The Dawn of Slavic; An Introduction to Slavic Philology

1.1. In search of roots. Human collectives have always strived to discover their origins. Held fast by linguistic, tribal, or religious bonds, societies are wont to test the strength of their union by examining its age and provenience. In this quest for a genealogy the Slavs find themselves in a less fortunate position than many other members of the Indo-European family of languages. Speakers of Greek and the Romance languages have the satisfaction of being heir to the glorious traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. The Celtic and Germanic peoples know much about their past from what was written about them by classical authors and from their own tales and legends. The Slavs, by contrast, did not enter the records of history until the sixth century A.D. Their early fates are veiled by the silence of their neighbors, the muteness of their own oral tradition, and the ambiguity of such nonverbal sources of information as archaeology, anthropology, or paleobotany.

Yet, the darkness of prehistory has not inhibited the Slavs in their search for roots. Scholars have fanned the few flickers of evidence hoping to illumine the past and reveal some heretofore hidden contours and shapes. How useful a search of this kind may be is best illustrated by the ingenious investigations of the Polish botanist Jzef Rostafinski. Having noticed that Slavic lacked a native term for beech (Fagus silvatica) and for several other plants, Rostafinski assumed that there was a correlation between the easterly extension of the beech and the western limit of prehistoric Slavic settlements and concluded that the original homeland of the Slavs was located in the basin of the upper and middle Dnieper.

Such insights, however, are few and far between. All too often the absence of concrete evidence and reliable source material gave scholars free rein to engage in fanciful speculation, unrestrained by considerations of fact and probability. As a result, theories have been proposed in which the line between ascertainable reality and more or less imaginative conjecture has been blurred or is altogether absent.

1.2. The autochthonous theory. One such theory would have the prehistoric Slavs dwell continuously upon the shores of the Vistula and Oder rivers and the Baltic Sea, a territory roughly coextensive with that of today's Poland, since the middle of the second millennium B.C. Championed mainly by Polish scholars and dubbed, therefore, the autochthonous theory, it was summarized by the Czech historian of early Slavdom Father Francis Dvornik: "The modern Polish school of archaeologists ... came boldly forward with the theory that the primitive habitat of the Slavs should be located in the lands between the Elbe, Oder, Vistula and Bug rivers and that the so-called 'Lusatian culture' ... was a product of the primitive Slavs" (Dvornik 1956:9).

Could, however, the rich finds of the so-called Lusatian culture, which thrived from about 1300 to 400 B.C. in the basins of the Vistula, the Oder, and the upper Elbe, be shown to have been Slavic in origin' While harboring some doubts on that score, Dvornik finds the autochthonous hypothesis persuasive: "Most of the prehistoric maps show a vacuum in the lands where the Lusatian culture flourished. On several grounds it would seem reasonable to fill this vacuum with the Slavs" (Dvornik 1956:10). Reasoning ex vacuo, as one might call Dvornik's attempt to assign an area to the Slavs chiefly because no one else is claiming it, is used also when a name or a term comes down to us in the form of a label separated from its referent. A striking instance of such an approach is the persistent attempt to prove that the names of the Neuri and the Budini, two tribes which according to the Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century B.C.) lived somewhere on the territory of today's Ukraine or Belarus, are Slavic in origin. We know absolutely nothing of the ethnic affiliation of these tribes-their names have no clear etymology and could be associated with any branch of Indo-European-yet both or either of them have been considered Slavic (Lowmiannski 1967: 367-369; Golab 1991:284-287) in an eager effort to establish some lineage for the historical Slavs who live in that area.

In addition to claiming a connection between the Lusatian culture and the Slavs, the adherents of the autochthonous theory rest their case on several other assumptions. They include the claims that the ancient tribe of the Veneti, who lived along the Vistula and the Baltic, was linguistically Slavic and that Slavic etymologies can be postulated for the names of the river Vistula, which was well known in antiquity, and the town of Kalisz, which was mentioned by Ptolemy (ca. A.D. 100-178). Let us try to ascertain whether these assumptions can stand up to critical scrutiny.

