One day from the life of the ancient Slavs

To begin with, it would be nice to understand who such Slavs. It is not simple. After all, today under this word implies a huge number of peoples living in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. They all speak Slavic languages, which belong to the Indo-European language family. We will be called Slavs.

Question number two is the most difficult thing: when these peoples appeared? And here scientists are divided into two camps: optimists and skeptics. The first believe that the "happy birthday" of Slavs can be prescribed the time when evidence of material culture appears: ceramics, decorations, tools, remnants of dwellings and. D. The second believe that this is not enough. Similar items may arise from themselves different ethnic groups and on one territory. Skeptics are confident that truly about the Slavs can only be said when the chronicles from neighboring regions are added to archaeological data – and about the nations themselves, and their vocabulary. All three components begin to "coincide" only in the V-VI centuries.

All this, of course, does not mean that before the V century there was no Slavs – they did not appear from nowhere. But evidence of them is foggy, like the shores of the island of Newfoundland. Therefore, we are forced to upset everyone to spend their pedigree from Adam and Eve. So…

Morning

You wake up in a cool dusk. This is understandable, because your family lives half underground – in a small house, almost completely in-depth into the soil (only three or four rows of thick logs look out from under the ground). Your interior, how to say, is rich: in the corner of stone or carved right in the ground stove, stern roof and earth floor. And no five-ranger, traditionally considered Russian (such dwellings begin to appear only in the X century).

You do not even have the doors – it replaces a large square hole, covered with a pair of log cabins, connected together. And yes, no pipe – Chad from the furnace goes straight to the house. You live in a cold climate, so in winter, so that it becomes warmer, you will then pour water to the stove – raw, but warm.

So imagine that you are a man. You woke up and see that your spouse watering the floor with water. So today is cleaning day – after she starts to sweep it. Paul from this will not soften this, on the contrary, with time it will become like corundum. On a wooden table, breakfast is already waiting for you: milk, chowder (which you call "Yuha") or wheat porridge, barley, rye, pea or oats. Water you get from the well.

About the pottery circle you know about the same amount as a resident of Amazonian Selva – about the Vacuum train Ilona Mask. Your dishes are made manually without special excesses. From the patterns maximum laconic oblique notches on the edge of the pot. Almost all your dining room utensils, not counting flat plates – high jugs with a slightly narrowed throat, similar to the tulip flower. In them, your spouse and cooks food.

And in such a vessel you buried the dust of your brother, pre-burned in the fire. To do this, in a specially designated place, you dug a small pit; Later, archaeologists will name your "cemeteries" by the culture of the fields of burial urns.

But the morning is not time for sad thoughts. It’s time for work, in the field or in the forest. But your wife will stay at home – weave and sew clothes. Children follow the beast (she lives in the barn). You and your neighbors have cows, horses, pigs, some – goats. Do you have a sheep, but they are mainly needed for wool, lamb in food you use infrequently (probably from hopelessness), but the horses apparently eat. And some of your neighbors have chickens and ducks.

Day

You are farmer. In addition to wheat, barley, rye, oats, you are growing flax and hemp (for fabrics). The main tool of labor – Sokh, the land you call the mother. That that was never in processing, "goal", "goals (s) on", "Pustosa", sowed – "Niva", "Plee".

You shout into the sky something like: "Stop, goby! Don’t let your whites bowl. Ours, black, your reproach. Break your shidel

With "fields" you have tens, because the terrain where you live, mostly forest. However, you do not lose, because you create your arable people themselves. Once a few years, in winter, you go to the forest to dry the trees with your neighbors. In the spring, when they snap, it remains only to set fire, and soon the new field is ready. And the harvest after such a procedure is to envy! True, shortly. Five years later you will have to go to the winter forest. When your descendants will get bored, they will start using a plow and wheeled vehicles, harvested by oxen or horses.

But while you, armed with hoe and copal, go to your arable land. By the way, most of your work tools are wooden. Iron is also there, but they are in short supply. Yes what is there, because few blacksmiths do you think almost demigods that are certainly praised with the unclean power. Still: create a knife, awl, scissors or some temporal rings from a piece of inconspicuous ore (jewelry that your daughter and spouse) and bracelets are not clouds.

By the way, about clouds. It seems the rain is starting. Therefore, you shout into the sky something like: "Stop, goby! Don’t let your whites bowl. Ours, black, your reproach. Break your shidel. All because some Slavs (primarily Serba) considered clouds of the bulls, clouds – cows, rain himself – heavenly milk. However, the storm did not expect anything good. Our ancestors, in fact, revered the notorious god thunderstorms and Lightning Perun (perhaps, still the Holy Divine, connected with the war and victory) and considered the badness of the wrath of the Ruchitz, and the clouded clouds – the attack of heavenly herds on Earth. The latter, as we believed Slavs, can protect ordinary earth herds, so they appeaseed. True, sometimes the Slavs "allowed" to shed heavenly milk, because they knew that he was "feeding" the land.

For the new year you burn birch or oak floor, so that the field was a rich harvest, and in the house – peace and wealth

It seems you did everything in the field? It’s time in the forest behind honey. Because you have no apiary. Your occupation is called Borutnom: From the Word "Bore" – Hollow Tree. This is an oldest form of beekeeping, when people looked out in wooden cavity decks, arranged inside the partition, and then they hung them on the trees (or simply used natural hollows). The decks were hanging at an altitude of 4 to 15 m. You set fire on the piece of climbing and fry the bees smoke – to calm down, and then with a long stick through the narrow holes get honey.

In general, the forest gives you everything: berries, mushrooms, nuts, acorns, all sorts of roots, fruits, resin, birch and maple juice, bark, bark, herbs (you are using for medical purposes) and wood. With her you have a special relationship. Even the concept of "health" and "friendship" you probably associate with the tree (linguists believe that once these words were single-handed). Special wrench use oak and birch. For the new year (as a rule, you celebrate it in September, on the day of autumn equinox) you burn the birch or oak floor to be a rich harvest, and in the house – peace and wealth.

By the way, about the holidays. You eat just, but sometimes, of course, allow yourself and meat, and fish. However, the last rarely (fisheries in the ancient Slavs was not too developed) – you catch its incentive, baskets and a non-child. But meat, in addition to its own cattle, gives hunting. In this you help all sorts of steels, horns, throwing shells and even bows. But the main help of numerous traps, sinks, networks, west, adhesives (vegetable origin; they are needed for catching birds) and, of course, your old good friends – Dogs. Yes, and the cats are also known – they guard your harvest from rodents. About the history of animal domestication "My Planet" wrote here.

Evening

You have time and hurry to the hearth. Next to you, and maybe your coming relatives live in your home: brothers, parents. To the last you feel very respectfully, as well as your spouse. The latter is always true for you and will be true not only in this life, but even after death (my wife has often ended with suicide or went to the fire after their dead husbands, as evidenced by not only written sources of neighborhood peoples, but also archaeological data). So you hardly stand to worry that some familiar cocks in your house. But you seem to do not mind to look at the unmarried neighbor on the plate. At least if you had opportunities – you could have a few more wives. The benefit of Slavic "laws" is allowed.

Our time machine is ready to transfer you also for one day in Middle Ages, ancient Greece or Mesoamerica.