Christian Churches of God
No. 46G
Sons
of Japheth: Part VII
Meshech
(Edition 1.0
20071117-20150919)
Meshech, sixth son of Japheth, is the father of the Slavic peoples. Initially an insignificant, repeatedly subjugated Indo-European group living north of the Carpathian Mountains and the middle Dnieper river area, the Slavic farmers through their persistence managed to survive and ultimately succeeded in occupying a vast territory in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula. We trace their movements here.
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Meshech
Meshech was the 6th son of Japheth (Gen. 10:2; 1Chr. 1:5), living in what is now the area of Moscow, and the forefather of the Moscovites of later Russia.
Meshech: (from Easton’s Bible
Dictionary)
Drawing out, the sixth son of Japheth
(Genesis 10:2), the founder of a tribe (1 Chronicles 1:5; Ezek. 27:13; 38:2,
3). They were in all probability the Moschi, a people inhabiting the Moschian
Mountains, between the Black and the Caspian Seas. In Psalm 120:5 the name
occurs as simply a synonym for foreigners or barbarians. "During the
ascendency of the Babylonians and Persians in Western Asia, the Moschi were
subdued; but it seems probable that a large number of them crossed the Caucasus
range and spread over the northern steppes, mingling with the Scythians. There
they became known as Muscovs, and gave that name to the Russian nation and its
ancient capital by which they are still generally known throughout the East"
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon says: “the
descendants of Mesech often are mentioned in connection with Tubal, Magog, and
other northern nations including the Moschi, a people on the borders of Colchis
and Armeni.
Meshech/Mosoch: Moscow
Wikipedia
articles state
the following:
Some
Bible scholars consider Meshech the ancestor of the Russian people with the
view that such geographic names in Russia as Moscow, the Meschera tribe and the
Meshchera Lowlands could be related to Meschech. Also, the people of Georgia
have traditions of descent from Meshech, among others.
Josephus has this to say about Meshech and Moscow:
Mesech: Mosocheni were founded by Mosovh; now they are Cappadocians. There is also a mark of their ancient denomination still to be shown; for there is even now among them a city called Mazaca, which may inform those that are able to understand, that so was the entire nation once called (Josephus: A of J, k 1. Ch 6.1).
The oldest settlements, dated as 3,000 BCE, in
the territory were discovered within the area of the present-day city of
Moscow. Slavic tribes ("vjatichi") occupied areas near Moscow in the
second half of the first millennia of our era and these were regarded as a core
of the future population of Moscow.
From the Wikepedia
article “Merya”:
The first
reference to Moscow dates from 1147 when it was an obscure town in a small
province inhabited mostly by Merya, speakers of a now extinct Finnic language.
The Meri people (also Meryas or Merä) were
an ancient Finno Ugrian tribe who lived in the region of modern Russian cities
of Moscow, Rostov, Kostroma, Jaroslavl and Vladimir. Their language was related
to the languages spoken by their neighbours, such as the Mari, the Mordvins,
the Meshchera and the Veps. Numerous archaeological finds in those areas show
they were an old and important culture.
Their
role has been neglected in Russian history, but after 1998, when a closed
archive was located and opened to [the] public, a lot of new (old) Russian
information has come to light and provides fascinating facts, even written [in
the] Meri language including transliteration of Biblial Old Testament to Meri
language in [ca] 1000 [Tenth]-century.
They
were assimilated by the Slavs. However, the Merya culture was also assimilated
in those regions that were initially inhabited by the Merya. Sacred woods and
stones, worshipped by the Merya, were part of local traditional feasts for much
longer than the similar Slavic sacred places in the west regions of modern
Russia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merya
Wikipedia article ‘Mushki’ says:
The Mushki (Muški)
were an Iron Age people of Anatolia, known from Assyrian sources. They do not
appear in Hittite records. Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi
(Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the Georgian tribe
of the Meskhi.
Two different groups are called Muški in the Assyrian sources
(Diakonoff 1984:115), one from the 12th to 9th centuries, located near the
confluence of the Arsanias and the Euphrates ("Eastern Mushki"), and
the other in the 8th to 7th centuries, located in Cilicia ("Western
Mushki"). Assyrian sources identify the Western Mushki with the Phrygians,
while Greek sources clearly distinguish between Phrygians and Moschoi.
Identification of the Eastern with the Western Mushki is uncertain, but
it is of course possible to assume a migration of at least part of the Eastern
Mushki to Cilicia in the course of the 10th to 8th centuries, and this
possibility has been repeatedly suggested, variously identifying the Mushki as
speakers of a Georgian, Armenian or Anatolian idiom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushki
Moschoi
The Wikipedia
article has this to say about Moschoi:
Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550 - 476
BCE) speaks of the Moschi as "Colchians" (perhaps, Georgian
speaking), situated next to the Matieni (Hurrians).
