The Origins of Russian Language and Mother Russia Preface. In doing the research the Wikipedia, as well as many other information resources, can be very helpful and informative, but the information has to be managed and taken with a grain of salt. One has to detect where the truth lies. As we slowly unravel the marvels of ancient mysteries buried in the dust of time, we will see a clearer view of history in all its gory and glorious details. Introduction. The modern Russian alphabet, azbuka, and language is part of the Indo-European family of languages that have evolved from the old Slavic Glagolitic alphabet, Az Buki Vedi – the first three letters of the ancient Glagolitic alphabet, and language. Naturally that sort of evolution would apply to most languages and dialects. Also granted that many languages borrow from each other, however the evolutionary linguistic connections are often obvious and well established. For example, the Latin has many links with the ancient Slavic, although it is a Roman branch of the Indo-European family, both languages share many similarities; the grammar is very close, such as the declension of cases for nouns and adjectives, the conjugation of verbs, along with many similar roots and words. All alphabets originate in the ancient wisdom of astronomy and zodiac and have evolved from the common source.0* The modern Russian is based on the “Cyrillic” alphabet and “named in honor of the two (Bulgarian) Byzantine brothers,”2* “whose birth names are Tsurho and Strahota, born in Thessaloniki,”1* “Saints Cyril (827-869 AD) and Methodius (826-885 AD), who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on”1* I really doubt that they created the new alphabet system where there was none before in order to do their missionary work, if that's the case they would have used Greek or Latin, or any other popular European alphabet, instead they adopted the existing “tamgi” symbols in use by the local Slavic tribes in their Proto-Slavic language system of communication and record keeping. The Glagolitic alphabet, Glagolitsa in Russian, was established by the Byzantine monks to standardize many different Proto-Slavic dialects that used the tamgi symbols socially and in their spiritual pagan ceremonies “in order to translate the Bible and other religious works into the language of the Great Moravia region. They probably modelled Glagolitic alphabet on either cursive form of the Greek alphabet”5* or, and more likely, on the existing many ancient symbols called “tamgi” that were in common use across the Eurasian continent and still around even today, while “based their translations on a Slavic dialect of the Thessalonika area, which formed the basis of the literary standard known as Old Church Slavonic.”5* “Modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius.”1* “Paul Cubberley posits that although Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it was his students [...] that developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books.”1* “Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script (i.e. Majuscule, written entirely in capital letters) augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures (combination of letters used in typography as a single glyph). These additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek.”1* “The Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system that was developed during the late ninth century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Orthodox Slavic population in Europe. It was developed in the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire,” “under the commission of Boris I of Bulgaria when Christianity was made the official state religion in 864,“ “to write the Old Church Slavonic language,”3* aka Old Church Slavic (OCS), “and using it in translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek ecclesiastical texts as part of the Christianisation of the Slavic peoples. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (now in Greek Macedonia).”4* In Tsarist Russia, prior to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, all schools taught, along side with the modern Cyrillic, the old Slavic Glagolitic alphabet, from the Old Church Slavonic glagolъ means "utterance" or "to speak."2* “It played an important role in the history of the Slavic languages and served as a basis and model for later Church Slavonic traditions, and some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches use this later Church Slavonic as a liturgical language to this day. As the oldest attested Slavic language, OCS provides important evidence for the features of Proto-Slavic, the unattested common ancestor of all Slavic languages.”4* Chapter I -- The Tamgi Symbols. “RUNY SŁOWIAN (...) The Sarmatian theory: ‘This is a current theory saying that the coats of arms of Polish nobility developed from magical characters of the Sarmatians which were called “tamgas.” According to tradition Polish nobility were the descendants of the ancient Sarmatians, and in fact Poland was often called Sarmatia or Sauromatia. In the 19th century this traditional belief was regarded as a myth, but now it is held to be based on truth.”6* Now, who in the world are Sarmatians7* of Scythia8* and what are these magical tamgas/tamgi characters? If we consult Wikipedia, aka the “official” mainstream perspective, then the Sarmatians are Iranians, but according to another less known theory the Sarmatians are the Proto-Russians, the nomadic Proto-Slavic language speaking tribes who moved across the expanse of the Eurasian plains back and forth, some travelling to as far as the Ganges river in India, however most would get to as far as Mongolia, China, and parts of Siberia, where many different tribes would settle for a while on their traditional migration routes, but not for too long, being in company of many people and animals, and at the mercy of