Who are the Slavs? - Citations and Sources

[Sovius]

R1a1? I remember this paper. Voltron, that study was published back in 2007, I believe. You should probably take a look at where evidence has taken researchers over the last 5 years.

The 7th Millennium BC Slavic Migration Theory?

Hm? It does have a certain ring to it.

Here, you seem to be rather adept at copying and pasting:

r1a.org

The site has done an excellent job of providing overviews of every mutation that's been discovered downstream from R1a1 so far.

[Voltron]

Granted Im not one for genetics but here is an interesting article nonetheless.

Origin of Slavs in the Ukraine

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2007/03/origin-of-slavs-in-ukraine.html

UPDATE (March 17):

From the paper:

The most outstanding populations were those of Poland and northern Belarus, while populations of central Belarus, southern Belarus and Slovakia were genetically indistinguishable.

...

The most apparent genetic distance was found between the northern (Eastern and Western) and Southern Slavs, who at the end of the 9th century were separated by the invasion of Finno-Ugric Hungarians [...] The observed northern Slavic Y-STR genetic homogeneity extends from Slovakia and Ukraine to parts of Russia and Belarus, but also involves Southern-Slavic populations of Slovenia and western Croatia, and is the most probably due to a homogeneous genetic substrate inherited from the ancestral Slavic population. However, due to the Y-STR proximity of linguistically and geographically Southern-Slavic Slovenes and western Croats to the northern Slavic branch, the observed genetic differentiation cannot simply be explained by the separation of both Slavic-speaking groups by the non-Slavic Romanians, Hungarians, and Germanspeaking Austrians [...] Thus, the contribution of the Y chromosomes of peoples who settled in the region before the Slavic expansion to the genetic heritage of Southern Slavs is the most likely explanation for this phenomenon. On the other hand, our results indicate no significant genetic traces of pre-sixth-century inhabitants of present-day Slovenia in the Slovene Y chromosome genetic pool.

...

AMOVA revealed significant differences in Y-STR distribution between Slavic and Baltic populations (P < 0.005 for all pairwise comparisons), which is likely to result from the previously observed different Ychromosomal haplogroup distribution (Rosser et al. 2000). The Baltic populations are characterised by the high incidence of the Y-chromosomal haplogroup N3 (47% among Lithuanians, 32% among Latvians) (Rosser et al. 2000; Zerjal et al. 2001). Its distribution pattern in Slavic populations indicates that Proto-Slavs did not carry this lineage at a substantial frequency, since it is relatively rare among Slavs and at high frequency was observed only in some Russian subpopulations (Malyarchuk et al. 2004).

...

we estimated haplogroup N3 frequencies in the three Belarusian subpopulations. The results suggest that the uniqueness of the northern Belarusian population is most likely due to the high incidence of Y chromosomes from the haplogroup N3 (18.9%), which has half the frequency in central and southern Belarus (8.8 and 8.1%, respectively). Therefore, although the early ethnogenesis of the Belarusian nation has customarily been linked to the gradual Slavicisation of the homogeneous Baltic substrate on the territory of present-day Belarus (Sedov 1970), only northern Belarus seems to be a transient area for the Baltic and Slavic settlement.

...

Because Slavs unequivocally enter the records of history as late as the sixth century AD, when their expansion in Eastern Europe was already advanced, different theories concerning the Slavs’ geographic origin based on archaeological, anthropological and/or linguistic data have been formulated. Two such theories have gained the largest support among the scientists (Schenker 1995), one placing the cradle of Slavs in the watershed of the Vistula and Oder rivers (present-day Poland), and the other locating it in the watershed of the middle Dnieper (present-day Ukraine). Our results indicate that using the population-of-origin approach based on the AMOVA, as many as nine (P > 0.05) or ten (P > 0.01) populations can be traced back to the lands of present-day Ukraine, including Eastern-Slavic Russians and Belarusians, Western-Slavic Poles and Slovaks, and Southern-Slavic Slovenes and Croats.

...

Results of the interpopulation Y-STR haplotype analysis exclude a significant contribution of ancient tribes inhabiting present-day Poland to the gene pool of Eastern and Southern Slavs, and suggest that the Slavic expansion started from present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the hypothesis that places the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the basin of the middle Dnieper.

