1.
Alexander Nevsky
–
Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky served as Prince of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Kiev and Grand Prince of Vladimir during some of the most difficult times in Kievan Rus history. He was canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church by Metropolite Macarius in 1547, as it was told by the prophet Isaiah, Thus sayeth the Lord, I appoint the princes because they are sacred and I direct them. He was taller than others and his voice reached the people as a trumpet, and his face was like the face of Joseph and his power was a part of the power of Samson and God gave him the wisdom of Solomon. This Prince Alexander, he used to defeat but was never defeated, born in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Alexander was the second son of Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and Rostislava Mstislavna, daughter of Kievan Rus Prince Mstislav Mstislavich the Bold. Alexander seemed to have no chance of claiming the throne of Vladimir, in 1236, however, he was summoned by the Novgorodians to become knyaz of Novgorod and, as their military leader, to defend their northwest lands from Swedish and German invaders. According to the Novgorod Chronicle written in the 14th cent, the Neva battle of 1240 saved Novgorod from a full-scale invasion from the West. Because of this battle, 19-year-old Alexander was given the sobriquet Nevsky and he would soon have to leave Novgorod because of this conflict. This supposed battle is not mentioned in any Swedish or other source, the supposed Swedish commander was called Spiridon which is an Orthodox, not Scandinavian name. Furthermore, Sweden was on the brink of war with Norway ever since the Norwegians infamous Värmland expedition in 1225, relations improved only after the Treaty of Lödöse in 1249, which was forged by the newly empowered Birger Jarl. Before the treaty, Norway remained an ally of the folkungs, giving them refuge and providing men, in this situation, it seems unlikely that Sweden could have been able to organize a major expedition against Novgorod. After Pskov had been invaded by the Germans and Estonians, the Novgorod authorities sent for Alexander, in spring of 1241 he returned from his exile, gathered an army, and drove out the invaders. Alexander and his men faced the Livonian heavy cavalry led by the bishop of Dorpat Hermann, Nevsky faced the enemy on the ice of the Lake Peipus and defeated the German knights and Estonian infantry during the Battle of the Ice on 5 April 1242. Alexander’s victory was a significant event in the history of the Russia, foot soldiers of Novgorod had surrounded and defeated an army of knights, mounted on horseback and clad in thick armour. Tactical military considerations aside, Alexanders victory was an important milestone in the development of Muscovite Russia, after the Livonian invasion, Nevsky continued to strengthen Russia’s Northwest. He sent his envoys to Norway and, as a result, Alexander led his army to Finland and successfully routed the Swedes, who had made another attempt to block the Baltic Sea from the Russians in 1256. Nevsky proved to be a cautious and far-sighted politician, historians seem to be unsure about Alexander’s behavior when it came to his relations with Mongols. He may have thought that Catholicism presented a more tangible threat to Russian national identity than paying a tribute to the Khan, Alexander tried to strengthen his authority at the expense of the boyars and at the same time suppress any anti-Mongol uprisings in the country. According to one interpretation, Alexander’s intentions were to protect scattered principalities of what would become Muscovy from repeated invasions by the Mongol army
2.
Golden Horde
–
The Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate and it is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi. After the death of Batu Khan in 1255, his dynasty flourished for a century, until 1359. The Hordes military power peaked during the reign of Uzbeg, who adopted Islam, the territory of the Golden Horde at its peak included most of Eastern Europe from the Urals to the Danube River, and extended east deep into Siberia. In the south, the Golden Hordes lands bordered on the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the khanate experienced violent internal political disorder beginning in 1359, before it briefly reunited under Tokhtamysh. However, soon after the 1396 invasion of Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire, at the start of the 15th century the Horde began to fall apart. By 1466 it was being referred to simply as the Great Horde, within its territories there emerged numerous predominantly Turkic-speaking khanates. These internal struggles allowed the northern state of Muscovy to rid itself of the Tatar Yoke at the Great stand on the Ugra river in 1480. The Crimean Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate, the last remnants of the Golden Horde, in any event, it was not until the 16th century that Russian chroniclers begin explicitly using the term Golden Horde to refer to this particular successor khanate of the Mongol Empire. The first known use of the term, in 1565, in the Russian chronicle History of Kazan, applied it to the Ulus of Batu and its left wing was referred to as the Blue Horde in Russian chronicles and as the White Horde in Timurid sources. Western scholars have tended to follow the Timurid sources nomenclature and call the left wing the White Horde, the khanate apparently used the term White Horde to refer to its right wing, which was situated in Batus home base in Sarai and controlled the ulus. However, the designations Golden Horde, Blue Horde, and White Horde have not been encountered in the sources of the Mongol period. At his death in 1227, Genghis Khan divided the Mongol Empire amongst his four sons as appanages, Jochi was the eldest, but he died six months before Genghis. In 1235, Batu with the great general Subedei began an invasion westwards, first conquering the Bashkirs, from there he conquered some of the southern steppes of present-day Ukraine in 1237, forcing many of the local Cumans to retreat westward. The military campaign against the Kypchaks and Cumans had started under Jochi, by 1239 a large portion of Cumans were driven out of the Crimea peninsula, and it became one of the appanages of the Mongol Empire. The remnants of the Crimean Cumans survived in the Crimean mountains, moving north, Batu began the Mongol invasion of Rus and for three years subjugated the principalities of former Kievan Rus, whilst his cousins Möngke, Kadan, and Güyük moved southwards into Alania. Using the migration of the Cumans as their casus belli, the Mongols continued west, raiding Poland and Hungary and culminating in the battles of Legnica, in 1241, however, Ögedei Khan died in the Mongolia homeland. Batu turned back from his siege of Vienna to take part in disputing the succession, the Mongol armies would never again travel so far west
3.