gods, nature, and good fortune, most in due time would turn back to the fertile plains of Russia, slowly moving through Ukraine, Poland, to Germany, some even reaching all the way to the Northern Ireland. If this is the case, then there must be some evidence either in favour of the “official” Iranian connection or more radical Slavic link. Sure enough there is plenty and it is worth exploring. The obvious question is then, what is this Proto-Slavic language the evidence of which could be found across the biggest continent in the world, from Ganges all the way to Northern Ireland? The answer is those magical “tamgas” or “tamgi” characters. They are not only found on the family crests of old Polish aristocracy but also known to had been displayed on the crests, flags, and insignias of the old German tribes; the brute Vandals, pale Goths, sexy Saxons, many of whom show ancient close family links with China, the Chinese in turn also have many tamgi symbols of their own, and so do many Tartar, Mongolian, Slavic and other distinguished families and tribes. There are literally thousands upon thousands of this ancient tamgi letters all over the entire Eurasian continent and beyond. Some modern New Age occult movements adopted tamgi for the ritual use. The tamgi symbols are the secret Slavic Scythian tribes', Sarmatians are one of the tribes, sacred writing system rooted in ancient wisdom of zodiac and astronomy, and represent the individuals in the tribe or the tribes themselves, like the native totem pole, where each tamgi is associated with a name, sound, colour, number, & concept, and could be used for communication, as an ID, or to keep records, track of the supplies, trade, hunting game, etc. The Alans. “The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke,”10* here is where again i differ from Wikipedia, a Proto-Slavic language which is based on the Scytho-Sarmatian tamgi symbols that derived from even earlier civilizations, which would be the Linear B script of the Mycenaean Greece and before then the Linear A script of the Minoan civilization. I will expand about it later. “By the beginning of the 1st century, the Alans had occupied lands in the northeast Azov Sea area, along the Don and by the 2nd century had amalgamated or joined with the Yancai of the early Chinese records to extend their control all the way along the trade routes from the Black Sea to the north of the Caspian and Aral seas. The written sources suggest that from the end of the 1st century to the second half of the 4th century the Alans had supremacy over the tribal union and created a powerful confederation of Sarmatian tribes.”10* “The Roxolani (from Alanic ruxsalan- "bright alan", polish - róg jeleni 'antler') were a Sarmatian people, who are believed to be an off-shoot of the Alans, although according to Strabo they were the most remote of Scythian peoples. Their first recorded homeland lay between the Don and Dnieper rivers; they migrated in the 1st century BC toward the Danube, to what is now the Baragan steppes in Romania. The Greco-Roman historian Strabo (late 1st century BC-early 1st century AD) described them as "wagon-dwellers" (i.e. nomads) (Geographika, Book VII).”9* “A number of Russian anti-Normanist historians, such as Dmitry Ilovaisky, have linked the Roxolani with the Slavic Rus, who appeared in Eastern Europe some four centuries after the disappearance of the Roxolani. Such theories continue to be popular in Russia to this day. A wife of the 16th-century Ottoman Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent was known as Roxelana, an appellation which indicated her Ukrainian Slavic origin. Similary, two villages in the Republic of Macedonia are called Ros and Rosoman, indicating that the Roxolani also influenced the South Slavs.”9* “Some historians argue that the arrival of the Huns on the European steppe forced a portion of Alans previously living there to move northwest into the land of Venedes, possibly merging with Western Balts there to become the precursors of historic Slav nations. It's believed that some Alans resettled to the North (Barsils), merging with Volga Bulgars and Burtas, eventually transforming to Volga Tatars. It is supposed that Iasi, a group of Alans have founded a town in NE of Romania (about 1200–1300), called Iași near Prut river. Iași became the capital of ancient Moldova in Middle Ages.”10* “In Cathay and the Way Thither, 1866, Henry Yule writes: The Alans were known to the Chinese by that name, in the ages immediately preceding and following the Christian era, as dwelling near the Aral, in which original position they are believed to have been closely akin to, if not identical with, the famous Massagetæ. Hereabouts also Ptolemy (vi, 14) appears to place the Alani-Scythæ, and Alanæan Mountains. From about 40 B.C. the emigrations of the Alans seem to have been directed westward to the Lower Don; here they are placed in the first century by Josephus and by the Armenian writers; and hence they are found issuing in the third century to ravage the rich provinces of Asia Minor. In 376 the deluge of the Huns on its westward course came upon the Alans and overwhelmed them. Great numbers of Alans are found to have joined the conquerors on their further progress, and large bodies of Alans afterwards swelled the waves of Goths, Vandals, and Sueves, that rolled across the Western Empire. A portion of the Alans, however, after the Hun invasion retired into the plains adjoining Caucasus, and into the lower valleys of that region, where they maintained the name and nationality which the others speedily lost. Little is heard of these Caucasian Alans for many centuries, except occasionally as mercenary soldiers of the Byzantine emperors or the [p. 316] Persian kings. In the thirteenth century they made a stout resistance to the Mongol conquerors, and though driven into the mountains they long continued their forays