UPDATE 2

The paper confirms some points that were already known by previous work, namely the Y chromosomal homogeneity of Slavs. Some Slavic groups such as Czechs are missing from the analysis. The homogeneity is less visible in groups that have absorbed significant substrata, i.e., in some Balkan populations and in populations that have absorbed Finno-Ugrian elements characterized by haplogroup N3.

The interpretation of the homogeneity would benefit greatly by an estimation of time depth. There are not dates in the paper, so it is not clear (although possible) that the homogeneity is due to the medieval Slavic dispersal.

The use of Y-STRs is useful for estimating historical relationships, but a limited number of these is used for most populations except for the core group where 18 STRs were used. The use of binary haplogroup data - used in the paper only for the presence of haplogroup N3 - would help determine the elements present in the different populations. The chosen approach gives no insight about the genetic identity of the population of Proto-Slavs.

The paper does make a good case for Ukraine being the Proto-Slavic homeland, since Poland emerges clearly as a destination of a subset of Y chromosome diversity rather than as a unifying source of diversity observed in all major Slavic sub-groups. But, the date of the Out-of-Ukraine expansion, likely to be reflected in specific haplogroup R1a1 subclades is not established and must await further research.


Journal of Human Genetics (online early)

Y-STR variation among Slavs: evidence for the Slavic homeland in the middle Dnieper basin

Krzysztof Rębała, Alexei I. Mikulich, Iosif S. Tsybovsky, Daniela Siváková, Zuzana Džupinková, Aneta Szczerkowska-Dobosz and Zofia Szczerkowska

Abstract A set of 18 Y-chromosomal microsatellite loci was analysed in 568 males from Poland, Slovakia and three regions of Belarus. The results were compared to data available for 2,937 Y chromosome samples from 20 other Slavic populations. Lack of relationship between linguistic, geographic and historical relations between Slavic populations and Y-short tandem repeat (STR) haplotype distribution was observed. Two genetically distant groups of Slavic populations were revealed: one encompassing all Western-Slavic, Eastern-Slavic, and two Southern-Slavic populations, and one encompassing all remaining Southern Slavs. An analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) based on Y-chromosomal STRs showed that the variation observed between the two population groups was 4.3%, and was higher than the level of genetic variance among populations within the groups (1.2%). Homogeneity of northern Slavic paternal lineages in Europe was shown to stretch from the Alps to the upper Volga and involve ethnicities speaking completely different branches of Slavic languages. The central position of the population of Ukraine in the network of insignificant AMOVA comparisons, and the lack of traces of significant contribution of ancient tribes inhabiting present-day Poland to the gene pool of Eastern and Southern Slavs, support hypothesis placing the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the middle Dnieper basin.

Link ----> https://springerlink3.metapress.com/...ringerlink.com

[Sovius]

Onur,
Thank you for all these interesting examples of Imperialist Era pseudo-scholarship, quite impressive, really, I was wondering where all those textbooks went after Germany lost WW I.



Not sure what to make of all those decapitated human heads. Is this a popular hobby in Turkey?

[Onur]

Voltron you silly, there was no such a thing as Ukraine until recent times. Russia invaded Crimea and abolished Crimean Khaganate in 1780s. Until that time, there was people called as Ruthenians in there who were just a small minority among Tatars and who were also akin to today`s Ukrainians. But most of today`s Ukrainians has been forcibly settled there by Russian Tsars in 1870s after the great massacre and exodus of the millions of Crimean and Kazan Tatars. These newborn Ukrainians came from the neighboring northern territories of the Crimea but god knows where they were living exactly b4 and how they were looking in early medieval era.

I have no pictures of early medieval Poles, Czechs or Sorbs. You search for it and post here in the name of contributing here at least once.

[Voltron]

Nice Pictures, but can you find any Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Sorb pictures ?
Russians arent the best example to use.

Reminds me of a joke where a Pole is asked why he on earth he would want Ghengiz Khan to come to Poland since he causes death and destruction everywhere he went. He answered because they would have to arrive and return through Russia each time. Gives you an idea of the love loss they had for each other.

[Onur]

A world famous Russian anthropologist named Mikhail Gerasimov, the pioneer of the facial reconstruction work from an human skull, reconstructed several medieval Russians, by using their own skulls excavated from their graves.