Vladimir, Russia
–
Vladimir is a city and the administrative center of Vladimir Oblast, Russia, located on the Klyazma River,200 kilometers to the east of Moscow. It is served by a railway and the M7 motorway, Vladimir was one of the medieval capitals of Russia, with significant buildings surviving from the 12th century. Two of its Russian Orthodox cathedrals, a monastery, and associated buildings have been designated as among the White Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal, in the past, the city was also known as Vladimir-on-Klyazma and Vladimir-Zalessky, to distinguish it from another Vladimir in Volhynia. Traditionally, the date of Vladimir has been acknowledged as 1108. This view attributes the founding of the city, and its name, to Vladimir Monomakh and it is named there as Volodymyr. On the 17th centuries maps, it was identified as Wolodimer, being established long after the city of Volodymyr in Volhynia, initially it was named Vladimir-on-Klyazma. In 1958, the 850th anniversary of the city foundation was celebrated, in the 1990s, a new opinion developed that the city is older than this. The neighboring town of Suzdal, for instance, was mentioned in 1024 and its 12th-century inhabitants alluded to Vladimir as a young town and treated its rulers with arrogance. In the words of a chronicle, they said that the people of Vladimir were their kholops. In the seniority conflicts of the 12th and early 13th centuries, Vladimir was repeatedly described as a young town compared to Suzdal, nevertheless, the Charter of Vladimir, the basic law of the city passed in 2005, explicitly mentions 990 as the date of the citys foundation. The citys most historically significant events occurred after the turn of the 12th century, under Dolgorukys son, Andrey Bogolyubsky, the city became the center of the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality. It had a Golden Age, which lasted until the Mongol invasion of Rus in 1237, during this time, Vladimir enjoyed immense growth and prosperity. Andrey oversaw the building of the citys Golden Gates and the Dormition Cathedral, in 1164, Andrey attempted to establish a new metropolitanate in Vladimir, separate from that of Kiev. He was rebuffed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, scores of Russian, German, and Georgian masons worked on Vladimirs white stone cathedrals, monastery, towers, and palaces. Unlike any other buildings, their exterior was elaborately carved with high relief stone sculptures. Only three of these edifices stand today, the Dormition Cathedral, the Cathedral of Saint Demetrius, and they are included among the White Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. During Andreys reign, a palace in Bogolyubovo was built, as well as the world-famous Church of the Intercession on the Nerl. Andrey was assassinated at his palace at Bogolyubovo in 1175, Vladimir was besieged by the Mongol-Tatars of the Golden Horde under Batu Khan
4.