on the tracts subjected to the Tartar dynasty that settled on the Wolga, so that the Mongols had to maintain posts with strong garrisons to keep them in check. They were long redoutable both as warriors and as armourers, but by the end of the fourteenth century they seem to have come thoroughly under the Tartar rule; for they fought on the side of Toctamish Khan of Sarai against the great Timur. Around 370, the Alans were overwhelmed by the Huns. They were divided into several groups, some of whom fled westward. A portion of these western Alans joined the Vandals and the Sueves in their invasion of Roman Gaul.”10* “Some of the other Alans remained under the rule of the Huns. Those of the eastern division, though dispersed about the steppes until late medieval times, were forced by the Mongols into the Caucasus, where they remain as the Ossetians. Between the 9th and 12th centuries, they formed a network of tribal alliances that gradually evolved into the Christian kingdom of Alania.”10* The Antes. “According to the Sarmatians-Antes link, the Antes were a sub-group of the Alans, which dominated the Black Sea and north Caucasus region during the "Late Sarmatian Period". The Antes were based between the Prut and lower Dniester during the 1st to 2nd centuries AD. From the 4th century, their center of power shifted northward toward the southern Bug. In the fifth and sixth centuries they settled in Volhynia and subsequently in the middle Dnieper region near the present-day city of Kiev. As they moved north from the open steppe to the forest steppe, they mixed with Slavic tribes. They organised the Slavic tribes and the name Antes came to be used for the mixed Slavo-Alanic body. Whatever their exact 'origins', Jordanes and Procopius appear to suggest that the Antes were Slavic by the 5th century. In describing the lands of Scythia (Getica. 35), Jordanes states that "the populous race of the Venethi occupy a great expanse of land. Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sklaveni and Antes". Later, in describing the deeds of Ermanaric, the mythical Ostrogothic king. He informs that the Venethi "have now three names, Venethi, Antes and Sklaveni" (Get. 119').”21* “However, recent perspectives view the tribal entities named by Graeco-Roman sources as fluctuant political formations which were, above all, etic categorizations based on ethnographic stereotypes rather than first-hand, accurate knowledge of barbarian language or 'culture'. Szmoniewski summarizes that the Antes were not a "discrete, ethnically homogeneous entity" but rather "a highly complex political reality". Linguistically, contemporary evidence suggests that Slavic was widely spoken over a large area (from the eastern Alps to the Black Sea) by various ethnie, including those Roman provincial, "Germanic" (such as Gepids and Lombards), and Oghuric (Avars, Bulgars) populations. It has further been proposed that the Sklaveni were not distinguished from others on the basis of language or culture, but the type of their military organization. Ie compared to the Avars, or 6th century Goths, the Sklaveni were numerous, smaller disunited groups, one of which - the Antai- became foederati constituted by a treaty.”21* “The Antes (or Antae) were an early Slavic tribal polity which existed in the 6th century lower Danube and northwestern Black Sea region (modern Moldova and western Ukraine). They are commonly associated with the archaeological Penkovka culture. They were prominent in military and diplomatic affairs in Southeastern Europe, becoming Byzantine foederati until their eventual demise in the early 7th century AD. Based on the literary evidence provided by Procopius and Jordanes, the Antes (along with the Sklaveni and Venethi) have long been viewed as one of the constituent proto-Slavic peoples from which, both, medieval groups and modern nations descended. Studied since the late 18th century, modern scholars have at times engaged in heated polemics regarding Antean origins and the attribution of their ancestors. They have been variously regarded as ancestors of specifically the Vyatichi or Rus, from medieval perspective, and the Ukrainians versus all East Slavs with regard to extant populations. South Slavic historians additionally regarded the Antes as the ancestors of the eastern South Slavs (Bulgarians, Macedonians). Although regarded as a predominantly Slavic tribal union, numerous other theories have arisen, especially with regard to the origins of their ruling core; including theories of a Gothic, Iranic and Slavic ruling nobility, or some mixture thereof. Much dispute arose because of scant literary evidence: little is known apart from the tribal name itself and a handful of anthroponyms. The name Antes itself does not appear to be Slavic, but is often held to be an Iranian word. Pritsak, citing Max Vasmer, argues that anta- means "fontier, end" (in Saskrit), thus *ant-ya could mean frontier-man. Although the first unequivocal attestation of the tribal Antes in the 6th century AD, scholars have tried to connect the Antes with a tribe rendered An-tsai in a 2nd-century BC Chinese source (Hou Han-shu, 118, fol. 13r). Pliny the Elder (Natural History VI, 35) mentions some Anti living near the Azov shores; and inscriptions from the Kerch peninsula dating to the third century AD bear the word antas. Based on documentation of "Sarmatian" tribes inhabiting the north Pontic region during the early centuries of the Common Era, presumed Iranian loanwords into Slavic, and Sarmatian 'cultural borrowings' into the Penkovka culture, scholars such as Robert Magosci, Valentin Sedov and John Fine Jr. maintain earlier proposals by Soviet-era scholars such as Boris Rybakov, that the Antes were originally a Sarmatian-Alans frontier tribe who become Slavicized, but preserved their name.”21* Records also show that in the 16th century, “Protestants were the first to react to