According to Herodotus [Histories: 7.78], the equipment of the Moschoi was similar to that of the
Tibareni, Macrones, Mossynoeci and Mardae, with wooden caps upon their heads,
and shields and small spears, on which long points were set. All these tribes
formed the 19th satrapy of the Achaemenid empire, extending along the southeast
of the Euxine, or the Black Sea, and bounded on the south by the lofty chain of
the Armenian mountains.
Strabo [xi.2. 14,16] locates the Moschoi in two places. The first
location is somewhere in modern Abkhazia (Georgia) on the eastern shore of the
Black Sea, in agreement with Stephan of Byzantium quoting Hellanicus. The
second location Moschice (Moschikê) was divided between the
Colchians, Armenians, and Iberians (cf. Mela, III. 5.4; Pliny VI.4.). These
latter Moschoi were obviously the Georgian Meskhi or Mesx’i (where Greek
χ, chi, is Georgian ხ, x). Procopius calls them Meschoi and says
that they were subject to the Iberians (i.e., Georgians), and had embraced
Christianity, the religion of their masters. According to Professor James R.
Russell of Harvard University, the Georgian designation for Armenians Somekhi,
preserves the old name of the Mushki.
Pliny [6.10] in the 1st century AD mentions the Moscheni in
southern Armenia. In Byzantine historiography, Moschoi was a name equivalent to
or considered as the ancestors of "Cappadocians" (Eusebius) with
their capital at Mazaca (later Caesarea Mazaca, modern Kayseri). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushki#Moschoi
Slavic
peoples
…Their
thirteen separate languages, grouped into western, southern and eastern blocs,
emerged from what appears to have been a single language until the ninth
century AD. The languages within the respective blocs show close affinities and
transitional dialects connecting them can be observed; but there are also
countless differences, just as there are between those of one bloc and another…
The Slavs are not a blood group; there is no Slavic race, as there is no
Germanic or Romance race.
…the
diversities of the modern Slavic nations are directly attributable to the varied
cultural encounters the Slavs met with during their expansion period. Each
Slavic group underwent social and economic changes as a result of exposure to
differing ethnetic environments. By the tenth century, the western and southern
Slavic dialects had separated into entities which resemble contemporary
linguistic divisions.
…The
Slavic story begins earlier than the tenth-century formation of the Slavic
states, earlier than the historic records of the Slavic introduction to
Christianity and, in fact, earlier than the accounts of the ‘Sclavini’ written
by the sixth-century historians, Procopius and Jordanes. The Slavs,
constituting a branch of the Indo-European peoples, can be assumed to have
needed as long a period of time for development of their language and culture
as did the Greeks, Balts, Germanic peoples, Illyrians, Tracians and other
Indo-European groups.
Origins
…Most
widely accepted as the geographical location of the Slavic homeland is either
1) Central Europe which includes the Oder-Vistula area of Germany and Poland,
or 2) the western Ukraine or the whole Ukraine area north of the Black Sea.
Recent
research has made it clear that ‘proto’-Indo-Europeans embarked on an enormous
expansion into Europe and the Near East from the steppes of Eurasia…The first
movement from South Russia to the Ukraine and the Lower Danube basin occurred
some time before 4000 BC and the repeated migrations and devastation of the
Aegean, Mediterranean and Anatolian lands took place in the period 2300 BC.
The
‘Proto’-Indo-Europeans were semi-nomadic pastoralists having a patrilinear and
patriarchal social system. They were horse breeders and possibly used horses as
mounts and possessed vehicles as early as the third millennium BC. This
explains their mobility. It took them less than a millennium to conquer and/or
assimilate a number of Balkan and Central European food-producing cultures as
well as convert some North European hunters and fishers to their way of life. …
(Marija Gimbutas, The Slavs, Thames
and Hudson Ltd., London, 1971, pp. 14-18.)
Origin of the
term Slav
The origin of the word Slav is uncertain, and the earliest references of this name are from the 6th century. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic dating from the 9th century describe the Slavs around Thessalonica as slověne..
Some scholars link the name either with the word sláva "glory", "fame" or slovo "word, talk" (both related to the word slusati "to hear" from the IE root *kleu-). Thus slověne would mean "people who speak (the same language)", i.e. people who understand each other.