Here are some works of him. Needless to say, wrinkles of the skin, hairstyle and facial hair are imagination of the artist but it should be similar of how they were when these people was alive;

Yaroslav the Wise, Prince of Kiev, 11th century;



Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky of 12th century;



Prince Ivan the Terrible of 16th century;




Khan Timur/Tamerlane of 14th century;



I should say that the medieval Russian rulers would easily pass as the relatives of today`s Mongolians. Timur looks like very similar of today`s Uzbeks, Kazaks with his partly mongol appearance but medieval Russian princes looks even more mongolic than Timur, especially Andrey B. and Ivan the terrible.


Other works of Mikhail Gerasimov;

A woman in Volga Bulgaria from late bronze age;



A man from today`s Russia in bronze age;



Men from western Siberia in late bronze age. These people should be the relatives of today`s Finns, Estonians;




A Scythian man from late antiquity;

[slovenec zrinski]

Why does southern Austria have bi-lingual road signs showing two different names for the same place?

Because Slovenians live there And those signs were realised last year after a 60 year old struggle... Often the german name is a translation of the slovenian one. And sometimes they have mistranslated the german one thus showing that the Slovenian name was there first

[Sovius]

If I may be permitted to offer up a few observations, prior to the Roman occupation of Southeastern Europe, Thracian place names, and, indeed, fragments of the Thracian language, itself, appeared in the written record through the eyes and ears of populations who were largely colonial in nature and hostile towards these populations, writers who recorded these phonetic combinations within the confines (pronunciation rules) of their own language. Early on, during the Roman occupation of Southeastern Europe, their history was recorded by Western Romans, who were writing about cultures that were largely foreign to them, chroniclers who were limited by their own linguistic conventions, as far as, the extent to which they could record an unfamiliar word or place name and still have it make sense to the people these writers were writing for. During the later periods of this occupation, Thracians, Illyrians and Macedonians were the Romans and recorded their own history and wrote these accounts in the Eastern Roman language.

What place names do Macedonians in the Republic of Macedonia use for place names in Aegean Macedonia? Hopefully, the authentic ones. Is it Warsaw or is it Varshava? Why does southern Austria have bi-lingual road signs showing two different names for the same place? Why would an Eastern Roman writer use what has been posited as a Slavic (Dacian) place name, if, in fact, a massive, culture changing migration never occurred? Communication has a component that is impulse driven and impulse follows familiarity.

[Voltron]

Again, explain to me how goat milking tent living nomads got into the architecture business. Besides those buildings like the one in India you are showing me are influenced from their contact with the Persians. It is not their own.

Russia is not the best Slavic example to use. If you would read a few pages before you would see that I gave the same reasons you did. We both are in agreement that Russians have Tatar component in them more than their western counterparts. As far as an Avar state in Poland, Im all ears.

[Onur]

Voltron, i am not your paid teacher. If you cant comprehend how these buildings done by the central Asian peoples, then read and learn yourself. Besides that, you are dumb enough to ask me whats got to do between Avars and Poles while posting a map showing Avar state reaching today`s Poland.

Avars subjected slavic speaking tribes [or slavs fled from Khazars in the Eurasia like Bulgars did soon after] and settled them to eastern Europe. They taught them warfare skills and used them as soldiers according to the Byzantine chronicles. They invaded today`s Greece reaching `till Crete and desolated the whole place, erasing the final remnants of hellenic Greece from the antiquity.


If we return to your claim of the so-called "slavic architecture" by Russians, then tell me what are these buildings from 16th century in northern India then;

Timurid/Mughal building style at the background and Sikh building called as golden temple, influenced by the Mughal/Timurid architecture again;


Did Russian slavic architecture somehow influenced India too, as early as 16th century then? Wow!

[Voltron]

I dont buy the "slaves" theory one bit. I also heard from the word "Slava" celebrated or glorious ones ? I dont know, it was probably used very looslely to classify a cluster of people in Eastern Europe that were not entirely known before. Well I found a map that shows them coming from this area.

[DraganOfStip]

Where does the word "Slav" come from anyway?Some say it comes from the slavic word SLOVO,meaning WORD in a great number of slavic languages (Slavs refer to them as "Sloveni").Meaning something like "people who speak same language" or "who understand each other".Others say that the name of Dniepr river in Ukraine was once Slavuta,an East Slavic name for it,and ergo meaning "people who live along the Slavuta river".I even came across that other nations named them after being slaves once (which I seriously doubt,since almost nothing is known about them prior to their 6th century expansion,just a speculation I believe).Any thoughts about this?