news of Copernicus' theory. Melanchthon wrote: Some people believe that it is excellent and correct to work out a thing as absurd as did that Sarmatian [i.e., Polish] astronomer who moves the earth and stops the sun. Indeed, wise rulers should have curbed such light-mindedness.”22* Rus' Khaganate. “The origins of the Rus' Khaganate are unclear. The first Norse settlers of the region arrived in the lower basin of the Volkhov River in the mid-8th century. The country comprising the present-day Saint-Petersburg, Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl, and Smolensk regions became known in Old Norse sources as "Garðaríki", the land of forts. Around the 860 Rus', a group of Vikings perhaps from Roden, Sweden, began to rule the area under their leader Rurik. Gradually, Norse warlords, known to the Turkic-speaking steppe peoples as "köl-beki" or "lake-princes", came to dominate some of the region's Finno-Ugric and Slavic peoples, particularly along the Volga trade route linking the Baltic Sea with the Caspian Sea and Serkland. ”14* “The Rus' Khaganate is the name applied by modern historians to a polity that was postulated to exist during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe, roughly the late 8th and early-to-mid-9th centuries AD. It was suggested that the Rus' Khaganate was a state, or a cluster of city-states, set up by a people called Rus', who may have been Norsemen, somewhere in what is today European Russia, as a chronological predecessor to the Rurik Dynasty and the Kievan Rus'. The region's population at that time was composed of Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Turkic, Hungarian, and Norse peoples. The region was also a place of operations for Varangians, eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants, and pirates. While there have been several theories, the prevailing opinion today (as of 2013) is that the population centers of the region may have included the proto-towns of Holmgard, Aldeigja, Lyubsha, Alaborg, Sarskoye Gorodishche, and Timerevo. According to sparse contemporaneous sources, the leader or leaders of Rus people at this time were using the Old Turkic title (actually most likely derived from Jewish Kohen/Kohen Gadol meaning Priest15*/High Priest or Priest King16*) Khagan, hence the suggested name of their organization. ”14* “Omeljan Pritsak speculated that a Khazar khagan named Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi, exiled after losing a civil war, settled with his followers in the Norse-Slavic settlement of Rostov, married into the local Scandinavian nobility, and fathered the dynasty of the Rus' khagans. Zuckerman dismisses Pritsak's theory as untenable speculation, and no record of any Khazar khagan fleeing to find refuge among the Rus' exists in contemporaneous sources. Nevertheless, the possible Khazar connection to early Rus' monarchs is supported by the use of a stylized trident tamga, or seal, by later Rus' rulers such as Sviatoslav I of Kiev; similar tamgas are found in ruins that are definitively Khazar in origin. The genealogical connection between the 9th century Khagans of Rus' and the later Rurikid rulers, if any, is unknown at this time. Most historians agree that the title "khagan" was borrowed by the Rus from the Khazars (who adopted Judaism around 750 CE), but there is considerable dispute over the circumstances of this borrowing. Peter Benjamin Golden presumes that the Rus' khaganate was a puppet state set up by the Khazars in the basin of the Oka River to fend off recurring attacks of the Magyars. However, no source records that the Rus' of the 9th century were subjects of the Khazars. For foreign observers (such as Ibn Rustah), there was no material difference between the titles of the Khazar and Rus' rulers. Anatoly Novoseltsev hypothesizes that the adoption of the title "khagan" was designed to advertise the Rus' claims to the equality with the Khazars. This theory is echoed by Thomas Noonan, who asserts that the Rus' leaders were loosely unified under the rule of one of the "sea-kings" in the early 9th century, and that this "High King" (or Priest King) adopted the title "khagan" to give him legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects and neighboring states. According to this theory, the title was a sign that the bearers ruled under a divine mandate.”14* “Early medieval Byzantine and Persian/Arabic sources mention that the Rus' people were governed by a khagan.”17* “Recent archaeological research, conducted by Anatoly Kirpichnikov and Dmitry Machinsky, has raised the possibility that this polity was based on a group of settlements along the Volkhov River, including Ladoga, Lyubsha, Duboviki, Alaborg, and Holmgard. "Most of these were initially small sites, probably not much more than stations for re-fitting and resupply, providing an opportunity for exchange and the redistribution of items passing along the river and caravan routes". If the anonymous traveller quoted by ibn Rustah is to be believed, the Rus of the Khaganate period made extensive use of the Volga route to trade with the Middle East, possibly through Bulgar and Khazar intermediaries. His description of the Rus' island suggests that their center was at Holmgard, an early medieval precursor of Novgorod whose name translates from Old Norse as "the river-island castle". The First Novgorod Chronicle describes unrest in Novgorod before Rurik was invited to come rule the region in the 860s. This account prompted Johannes Brøndsted to assert that Holmgard-Novgorod was the khaganate's capital for several decades prior to the appearance of Rurik, including the time of the Byzantine embassy in 839. Machinsky accepts this theory but notes that, before the rise of Holmgard-Novgorod, the chief political and economic centre of the area was located at Aldeigja-Ladoga.”14* “This period is thought to be the times of the genesis of a distinct