Earliest
accounts
Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy mention a tribe of the Venedes around the
river Vistula. The Slavs under name of Venets, the Antes and the Sklavens
make their first appearance in Byzantine records in the early 6th century.
Byzantine historiographers under Justinian I (527-565), describe tribes
emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the
Black Sea, invading the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire.
Jordanes mentions that the Venets sub-divided into three groups: the
Venets, the Ants and the Sklavens (Sclovenes, Sklavinoi), collectively called
Spores.
The westward
movement of Germans and Celts in the 5th and 6th centuries AD started the great
migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes
fleeing the Huns and their allies: westward into the country between the Oder
and the Elbe-Saale line; southward into Bohemia, Moravia, much of present day
Austria, the Pannonian plain and the Balkans; and northward along the upper
Dnieper river. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_tribes
Genetic origins
Slavs stem from a wide variety of genetic backgrounds and each group has its own unique history, religion and culture. Today the Slavs are divided into three major subgroups: West Slavic: Czechs, Poles and Slovaks; East Slavic: Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians; and South Slavic Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenians.
From the Wikipedia article ‘History of Belarus’:
Between
the 6th and 8th centuries, Slavs settled on the territory within present-day
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, assimilating local Baltic, Ugro-Finnic and steppe
nomads already living there. These early ethnic integrations contributed to the
gradual differentiation of the three East Slavic nations.
The modern Belarusian identity was probably formed on the basis of the three Slavic tribes – Kryvians, Drehovians, Radzimians – as well as several Baltic tribes.
After an initial period of independent feudal consolidation, Belarusian lands were included into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus and Samogitia within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and eventually the Soviet Union. Belarus became their own country in 1991 after declaring itself free from the Soviet Union.
Belarus was named Belorussia in the days of Imperial Russia, and the Russian tsar was usually styled Czar of All the Russias—Great, Little, and White.
The name Belarus derives from the
term White Russia, which first appeared in German and Latin medieval
literature. During the 17th century, Russian tsars used White Rus',
asserting that they were trying to recapture their heritage from the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Belarus
is not to be confused with the political group of White Russians that opposed
the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The term "White
Russians" is misleading as it incorrectly suggests being a subgroup of
Russians, whereas Belarusians trace their name back to the people of Rus and
not to Russians, who are also descendants of the people of Rus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Belarus
The most popular origin for the name “White Russians” is the fair
complexion of the people. However, during the 14th century the name
“White Russia” was given to the Western lands of Russia as an expression of
their freedom from foreign domination. In those days the word “white” implied
“free” and “unconquered”. Sadly, the history of these people since that time
tells a different story. They are a people who have suffered greatly at the
hands of foreign occupants. … The Belorussians who share a common heritage with
the Russians and Ukrainians began to emerge as a separate nationality with a
distinct language in the 14th century. …http://www.janzteam.com/OSTEUROPE/en/wfl2.htm
: Article ‘White Russians’.
Belarusians speak an Eastern Slavic language, but some people also speak Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. The written language uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
Because
the people of Belarus were greatly influenced by the Soviet rule, over 90% of
the population speak only Russian, while the native Belarusian language remains
confined to the rural areas alone. The language is closely related to Russian
and Ukrainian.
Belorussians are either Eastern Orthodox, Uniate or Catholic in faith.
Very little is known about the Russians and East Slavs in general prior to approximately 859 AD, the date from which the account in the Primary Chronicle (a history of the Ancient Rus from around 850 to 1110 originally compiled in Kiev about 1113) starts.
Ethnic Russians are said to have originated from the earlier Rus people and gradually evolved into a different ethnicity from the western Rus peoples, who became the modern-day Belarusians and Ukrainians. Most prominent Slavic tribes in the area of what is now European Russia included Vyatichs, Krivichs, Radimichs, Severians and Ilmen Slavs. By the 11th century, East Slavs assimilated the Finno-Ugric tribes Merya and Muroma and the Baltic tribe Eastern Galindae.
Ethnic Russians known as Great Russians began to be recognized as a distinct ethnic group in the 15th century. At that time, during the consolidation of the Muscovy Tsardom as a regional power, they were referred to as Muscovite Russians. Between the 12th and 16th centuries, Russians known as Pomors migrated to Northern Russia and settled the White Sea coasts. As a result of these migrations and Russian conquests, following the liberation from the Mongol Golden Horde domination during the 15th and 16th centuries, Russians settled the Volga, Urals and Northern Caucasus regions. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, Russian migrants settled eastwards in the vast, sparsely inhabited areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East. Russian Cossacks played a major role in these territorial expansions and migrations.
