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The indigenous Balkan Slavs and the myth of Slavic Migration
Three preliminary remarks are in order:
(A) the Slavic area corresponds to almost half of Europe. As such it is the
continent’s largest, and the only one that includes three climatic zones (subarctic,
continental and Mediterranean) and almost all ecological zones: arctic,
tundra, coniferous forest, mixed forest, steppe-forest, steppe, semi-desertic,
Mediterranean, alpine.
(B) In spite of their huge extension, Slavic languages are much less differentiated than, for example, the Germanic or the Romance.
(C) Slavic languages have also a unique, asymmetric areal distribution: while
Southern Slavic languages (Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and
Bulgarian) form a homogeneous bloc, sharing several common features, for
Northern Slavic languages it is necessary to distinguish between a Western
branch (including Czech, Sorbian and Polish), and an Eastern one (including
Russian, Ucrainian and Belo-Russian), as each of the two branches shares
different features with Southern Slavic.
An adequate theory of Slavic ethnogenesis will have to provide a satisfactory
and coherent explanation for these three fundamental aspects of Slavic: enormous extension, extraordinary homogeneity, and areal asymmetry between South and North.
The old version of the traditional theory assumed, as is known, the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs in historical times, following their alleged “great migration” in the 5th and 6th centuries of our era, from an unknown area. It claimed that this is the reason for their large extension and phenomenal homegenity. Even though this radical thesis is now maintained only by a minority (represented by Schenker), its more recent, variously modified version, at present favoured by the majority of Slavists, does not differ substantially from it: for what is now admitted is simply the presence of the Slavs in the Bronze and Iron Age in a small area of Eastern Europe. So that the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs is now placed eralier, i.e. in the Bronze or in the Iron Age, while the “great migration”
would still have taken place in historical times. In short, ‘only’ the last, huge wave of the Slavic migration would be dated so recently.“I have to commence by clearing away one of the most absurd consequences of the traditional chronology, namely, that of the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs into the immense area in which they now live. The only logical conclusion can be that the southern branch of the Slavs is the oldest and that from it developed the Slavic western and eastern branches in a differing manner and perhaps at different times.”
“Today only a minority of experts support the theory of a late migration for the Slavs… because none of the variant versions of such late settlement answers the question of what crucial factor could possibly have enabled the Slavs to have left their Bronze-Age firesides to become the dominant peoples of Europe. The southwestern portion of the Slavs had always bordered on the Italic people in Dalmatia, as well as in the areas of the eastern Alps and in the Po lowlands.”
“The surmised ‘Slavic migration’ is full of inconsistencies. There is no ‘northern Slavic language’, it is rather only a variant of the southern Slavic… The first metallurgic cultures in the Balkans are Slavic… and connected with Anatolia… Slavic presence in the territory, nearly identical to the one occupied by them today, exists ever since the Stone Age… The Slavs have (together with the Greeks and other Balkan peoples developed agriculture… agriculturally mixed economy, typically European, which later enabled the birth of the Greek, Etruscan, and Latin urbanism. Germanic peoples adopted agriculture from the Slavs… The Balkans is one of the rare regions in which a real and true settlement of human groups coming from Anatolia is proven…].
The areal asymmetry of the Slavic areal distribution
As a specialist in geolinguistics, I have always been surprised by the fact that Slavic
specialists have failed in noticing or appreciating the extraordinary diagnostic value –
from a geolinguistic point of view – of the asymmetric configuration of the Slavic area.
Even more so since the cause of this asymmetry is quite well-known, and explicitly
stated in all handbooks for first-year students of Slavic: Northern Slavic does not form a single unit, but each of its two branchings – the Western and the Eastern – shares
different features with Southern Slavic.
Now, from a geolinguistic point of view, there is just one explanation possible
for this peculiar and transparent areal configuration: Southern Slavic must form the
earlier core, while the two Northern branchings must be a later development, each with
its proper history and identity. No other explanation is possible, unless one challenges
the very raison d’etre of IE and Proto-Slavic reconstruction, besides common sense.