Rus' ethnos, which gave rise to Kievan Rus' and later states from which modern Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine evolved.”14* The Varangian Viking Varyags. “Having settled Aldeigja (Ladoga) in the 750s, Scandinavian colonists played an important role in the early ethnogenesis of the Rus' people and in the formation of the Rus' Khaganate. The Varangians (Varyags, in Old East Slavic (means sailors)) are first mentioned by the Primary Chronicle as having exacted tribute from the Slavic and Finnic tribes in 859. It was the time of rapid expansion of the Vikings in Northern Europe; England began to pay Danegeld in 859, and the Curonians of Grobin faced an invasion by the Swedes at about the same date. ”13* “The Varangians or Varyags (Old Norse: Væringjar; Greek: Βάραγγοι, Βαριάγοι, Varangoi, Variagoi) was the name given by Greeks and East Slavs to Vikings, who between the 9th and 11th centuries ruled the medieval state of Rus' and formed the Byzantine Varangian Guard. According to the 12th century Kievan Primary Chronicle, a group of Varangians known as the Rus' settled in Novgorod in 862 under the leadership of Rurik. Before Rurik, the Rus' might have ruled an earlier hypothetical polity. Rurik's relative Oleg conquered Kiev in 882 and established the state of Kievan Rus', which was later ruled by Rurik's descendants.”11* “The Varangians left a number of rune stones in their native Sweden that tell of their journeys to what is today Russia, Ukraine, Greece, and Belarus. Most of these rune stones can be seen today, and are a telling piece of historical evidence. The Varangian runestones tell of many notable Varangian expeditions, and even account for the fates of individual warriors and travellers. ”13* Here is important to note that the Proto-Slavic language, based on the Glagolitic alphabet, is comprised of the ancient tamgi letters that are connected and resemble many of the ancient Nordic runes. The two writing systems can be argued arose from the same origins and then were separated at birth. “The Vikings allegedly had some enduring influence in Rus, as testified by loan words (these ones persist from Glagolitic script at Adriatic prior and out of any Vikings), such as yabeda "complaining person (rat)" (from æmbætti, embætti "office"), skot "cattle" (? from skattr "tax") and knout (from knútr, "a knotty wood"). Moreover three Nordic names of the first Varangian rulers also became popular among the later Rurikids and then among the East Slavic people in general: Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga) and Igor (Ingvar).”13* “Attracted by the riches of Constantinople, the Varangian Rus' initiated a number of Rus'-Byzantine Wars, some of which resulted in advantageous trade treaties. At least from the early 10th century many Varangians served as mercenaries in the Byzantine Army, comprising the elite Varangian Guard (the personal bodyguards of Byzantine Emperors). Eventually most of them, both in Byzantium and in Eastern Europe, were converted from paganism to Orthodox Christianity, culminating in the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988. Coinciding with the general decline of the Viking Age, the influx of Scandinavians to Rus' stopped, and Varangians were gradually assimilated by East Slavs by the late 11th century.”11* Kievan Rus: The Rurik Dynasty. “Rurik or Riurik (Old Church Slavonic: Рюрик, from Rørik, the Old East Norse form of the name Roderick; c. 830 – c. 879) was a Varangian chieftain who gained control of Ladoga in 862, built the Holmgard settlement near Novgorod, and founded the Rurik Dynasty, which ruled Kievan Rus (and later Grand Duchy of Moscow and Tsardom of Russia) until the 17th century. There is a debate over how Rurik came to control Ladoga and Novgorod. The only information about him is contained in the 12th century Primary Chronicle, which states that Chuds, Slavs, Merias, Veses, and Krivichs "...drove the Varangians back beyond the sea, refused to pay them tribute, and set out to govern themselves". Afterwards the tribes started fighting each other and decided to invite the Varangians, led by Rurik, to reestablish order. According to the Primary Chronicle, Rurik was one of the Rus, a Varangian tribe likened by the chronicler to Danes, Swedes, English, and Gotlanders. In the 20th century, archaeologists partly corroborated the chronicle's version of events, but mostly the excavations denied most of the chronicle's data about Rurik's arrival when it was apparent that the old settlement stretched to the mid-8th century and the excavated objects were mostly of Finnish-Ugric and Slavic origin, dated to the mid-8th century, which showed the settlement was not Scandinavian from the beginning. Rurik remained in power until his death in 879. His successors (the Rurik Dynasty), however, moved the capital to Kiev and founded the state of Kievan Rus', which persisted until the Mongol invasion in 1240. A number of extant princely families are patrilineally descended from Rurik, although the last Rurikid to rule Russia, Vasily IV, died in 1612. According to the entries in the Radzivil and Hypatian Chronicles under the years 862–864, Ryurik’s first residence was in Ladoga. It is only later that he moved his seat of power to Novgorod, a fort built not far from the source of the Volkhov River. The meaning of this place name in medieval Russian is "new fortification", while the current meaning ("new town") appeared only later.”12* “The descendants of Rurik were the ruling dynasty of Rus' (after 862), and of principalities created in the area formerly occupied by Kievan Rus', Galicia-Volhynia (after 1199), Chernigov, Vladimir-Suzdal, Grand Duchy of Moscow, and the founders of the Tsardom of Russia.”13* Ros' People: Academic study. “The Western account of the Norsemen was introduced to Russians by the German historian Gerhardt Friedrich Müller (1705–1783), who