Language
Modern Russian gradually evolved from the Old East Slavic and Church Slavonic between the 15th and 18th century.
Religion
According to estimates, less than half of the Russian population are practicing worshipers of any religion. Orthodox Christianity is a dominant faith among the Russian believers, most of whom belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, which played a vital role in the development of the Russian national identity.
Most prominent of other world religions are Baptists, Pentecostals, Evangelicals and Seventh-Day Adventists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians
Ukrainians
Most of the following information was retrieved from the Wikipedia article ‘Ukrainians’:
Numerous nomadic tribes inhabited territories now known as Ukraine in antiquity. These included: Iranic-speaking Scythians and Sarmatians; Greeks from the Black Sea colonies; Germanic-speaking Goths and Varangians; as well as Turkic-speaking Khazars, Pechenegs and Cumans. However, Ukrainian origins are predominantly Slavic. Some claim a Khazar origin and they controlled a large area of the steppes.
Gothic historian Jordanes and 6th century Byzantine authors named two
groups that lived on the south of Europe: sclavins (western Slavs) and Anti.
The Anti are normally identified with proto-Ukrainians. The name anti is
of Iranic origin and means people living on the borderland. The state of
Anti existed from the end of 4th to early 7th centuries. In the 4th century the
Anti fought against the Goths. In 375, the Gothic king Vinitar,
facing the Antis, at first experienced defeat but later captured the king of
Anti, Bozh, whom he executed together with his
sons and 70 aristocrats. The Goths did not manage to subdue the Anti, since in
the same year the Gothic union fell from the attack of the Huns. From the 6th
century the Anti fought Byzantium and in the 6-7th centuries colonised the
Balkan Peninsula. From the end of 6th century they fought against the Avars.
Among the native Ukrainian population of the Carpathians, there are
several distinct groups, namely the Hutsuls, Lemkos and Boyko, each with a peculiar
area of settlement, dialect, dress, anthropological type and folk traditions.
There are a number of theories as to the origins of each of these groups, some
even connecting Boyky with the Celtic tribe of Boii and Hutsuls with
Uz people of Turkic stock.
History
Up to the fifteenth century, Ukrainians were part of the Old East Slavic stock which also gave rise to the Belarusians and Russians. However, long history of separation and foreign influences have reshaped their ethnolinguistic identity splitting them from the rest of the East Slavs.
Slavic tribes had inhabited modern-day lands of Ukraine since the ancient times and by the 5th century CE became dominant there and founded the city of Kiev—later capital of a powerful state known as Kievan Rus'.
During the 800s CE, a Slavic civilisation called Rus appeared in Kiev and elsewhere – from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
The 13th century Mongol (later Tartar) invasion devastated the Kievan Rus'. Ukraine/Ruthenia became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and still later of the Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, Poland and the Soviet Union, finally gaining its independence on August 24, 1991.
The history of independent statehood in Ukraine started with the Cossacks who occupied the territory between the Poles and the Tartars. During the 1400s many peasants joined bands with the Cossacks and the region became known as the Ukraine, which means borderland.
Most of the Ukraine remained under Polish rule until the 1600s. The Cossacks opposed Polish efforts to make them leave the Eastern Orthodox Church and join the Roman Catholic Church, and in time this led the Cossacks to form an alliance with the Russian czar.
Russia then gained control over nearly all of the Ukraine, and understandably many Ukrainians objected to the harsh Russian rule. In time, the Bolshevik Revolution resulted in Russia becoming Communist and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were sent to Siberia for resisting the government takeovers.
In the 1930s, crop failures and government seizures of grain resulted in millions of deaths from starvation.
Millions of Ukrainians starved to death in a famine, known as
the Holodomor.
Some historians claim Soviet authorities were responsible for nearly 10 million
deaths of innocent men, women, and children killed by the deliberate famine in
1932-1933. Ukraine, along with 25 other countries, has declared the Holodomor
to be an act of genocide.
The Ukrainian language is an East Slavic language and Ukrainian people belong to the same subdivision of Slavs as Rusyn (all Ukrainians were referred as Rusyns or Ruthenians before, from the Kievan Rus' state of proto-Ukraine).
Written Ukrainian uses a Cyrillic alphabet. The language shares some vocabulary with the languages of Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Slovak.
Religion
Ukrainians are predominantly of the Orthodox Christian faith. Some Ukrainians belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. There are various Protestant churches and also ethnic minorities practise Judaism and Islam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians
Czechs
Czechs are descended from the ancient Western Slavic tribes and are related to both the Celts and the Goths. Since the 6th century the Slavic tribes inhabited the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, the three political subdivisions of the Czech Republic. Each of the divisions has a slightly varying culture, and although each part speaks the Czech language there are certain local dialects.