Old East Slavic
–
Old East Slavic, Old Ruthenian, Old Rusian was a language used in the 10th–15th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus and states which evolved after the collapse of Kievan Rus. Dialects of it were spoken, though not exclusively, in the area occupied by Belarus, central and northern Ukraine. Linguists from each of the three East Slavic countries tend to treat Old East Slavic as the predecessor of their own language. The Russian drevnerusskij jazyk means Old Rus’ian as well, Rusian is similarly used by some western scholars such as Horace Lunt. The language was a descendant of the Proto-Slavic language and faithfully retained many of its features, a striking innovation in the evolution of this language was the development of so-called pleophony, which came to differentiate the newly evolving East Slavic from other Slavic dialects. For instance, Common Slavic *gordъ settlement, town was reflected as OESl. gorodъ, Common Slavic *melko milk > OESl. moloko, other Slavic dialects are differed by resolving the closed-syllable clusters *eRC and *aRC as liquid metathesis, or by no change at all. Since extant written records of the language are sparse, it is difficult to assess the level of its unity, in consideration of the number of tribes and clans that constituted Kievan Rus, it is probable that there were many dialects of Old East Slavonic. Nonetheless, by 1150 it had more unity than any other branch of Slavic, with time, it evolved into several more diversified forms, which were the predecessors of the modern Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian languages. The Ukrainian branch split away first, between 1200 and 1500, whereas Russian later separated from Belarusian by 1700, each of these languages preserves much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary. The Old Church Slavonic language was introduced, documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing, although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments, the spelling of the original excerpt has been partly modernized. The translations are best attempts at being literal, not literary,1110, from the Laurentian Codex,1377, Early language, fall of the yers in progress or arguably complete. South Slavic features include времѧньнъıх bygone, modern R прошлых, modern Ukr минулих, correct use of perfect and aorist, єсть пошла is/has come, нача began Note the style of punctuation. 1200, from the Pskov manuscript, fifteenth cent, illustrates the sung epics, with typical use of metaphor and simile. The Old East Slavic language developed a certain literature of its own, though much of it was influenced as regards style, the earliest dated specimen of Old East Slavic must be considered the written Slovo o zakone i blagodati, by Hilarion, metropolitan of Kiev. In this work there is a panegyric on Prince Vladimir of Kiev and this subtle and graceful oration admirably conforms to the precepts of the Byzantine eloquence. It is rivalled by another panegyric on Vladimir, written a decade later by Yakov the Monk, from the writings of Theodosius we see that many pagan habits were still in vogue among the people
5.
Russian Orthodox Church
–
The Russian Orthodox Church, alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches, in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox patriarchates. The Primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and it also exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and the Orthodox Christians resident in the Peoples Republic of China. The ROC branches in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Ukraine since the 1990s enjoy various degrees of self-government, in Ukraine, ROC has tensions with schismatic groups supported by the current government, while it enjoys the position of numerically dominant religious organisation. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, headquartered in New York, New York, the two Churches reconciled on May 17,2007, the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the location of Kiev. The spot where he erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrews Cathedral. By the end of the first millennium AD, eastern Slavic lands started to come under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, by the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Byzantine Greek priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus′ to convert to Christianity and her grandson, Vladimir of Kiev, made Rus officially a Christian state. The Kievan church was a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical patriarch appointed the metropolitan, who usually was a Greek. The Metropolitans residence was located in Kiev itself, the capital of the medieval Rus state. Following the tribulations of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival, despite the politically motivated murders of Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver, the Mongols were generally tolerant and even granted tax exemption to the Church. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, the Trinity monastery founded by Sergius of Radonezh became the setting for the flourishing of spiritual art, exemplified by the work of Andrey Rublev, among others. The followers of Sergius founded four hundred monasteries, thus extending the geographical extent of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441, Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia without the consent from Constantinople. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople
6.
Grand Duke of Vladimir
–
The Grand Duke of Vladimir was a prince during the Kievan Rus and after its collapse. He ruled territory approximately bounded by the Volga, Oka and Northern Dvina rivers and its capital was Vladimir during 1157-1238. Vladimir city was founded by a Kievan prince Vladimir Monomakh in 1108 and was destroyed by a Mongol invasion in 1238, the second important city was Suzdal, also destroyed by Mongols. The Grand Duke Yuri Dolgorukii, the son of Vladimir Monomakh. Vladimir-Suzdal began the consolidation of Russian lands, completed by Muscovy. Vladimir was founded in the 12th century, the principality was overrun by the Mongols under Batu Khan in 1242. He and his successors asserted suzerainty over it until 1328, during this period, Vladimir became the chief town of the Russian settlements in the basin of the Oka and it clashed with the new principality of Moscow, to which it finally succumbed in 1328. It began to decay in the 14th century, traditionally, Vladimir-Suzdal is perceived as a cradle of the Great Russian language and nationality and gradually evolved into the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Since 1332 the title of the Grand Princes of Vladimir passed to the Grand Dukes of Moscow
7.