was invited to work in the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1748. At the beginning of an important speech in 1749, Müller declared that the "glorious Scandinavians conquered all the Russian lands with their victorious arms". This statement caused much anger in the hearts of his Russian audience, and earned him much animosity during his professional career in Russia. The remainder of the speech represented a lengthy list of Russian defeats by the Germans and Swedes, Müller was forced to curtail his lecture by shouts of anger from the audience. The scathing criticism from Lomonosov, Krasheninnikov, and other Russian historians led to Müller being forced to suspend his work on the issue until Lomonosov's death. Although the printed text of the original lecture was destroyed, Müller managed to rework it and had it reprinted as Origines Rossicae in 1768. There were, however, some Russian historians who accepted this historical account—including Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826) and his disciple Mikhail Pogodin (1800–75)—gave credit to the claims of the Primary Chronicle that the Varangians were invited by East Slavs to rule over them and bring order. The theory was not without political implications. According to Karamzin the Norse migration formed the basis and justification for Russian autocracy (as opposed to anarchy of the pre-Rurikid period), and Pogodin used the theory to advance his view that Russia was immune to social upheavals and revolutions, because the Russian state originated from a voluntary treaty between the people of Novgorod and Varangian rulers. Genetic studies in the "Family Tree DNA Rurikid Dynasty Project" support the Norse theory, pinpointing the origin of the Monomakhovich (the descendants of Vladimir II Monomakh) branch of Rurikid descendants' DNA consistent with the North Germanic inhabitants of Uppland, North of Stockholm in Sweden. Anti-Normanism. “The Invitation of the Varangians by Viktor Vasnetsov: Rurik and his brothers Sineus and Truvor arrive to the lands of Ilmen Slavs. Starting with Lomonosov (1711–1765), scholars from Eastern Europe have criticised the idea of Norse invaders. In the early 20th century, the traditional anti-Normanist doctrine (as articulated by Dmitry Ilovaisky) seemed to have lost currency, but in Stalinist Russia, the anti-Normanist arguments were revived and adopted in official Soviet historiography. Mikhail Artamonov ranks among those who attempted to reconcile both theories by hypothesizing that the Kievan state united the southern Rus' (of Slavic stock) and the northern Rus' (of Germanic stock) into a single nation. The staunchest advocate of the anti-Normanist views in the post-WWII period was Boris Rybakov, who argued that the cultural level of the Varangians could not have warranted an invitation from the culturally advanced Slavs. This conclusion leads Slavicists to deny the Primary Chronicle, which writes that the Varangian Rus' were invited by the native Slavs. Rybakov assumed, that Nestor, putative author of the Chronicle, was biased against the pro-Greek party of Vladimir Monomakh and supported the pro-Scandinavian party of the ruling prince Svyatopolk. He cites Nestor as a pro-Scandinavian manipulator and compares his account of Rurik's invitation with numerous similar stories found in folklore around the world. There have been quite a few alternative, non-Normanist origins for the word Rus, although none was endorsed in the Western academic mainstream: Three early emperors of the Urartian Empire at Caucasus from 8th to 6th century B.C. had their names Russa I, Russa II and Russa III, documented in cuneiform monuments. The medieval Ukrainian and Polish legend of three brothers, one named Rus, had also its predecessor in very similar legend from ancient Armenians with almost the same classical name (studies by D.J. Marr). Furthermore, Kiev was founded centuries before the Rus' rule. The ancient Sarmatian tribe of the Roxolani (from the Ossetic, ruhs ‘light’; R русые волосы /rusyje volosy/ "light-brown hair"; cf. Dahl's dictionary definition of Русь /rus/: Русь ж. в знач. мир, белсвет. Rus, fig. world, universe [белсвет: lit. "white world", "white light"]). From the Old Slavic name that meant "river-people" (tribes of fishermen and ploughmen who settled near the rivers Dnieper, Don, Dniester and Western Dvina and were known to navigate them). The rus root is preserved in the modern Slavic and Russian words "ruslo" (river-bed), "rusalka" (water sprite), etc. From one of two rivers in Ukraine (near Kiev and Pereyaslav), Ros and Rusna, whose names are derived from a postulated Slavic term for water, akin to rosa (dew).”13* An old name for the Volga river “Rosa” could be related to the Sanskrit 'rasa'—water, juice, essence. “A Slavic word rusy (refers only to hair color — from dark ash-blond to light-brown), cognate with ryzhy (red-haired) and English red. A postulated proto-Slavic word for bear, cognate with Greek arctos and Latin ursus. According to F. Donald Logan (The Vikings in History, cit. Montgomery, p. 24), "in 839, the Rus' were Swedes. In 1043, the Rus' were Slavs." The Scandinavians were assimilated and, unlike their brethren in England and in Normandy, they left little cultural heritage in Eastern Europe. This near absence of cultural traces (besides several names, as discussed above, and arguably the veche-system of Novgorod, comparable to thing in Scandinavia), is remarkable, and the Slavicists therefore call the Vikings "cultural chameleons", who came, ruled and then disappeared, leaving little cultural trace in Eastern Europe."13* “Meanwhile the southwestern territories of historical Rus' had been incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (whose full name was Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus' and Samogitia). The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as a