Needless to say, this simple remark demolishes the whole construction of the
Slavic homeland in Middle Eastern Europe and of the Slavic migration in traditional
terms, as well as all of its corollaries. But let us check the other two points, before
developing it further within the framework of the PCT.The Slavic enormous expansion
The only evidence for a great migration of Slavs in historical times that traditional
scholars can possibly claim lies in a literal reading of the mentions of medieval
historians, such as the Thracian Priscus of Panion (5th century), the Greek Procopius of
Cesarea (6th century) and the Goth Jordanes (6th century), or those of the Church (e.g.
Conte 1990, 33-34). But it is quite evident that such mentions do not point
unambiguously to an ‘invasion’ or ‘migration’ of Slavs, but can just as simply be taken
as to refer to pre-existing Slavs, the presence of which even traditional scholars now
admit. When, for example, John of Ephesos, bishop of Constantinopolis under Justinian
(527-65) mentions the innumerable raids into the Bizantine territori by “the damned
people of the Slavs” he damns them because they were still pagan, and not because they
are ‘arriving’! And when, in his De rebus Gethicis Jordanes describes the location of
the Venedi, and writes that they inhabited the area “From the source of the Visla river
and on incommensurable expanses”, he does not give the slightest indication of a recent
arrival of theirs, but simply describes a statu quo. And I challenge Slavic specialists to
find any indication of a recent arrival of the Slavs in their area in other medieval
sources.
Not only, but when earlier historians, living in the centuries preceding the
supposed arrival of the Slavs, write that the population of the Carpatian Basin offered a
drink called medos (Proto-Slavic medŭ ‘drink produced with honey”) the Byzantine
ambassadors directed to the court of Attila (king of the Huns), and that a part of the
funeral rituals for Attila’s death was called strava (medieval name of a Slavic funeral
ritual), only a biased reader can find evidence in this for the “first infiltrations” of Slavs
in the Carpatian area, especially as they seem to have left not trace of their coming!
(Neustupný-Neustupný 1963, 196).
The much simpler truth is that the Slavs were there from remote times. For,
again, the first mention of peoples in writing depends on the birthday of writing, and not
on the birthday of peoples!
In short, if such an enormous expansion of the Slavs both to the South and to the
North from their alleged homeland in Middle-Eastern Europe had really taken place, the
most important evidence we should expect to find would be archaeological. Which is
entirely missing. Just as we miss any discussion of this point in Mallory’s book –and
certainly not by accident, given the fact that Mallory is an archaeologist. I fail to see,
then, how an archaeologist can advance the hypothesis of a massive expansion that
involves half of Europe, and is capable of entirely changing its linguistic identity,
without the slightest archaeological evidence: unless it is a curious case of
underestimation of one’s own science.
Another fundamental objection to this thesis lies in the fact that, following the
traditional scenario, we would have to assume that this ‘great migration’ involved also
the Southern Slavic area: an absolute impossibility, as we have just seen. If there has
been a ‘migration’, it must have proceded from South northwards.
A third, fundamental objection to this thesis is the contradiction between the
idea of a medieval migration and the total disappearance of the presumed pre-existing
languages. Not even modern mass migration and colonization, despite the enormous
technological and cultural difference between the migrants and the indigenous people,
have caused the total extinction of all autocthonous languages in the New World. The
ideal of the extinction of all alleged pre-Indo-European languages because of a Copper
Age IE migration is already hard enough to admit, given the same reason, plus the fact
that research on pre-Indo-European has never produced any serious result (Alinei 1996,
2000). How can we accept such an idea for the Early Middle Ages, and for the highly
civilized areas of Southern Eastern prehistoric Europe? What and where would the pre-
Indo-European substrate be in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and
Slovenia? Unless we associate this late migration to a gigantic genocide – a
phantascientific hypothesis – this hypothesis does not belong to serious scientific
thinking.The homogeneity of the Slavic languages
Unquestionably, the homogeneity of the Slavic languages, which contrasts so strikingly
with the internal differentiation of Germanic, Romance and Celtic, for example, can
only be explained in two ways: by positing: (A) a very high degree of cultural and
social stability for a very long period, or (B); a most rapid expansion of the Slavs, the
tempo of which would have prevented the original Slavic language (Proto-Slavic) from
changing in the new areas. Something like what happened, for instance, to the English
language of the Pilgrims when they migrated to America, for its rapid expansion into
the new continent produced much fewer dialectal differences – despite its enormous
area – than, say, British English shows in the island of England.
