Re: [tied] Fw: Sorok i devianosto

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>

We don't actually have to

> posit that "sorok" emerged as a result of the direct
> contacts between Constantinople and Kyiv. The
> "Varangian Route" existed long before the arrival of
> the "Varangians" after which it was later named. We
> have Arab documents (and archaeological confirmation)
> of strong trade relations between Crimean Chersones
> and the north (serviced along the Dnipro and its
> links). And certainly thriving at the time of the
> Khazar suzerainty over Far Eastern Europe: ca.660-860.
> Slavic merchants were active here before the Norse.
> >
> > Sergei
> >

An article I saw recently stated that the importance of long-distance
trade on the Russian rivers had been overexposed; that that trafic in
its origin was local in nature and that transport by sledge had been
neglected by research. Sounds reasonable given the trouble they had
recently recreating a supposed all-the-way trip dragging ships from
one river system to the next.

Torsten