Who are the Slavs? - Citations and Sources

[Carlin]

[Carlin]

Approximate ethno-linguistic map of European Eastern Kievan Rus in the 9th century: The five Volga Finnic groups of the Merya, Mari, Muromians, Meshchera and Mordvins are shown as surrounded by the Slavs to the west, the (Finnic) Veps to the northwest, the Permians to the northeast the (Turkic) Bulghars and Khazars to the southeast and south.

URLs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muromian-map.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Finns

The Mordvins (also Mordva, Mordvinians) remain one of the larger indigenous peoples of Russia. They consist of two major subgroups, the Erzya and Moksha, besides the smaller subgroups of the Qaratay, Teryukhan and Tengushev (or Shoksha) Mordvins who have become fully Russified or Turkified during the 19th to 20th centuries.

URL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

Indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia are speakers of the Uralic languages, such as the Vepsians, Mordvins, Maris and Permians. Historically, the Russification of these peoples begins already with the original eastward expansion of the East Slavs. Written records of the oldest period are scarce, but toponymic evidence indicates that this expansion was accomplished at the expense of various Volga-Finnic peoples, who were gradually assimilated by Russians; beginning with the Merya and the Muroma in the early 2nd millennium CE.

The Russification of the Komi began in the 13th to 14th centuries but did not penetrate into the Komi heartlands until the 18th century. Komi-Russian bilingualism has become the norm over the 19th and has led to increasing Russian influence in the Komi language.

[Carlin]

NEURI, an ancient tribe placed by Herodotus (iv. 105) to the north-east of Scythia. He says of it that it is not Scythian, but has Scythian customs. Every member of it, being a wizard, becomes a wolf once a year. The position assigned to their district appears to be about the head waters of the Dniester and Bug (Bugh) and the central course of the Dnieper just the region which, on general grounds, place-names, recorded migrations and modern distribution, appears to be the original location of the Slavs (q.v.). The wolf story again recalls the tales of werewolves so common among Slavonic peoples, and there is much probability in Schafarik's conjecture that the Neuri are nothing but the ancestors of the Slavs.

URL:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_...itannica/Neuri




URL:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=ijJ...0Slavs&f=false

[Carlin]

Ancient Bone Sheds Light on Slav Alphabet History

URL:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cou...habet-history/

PRAGUE (AFP) — An inscribed cow bone dating back to the seventh century proves that Germanic runes were the oldest script ever used by the ancient Slavs, Czech scientists said Thursday.

Up to now, it was believed that the oldest Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic, invented by Byzantine monk St Cyril in the ninth century.

Cyril and his brother St Methodius came to former Great Moravia, covering today’s Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia and parts of Austria, Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the Balkans, on a mission in 863.

But the broken bovine rib found in the southern Czech Republic in 2017 and examined by an international team of Czech, Austrian, Swiss and Australian scientists proved the assumption about the alphabet wrong.

“The team discovered this was the oldest inscription found with the Slavs,” head researcher Jiri Machacek from Masaryk University in the city of Brno said in a statement.

The team used genetic and radio-carbon testing to examine the bone.

“These sensitive analyses have shown the bone comes from domesticated cattle that lived around the year 600 AD,” said team member Zuzana Hofmanova, an analyst at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

Robert Nedoma from the University of Vienna identified the inscription as so-called Elder Futhark runes, used by the German-speaking inhabitants of central Europe in the second to seventh centuries.

The Elder Futhark alphabet comprised 24 signs, and the last seven were inscribed on the newly found rib, according to the researchers.

“It is probable that the bone originally comprised the whole runic alphabet. Hence, it is not a specific message but rather a teaching tool,” the scientists said.

[Soldier of Macedon]

According to the article, they found a bone fragment with Germanic runes in the same pit as a type of pottery that has supposedly been identified with the 'early Slavs'. The location of the pit is in today's Czech Republic but in the 6th century it was an area where the settlements of Germanic-speaking and Slavic-speaking peoples were within close proximity to each other. The bone fragment itself is inscribed with the last 7 signs of a runic alphabet, suggesting that the whole bone may have consisted of a complete alphabet and therefore used as a teaching tool. That's about it.

An inscribed cow bone dating back to the seventh century proves that Germanic runes were the oldest script ever used by the ancient Slavs, Czech scientists said Thursday.

I wonder if that is what the actual Czech scientists said or if this AFP journalist is applying his own creative interpretation. The person who inscribed the runes on that bone fragment may have been some Germanic-speaking tribesman or Slavic-speaking individual who was learning to use runes for the purpose of writing in a Germanic language. Is it possible that some of the ancestors of the Czechs may have used runes to write in a Slavic language? Sure, but there is no evidence of it presented in this finding (or anywhere else, for that matter). Which makes the below statement all the more ridiculous.

Up to now, it was believed that the oldest Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic.......the broken bovine rib found in the southern Czech Republic in 2017 and examined by an international team of Czech, Austrian, Swiss and Australian scientists proved the assumption about the alphabet wrong.

Even if another set of letters or signs was used to write in a Slavic language, it can hardly be considered a Slavic alphabet. And the comparison between the runes cited in this finding and Glagolitic is just comical.