Early Eastern Slavs

Last Updated    12/4/2007     10/20/2007      10/19/2007     10/18/2007

In 500 AD Eastern Slavs begin to move toward the Volga River. They were hunters and farmers whose ancestors were Ukrainians, Belarussians, and Russians.

Villages
Villages were made up of 25 related families.
A stockade surrounded the village.

Houses
Houses built partly underground to provide warmth.
House had low walls and a dirt covered roof.
Later the East Slavs built izbas.
The whole family lived, worked, ate, and slept in the single-room cabin.
Had a fireplace but no chimney.
Smoke went out the windows.

Government
Oldest male governed the village.
He assigned jobs, judged qurrales, and was the military leader.
600 AD Slavs controlled all the land to the Volga River.
860 AD People from Novgorod asked Viking leader Rurik to rule over them.

Farming
Planted crops: barley, rye, flax.
Forests provided all the lumber they needed..
East Slavs soon became skilled builders with wood.
They made musical instruments, boats, and izbass.

Religion
The villagers worshipped many gods: nature, spirits, and ancestors.
Most ancient gods of the Russian Slavs seem to have been Svarog, the heaven, and "our mother, the dank earth."
Great Mother was the goddes of the land and harvest.
Voloss protected cattle and sheep.
Perun was the god of thunder and lighting.
The people built wooden images of their gods on the highest ground around their towns.
Do not seem to have had either temples or priests

Burials
Tombs of dead Slavs contain arms, instruments, jewels, animals, bones, and grains of wheat.
Russian Slavs expected the future life to be an exact continuation of the present one.
They surrounded the dead with all the objects that here contributed to his happiness.
Servants and female slaves were sacrificed over the corpse.

Trade
Rivers were roads, and later became trade routes.
Trade route ran from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea.
Coins from China dated 699 have been found.
800 AD East Slavs built trading towns along the river.
In winter merchants gathered furs, honey, and forest products.
In the Spring, they traded in Byzantium, for cloth, wine, weapons, and jewelry.
Varangians, Viking warriors, protected the trade route.
It was called "Varangian Route."
The Varangians became part of the largwer Slav population.
Vessels of pottery, iron, bronze, gold and silver objects, glass, false pearls, rattles have been found.
Proves that they had a certain amount of trade.

Weapons
Their armor was defective, they had no breast--plates.
They fought on foot and were naked to the waist. 
They had for weapons, pikes, large shields, wooden bows, poisoned arrows, and lassoes to catch their victims.

Literature
1100 AD Slavic traditions written in the Primary Chronicle, a record of legends and facts.

Bibliography
Greenblatt, Miriam, and Lemmo, Peter. Human Heritage A World History. Columbus, Ohio: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Rambaud,Alfred, Russia, Leonora B. Lang, tr., vol. 1 (New York: Collier, 1900), pp. 24-26]