whole, was dominated by Rus', as it was populated mainly by Rus', many of its nobles were of Rus' origin, and a descendant of the Old East Slavic language, Ruthenian, is the language of most surviving official documents prior to 1697 (excluding Polish).”17* Ros', Rus, Russia. “Originally, the name Rus’ (Русь, Rus) referred to the people, the region, and the medieval states (9th to 12th centuries) of the Kievan Rus' polities. In the Western culture it is better known as Ruthenia from the 11th century onwards. Its territories are today distributed among Belarus, Ukraine, and a part of the European section of the Russian Federation. One of the earliest written sources mentioning the people called Rus' (as Rhos) dates back to year 839 AD in a Royal Frankish chronicle Annales Bertiniani; the Frankish authorities identified them as a Germanic tribe called the Swedes. According to the Kievan Rus' Primary Chronicle, compiled in about 1113 AD, the Rus' were a group of Varangians, Norsemen who had relocated somewhere from the Baltic region (literally "from beyond the sea"), first to Northeastern Europe, then to the south where they created the medieval Kievan state. The modern name of Russia (Rossiya), which came into use in the 17th century, is derived from the Greek Ῥωσσία (transliterated Rossia, nowadays spelled Ρωσία and transliterated Rosia) which in turn derives from Ῥῶς (transliteration: Ros), an early Greek name for the people of Rus'. "Rus'" as a state had no proper name; by its inhabitants it was called "rusĭska zemlya".(русьска(я) земля) (with rusĭska alternatively spelled russka, rus'ka, and most often ruska), which might be translated as "Land of the Rus'".”17* Slavs. “The meaning of the term Slav depends upon the context in which it is used. This term refers to a culture (or cultures) living north of the River Danube, east of the River Elbe, and west of the River Vistula during the 530s CE. In addition, Slav is an identifier for the common ethnic group. Furthermore, Slav denotes any language with linguistic ties to the modern Slavic language family (which has no connection to a common culture or shared ethnicity). Despite the various notions of Slav, it is unclear whether any of these descriptions add to an accurate representation of that group's history, since historians, such as George Vernadsky, Florin Curta, and Michael Karpovich have called into question how, why, and to what degree the Slavs were cohesive as a society between the 6th and 9th centuries. When discussing the evidence that specialists use to construct a plausible history of the Slavs, the information tends to fall into three avenues of research: the archeological, the historiographic, and the linguistic.”18* However this article is focusing on the language. “The Slavic autonym is reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as Slověninъ. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest Словѣне Slověne to describe the Slavs. Other early Slavic attestations include Old East Slavic Словѣнѣ Slověně for "an East Slavic group near Novgorod." However, the earliest written references to the Slavs under this name are in other languages. In the 6th century AD Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, refers to the Σκλάβοι Sklaboi, Σκλαβηνοί Sklabēnoi, Σκλαυηνοί Sklauenoi, Σθλαβηνοί Sthlauenoi, or Σκλαβῖνοι Sklabinoi, while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the Sclaveni in Latin. The Slavic autonym Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo "word", originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)," i.e. people who understand each other, in contrast to the Slavic word denoting "foreign people" – němci, meaning "mumbling, murmuring people" (from Slavic němъ – "mumbling, mute"). The latter word may be the derivation of words to denote German/Germanic people in many later Slavic languages: e.g., Czech Němec, Slovak Nemec, Slovene Nemec, Belarusian, Russian and Bulgarian Немец, Serbian Немац, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Nijemac, Polish Niemiec, Ukrainian Німець, etc., but another theory states that rather these words are derived from the name of the Nemetes tribe, which is derived from the Celtic root nemeto-. The English word Slav is derived from the Middle English word sclave, which was borrowed from Medieval Latin sclavus or slavus, itself a borrowing and Byzantine Greek σκλάβος sklábos "slave," which was in turn apparently derived from a misunderstanding of the Slavic autonym (denoting a speaker of their own languages).”18* Earliest Accounts. “The relationship between the Slavs and a tribe called the Veneti east of the River Vistula in the Roman period is uncertain. The name may refer both to Balts and Slavs. The Slavs under name of the Antes and the Sclaveni make their first appearance in Byzantine records in the early 6th century. Byzantine historiographers under Justinian I (527–565), such as Procopius of Caesarea, Jordanes and Theophylact Simocatta describe tribes of these names emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the Black Sea, invading the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire. Procopius wrote in 545 that "the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called Spori in olden times." He describes their social structure and beliefs: For these nations, the Sclaveni and the Antae, are not ruled by one man, but they have lived from of old under a democracy, and consequently everything which involves their welfare, whether for good or for ill, is referred to the people. It is also true that in all other matters, practically speaking, these two barbarian peoples have had from ancient times the same institutions and customs. For they believe that one god, the maker of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him cattle and all other victims. He mentions that they were tall and hardy: "They live in pitiful hovels which