The traditional theory was indeed coherent with this approach, when it assumed
the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs in historical times, following their ‘great migration’. This
scenario did indeed involve a sort of blitz-invasion of most Eastern Europe, which in
turn would explain the homogeneity of the Slavic languages as they are now. Rather than beeing stable, the two
millennia of the Bronze, Iron Age and the beginning of our era form – on the contrary –
one of the most turbulent periods of European prehistory, protohistory and history:
Celts, Greeks, Romans, Illyrians and other people (including Slavs themselves, if we
accept this theory!), were constantly on the war path, occupying other people’s
territories, and greatly influencing their languages and cultures, as the numerous Celtic,
Greek and Latin loanwords in the Slavic languages abundantly witness.The demographic explosion of the Slavs, preceding their great
migration
Neither version of the traditional theory can provide a satisfactory answer to the twofold
question underlying the hypothesis of the great Slavic migration in the Early Middle
Ages: What prehistorical or historical circumstances would have brought the Slavic
people first to their demographic explosion and then to their great migration, both of which made them into the dominating population of Eastern Europe, from North to
South, and the most numerous group in Europe? Neither archaeology nor history gives
us the slightest piece of evidence for such events which, as we have already noticed,
would have caused nothing less than the almost total disappearance of the previous
populations and of their languages. Notice that we followed the traditional theory we
wold have to assume not only that the Proto-IE people would “arrive” with the kurgan
culture from the Ukrainian steppes, in the Copper Age, while the Slavs would “arrive”
in Central Eastern Europe in the Bronze Age; but also, and especially, that after their
arrival they would multiply like ants, and would then occupy almost the whole of
Eastern Europe, from the arctic area and the tundra to the shores of the Black Sea. Can
such a preposterous thesis be in all seriousness advanced, in the 21st century, with the
progress made in so many scientific fields such as archaeology, anthropology, general
linguistics, and without a single piece of evidence? If we then also recall that the core
area of the Slavs was the South and not the North – as the geolinguistic picture
irrefutably indicates – what remains of this construction?The diagnostic value of the etymological semantic change from Slav
to slave
A last argument against the traditional view of the Slavic ethnogenesis, and in my
opinion just as strong as it is new, can be found in the historical events involving Slavs
in the very period of their historical appearance in Europe.
As is known, most western European words designating the notion of “slave”
derive from the Latin word sclavus, originally meaning “Slavic”: not only English
slave, but also German Sklave, Dutch slaaf, Danish slave, Swedish slaaf, Welsh slaf,
Breton sklav, French esclave, Spanish esclavo, Portuguese escravo, Italian schiavo,
Albanian skllaf, Modern Greek sklavos, etc. The word has also entered Spanish Arabic,
where it has become saklabi or siklabi, plural sakaliba, with the meaning of “eunuch”.
In Italy, Lat. sclavus has developed into schiavo in the dialect of Florence, which
eventually has become standard Italian. But in Northern Italian dialects, in particular in
the dialects of Veneto, through regular phonetic developments, sclavus ‘Slav’ as well as
‘slave’ has become first sciavo, then sciao, and finally ciao, the Italian informal
greeting, now internationally known3.
As to the semantic change from the notion of “slave” to a simple greeting, it can be
easily explained by comparing the very similar development by which in certain parts
of central Europe the word servus, originally meaning “servant”, has become a common
greeting.
Why is all of this important for the traditional theory of the ethnogenesis of the
Slavs? Because of the passage from the meaning of ‘Slav’ to the notion of ‘slave’, and
its great historiacl significance. Let us see this in greater detail.
There is a whole collection of medieval sources, which would take too long to list,
but which have been systematicaly studied by the three fundamental studies on the
history of Lat. sclavus (Aebischer 1936, Verlinden 1943, 1955), which shows that the
earliest attestations of the word sclavus date back to the Early Middle Ages: precisely
when the Slavs, in the traditional scenario, should undertake their ‘great migration’.
