At the present stage, knowledge about the most ancient period of Russia sometimes completely repeats what was gleaned by German historians from Christian chronicles back in the 18th century. Their position was re-voiced on September 21, 2010 by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia in an interview with the Rossiya TV channel: “Who were the Slavs? They are barbarians, people who speak an incomprehensible language, they are second-class people, they are almost animals. Let's leave epithets on the conscience of the patriarch. Moreover, it is far from the 10th century and not even the 18th century.
And over the 20th century, the number of scientific disciplines has noticeably increased. First, archeology took shape. With its help, by the beginning of the 21st century, we know much more about the ancient life of the Earth's population than we could have gleaned earlier from written sources. Secondly, linguistics was formed. With its help, many ancient languages and the ancient phases of today's languages have been reconstructed. In addition, the routes taken by the native speakers are traced. Thirdly, genetics and DNA genealogy were formed. With their help, we can accurately identify the skeletal remains of fossils of people, as well as explore their genealogical connections to a depth of several tens of thousands of years.
Fourth, anthropology has made significant steps in its development. Special methods (school of M. M. Gerasimov) restored the physical appearance of people who lived 2, 3, 5, and even 30 thousand years ago. Huge amounts of data have been obtained by geographers, zoologists, botanists, physicists, and others about the ancient periods of the Earth, about the climate, about plants and animals. All this presents a picture of ancient times that is significantly different from that which the written sources painted for us.
On the territory of the Russian Plain, a species of paleanthropus lived. The sites of the Acheulean and Mousterian times in the Dubovsky district of the Volgograd region - Chelyuskinets II (145 ± 18 thousand years) and Zaikino Pepelishche (147 ± 20.5 thousand years). The Sukhaya Mechetka site (178 + 31 thousand years old) is located within the city of Volgograd. The skull cap of a Mousterian man from Moscow is widely known. There is every reason to consider the Russian Plain as the place of origin of modern humans. This is also confirmed by recent studies of Homo bones from Khvalynsk, dated by researchers also to the Acheulean-Mousterian time, but, in their opinion, having clear similarities with the inhabitants of the Yaroslavl region of the Middle Ages.
From the 50th millennium BC beginning (Kostenkovskaya culture), neoanthropists of the Russian Plain created a number of successive and genetically related archaeological cultures: Sungir (30-26 thousand BC), Zaraiskaya (21-20 thousand BC), Yudinovskaya (13 thousand BC), Ressetinskaya (11 - 9 thousand BC), Jena (10 - 6 thousand BC), Upper Volga (6 - 4 thousand BC), Volosovskaya (4 - 2 thousand BC), Fatyanovskaya (3 - 1 thousand BC) and further - ethnic Russians. The report at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences gives a statistical analysis of archaeological sites. There were several thousand of them in every archaeological epoch, every few hundred meters. The archaeological position has been confirmed by geneticists and DNA genealogy in collaboration with scientists from Harvard University (USA).
Disputes about the anthropological continuity of the ancient population of these archaeological cultures are gradually fading into the background, giving way to the belief that we have one hereditary line of a completely autochthonous population. With regard to a wide range of dates, starting with the Mesolithic (from the 15th millennium BC), anthropologist T. I. Alekseeva argues that “the picture of the formation of anthropological features of the Volosovo population is typical for the entire area of the Volosovo culture. On the example of burials from the Sakhtysh sites, the continuity of the population is clearly traced over a very long time - from the Early Neolithic to the Eneolithic. This continuity has its roots in the Mesolithic. Strictly speaking, in this case, anthropology confirms the point of view about the autochthonous nature of the Volosovites. The described craniological features (weakened horizontal profiling of the upper part of the face, strong profiling of the middle part of the face and a strong protrusion of the nose), formed over the vast territory of Eastern Europe, are extremely stable and can be traced in the population of later historical eras."
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Volosovskaya culture - the culture of the Neolithic of the Russian Plain. It was especially actively studied by the archaeologist D. A. Krainov. M. M. Gerasimov made physical reconstructions of the anthropological appearance of the Volosovites - no different from modern Russians. It is with this culture that the beginning of active international trade on the Russian Plain is associated. According to archaeological data, from the 4th - 3rd millennium BC. In the central regions of modern Russia, there was active trade, counterparties were located in Altai, and in ancient Egypt, and in Sumer, and even in ancient England.
The Volosov stage was marked by its functioning in the 5th - 2nd millennium BC. "Lapis lazuli" trade route (hereinafter, the accepted names of the indicated archaeological phenomena), in the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. - "amber" and "jade" paths. Jade was mined in Central Asia and Southern Siberia, Northern Kazakhstan, Southern Urals and the Volga region were delivered to the regions of the Volga-Oka interfluve. The entire path was marked with archaeological finds of jade of eastern origin. From the territory of Ancient Russia, jade was supplied to the south: the route passed through the Caucasus and was divided into two - to Egypt and to Sumer. These paths are also marked by finds, the origin of jade is the same: "for the first time in history, the jade path connected the Far East with Europe." He combined the Glazkovo culture of the Baikal region with the Seima-Turbino culture of the Volga-Kama region. In the Turbinsky burial ground located within the city of Perm,discovered 36 jade rings.
Lapis lazuli followed the same route. The connections of the Russian Plain with Ancient Egypt and Sumer are increasingly finding confirmation in archaeological facts. The earliest find of lapis lazuli beads is associated with the Khvalyn-Sredniy Stog community (Nalchik burial ground, first half of the 5th millennium BC). In the mound of the Maikop-Novosvobodnaya community (4th - early 3rd millennium BC) in Kabardino-Balkaria, among the burial items of which were found beads from Badakhshan lapis lazuli. The "lapis lazuli" trade route testifies to "the connections of the Caucasus with the world of the Sumerian civilization in the Uruk period (second half of the 4th - 3rd millennium BC)". The "Amber" route operated in the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. "The export of" northern gold "and products from it to the Mediterranean countries began, as researchers believe, back in the days of the Egyptian pharaohs (34-24 centuries BC)."In the burials of the Volosov culture - about 250 graves - a total of about 11,700 amber jewelry was collected.
In the 1st millennium BC. - almost a thousand years before the discovery of the Great Silk Road (southern branch) - the Northern Silk Road functioned, along which not only Chinese silks went to Russia and further to Europe, but also Chinese mirrors, as well as jade and lapis lazuli. E. I. Lubo-Lesnichenko concludes that at the early stage of East-West ties, the northern route was more important than the southern one. The active trade of Ancient Rus continued until the 11th century. So, the early silver dirhams almost completely settled on Russian soil. More than 700 treasures are known, some weighing 70 or more kilograms. These coins were not found in the places of the supposed minting of dirhams (in the Caliphate) - the export to Russia was complete. The trading operations of Ancient Rus ceased with the introduction of Christianity.
In conclusion, we note that the huge population of Ancient Rus, a huge number of archaeological sites of all eras without exception, a dense network of transcontinental trade routes of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age - all this testifies to the fact that a state formation similar to Ancient Egypt or Sumer, which developed in parallel with them and actively traded with them. Several hundred scientists from various fields of science are successfully engaged in the discovery of the facts of this ancient state, and the reconstruction of the history of Ancient Russia is, in our opinion, the most significant issue of history today.
A. Tyunyaev