they set up far apart from one another, but, as a general thing, every man is constantly changing his place of abode. When they enter battle, the majority of them go against their enemy on foot carrying little shields and javelins in their hands, but they never wear corselets. Indeed, some of them do not wear even a shirt or a cloak, but gathering their trews up as far as to their private parts they enter into battle with their opponents. And both the two peoples have also the same language, an utterly barbarous tongue. Nay further, they do not differ at all from one another in appearance. For they are all exceptionally tall and stalwart men, while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are all slightly ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts ...". Jordanes tells us that the Sclaveni had swamps and forests for their cities. Another 6th century source refers to them living among nearly impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes. Menander Protector mentions a Daurentius (577–579) that slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I. The Avars asked the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars, he however declined and is reported as saying: "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs ... so it shall always be for us". Scenarios of Ethnogenesis. The Globular Amphora culture stretches from the middle Dnieper to the Elbe in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE. It has been suggested as the locus of a Germano-Balto-Slavic continuum (compare Germanic substrate hypothesis), but the identification of its bearers as Indo-Europeans is uncertain. The area of this culture contains numerous tumuli – typical for IE originators. The Chernoles culture (8th to 3rd centuries BC, sometimes associated with the "Scythian farmers" of Herodotus) is "sometimes portrayed as either a state in the development of the Slavic languages or at least some form of late Indo-European ancestral to the evolution of the Slavic stock." The Milograd culture (700 BCE – 100 CE), centered roughly on present-day Belarus, north of the contemporaneous Chernoles culture, has also been proposed as ancestral to either Slavs or Balts. The ethnic composition of the bearers of the Przeworsk culture (2nd century BCE to the 4th century AD, associated with the Lugii) of central and southern Poland, northern Slovakia and Ukraine, including the Zarubintsy culture (2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, also connected with the Bastarnae tribe) and the Oksywie culture are other candidates. The area of southern Ukraine is known to have been inhabited by Scythian and Sarmatian tribes prior to the foundation of the Gothic kingdom. Early Slavic stone stelae found in the middle Dniester region are markedly different from the Scythian and Sarmatian stelae found in the Crimea. The Wielbark Culture displaced the eastern Oksywie part of the Przeworsk culture from the 1st century AD. While the Chernyakhov culture; 2nd to 5th centuries CE leads to the decline of the late Sarmatian culture in the 2nd to 4th centuries, the western part of the Przeworsk culture remains intact until the 4th century, and the Kiev culture flourishes during the same time, in the 2nd–5th century AD. This latter culture is recognized as the direct predecessor of the Prague-Korchak and Pen'kovo cultures (6th–7th centuries AD), the first archaeological cultures the bearers of which are indisputably identified as Slavic. Proto-Slavic is thus likely to have reached its final stage in the Kiev area; there is, however, substantial disagreement in the scientific community over the identity of the Kiev culture's predecessors, with some scholars tracing it from the Ruthenian Milograd culture, others from the "Ukrainian" Chernoles and Zarubintsy cultures and still others from the "Polish" Przeworsk culture. ”18* So, to figure it out where did all these Russkis came from we continue to follow the history of the Proto-Slavic language based on the Scytho-Sarmatian ancient hereditary secret magical sacred tamgi symbols that derived from even earlier civilizations, which would be the Linear B script19* of the Mycenaean Greece and before then the Linear A script20* of the Minoan civilization. I will expand about it later. Chapter II -- Will Continue. Written by Alexander Braun. Toronto, ON, Canada. 14 April, 2014. References: 0* - http://www.sino-platonic.org/ -- On the Origins of the Alphabet by Brian R. Pellar. 1* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic 2* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet 3* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic 4* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Church_Slavonic 5* - http://www.pinterest.com/pin/182747697353393420/ 6* - http://www.pinterest.com/pin/148759593915891038/ 7* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians 8* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythia 9* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxolani 10* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alans 11* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian 12* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik 13* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus'_people 14* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_Khaganate 15* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohen 16* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Priest_(Judaism) 17* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus_(name) 18* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs 19* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B 20* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A 21* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antes_people 22* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus Online version: http://theuniverse.name/wp/2014/04/the-origins-of-russian-language/