, which contain remains of sacrificial altars.

All these archeological remains have the multiplicity of aspects in common. Statues of gods with multiple faces and remains of shrines with multiple sacrificial altars confirm written reports of Christian missionaries about the Slavs worshipping polycephalic gods, and also indicate that ancient Slavic mythology apparently put great emphasis on worship of deities with more aspects than one.

Also quite important are remains of several pieces of pottery from 4th century Chernyakhov culture. Russian archeologist Boris Rybakov identified and interpreted symbols inscribed onto them as records of the ancient Slavic calendar.

It is commonly claimed that worshiping among Slavic people often happened in the woods rather than in shrines. Such woods were called "gaje" in the Proto-Slavic language (compare Polish gaj 'small wood, thicket, bush, grove'; see: sacred grove), and were sometimes encircled by a fence which created a sacred area, both a natural and social sphere. Sometimes they would be used as cemeteries as well.

 Folklore traces

As various Slavic populations were Christianised between the 7th and 12th centuries, Christianity was introduced as a religion of the elite, flourishing mostly in cities and amongst the nobility. Amongst the rural majority of the medieval Slavic population, old myths remained strong. Christian priests and monks in Slavic countries, particularly in Russia, for centuries fought against the phenomenon called dvoeverie (double faith). On the one hand, peasants and farmers eagerly accepted baptism, masses and the new Christian holidays. On the other hand, they still persisted performing ancient rites and worshiping old pagan cults, even when the ancient deities and myths on which those were based were completely forgotten.

This was because, from a perspective of the Slavic peasant, Christianity was not a replacement of old Slavic mythology, but rather an addition to it. Christianity may have offered a hope of salvation, and of blissful afterlife in the next world, but for survival in this world, for yearly harvest and protection of cattle, the old religious system with its fertility rites, its protective deities, and its household spirits was taken to be necessary. This was a problem the Christian church never really solved; at best, it could offer a Christian saint or martyr to replace the pagan deity of a certain cult, but the cult itself thrived, as did the mythological view of the world through which natural phenomena were explained.

While folk beliefs and traditions of all Slavic peoples indeed are the richest resource for reconstructing the ancient pagan beliefs, these may very likely have lost their original mythology and sanctity. People entertained a vague idea that some festivals must be celebrated in a certain way, some stories must be told or some songs must be sung, merely in accordance with tradition. Cults of old deities were mixed with worship of new Christian saints, and old rituals blended among new Christian holidays.

This led scholars to analyze the structure of folklore itself, and to devise methodologies through which they could reconstruct the lost mythology from this structure. We can roughly divide the folklore accounts into two groups:

· Fairy tales about various fantastical characters and creatures such as Alkonost, Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, Firebird, Zmey, songs and tales of legendary heroes such as Russian bogatyrs, and superstitions about various demons and spirits such as domovoi, likho, vilas, vampires, vodyanoy, rusalkas etc. Many of these tales and beliefs may be quite ancient, and probably contain at least some elements of old mythical structure, but they are not myths themselves. They lack a deeper, sacral meaning and religious significance, and furthermore they tend to vary greatly among various Slavic populations.

· Folk celebrations of various Christian festivals and popular beliefs in various saints. It is, for instance, quite clear that a popular saint in many Slavic countries, St Elijah the Thunderer, is a replacement of old thunder-god Perun. Likewise, traces of ancient deities can also be found in cults of many other saints, such as St Mary, St Vitus, St George, St Blaise and St Nicholas, and it is also obvious that various folk celebrations, such as the spring feast of Jare or Jurjevo and the summer feast of Ivanje or Ivan Kupala, both very loosely associated with Christian holidays, are abundant with pre-Christian elements. These beliefs have considerable religious and sacral significance to the people still performing them. The problem is, of course, that the elements of pre-Christian religion are hopelessly mixed into popular Christianity.