The most successful and influential of all Czech kings was Charles IV (Karel IV.), who also became the Holy Roman Emperor.
The first genuine state structure on the territory
of the Czech Republic was the Great Moravian Empire. This was located on the
territory of Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, Slovakia and the Danube Basin. In the
west, it bordered on the powerful East Frankish Kingdom, from where
Christianity spread to pagan Moravia.
After the glorious period of the Great Moravian
Empire, the center of the state moved westward to Bohemia, where power was
concentrated in the hands of the Přemyslids, who held onto it for more
than 400 years until it passed to the hands of the Luxemburgs in 1306 .
After the death of the last king of the
Přemyslid Dynasty, several kings supplanted each other as the head of
state, but none could consolidate their position. Some of the nobility and the
abbots, who were dissatisfied with the reign of the king concocted a coup. They
deposed the king with the agreement of Emperor Henry VII of Luxemburg.
The Czech lands were affected by
an economic depression under the reign of Wenceslas IV, the son of Charles IV.
Highwaymen and plague epidemics racked the country, while private wars raged.
The Church, which was supposed to supervise the observance of God’s
commandments, focused on attaining positions of power and accumulating
property. Clergymen had long been performing jobs in the royal administration
and instead of money they received a church office as settlement. Criticism of
the Church grew stronger due to its deviation from its original principles, not
just in Bohemia, but all over Europe. http://www.czech.cz/en/czech-republic/history/all-about-czech-history/
Mythology
According
to a popular myth, the Czechs come from a certain forefather Čech, who
brought the tribe into its land.
According to an old legend, Lech, Čech and Rus were
brothers who founded the three Slavic nations:
Poland (poetically also known as Lechia),
Bohemia (Čechy – now the major part of the Czech Republic),
and
Ruthenia (Rus', whose successor states are now Russia, Belarus
and Ukraine).
In one variation of the legend, the three brothers went hunting
together but each of them followed a different prey and eventually they all
traveled in different directions. Rus went to the east, Čech headed to the
west to settle on the Říp Mountain rising up from the Bohemian hilly
countryside, while Lech traveled to the north until he came across a
magnificent white eagle guarding her nest. Startled but impressed by this
spectacle, he decided to settle there. He named his settlement (gród) Gniezno
(Polish adjective from gniazdo, or "nest") and adopted the
White Eagle as his coat-of-arms which remains a symbol of Poland to this day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forefather_%C4%8Cech
Language
The Czech language developed from the Proto-Slavic language in the 10th century and is closely related to the Slovak language and, to a lesser degree, to Polish or to Sorbian in East Germany. Czech and Slovak speakers usually understand each other’s language in its written and spoken form.
Religion
The Czech Republic has one of the most non-theistic populations in all of Europe. According to the 2001 census, 59% of the country is agnostic, atheist, non-believer or non-organised believer, 26.8% Roman Catholic and 2.5% Protestant.
According to a 2005 poll, 19% of Czech citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", whereas 50% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 30% that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic
Slovaks
The people of Slovakia are descended from the Slavic who settled around the Danube river basin around 500 CE. The first known Slavic state on the territory of present-day Slovakia was the Empire of Samo. The first known state of the Proto-Slovaks was the Principality of Nitra founded sometime in the 8th century.
The original territory inhabited by the proto-Slovaks included present-day Slovakia, parts of present-day south-eastern Moravia and approximately the entire northern half of present-day Hungary.
Great Moravia
Great Moravia (833 - ?907) was the ancestral state of the present-day Moravians and Slovaks in the 9th and early 10th centuries CE. Among the important developments that took place at this time included the mission of Cyril and Methodius and the development of the Glagolitic alphabet – an early form of the Cyrillic alphabet – and the use of Old Church Slavonic as the official and literary language.
Slovakia came under Hungarian rule gradually from 907 to the early 14th century and remained a part of the Kingdom of Hungary until the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Politically, Slovakia formed (again) the separate entity called Nitra Frontier Duchy, this time within the Kingdom of Hungary, but this was abolished in 1107 and the territory inhabited by the Slovaks was gradually reduced.
When Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1541, Slovakia became the core of the "reduced" kingdom, officially called Royal Hungary. Many Magyars (Hungarians) fleeing from Hungary settled in large parts of present-day southern Slovakia, thereby creating the considerable Magyar minority in southern Slovakia today. Some Croats settled for similar reasons, and Germans, Jews and Gypsies also formed significant populations within the territory.