Indeed we find the meaning ‘slave’ associated to the word sklavos sklavus generally used in Byzantine Greek and Late Latin documents of the 10th century of our era, and
most philologists and historians who have discussed the problem are inclined to read
“slave” instead of “Slav” in many earlier attestations. Still earlier, the first attestations
of the word in the sense of “Slavic” can also be found in Greek, in the 6th century of our
era. According to Vasmer himself, for example, the attestation of sclavos in Agathias
(6th century) already has the meaning of “slave” (Aebischer 1936, 485).
How do scholars explain the semantic development from “Slavic” to “slave”? All
historical sources irrefutably show that the Slavic area was the main reservoir of slaves
in the whole period of Early Middle Ages, beginning probably in the 6th century, and
with a peak around the 10th. This preference for slaves of Slavic origin – so strong as to
make Slavs the slaves by anthonomasia – has been easily explained: in that period
Slavic people were the only ones who were still pagan, and this detail is most important
as it explains why, by choosing them, early medieval slave traders – mostly Venetian,
Genoese and Jewish – did not violate the new principles of the “Societas christiana”,
introduced by Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the 6th century, according to which
baptized people must be excluded from slavery. So we obtain a safe dating for the word
sclavus, in the sense of “slave”, which will be approximately the period between the
sixth and tenth centuries.
Now, as this period is precisely the one in which the supposed ‘great migration’ of
the Slavs should take place, the question arises: how can huge migrating groups that
were supposed to be aggressively busy occupying half of Europe, from the Arctic area
to the Black Sea, submerging and extinguishing all previous populations, have at the
same time been chosen as the European slaves par excellence? This would clash against
all that we know – and that history abundantly shows – , about the characters of ethnic
and racial groups systematically reduced to slavery. In fact, if Slavs in the Early Middle
Ages became the historical slaves of Europe, this implies that in that period, rather than
being migrating to new territories and exterminating pre-existing people, they were
known to have beeen stable in their territories, to be hard workers, and especially to be
without much possibility to defend themselves from slave raiders and slave owners.Trubačev’s theory
A place a part deserves the theory of the Russian scholar Oleg Trubačev, certainly one
of the most serious and original Slavists of our times, and author of a not yet completed
monumental etymological dictionary of Slavic languages. Though his theory,
unfortunately, does not completely abandon the traditional chronological framework, its
structural components, as we shall see, are new and come very close to the PCT.
7.4.1 Extension to South of the Proto-Slavic homeland
Trubačev’s main thesis, which mutatis mutandis forms the basis of the PCT, is that
prehistoric Slavs occupied not only the middle area of Central Europe, but also the
Danube basin. Several arguments, to be added to mine, have led him to this conclusion:
(1) “The version about the Slavs coming from ‘somewhere’ originated long time ago in
a misunderstanding of the silence of the Greek and Roman authors about the Slavs as
such” (Trubačev 1985, 227). Trubačev here refers to the old version of the traditional
theory, according to which Slavs would have ‘arrived’ in the 6th century.
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(2) The absence of any memory of the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs in the Slavic written or oral
record “may be an indication of their (and their ancestors!) original stay in Central
Oriental Europe in large numbers” (idem, 206).
(3) Both in the oldest, 12th century Russian chronicle (the so called “Narration of the
past times”) (Conte 1990, 9), and in the oral tradition represented by Russian byliny, the
permanence of Slavs on the Danube is remembered (Trubačev 1985, 204-5). “What
else, if not a memory of the old stay on the Danube, appears [...] in the old songs about
the Danube among the Eastern Slavs who, it should be remembered, never lived on the
Danube [...] during their written history and never took part in the Balcanic invasions of
the Early Middle Ages” (ibidem). More over, already B.A. Rybakov had maintained
that the history of Eastern Slavs began in the South (idem, 225). The Middle Dneper
area remains important, but “it is not excluded that in some previous period [...] [it] was
only a [peripheral] part of a greater and otherwise shaped territory”. This would be also
confirmed y the high percentage of anthropological Mediterranean types among Eastern
Slavs and Poles (idem, 225, n. 20). In fact, in the middle of the first millennium the
Right Bank Ukraine must already be a part of the periphery of the ancient Slavic area
(idem, 242).
