Some brief comments between the lines.
--- Michael Smith <
mytoyneighborhood@...>
wrote:
> What about Mallory's suggestion that proto-Slavic
> homeland can be
> identified with the Chernoles culture (750-200 B.C.)
*****GK: That is difficult to maintain. The "homeland"
was probably just to the north of the Chornolis c., in
the southern fringes of the forest area where the
earliest Slav hydronyms are concentrated. The Ch. c.
was "forest-steppe", and its northern boundaries
coincide with a number of remnant Thracian or Thrakoid
hydro- and toponyms.******
> NW of the Black
> Sea and that this coincides with Herodotus' Scythian
> Farmers, who
> would be Iron Age Slavs,
*****GK: The "Scythian Farmers" were apparently
primarily a Thrakoid population (with an Iranic ruling
class), though archaeology has demonstrated
(confirming Herodotus BTW, who knows of "Neuri" on the
uppermost southern Boh (Bog)r.) that in the
northernmost area of the "Aukhata" (Scythian
Farmers)there were many "Baltic" settlements. IMO it
is these (very) southern "Balts", with political and
cultural connections distinct from their northern
neighbours, who eventually evolved into a major
component of the early historical "Slavs" [a process
begun ca. 600 BC and completed by the early 2nd c.
AD]. As for the "Scythian Farmers" proper, most of
them migrated south of the Danube in the first half of
the 3rd c. BC, in the process of the disintegration of
classical Scythia. They occupied an area later known
as "little Scythia", and in the 3rd-2nd c. remained
politically independent under a series of kings, some
of whose coins have survived.*******
and that the Neuri
> mentioned by Herodotus
> are the Balts, as implied by the plague of snakes
> and werewolf
> legends he mentions among them?
*****GK: That is very likely. Perhaps BaltoSlavs is
more accurate. The Balts and Slavs were not clearly
distinguished in the writings of classical authors
until the 5th and 6th centuries. Ptolemy considered
the earliest likely "Slavs" to be a tribe of what we
would recognize as a Baltic complex, although by then
they were almost certainly distinct.******
Mallory further
> states that
> Herodotus locates the Neuri north of the Scythian
> Farmers/possibly
> Slavs, which would equate the Neuri/Balts with the
> Milograd culture
> that he says falls within the Old Baltic hydronymic
> system.
*****GK: Archaeologically, the earliest Slavs (those
mentioned by Ptolemy) would be identified with the
Late Zarubinian culture of the 2nd c. AD. The Milograd
c. was one of its components. The southern portion of
the Milograd c. area (south of the Prypjat'/Pripet r.)
has both Baltic and Old Slavic hydronyms, with the
latter slightly predominating.*****
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