After the Ottoman Empire was forced to retreat from present-day Hungary around 1700, hundreds of thousands of Slovaks were gradually settled in depopulated parts of the restored Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Croatia), and that is how present-day Slovak enclaves in these countries arose.
Slovakia was the most advanced part of the Kingdom of Hungary for centuries, but in the 19th century, when Buda/Pest became the new capital of the kingdom, many Slovaks were relegated to the peasant class. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Slovaks emigrated to North America.
People
of Slovakia spent most part of the 20th century within the framework of
Czechoslovakia, a new state formed after World War I. Significant reforms and
post-World War II industrialization took place during this time. The Slovak
language was strongly influenced by the Czech language during this period.
The Slovaks and Slovenes are the only current Slavic nations that have preserved the old name of the Slavs (singular: slověn) in their name.
According to Nestor and modern Slavic linguists, the above mentioned word slověn
probably was the original name of all Slavs, but most Slavs took other names in
the Early Middle Ages. Although the Slovaks themselves seem to have had a
slightly different word for "Slavs" (Slovan), they were called
by Latin texts "Slavs" approximately up to the High Middle Ages. Thus,
it is sometimes difficult to distinguish when Slavs in general and when Slovaks
are meant.
This is how Nestor
in his Primary Chronicle (historically/correctly)
describes the Slovaks: Slavs that were settled along the Danube, which have
been occupied by the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Lachs, and Poles that are now
known as the Rus. Nestor calls these Slavs "Slavs of Hungary" in
another place of the text, and mentions them in the first place in a list of
Slavic nations (besides Moravians, Bohemians, Poles, Russians, etc.), because
he considers the Carpathian Basin (including what is today Slovakia) the
original Slavic territory.
The Slovak language, sometimes referred to as "Slovakian", is an Indo-European language belonging to the West Slavic languages (together with Czech, Polish, Kashubian and Sorbian). Slovak is mutually intelligible with Czech. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovaks
The majority of Slovak citizens (69%) practice Roman Catholicism; the second-largest group is Protestants (9%). About 3,000 Jews remain of the estimated pre-WWII population of 120,000. The official state language is Slovak, and Hungarian is widely spoken in the southern region. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3430.htm
Slav tribes probably lived in what is now Poland as early as 2000 BCE. During the 800s CE several of the tribes united under the Polane, one of the largest groups in the area.
The exact ethnicity and linguistic affiliation of the groups that populated the area of what is now Poland in late Antiquity has been hotly debated. However, the most famous archaeological find from Poland's prehistory is dated from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, around 700 BCE.
The origin of the name of the nation Poland comes from a western Slavic ethnic group of Polans. Poles belong to the Lechitic subgroup of these ethnic people. The Polans, as one of the most influential tribes of Greater Poland managed to unite many other West Slavic tribes in the area under the rule of what became the Piast dynasty.
The
Polans inhabited the Warta river basin in the 8th century. In the late 9th
century they managed to subdue most of the Slavic tribes between the Odra
(Oder) and Western Bug rivers and between the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea.
By the 10th century they also managed to integrate the lands of Masovia,
Kuyavia and Great Poland.
Members of the Piast family became the first rulers of Poland around the middle of the Tenth century. Poland's first historically documented ruler, Mieszko I, was ruler over most of the land along the Vistula and Oder rivers. He converted from Paganism and adopted Catholic Christianity as the nation's new official religion, to which the bulk of the population converted in the course of the next centuries.
Mieszko’s son, Boleslaw I, was crowned the first king of Poland. He built on his father's achievement and uniting all the provinces that subsequently came to comprise the traditional territory of Poland. After his death Poland entered a period of instability and was eventually broken up under the rule of different nobles.
The marriage between the Queen of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania brought Poland under the Jagiellon dynasty but each country remained self-governing. Polish culture and economy flourished under the Jagiellons and a golden age ensued during the sixteenth century after the birth of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At this time Poland expanded its borders and became the largest country in Europe.
Despite the advances of this period, after the 1500s the monarchy began to lose power to the nobles who dominated the Parliament. After the death of the last Jagiellonian monarch in 1572, Polish kings were elected by the nobles, but some were foreigners and proved to be ineffective rulers. Resultant rivalries among the nobles weakened the Parliament and costly wars ruined the economy.