Reconstruction of original Slavic myths is thus a true detective work, requiring a considerable knowledge of various scientific disciplines such as semiotics, linguistics, philology, comparative mythology and ethnology. Folklore accounts must be analyzed on level of structure, not merely as songs or stories, but as groups of signs and symbols which contain some internal structural logic. Each of these signs is composed of some key words, which are more than simply names of characters, places or artifacts. One important aspect of symbols is that they are almost impossible to change; while their names may be altered, their structure may not. Changing or losing of key words would result in a change of symbol, which would then invalidate the internal structural logic of a text and render the entire tale meaningless. It would then soon be forgotten, because the pattern, or logic, through which it was transmitted over generations would be lost.

For example: as already stated, the Slavic god of thunder, Perun, was mostly equated with St Elijah the Thunderer in Christian folklore. But he was also sometimes equated with St Michael, and sometimes even with the Christian God, whilst in some Russian or Belarusian folk stories, he was downgraded to various fairy characters such as Tsar Ogin (Tsar Flame) or Grom (Thunder). Notwithstanding changes in the name itself, there are always some key words present which were used to describe Perun as a symbol in ancient mythical texts, and have survived through folklore. Perun is always gore (up, above, high, on the top of the mountain or in heaven; Perun is a heavenly god, and he is also the 'highest' deity of old Slavic pantheon), he is suh (dry, as opposite of wet; he is god of thunder and lightning, which causes fire), he treska/razbija/goni/ubija (strikes/sunders/pursues/kills; he is a god of thunder and storms, destructive and furious) with strela/kamen/molnija (arrow/stone/lightning; Perun's weapons, are of course, his bolts of lightning. He fires them as arrows which are so powerful they explode and blow up stones when they hit them). These key words are always preserved in folklore traces, even if the true name of Perun has been long since forgotten. Consequently, the structure of this symbol allowed the identification of Perun with similar characters either from Christian religion or from later folklore, which share these similarities in the structure of their own symbols.

Following similar methodology, and drawing parallels with the structure of other, related Indo-European mythologies (particularly Baltic mythology), and occasionally using some hints found in historical records of Slavic paganism, some of the ancient myths could be reconstructed. Significant progress in the study of Slavic mythology was made during the last 30 years, mostly through the work of the Russian philologists Vladimir Toporov and Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, as well as that of the Croatian scientists Radoslav Katičić and Vitomir Belaj. Also very valuable are the studies of Russian scholar Boris Uspensky and of Serbian philologist and ethnologist Veselin Čajkanović.

However, uncritical interpretation of folklore or unskilled reconstruction of myths can lead to disastrous effects, as explained below.

Inauthentic sources

When dealing with Slavic mythology, one cannot be too careful or too critical about the validity and authenticity of sources. Scholarly interest in beliefs of ancient Slavs has been continually waxing since the times of Renaissance, and with it the overall number of confusions, errors, misinterpretations, and unsupported reconstructions (not to mention inventions) has also increased.

No valid scientific methodology by which folklore accounts could be interpreted was known before the mid-20th century, and with sparse historical and archeological sources, the doors were thus opened to wild and unwarranted speculation. One of the best examples of overall confusion and complete misinterpretation is a fake deity of love, Lada or Lado, constructed from meaningless exclamations in Slavic wedding songs. Gods such as Koleda and Kupala were constructed from misinterpreted names of popular Slavic folk festivals; Koledo was the Slavic name for Christmas processions of carol singers, whilst the source of the name Kupala is unknown. Christian sources claim that it comes from Ivan Kupala (literally: John the Baptist) however this claim is as baseless as the claim of those who choose to interpret it as a pagan holiday. This festival day is celebrated at the summer solstice in many Slavic, and also western European countries, such as France and Italy. These customs indeed do have more than a few elements of pre-Christian beliefs, but simply inventing gods based on names of customs is not considered a valid method for reconstruction of lost beliefs.