Grand Duchy of Moscow
–
The Grand Duchy of Moscow, or Grand Principality of Moscow, was a late medieval Rus principality centered on Moscow and the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia. The state originated with Daniel I, who inherited Moscow in 1283, eclipsing and it later annexed the Novgorod Republic in 1478 and the Grand Duchy of Tver in 1485. After the Mongol invasion of Rus, Muscovy was a vassal to the Mongol ruled Golden Horde until 1480. By his marriage to the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, he established Muscovy as the state of the Roman Empire. Ivans successor Vasili III also enjoyed success, gaining Smolensk from Lithuania in 1512. Vasilis son Ivan IV was an infant at his fathers death in 1533 and he was crowned in 1547, assuming the title of tsar together with the proclamation of Tsardom of Russia. As with many states the country had no particular official name. The Duke of Moscow or the Sovereign of Moscow were common short titles, in rivalry with other duchies Moscow dukes also designated themselves as the Grand Dukes, claiming a higher position in the hierarchy of Russian dukes. During the territorial growth and later acquisitions, the title became rather lengthy. Since the 14th century various Moscow dukes added of all Rus to their titles, after the title of Russian metropolitans, Dmitry Shemyaka was the first Moscow duke who minted coins with the title the Sovereign of all Rus. Under the Polish-Lithuanian influence the country began to be called Muscovy in Western Europe, the first appearances of the term were in an Italian document of 1500. Initially Moscovia was the Latinized name of the city of Moscow itself, not of the state, later it acquired its meaning and has been used alongside of the older name. The term Muscovy persisted in the West until the beginning of the 18th century and is used in historical contexts. When the Mongols invaded the lands of Kievan Rus in the 13th century, the first ruler of the principality of Moscow, Daniel I, was the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky of Vladimir-Suzdal. He started to expand his principality by seizing Kolomna and securing the bequest of Pereslavl-Zalessky to his family, daniels son Yuriy controlled the entire basin of the Moskva River and expanded westward by conquering Mozhaisk. He then forged an alliance with the overlord of the Rus principalities, Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde, the Khan allowed Yuriy to claim the title of Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal, a position which allowed him to interfere in the affairs of the Novgorod Republic to the north-west. Yuriys successor, Ivan I, managed to retain the title of Grand Duke by cooperating closely with the Mongols and by collecting tribute and taxes from other Rus principalities on their behalf. This relationship enabled Ivan to gain regional ascendancy, particularly over Moscows chief rival, the city of Tver
8.
History of Russia
–
The History of Russia begins with that of the Eastern Slavs. The traditional beginning of Russian history is 862 A. D. Kievan Rus, the state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning with the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus ultimately disintegrated as a state because of the Mongol invasion of Rus in 1237–1240, after the 13th century, Moscow became a cultural center. By the 18th century, the Tsardom of Russia had become the huge Russian Empire, expansion in the western direction sharpened Russias awareness of its separation from much of the rest of Europe and shattered the isolation in which the initial stages of expansion had occurred. Successive regimes of the 19th century responded to such pressures with a combination of halfhearted reform, peasant revolts were common, and all were fiercely suppressed. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, but the peasant fared poorly, from its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves, beginning in March 1918. The Russian Federation began in January 1992 as the successor to the USSR. Russia retained its nuclear arsenal but lost its superpower status, Russias treatment of Ukraine led to severe economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. In 2006,1. 5-million-year-old Oldowan flint tools were discovered in the Dagestan Akusha region of the north Caucasus, arctic Russia was reached by 40,000 years ago. During the prehistoric eras the vast steppes of Southern Russia were home to tribes of nomadic pastoralists, in classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as Scythia. Remnants of these long gone steppe cultures were discovered in the course of the 20th century in places as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim. In the latter part of the 8th century BCE, Greek merchants brought classical civilization to the trade emporiums in Tanais, gelonus was described by Herodotos as a huge earth- and wood-fortified grad inhabited around 500 BCE by Heloni and Budini. At about the 2nd century CE Goths migrated to the Black Sea, and in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, a Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas through to the 8th century. Noted for their laws, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism, the Khazars were the commercial link between the Baltic and the Muslim Abbasid empire centered in Baghdad. They were important allies of the Byzantine Empire, and waged a series of wars against the Arab Caliphates. In the 8th century, the Khazars embraced Judaism, some of the ancestors of the modern Russians were the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pripet Marshes. The Early East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia in two waves, one moving from Kiev towards present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk towards Novgorod, scandinavian Norsemen, known as Vikings in Western Europe and Varangians in the East, combined piracy and trade throughout Northern Europe. In the mid-9th century, they began to venture along the waterways from the eastern Baltic to the Black, thus, the first East Slavic state, Rus, emerged in the 9th century along the Dnieper River valley
9.