(4) Many scholars have anticipated Trubačev’s thesis: Budimir, supported by numerous
ex-Yugoslavian scholars, claimed a greater proximity of Ancient Slavs to the Balkanic
region than traditionally thought; Kopitar sought the Proto-Slavic homeland on the
Danube and in Pannonia; Niederle admitted the existence of Slavic enclaves in Thracia
and in Illyiria already at the beginning of our era; and both Niederle and Šafárik
considered as Slavic terms like Vulka, Vrbas, Tsierna e Pathissus (s. further) (idem,
223, 227, 229).
(5) According to Trubačev, even the historian Jordanes’ collocation of the Veneti to the
North of the Sclaveni, and Anti to their East, implies the Slavic presence in the South
(idem, 228).
(6) Hungarian place names, in Pannonia and on the Tisza, are Slavic, as J. Stanislav has
demonstrated (idem, 228). The region’s river names, such as Tisza (Rum. Tisa, Germ.
Theiss, to be compared with Plinius’ place name Pathissus, composed with the Slavic
prefix po-; Maros (Rum. Mureş, in Herodotus Máris, from PIE *mori ‘sea’, but with a
Slavic suffix); the suffix -s, common to river names such as Szamos (Rum. Someş) and
Temes, certainly derives from a Slavic suffix -sjo- (idem, 228-9).
(7) Trubačev then underlines the importance of the contacts between common Slavic
and the different IE linguistic groups, and of the respective isoglosses (often, however,
without being able to exploit them owing to the traditional chronology!):
(a) The Slavo-Latin isoglosses, appearing in the social sphere (Lat. hospes ~ Slav.
*gospodĭ, Lat. favere ~ Slav. *gověti), in the construction terminology (Lat. struere ~
Slav. *strojiti), in that of landscape (Lat. paludes ~ Slav. *pola voda); of agriculture
(Lat. pomum < *po-emom ~ Slav. *pojmo (Russ. pojmo ‘handful’) (idem, 216. And see
also 217: gŭrnŭ, kladivo, molty). Within the PCT these isoglosses can be dated, at the
latest, to the beginning of Neolithic, when the contacts between the ‘Italid’ culture of
the Cardial/Impresso Ware on the Adriatic Eastern coast and the South Slavic Starčevo
culture were certainly very close.
(b) The Slavo-Illyrian isoglosses (Doksy, Czech place name, Daksa, Adriatic island, and
Hesichius’ gloss: Epirotic dáksa; Dukla, mountain pass in the Carpatians, Duklja in
Montenegro, Doklea (Ptolemy); Licicaviki, Polish tribal name, to be compared to Illyr.
*Liccavici (Illyr. anthroponym Liccavus, Liccavius) and Southern Slavic place name
Lika (Trubačev 1985, 217-8). These isoglosses can be better explained in the light of the
PCT, as from this vantage point the Illyrians were not only a people contiguous to the Slavs, but , later, they also formed an elite group that dominated a part of the Southern
Slavic territory for a period.
(c) Slavo-Iranian contacts, which, as we have seen, according to Trubačev should not
precede the middle of the 1st millennium (idem, 241).
(8) Criticizing the excessive restriction of the earliest Slavic area Trubačev finally
recalls Brückner’s humorous warning: “Don’t do to anybody what would not please
you. The German scholars would love to drown all the Slavs in the Pripet swamps, and
the Slavic scholars all the Germans in the Dollart […] – a quite pointless endeavour:
there would not be enough room for them; better drop the matter and don’t spare God’s
light for either of them” (idem, 206).The problem of the Balto-Slavic relationship
Trubačev also discusses at length the various theories on the Balto-Slavic relationship
and maintains – in my opinion quite rightly – that any serious theory on Slavic
ethnogenesis must first address the problem of the relationhip between Baltic and Slavic
(Trubačev 1985, 210). He does not support the newest of such theories, namely the one
that considers Baltic as a the earliest stage of Slavic but, on the basis of the evident
discontinuity between the two groups, and of their remarkable differences in lexicon,
phonetics and morphology, he prefers the oldest theory of an earlier unity of the
languages, with successive, secondary relationships and contacts of a different type
(idem, 212).
Very important, however, and in my opinion pointing rather to the newest theory
of Slavic derivation from Baltic than to oldest theory of an ancient unity, are Trubačev’s
remarks on the affinities, sometime extraordinary, between Baltic and Thracian place
names: e.g. the Thr. river name Kérsēs ~ OPruss. Kerse; Thr. town name Edessa ~ Balt.