In the mid-seventeenth century, a Swedish invasion and Cossack's
uprising which ravaged the country marked the end of the golden age. Numerous
wars against Russia coupled with government inefficiency caused by the Liberum
Veto, marked the steady deterioration of the Commonwealth from a
European power into near-anarchy which saw it controlled by its neighbours. The
reforms, particularly those of the Great Sejm, were thwarted with the three
partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, and 1795) which ended with Poland's being
erased from the map and its territories being divided between Russia, Prussia,
and Austria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland
Language
Polish is the official language of the Republic of Poland. It is the most spoken West Slavic language and is written in the Roman alphabet.
Religion
Though predominantly Roman Catholic, Poland is home to other religious groups, such as Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim.
Bosniaks belong to the Slavic ethnic group, but nevertheless their 'genetic roots' are a mixture of Slav settlers and descendants of pre-Slavic indigenous Balkan peoples, mainly of Illyrian tribes. For example, anthropologist John J. Wilkes regards Bosniaks (and Bosnians in general) as a possible descendant of the Illyrians and places Bosnia as once the centre of the Illyrian kingdom.
Once spread throughout the regions they inhabited, various instances of ethnic cleansing and genocide have had a tremendous effect on the territorial distribution of the Bosniak population.
The earliest Bosnian "name" was the historical term "Bošnjanin"
(Latin: Bosniensis), which signified any inhabitant of the medieval
Bosnian kingdom. By the early days of Ottoman rule, the word had been replaced
by "Bosniak" (Bošnjak). The Bosniaks derive their ethnic name from Bosona
(Bosnia), which has been proposed to have an Illyrian origin.
For the duration of Ottoman rule, the word Bosniak came to refer to all inhabitants of Bosnia.
The earliest (genetic) roots of the Bosniak people can be traced back to the ancient populations that expanded into the Balkans following the Last Glacial Maximum. Indeed, recent studies have indicated that the dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup found in Bosnian Bosniaks is I - and specifically its sub-haplogroup I-P37 - which are associated with these Palaeolithic settlers. These are Semitic and descended from the original IJ Haplogroup from which all Semites including Israelites, Jews and Arabs are descended. So also Croatia is comprised of some 40% of these Hg I Semites.
In the 13th century BCE, the old European cultures that developed from them were overrun and assimilated by the Illyrians, the earliest inhabitants of the region of whom we have any historical detail. They would remain the dominant group in the west Balkans until the Roman conquest of the area in 9 CE, which led to Romanization of the native population.
The earliest cultural and linguistic roots
of Bosniak history, however, can be traced back to the Migration Period of the
Early Middle Ages. It was then that the Slavs, a people from northeastern
Europe, invaded the Eastern Roman Empire with their Avar overlords and settled
in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the surrounding lands. The Serbs and
Croats came in a second wave, invited by Emperor Heraclius to drive the Avars
from Dalmatia.
Slavs settled in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and the surrounding lands, which were then part of the Eastern Roman Empire, in
the seventh century. The Slavic Bosnians established the first form of a state
between Croatia and Serbia in the ninth century under the rule of local bans
with the strong Bosnian Church, an indigenous Christian sect considered
heretical by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The
political circumstances of the High Middle Ages led to the area being contested
between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Byzantine Empire. After some centuries
of rule by the Byzantine Empire, an independent Bosnian kingdom flourished in
central Bosnia between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.
The subject of ethnicity in medieval Bosnia
is a complex and sensitive subject which has been obscured by nationalism and
propaganda through the ages. However, there is no sign that the population of
pre-Ottoman Bosnia had developed Croatian or Serbian ethnic consciousness, even
in a medieval sense of the word. To quote Noel
Malcolm from the book "Bosnia A Short History":
As for the question of whether the inhabitants of Bosnia were really Croat or really Serb in 1180, it cannot be answered, for two reasons: first, because we lack evidence, and secondly, because the question lacks meaning. We can say that the majority of the Bosnian territory (in 1180) was probably occupied by Croats - or at least, by Slavs under Croat rule - in the seventh century; but that is a tribal label which has little or no meaning five centuries later. The Bosnians were generally closer to the Croats in their religious and political history; but to apply the modern notion of Croat identity (something constructed in recent centuries out of religion, history, and language) to anyone in this period would be an anachronism. All that one can sensibly say about the ethnic identity of the Bosnians is this: they were the Slavs who lived in Bosnia.
Religion proved to be the determining factor in the later development of national consciousness, and was more pertinent than any original 'tribal heritage' from centuries earlier. Whilst it's Bishoprics were under Rome's jurisdiction, there was a large following of its local/native Bosnian Church – a form of Christianity with a connection to Bogomilism. The Bosnian Church declared to be faithful to Rome but practiced in Slavic liturgy with eastern type Monasticism. Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and local Bosnian Church following each predominated in certain areas, but neither was overriding. Sabbatarianism was prevalent among the Bogomils.