Yamna culture
–
The Yamna culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester and Ural rivers, dating to 3500–2300 BC. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-European language, Yamna and Yamnaya are borrowed from Ukrainian, Ямна культура and Russian, Ямная культура respectively, and both mean pit-grave. The root in both cases is яма meaning pit, in these groups, there are present several aspects of the Yamna culture. Studies have also established that these populations derived large parts of their ancestry from the steppes, the Yamna culture originated in the Don-Volga area, and is dated 3300–2500 BC. It was preceded by the middle Volga-based Khvalynsk culture and the Don-based Repin culture, the early Yamnaya horizon spread quickly across the Pontic-Caspian steppes between ca.3400 and 3200 BC. According to Anthony, the spread of the Yamnaya horizon was the expression of the spread of late Proto-Indo-European across the Pontic-Caspian steppes. In its western range, it was succeeded by the Catacomb culture, in the east and these two cultures were followed by the Srubna culture. According to Jones et al. and Haak et al, each of those two populations contributed about half the Yamnaya DNA. Remains of the Eastern European hunter-gatherers have been found in Mesolithic or early Neolithic sites in Karelia and Samara Oblast, Russia, three such hunter-gathering individuals of the male sex have had their DNA results published. Each was found to belong to a different Y-DNA haplogroup, R1a, R1b, the Near East population were most likely hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus c. q. Iran Chalcolithic related people with a CHG-component, who descended from the early neolithic Zagros Farmers. Jones et al. analyzed genomes from males from western Georgia, in the Caucasus, from the Late Upper Palaeolithic and these two males carried Y-DNA haplogroup, J* and J2a. Their genomes showed that a mixture of the Caucasians with Middle Eastern took place up to 25,000 years ago. A population related to the people of the Iran Chalcolithic contributed ~43% of the ancestry of early Bronze Age populations of the steppe. According to Lazaridis et al. these Iranian Chalcolithic people were a mixture of the Neolithic people of western Iran, the Levant, the Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas. Significantly, animal grave offerings were made, an associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans. The culture was nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers. Characteristic for the culture are the inhumations in pit graves under kurgans, the dead bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre
10.
Corded Ware culture
–
Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the Rhine on the west to the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The Corded Ware was genetically related to the Yamnaya culture. The Corded Ware culture may have disseminated the Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic Indo-European languages, the Corded Ware Culture also shows genetic affinity with the later Sintashta culture, where the proto-Indo-Iranian language originated. The term Corded Ware culture was first introduced by the German archaeologist Friedrich Klopfleisch in 1883 and he named it after cord-like impressions or ornamentation characteristic of its pottery. The term Single Grave culture comes from its burial custom, which consisted of inhumation under tumuli in a position with various artifacts. Battle Axe culture, or Boat Axe culture, is named from its characteristic grave offering to males, at the same time, they had several shared elements that are characteristic of all Corded Ware groups, such as their burial practices, pottery with cord decoration and unique stone-axes. The contemporary Beaker culture overlapped with the extremity of this culture, west of the Elbe. The origins and dispersal of Corded Ware culture was for a time one of the pivotal unresolved issues of the Indo-European Urheimat problem. Its wide area of distribution indicates rapid expansion at the time of the dispersal of Indo-European languages. Some archaeologists believed it sprang from central Europe while others saw an influence from nomadic societies of the steppes. In favour of the first view was the fact that Corded Ware coincides considerably with the earlier north-central European Funnelbeaker culture, according to Gimbutas, the Corded Ware culture was preceded by the Globular Amphora culture, which she regarded to be an Indo-European culture. The Globular Amphora culture stretched from central Europe to the Baltic sea, however, in other regions Corded Ware appears to herald a new culture and physical type. The degree to which cultural change generally represents immigration were matter of debate, according to controversial radiocarbon dates, Corded Ware ceramic forms in single graves develop earlier in the area that is now Poland than in western and southern Central Europe. The earliest radiocarbon dates for Corded Ware indeed come from Kujawy and Lesser Poland in central and southern Poland, whereas in the area of the present Baltic states and East Prussia, it is seen as an intrusive successor to the southwestern portion of the Narva culture. However, today Corded Ware is now seen as intrusive, though not necessarily aggressively so. A Genetic study conducted by Haak et al, about 75% of the DNA of late Neolithic Corded Ware skeletons found in Germany was a precise match to DNA from individuals of the Yamnaya culture. Haak et al. also note that their results suggest that haplogroups R1b and R1a spread into Europe from the East after 3,000 BCE.5 In terms of phenotypes, Wilde et al. and Haak et al. Autosomal DNA tests also indicate that the Yamnaya migration from the steppes introduced a component of ancestry referred to as Ancient North Eurasian admixture into Europe
.png)
Russia portal