Vedosa, river of the high Dneper; Thr. Zaldapa ~ Lith. Želtupė etc. (idem, 215, with
more examples). Irrespective of the chronology, this similarity seems to enhance the
thesis of a derivation of Slavic from Baltic and would permit a new approach and a new
solution of the Thracian problem (s. further). From a geolinguistic point of view, in any
case, it would be perfectly plausible that the Thracian area in the South and the Baltic
area in the North would have formed the periphery of the Slavic area (where the archaic
phase, as usual, would have been preserved), whereas the center of the area (again, as
usual in geolinguistics) would have been the most innovative, i.e. the most influenced
by the various adstrata and superstrata.
As is known, Trubačev’s research on Slavic and Baltic place names is fundamental, and
seems to confirm a substancial coincidence between the Slavic earliest area and the area
where place names are exclusively or prevailingly Slavic. First of all, the Baltic
character of river names of the Upper Dneper would exclude the Slavic presence to the
North of the Pripet. The area of maximal Slavic concentration would be that between
the Oder and the Dneper area (idem, 206). Trubačev, however, also expresses important
methodological reservations, on the unconditional use of place names for the
determination of an original ethnic area. The most homogenous toponomastic areas are
often those of recent colonization, and not those of the earliest settlements (idem, 209,
con bibl.). Also within the framework of Krahe’s so called ‘ancient European’ river
names (and similarly Schmidt’s, Udolph’s and others’, 220 ff.), the specific Slavic
contribution has now been ascertained (ibidem), which allows us to state with absolute
certainty that Slavs were present in Eastern Europe from ancient times. Needless to say, ‘ancient’ for Trubačev does not have the same meaning as for the PCT, but once the
myth of the IE invasion has been eliminated, Trubačev’s argument remains valid, and
the adjustment of chronology follows automatically. Fundamental, to show how close
he comes to the PCT, is the following statement: “We find the compact IE onomastic
area only in Europe, and that the diagnostic value of this fact for the problem of the
localization of the Proto-Indo-Europeans can hardly be overestimated” (idem 223).
To conclude, Trubačev is mistaken only with regrads to the basic question, namely
that which opposes continuity to invasion, as appears from his agreement with Bökönyi:
“I agree, in general, with the opinion that «... there is no reason to admit the
development in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods of linguistic communities whose
traces survive till historical times»” (idem, 244, quotation from Bökönyi 1978, 16).
The truth is, as we have seen, that the PCT has very strong arguments, both
interdisciplinary and linguistic, to admit such a development, and to advance a theory of
Slavic ethnogenesis quite similar to that by Trubačev, but much more concrete and
realistic, in that it shows a much greater convergence with the archaeological record and
with the global cultural anthropological picture.The Slavic ethnogenesis in the PCT
7.5.1 Palaeolitic and Mesolitihc
I omit an illustration of human settlements in Eastern Europe in the Upper Palaeolitic,
as well as in the last phases of Würm glaciation and at the beginning of the Post-glacial
(ca. 11000-7000 b.C.) (Tringham 1971, 36), and I begin with Mesolithic: the first period
in which the archaeological record permits to reconstruct an adequate global picture of
Europe.
According to the majority of archaeologists, the different lithic industries of
East-European Mesolthic can be attributed to two different human populations (e.g.
Tringham 1971, 36-7), corresponding to the two basic cultures of Eastern Europe: the
South-West of Eastern Europe, characterized by the microlithic industry (sometimes
improperly called tardenoisian), common to the rest of Europe, and the Northern part of
Eastern Europe, characterized by the Swiderian industry (e.g. Sulimirski 1970, 30 ff.).