1.3. Material culture and language. As far as the possibility of identifying the bearers of the Lusatian culture with the Slavs, one must remember that there is no necessary organic connection between material culture and language. Independent historical evidence for the purported connection between the Slavic language and the Lusatian culture is totally missing. Besides, the contrast between the finely shaped and ornamented ceramics of the Lusatian era and the unrefined burial jars of the demonstrably Slavic Prague-period pottery (sixth-seventh centuries) is so striking as to render such a connection implausible. Slavic artifacts are also cruder than those of the post-Lusatian cultures of the so-called Roman era, demonstrating the existence of a considerable cultural lag of the Slavs vis--vis their Central European predecessors (Godlowski 1979:13, 20-21).

1.4. Were the Veneti Slavic' From various ancient sources we know of three different tribes bearing the name of the Veneti or Venedi. A large tribe of the Veneti, first mentioned by Herodotus, lived along the northern shores of the Adriatic Sea. A few surviving place names and brief inscriptions suggest that the Adriatic Veneti spoke an Italic dialect. The memory of the Italic Veneti survives in the names of the province Venetia and the city of Venice. There was also a Celtic tribe of the Veneti living in the Morbihan district of Brittany. According to Caesar, the Veneti of Brittany excelled "in the theory and practice of navigation." Today several French place names, such as Vannes or Vende, remind us of this tribe's existence. Finally, a tribe of the Veneti was mentioned by Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) who located it along the Vistula. Tacitus (ca. A.D. 55-120) identified the Vistula Veneti as the eastern neighbors of Germania, while Ptolemy placed them along the southern shores of the Venedic Bay (Ouenediks klpos), that is, of the Baltic Sea. The Veneti are also mentioned twice on a Roman road map known as the Tabula Peutingeriana whose protograph may go back to the third or fourth century A.D.

Since the Vistula/Baltic Veneti left no written records, their linguistic affiliation can only be gleaned indirectly. Tacitus was alone among the ancient authors to tackle the problem of their ethnic origin. After hesitating whether to classify them as Germanic or Sarmatian, he finally decided in favor of the former on the basis of their cultural similarity with the Germanic peoples. Yet, in most investigations dealing with Slavic prehistory, the Baltic Veneti are not considered Germanic, as Tacitus would have it, or Illyrian, like their namesakes on the Adriatic, or Celtic, like the Morbihan Veneti. Rather, they are generally regarded as Slavic. To justify such an identification, which if correct would directly confirm the autochthonous theory, three circumstances are mentioned. It is noted, in the first place, that the Veneti of the first and second centuries A.D. and the historic Slavs of the sixth century inhabited the same area. Second, the name of the Veneti has survived in German as Wenden or Winden, where it designates the Slavs who live in the closest proximity of Germany. And, last, the sixth-century Gothic historian Jordanes (1.10) applied the terms Veneti and Slavs to the same ethnic community (Niederle 1923:32-33).

These arguments, however, are not decisive. There is no reason to doubt that by the sixth century the Slavs were on the Vistula (though it is quite unlikely that they had by then reached the Baltic). This does not mean, however, that they had to be there in the time of Tacitus. During the intervening four hundred years Europe underwent its most momentous transformations, as the fall of Rome and the Hunnic invasions started the ethnic whirligig known as the Great Migrations. To assume a lack of change during the period of such profound ethnic perturbations is to strain the laws of historical probability.

Nor can the German practice of designating their Slavic neighbors by the names Wenden or Winden help us in solving the question of the ethnic character of the Veneti. Transfers of names from one ethnic group to another have frequently occurred in history and signify no more than some kind of spatial and temporal contiguity between the two communities. The German usage may merely indicate that some non-Germanic Veneti lived in the area occupied later by the West Slavs and that the Germans transferred the name of the former to the latter. In an analogous way the Lithuanians transferred the name Gudai (Goths) to the East Slavs or the Germans referred to the Czechs as the Bhmer, which was the name of the Celtic tribe of the Boii who lived in Bohemia before the Czechs. There is no reason, however, to assume that the transfer of the name Veneti to the Slavs occurred much before the sixth century.

There is also no compelling evidence to justify the claim that Jordanes' identification of the Veneti with the Slavs reflects an ancient situation. The Slavicization of the Veneti is possible in the sixth century but most improbable in the first. To take an analogous example, the Franks in eighth-century France were already fully Romanized and could be identified with the native Gallo-Roman population. It would be absurd, however, to extend such an identification to the fifth-century Germanic Franks, who were then just embarking upon their conquest of Gaul.

