The Great Migration destroyed the ancient world, building the Middle Ages on its ruins. Despite many versions, it is still not clear what became the main reason for the movement of the barbarians, where the Huns came from, and who the Pre-Slavs were.
Reasons for moving ready
The great migration of peoples, contrary to popular belief, began not with the invasion of the Huns, but with the movement of the Goths, who migrated from the territory of Central Sweden, which was then called "Gothia" to the Black Sea coast in the II-III centuries AD. In the process of migration, more and more tribes joined them: Gepids, Borans, Typhals, Heruls, Vandals, Skirs. They left only destruction in their path, and became the first who captured and destroyed Rome under the leadership of King Alaric.
The Roman-German wars for the first time called into question the continued existence of the empire. Having firmly settled on the middle Danube lowland, which henceforth became the center of the barbarian world, they regularly set off on new military campaigns against their powerful neighbor. One of the most successful conquests was the strategically important province of Dacia, between the Danube, Tisza, Prut and Carpathian rivers, which later became one of the main footholds for the German invasions of the Empire.
But what was the very reason that gave rise to this bloody migration, which lasted, de facto, half a millennium: from the 2nd to the 7th centuries of our era.
In fact, there is still no consensus among historians on this score, therefore it is customary to single out a set of factors.
First, according to the Gothic historian Jordan, in the second century, the Goths living in Scandinavia faced the problem of overpopulation. According to legend, the Gothic king Filimir decided to move to another area with his families: “When a great multitude of people grew up there, and only the fifth king Filimir after Berig ruled, he ordered that the army was ready to move from there with families. In search of the most convenient areas and suitable places for settlement, he came to the lands of Scythia, which in their language were called Oyum."
Promotional video:
Obviously, overpopulation alone could not raise such a powerful horde of barbarians, consisting not only of the Goths, but of many other tribes. According to researchers, an important role was played by the general cooling or "climatic pessimum of the early Middle Ages", which was gaining momentum at that time. Temperatures fell and the climate remained excessively humid. Worse, the glaciers grew - there were fewer forests, less game. Famine threatened the people, and infant mortality increased.
Changes in weather conditions are quite often the root cause of important historical events. And the climatic pessimum of the early Middle Ages just accompanied the entire history of the Great Migration, reaching its peak in 535-536.
And, of course, we shouldn't forget about the human factor. On the eve of the great migration, significant changes took place in the economic life of the Germans and Slavs. As a result, the stratification of society has increased. From the middle class, the elite stood out, not involved in productive labor. They were a tribal elite that needed booty to maintain their status, which the Roman Empire was ideally suited to be.
Where did the Huns come from?
In the fall of 376, the peoples who inhabited the territories from the Central Danube Plain to the Black Sea coast began to move. Alarming rumors spread throughout the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire about some wild and cruel barbarians who eat raw meat and destroy everything in their path. Soon, messengers from their yesterday's enemies, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, came to the Romans with a request to settle on the territory of the empire.
The main reason for this concern was the Hunnic hordes that broke into Europe. Nobody knew who they were and where they came from at that time. One of the Roman historians Ammianus Marcellinus believed that they came from the Meotian swamp, that is, from the Sea of Azov. Modern researchers associate them with the Xiongnu people, who inhabited the steppes north of China, from 220 BC to the 2nd century AD. These were the first tribes who created a vast nomadic empire in Central Asia. Subsequently, some of them reached Europe, mixing along the road with the Turkic, East Sarmatian and Ugric tribes, which formed a new Hunnic ethnos.
Their invasion is considered one of the main factors that marked the beginning of the Great Migration, or rather, its second wave. On a long journey that led to such catastrophic consequences, they were obviously prompted by the impoverishment of pastures, which is a constant problem of nomads and the reason for their permanent movement. This was also the reason for their constant conflicts with China, as a result of which the Great Wall of China was built. However, in the 1st century BC, China took advantage of the weakening of the Hunnic state due to civil strife, and inflicted a crushing defeat on them, which summed up the centuries-old conflicts.
The Hunnic empire collapsed, and its scattered parts scattered across Asia and Europe. Some of the most desperate or, according to Gumilyov, passionaries, moved to the West, where they passed through Kazakhstan in the 50s of the II century AD and reached the banks of the Volga. After 360, possibly again due to a general cold snap, they crossed the Volga and continued on their way to the West, where they defeated the Alans and Ostrogoths. This is how Ammianus Marcellinus described it: “The Huns, passing through the lands of the Alans, which border on the Greitungs and are usually called Tanaites, made terrible extermination and devastation among them, and with the survivors they entered into an alliance and annexed them to themselves. With their assistance, they boldly broke through with a surprise attack into the vast and fertile lands of Ermanarich, the king of the Ostrogoths. They were followed by the Goths, who, under the onslaught of the nomads, divided into Visigoths and Ostrogoths. The Huns firmly established themselves in the territories of the Northern Black Sea region, coming close to the Roman borders.
How the Slavs were formed
To date, there is not a single generally accepted version of the origin of the Slavic ethnos. But we know that the Slavic ethnic space, which would later become the foundation for the formation of the ancient Russian state, was formed thanks to the great resettlement.
We practically do not know anything about the Pre-Slavs: who they were, what way of life they led, and where they actually lived. Ancient sources are silent about this period in the history of our ancestors. This may indicate that before the arrival of the Huns and resettlement, their territories were located far from the borders of the Roman Empire and were not included in the circle of interests of its politicians. True, sometimes we still find rare mentions of the Wendian tribes, which Herodotus recalled, as well as in later sources, of the Antas (already in late sources of the 6th-7th centuries) and Sklavins (a common name used by Byzantine authors to describe Slavs), who are considered to be the ancestors of the Slavic tribes.
According to some versions, all possible ancestors of the Slavs were originally a "combustible mixture" of Scythian nomadic tribes and local peoples (including the Greeks). Their common Slavic language, as well as an archaeological community, began to take shape not earlier than the 5th century, most likely in the territories of the Attila Empire. It was in it, on the basis of borrowings from various cultures, that the common Slavic language was formed, later known as the Old Bulgarian or Old Slavonic (the Bulgarians are known as the closest relatives of the Huns). That is, being part of Attila's empire, the Proto-Slavs experienced a huge influence of both nomadic Asian and sedentary European cultures.
Subsequently, the new ethnos completed the last stage of the Great Migration of Peoples (VI-VII centuries), settling in Eastern, South-Eastern and Central Europe.
Alisa Muranova