As I have recalled above, Uralic specialists, both archaeologists and linguists, see the
Swiderian culture as coinciding with the definitive settlements of the Uralic groups in
Northern Europe, so that – if we take this as a solid assumption (which it seems to be,
given the uninterrupted continuity of this area with later cultures which have been
attributed with certainty to the different Uralic groups) – the microlithic culture,
common to the rest of Europe, could only be considered as corresponding to the sphere
of IE influence in Mesolithic. Naturally, both in Palaeolithic and in Mesolithic it is
necessary to consider the consequences that the glaciations first and the deglaciation
later must have had on the distribution of populations. When the glacial cap covered
North-Eastern Europe, the Northern frontier of the Uralic as well as of the Balto-Slavic
groups of the North must have been somewhere in Middle Eastern Europe (see fig. 6
above); their Southern frontier, however, would have still be formed by the Black Sea,
the Greek peninsula and the Adriatic. In this more restricted area, Balto-Slavs and
Uralic people would have been side to side, the former in the West, the latter in the
East. Within the Balto-Slavic area, the Balts would have occupied the Northern part, by
definition more isolated and conservative. If we then project Proto-Greeks on the Greek
peninsula (given the certainty of the Greek presence in the Mycenean Greece of the 2nd
millennium b.C, the numerous stratigraphies showing continuity from Neolithic to
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Bronze, the stability of the Greek Neolithic shown by the formation of tells, and the
uninterrupted continuity, from Upper Palaeolithic to the Final Neolithic, shown by the
recently discovered Franchthi stratigraphy); and if we recognize also in the tells of the
Southern Slavic area a guarantee of uninterrupted continuity from Neolithic on (s.
further), we must then necessarily see only the Northern frontier of the Balto-Slavic
area as fluctuating, as it would be conditioned by the glacial cap and by the mobile
character of Mesolithic hunting and gathering populations.
In the postglacial scenario (that of human populations following the retreat of the
ice, already admitted for Uralic people), we could immagine the Balts settling on the
shores of the now formed Baltic Sea, with the Slavs behind them, and the Uralic people
ahead of them proceding north-eastwards.
The Slavic postglacial area would then form a kind of triangle, the Southern corner
of which would correspond to Macedonia, the western frontier of which would pass
along the Italid Dalmatia, and delimit the rest of ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary, ex-
Czechoslovakia, and Southern Poland, and the Eastern frontier of which would delimit
Bulgaria, Romania, Western Ukraine, Belorussia and parts of Middle Russia.
Northern neighbors of the Slavs would be Balts and Uralic people, South-Western
neighbors the Italids of Dalmatia, of the Eastern Alps and of a Po Valley much larger
than now, emerging from Northern Adriatic. North-Western neighbors would be Balts and Uralic people, South-Western
neighbors the Italids of Dalmatia, of the Eastern Alps and of a Po Valley much larger
than now, emerging from Northern Adriatic. North-Western neighbors would be
Germans, while on the Eastern side their neighbors would be Altaic and, much later,
Iranian elites (parts of the Scythians).Balkan Sprachbund
In contradiction with Renfrew’s main thesis, prehistorians of South-Eastern Europe
never miss to underline that in most cases it is possible to ascertain the continuity of
Neolithic cultures from Mesolithic (see further). Moreover, they remark that for a long
time the two economies could have coexisted in the same area, as Mesolithic hunters
and gatherers lived on the river and the lakes shores, on sand dunes or at the foot of
mountains, avoiding precisely the löss plains that were chosen by farmers (Tringham
1971, 35). The synchronism and the complementarity of the two economies enhances
thus the thesis of the linguistic unity of the area, and of its continuity from Mesolithic.
In the light of this consideraton we can then address the most conspicuous
problems of the Slavic ethnogenesis, represented by the enormous span of their area, by
the demographic density underlying it, and by the little differentiation of their
languages. And we have already seen that it is impossible, without falling into flagrant
contradictions, to attribute these aspects to a historical migration of the Slavs.