[Voltron]

The architecture style with onion shaped domes as you deemed as "slavic" is copied by Russians from Volga Bulgars, Tatars in Crimea and Turkic cultures, peoples of central Asia. There are buildings with union shaped domes from 10th century and onwards all over central Asia to India. I have to remind you that in 10th century, there was even no culture or a state named "Russia", let alone their architecture. In 14-15th century, there was several tombs, mosques with onion shaped domes from Timur/Tamarlane era too. Also when Timur`s grandson Babur created his state in northern India, he built these type of buildings in there too. Thats why one of the most beautiful building in the world, Taj Mahal mosque has onion shape dome too. Now what? You gonna claim that the people who built Taj Mahal mosque copied it`s style from Russians or Poles in 16th century?

The onion shaped is more predominant in Russia than Poland and that was the last picture I posted. I dont see how nomads that lived in tents be architectural designers but il give that the benfit of the doubt.
Slavs are said to originate from that general area as well (Eurasia, Caucus)

I also saw few mosques and tombs built during Seljuk era in 12-13th century in central and eastern Anatolia, having same architecture. But this central Asian style later abandoned by the Ottomans, they influenced from eastern Roman architecture style instead.

Influenced, key word there. Just because the onion shaped domes may have influence some countries does not mean its not distinct in their own way. Just like Ottoman architecture has its own flavor compared to Byzantine.

Your claim of Poles being the pures slavs is stupid too. Polish people settled there during the reign of the Avar state in 6th century but their ethnic composition changed a lot laters. Poland is one of the most invaded, colonized place on earth. Russians, Germans, Hungarians colonized and changed their ethnic composition of Poland several times. On top of that, Germans committed genocide in there, altering the ethnic composition again by killing millions of Polish speaking Jews and letting other catholic Poles to die from war and hunger. As a result of all these events, i can say that Poles are just a mix of Russians, Germans, Tatars, Hungarians and Poles speaking polish but having influenced from all these cultures.

Here we go again, pure slavs in the most flexible way. I said they best hold that description as an ethnos. I cant see how else someone would define them. You make a lot of allegations from Avars, Hungarians, Germans ect. You also said that Poles settled in Avar land ? You have evidence for this ? Even if this is so, didnt the Slavs travel with the Avars ? They did when they made incursions into the Balkans. Not everything in this world is related to Turks or Tatars Onur. Although you may like to believe so.

Thanks for your vote of confidence though lol.

[Onur]

Voltron, i wasn't hanging out around here for about 4 months but i see that you are not even changed a bit, still blabbering stupid stuff.

The architecture style with onion shaped domes as you deemed as "slavic" is copied by Russians from Volga Bulgars, Tatars in Crimea and Turkic cultures, peoples of central Asia. There are buildings with union shaped domes from 10th century and onwards all over central Asia to India. I have to remind you that in 10th century, there was even no culture or a state named "Russia", let alone their architecture. In 14-15th century, there was several tombs, mosques with onion shaped domes from Timur/Tamarlane era too. Also when Timur`s grandson Babur created his state in northern India, he built these type of buildings in there too. Thats why one of the most beautiful building in the world, Taj Mahal mosque has onion shape dome too. Now what? You gonna claim that the people who built Taj Mahal mosque copied it`s style from Russians or Poles in 16th century?

I also saw few mosques and tombs built during Seljuk era in 12-13th century in central and eastern Anatolia, having same architecture. But this central Asian style later abandoned by the Ottomans, they influenced from eastern Roman architecture style instead.


Your claim of Poles being the pures slavs is stupid too. Polish people settled there during the reign of the Avar state in 6th century but their ethnic composition changed a lot laters. Poland is one of the most invaded, colonized place on earth. Russians, Germans, Hungarians colonized and changed their ethnic composition of Poland several times. On top of that, Germans committed genocide in there, altering the ethnic composition again by killing millions of Polish speaking Jews and letting other catholic Poles to die from war and hunger. As a result of all these events, i can say that Poles are just a mix of Russians, Germans, Tatars, Hungarians and Poles speaking polish but having influenced from all these cultures.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Who would have thought you would turn into a propagandist.

Although you've become very good at it, you need to stop behaving like an idiot. There has been so much information produced on this thread that it has obviously overwhelmed a simpleton like yourself. Here is a point you have avoided countless times:

There were thousands of new toponyms, hydronyms, etc in the Balkans after the 6th century invasions.

In your expert opinion, how did the above come about?