Upon the Ottoman's invasion of Europe,
large numbers of Bosnians converted to Islam. A number of Catholic and Orthodox
adherents also converted to Islam. There was a three-way split of the
population in religious terms, and this was cemented by the Ottoman system that
separated people along religious, not ethnic lines. With the slow decay of the
Ottoman Empire, the Bosnians who were Catholic eventually identified with the
Croatian nation, whilst those that were Orthodox identified with the Serbian
nation, giving rise to what we now call “Bosnian Croats" and "Bosnian
Serbs". The Islamic Bosnians continued to put their religion at the
forefront of their identity, and thus did not align with the early-modern
Serbian or Croatian nationality. They were referred to by neighbouring Serbs
and Croats simply as Bosnian Muslims – or even "Turks." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosniaks
Most Bosniaks are Muslim, but some are
Atheist, Agnostic and Deist. Bosniaks belong to the Sunni branch of Islam,
although historically Sufism has also played a significant role in the country.
The Bosnian language is one of the standard versions of Central-South Slavic which covers the region that was once known as Serbo-Croat. However, the Serbian, Croatian, and Bosniak languages are all mutually understandable.
The Bosnian language is based on the Latin alphabet. While the Cyrillic alphabet is accepted, it is seldom used today. The name Bosnian language is the commonly accepted name among Bosniak linguists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_language
The Bulgarian DNA
data suggest that a human demographic expansion occurred sequentially in the
Middle East, through Anatolia, to the rest of Europe (Bulgaria included). From
a historical angle, Bulgarians have descended from three main ethnic groups
which mixed on the Balkans during the 6th - 10th century: local tribes,
including the Thracians; Slavic invaders, who gave their language to the modern
Bulgarians; and the Turkic-speaking Bulgars.
Genetically, modern Bulgarians are more closely related to Macedonians,
Greeks and Romanians than to the rest of the Europeans. On the other hand they
are closely related to Armenians, Italians, Turks, Cretans and Sardinians,
Scandinavians, Bosnians and Croatians.
Some recent genetic studies reveal that early Thracian and Daco-Getic populations made a significant contribution to the genes of the modern Bulgarian population, which is however comparable, or even less than, to the contribution to other Balkan and Italian groups. The ancient languages of the local people had already gone extinct before the arrival of the Slavs, and their cultural influence was highly reduced due to the repeated barbaric invasions on the Balkans during the early Middle Ages by Goths, Celts, Huns, and Sarmatians, accompanied by persistent hellenization, romanisation and later slavicisation.
The easternmost South Slavs became part of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians, which however, are genetically clearly separated from the tight DNA cluster of most Slavic peoples. This phenomenon is explained by “the genetic contribution of the people who lived in the region before the Slavic expansion”. The frequency of the proposed Slavic Haplogroup R1a1 ranges to only 14.7% in Bulgaria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarians
Their DNA distribution is:
The approximate distribution of Y-DNA
haplogroups among the Bulgarian people runs as follows:
16% E1b1b
1% G2a
3% I1
20% I2a (very common among South Slavic peoples)
1% I2b
20% J2
1% Q
18% R1a
18% R1b
1% T
Note that the E1 Hg. is also common
among Jews and came from North Africa.
25% of all European Jews are E1
and E3. 44% of all Bulgars are of Semitic Hg. IJ origin, 24% at I and
20% at J2. I2a is very common also among South Slavic people.
It is quite possible that these people
came from the ten tribes when they were moved north in 722 BCE over the Araxes
and intermingled with the R1B Scythian Hittites and the R1a groups there also.
Here are mtDNA haplogroups found among
Bulgarians:
38% H (of which 10% are in the subclades H1 and H3 combined)
10% J
6.5% T
20% U (of which 10% are in U3, 6.5% in U4, and 3.5% in U5)
13% K
6% X2
6.5% other haplogroups
Cf.http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/bulgarians.html
The Bulgarian language is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Language
Croatian is the official language. Today
the Croats are using exclusively the Latin Script.
In his book on the ‘History of Serbia’, John Cox has this to say:
(Cox, John K., The History of Serbia, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002, pp. 19-21.)
From the Wikipedia article ‘Serbs’:
Serbian Orthodox, Muslim, Roman Catholic, Protestant
Serbian is the official language.
From Prehistoric
Times to the Celts
Roman rule and
Slav settlement
Habsburg rule, the
counts of Celje, Turkish incursions and peasant revolts
http://www.culturalprofiles.org.uk/slovenia/Directories/Slovenia_Cultural_Profile/-6799.html