Within the PCT framework this problems, in all of its complexity, can easily be
solved in total harmony with the archaeological record, simply by recalling the main
features of Neolithic cultures of South-Eastern Europe. First of all, as it is known, the
process of the neolithization of Europe began precisely in the Balkanic peninsula, first
in the Aegean area and then inland, in the middle of the 7th millennium. From here, in
the course of about 2500 years, the new economy spread along the Danube, to reach
Eastern and Central Europe by the 5th millennium b.C. But the first, great Neolithic
cultural complex of the Balkans, with all its subsequent developments, is usually
subdivided in three main groups (see e.g. Lichardus and Lichardus 1985, 242, 253, 311
ff.), which can be identified, with greater or lesser ease, with as many linguistic groups:
34
(1) The Thessalian and Southern Macedonian culture of Proto-Sesklo, followed
by Sesklo and Dimini, identifiable with the Greek group;
(2) The ‘Painted Ware’ cultures of Anzabegovo-Vršnik in Northern Macedonia,
Starčevo in Serbia, Körös/Criş in Hungary and Romania, and Karanovo I in Bulgaria;
followed later by Vinča (Serbia, Hungary and Romania), Veselinovo (Bulgaria),
Dudeşti e Boian (Romania), identifiable with Southern Slavic;
(3) The Albanian ‘Painted Ware’ cultures of Vashtemi-Podgornie e Kolsh,
followed by those of Čakran and the more recent Maliq, to the last of which Albanian
prehistorians themselves attribute the origins of Illyrian.
The fact that these three cultural facies originally formed a unitary block, far
from representing an objection to the identification of three different language groups,
provides, rather, a further argument in its favour. Since this original block, in fact,
represents the earliest neolithized area of Europe, where the impact of the new economy
introduced by the Asiatic farmers must have been the greatest, the new Balkanic culture
would have first submerged the pre-existing ethnolinguistic frontiers; and in a second
phase, by the time the indigenous Mesolithic populations began to actively participate
in the adoption of the new economy, the old ethnolinguistic frontiers would emerge
again with the succcessive cultures. Which would of course reflect the original frontiers
between Greeks, Slavs and Illyrians. More over, as we shall see shortly, the original
homogeneity of this Neolithic Balkanic block can also explain the formation of the so
called Balkanic Sprachbund, characterized by a number of peculiar Geek, Albanian,
Southern Slavic and Rumanian isoglosses, until now without any satisfactory
explanation. These isoglosses can be much more rationally placed in this Neolithic
complex rather than in a modern context, and their coming into existence could be
connected with the first wave of foreign migrants from the Middle East.
Returning now to the strikingly low degree of differentiation of Slavic
languages, let us recall that one of the most conspicuous phenomenon of the Balkanic
Neolithic is the formation of the so called tells. As is known, tells are artificial hills,
typical of the Arab (whence the name) and Iranian (called then tepe) areas, produced by
the agglomeration of debris of prehistorical and proto-historical villages on the same
site. In the South-Eastern area, these formation are called, locally or as place names,
magula or tumba in Greece, mogila in Bulgaria, gňmila/mňgila in Serbia,
gamúle/mágule in Albania. But the word, with the meaning of ‘tumulus’, ‘tumb’, is
diffused also in the rest of the Slavic area slava (Russ. mogíla, Ukr. mohýła, Slovn.
gomíla, Czec. Slovk. mohyla, Pol. mogiła) and in Romania (Rum. măgură).
Unfortunately, its etymology is not certain. But given its areal distribution, Vasmer’s
proposal to connect it with Proto-Slavic *mogo, in the sense of ‘dominating site’, seems
quite plausible. Tell are, of corse, prehistoric sites of exceptional importance, not only
for the significance of theior stratigraphies, but also as signs of an uninterrupted
continuity, both cultural and ethnic (Lichardus-Lichardus 1985, 229). Continuity, of
course, that must have been also linguistic! While tells are very common in the Near
and Middle East, where Neolithic cultures have an extraordinary and well-known
duration and stability, in Europe they appear only in the Balkans, and only to the South
of the Danube (DP, s.v. tell), and thus only in the Greek, Albanian and Southern Slavic
area. In the last one, the tells are primarily Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian and
Bosnian, but that does not imply that in the contiguous areas within the same cultural
orbit the situation would be different. Here then lies the reason for the little
differentiation of Slavic languages (and mutatis mutandis for Greek): the cultural
35
stability and continuity from Mesolithic and Neolithic to the proto-history of the
populations of these areas.
At the same time, the enormous success of what we can now call the ‘Slavic
Neolithic’, which includes not only the tells cultures of the Balkanic area, but also the
extremely rich Neolithic cultures of the Russian, Ukrainian and Eastern Middle
European plains (for example Tripolye, see above and below), provides for the first
time in the history of research an adequate explanation for the demographic explosion
of the Slavic populations, implied by both the size of their area and the little
differentiation of their languages.
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Originally Posted by dralos
Heathenry
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