Quite aside from these considerations, the very fact that the ancient sources locate the Veneti on the Baltic provides the most persuasive argument against their identification with the Slavs. The point is that Slavic vocabulary does not contain any indication that the early Slavs were exposed to the sea. Proto-Slavic had no maritime terminology whatsoever, be it in the domain of seafaring, sea fishing, boat building, or sea trade. Especially striking is the absence of a Proto-Slavic word for amber, the most important item of export from the shores of the Baltic to the Mediterranean. In view of this, the very fact that Ptolemy refers to the Baltic as the Venedic Bay appears to rule out a possible identification of the Veneti of his times with the Slavs.

It is interesting to recall in this connection a story that many scholars, from afark (1862:133-138) on, have adduced in support of the identification of the Veneti with the Slavs. The story originated with Cornelius Nepos, the Roman historian of the first century B.C., and was repeated after him by Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder: "Cornelius Nepos ... reports the testimony of Q. Metellus Celer who ... said that when he was a proconsul in Gaul, the king of the Boti presented him with several Indians [Indos] and that when he inquired whence they had arrived in this land, he found out that a violent storm snatched them away from the Indian sea [ex Indicis aequoribus] and that, after traversing [the expanse] that lay in between, they were thrown out on the shores of Germany."

Could one claim that the Indi of this account were Slavs' In suggesting that this indeed could have been the case, afark had to accept a number of hypotheses: that Nepos' story was not fictitious; that a sea voyage from India (or some other place referred to as India) to Western Europe was not feasible in or before the first century B.C.; that Indi and Indicus are to be read as Vindi and Vindicus; that the Indi (now identified as the Vindi) were in fact the Venedi < Veneti; that the Indi (now identified as the Veneti) arrived on the shores of Germany from the Baltic rather than from some other sea, like the Adriatic; that the watery expanse [aequora] which the luckless sailors had to traverse was merely the Kattegat and the Skagerrak; that the Indi (= Vindi = Veneti) were Slavs; and that the Slavs were capable of making long sea voyages in or before the first century B.C. The degree of probability of most of these assumptions is fairly low, and afark was duly cautious in advancing his hypothesis ("we surmise that should our interpretation of this matter be correct, it would throw more light on [Slavic] antiquities," 133). afark followers, however, show no hesitation in considering his surmise a proven fact.

Another piece of evidence countering the claim that the Veneti of the times preceding the Great Migrations were Slavic is furnished by Henry of Livonia (Henricus de Lettis), who in his Latin chronicle, dating from the very beginning of the thirteenth century, described a clearly non-Slavic tribe of the Vindi (German Winden, English Wends) which lived in Courland and Livonia (on the territory of today's Latvia). The tribe's memory lives on in the name of the river Windau (Latvian Venta), with the town of Windau (Latvian Ventspils) at its mouth, and in Wenden, the old name of the town of Cesis (East Slavic Kesb) in Livonia. The location of this tribe coupled with recently discovered archaeological evidence (Ochmanski 1982) suggest that the Vindi of Courland and Livonia may well be the descendants of the Baltic Veneti.

1.5. Evidence of place and river names. The autochthonists assume that the names of several Central European rivers and of the town of Kalisz in Poland (Ptolemy's Kalisa) have demonstrably Slavic etymologies. The highly conjectural nature of these etymologies, however, seriously undermines their value as underpinnings of any attempt to establish the habitat of the early Slavs. While an etymology of a common noun can be tested on the semantic level, most proper names do not lend themselves to such verification. This is the case of the Vistula (Polish Wisla), the only river of the area known by the same name or its variants (Vistla, Visculus, Viscla, Visula) to both the ancients and the moderns. Neither the Vistula nor Kalisz, however, has a transparent Slavic or Indo-European etymology. These names could be Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, or even pre-Indo-European (Schenker 1987).

1.6. Classical sources.]

Continues...

---

Excerpted from THE DAWN OF SLAVIC by Alexander M. Schenker Copyright © 1996 by Yale University Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Copyright © 1996 Yale University Press
All right reserved.