Slavs: European ethno-linguistic group of people

Most archaeologists associate the Roman-period Proto-Slavs with the Kiev culture in the middle and upper Dnieper basin. Early remarks about Slavic populations can be found in the written sources of East Roman and Byzantine authors.

The Slavs are one of the great families of Europe; the Germans, Roams and Celts being the other three.

Anthropologically, the Slavs are characterized by a most rounded head, good cranial capacity, medium stature and good physical development. On complexion they range from brunette to blonde, the former predominating among the southern Slavs, while blondes are more numerous among the northern parts of the stock.

According to the 6th century AD Procopius of Caesarea, he describes 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.

In the early Slavs, it was much influenced by the events on the early stage of the Great Migration, when the Huns attacked the Goths in 375 CE. In the Dnieper area, from the mid-5th century CE on, the lands of the Goths were gradually taken by the populations of early Slavic cultures, who moved there from the upper Dnieper region.

In the seventh century, they arrived in the north of the Balkan peninsula, thus entered the zone of Byzantium's cultural, political and economic influence. At the same time, groups of western Slavs settled along the margins of the Merovingian and Lombard kingdoms.

In 863 AD, the Kingdom of Great Moravia became the first Slav state to accept the Christianity of Byzantium as its official religion. As early as 1833, languages were recognized as Indo-European.
Slavs: European ethno-linguistic group of people

European Union

The immediate origins of European unification lie in the economic and political problems confronting European countries, notably France and Germany.

In 1957 the Treaty of Rome was signed establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) between six countries: Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

The EEC was setup to integrate further the economies of the European Coal and Steel Community members beyond simply coal and steel. It was very ambitious plan which looked to create a common market in which there would be free movement of capital, goods, people and services.

In 1973, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Denmark joined the EEC.

In 1992, the 12 foreign affairs ministers signed the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union (EU), including the four areas of labor, capital, goods and services which came into force in November 1993.

Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995.
European Union

Ancient Europe

During lower Palaeolithic Age: 1.7 million BC - 200,000 BC, the peopling of Europe occurs, apparently in waves by separate hominid species; first Homo ergaster, around 1.7 million BC; then Homo heidelbergensis.

The earliest modern human found in Europe to date is 36,300 BC. The urge migratory herds in the tundra regions of southern Europe provide an abundant food supply that can be exploited with a relatively simple social organisation.

Sheep, goats, cattle and pigs are introduced to the region, followed by cereals by the end of the sixth millennium.

Post-glacial conditions, circa 10,00 - 6,000 BC reintroduced heavily forested landscape to middle and northern Europe largely replacing the grassland, steep and tundra and their big, herd herbivores with thick forest vegetation and the mainly small or scattered game associated with these environments.

Gathering, hunting and fishing continued as vigorously as ever both beyond the territories of the peasant settlers and indeed as a significant subcultural activity within the agricultural communities.

At the end of iron age, the peoples of northern Europe were increasingly connected to those of the Mediterranean world, who began to record there knowledge and impressions of the barbarians with whom they are trading and fighting. The Celts, Gauls and Germans did not use writing - their history was oral.

Since the beginning of the Christian era introduction to Europe had introduced rice, sorghum, sugarcane, cotton and several citrus fruits; amongst animals, the water buffalo and the silkworm had found an economic niche in southern Europe.
Ancient Europe

Greek Dark Ages

The term the Greek Dark Ages refers to the period from about 1200 to 750 BC beginning with the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and lasting to what is called the Archaic Period.

During 1150 – 900 BC, the Dorians moved into the Greek Peninsula in a series of destructive wavers and wiped out the Mycenaean ruling classes together with their entire civilization.

The era is called ‘dark’ because of its grimness – archeological evidence creates a picture of widespread destruction, depopulation and impoverishment.

The literate and artistic culture of the Mycenaeans seems to have disappeared and the population shifted from cosmopolitan palace sites into small, isolated villages.

Shortly after 850 BC the face of Greece began to change. Greeks from the island of Euboea entered into cooperative ventures with Phoenicians, which become rather elaborate by 800 BC.

By 800 BC a new urban society was formed, and during 800-600 BC, more than 100 colonies were founded, from the Black Sea, virtually a Greek lake to Marseille.
Greek Dark Ages

Merovingian dynasty

In the centuries of Byzantine decline, two Frankish dynasties, the Merovingians and the Carolingians, tapped the dynamic energy on the war band to form powerful new armies.

The Merovingian kings descended from the Sicambrian Franks, a Judaeo-Teuton people who by this time had settled large parts of France and Germany.

From the late fourth century a Frank, Clovis (r.c. 481-511) of the Merovingian dynasty, established a dominion which, under his successors, beyond Roman Gaul into Germany and north Italy.

Creators of the most effective and longest lasting successor state to emerge on the post-Roman world, the Merovingians rose to prominence under Clovis, who first forged various Frankish people into a unified kingdom.

He pushed forward to defeat, in 486, Syagrius king of Soissons, possibly the last commander of an outpost of the Roman Empire, before going on to crush the Burgundians and the Visigoths in the south.

Clovis combined great military success with skillful marriage alliances to build a dynasty that lasted two centuries, far longer than any earlier dynasty in the region.

For most of the two centuries after the death of Clovis, the Merovingians kings were among the most powerful and important of the rulers who came to power in Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Although the Merovingian dynasty’s political system was in clear decline by the seventh century, Frankish control was secured by the emergence of a Carolingian dynasty.
Merovingian dynasty

The origin of Celts people

According to archeological evidence, around the year 1000 BC the Tumulus culture (1550-1250 BC) and Urnfield culture (1200 BC) joined in the Danube Basin, giving rise to strong groupings of communities in that whole region.

A particular powerful amalgam soon came to the fore in the western part of the region, speaking the Indo-European dialect which may be term ‘proto-Celtic’.

Discovery by Johann George Ramsauer in Hallstatt, Austria confirmed that Celts came to existence around 800 BC. The Hallstatt cemetery is the first solid evidence of a culture that eventually came to be known as Celtic.

That these original Celts were a warlike people is evidenced by the number of weapons, particularly swords, which they buried with their dead; and this probably accounts for their name also.

The earliest written accounts of the Celts come mostly from non-Celts like the Greeks and Romans, who often saw Celts as the enemy.

The first mention of the Celts was in the classical world by a man name Herodotus. He referred to the race as ‘Keltoi’ which means mysterious people.

The basic meaning of the term Celts appears to have been ‘warrior’ and was probably used by themselves as a laudatory term reflecting their success in overcoming other peoples and spreading their power.

These people knew about iron-smelting and the use of other metal. Iron tools and weapons rendered the Celts superior to their neighbors and were doubtless the basis of their sudden eruption throughout Europe at the beginning of the first millennium BC.

The horsemanship was a major part of the Celt’s identity. As such it stands to reason why they were always on the go.

The Celts in the La Tene period were definitely of an age of aggressive expansion. It was the period of their greatest military might. The Celts had a great cultural revolution circa 350 BC.

In 387 BC, Celtic warriors attacked Rome, sacking the city and leaving only when the Romans paid them a hefty ransom.

The Celtic nation stretched basically through the whole of Western Europe and was bordered by the Rhine and the Italian Alps in the East.
The origin of Celts people