Early Russia - History of Russia in 100 Minutes - (Part 1 of 36)
History of Russia in 100 Minutes is a crash course for beginners. Here you will find the complete history summarized and retold in simple language with accurate dates, the most relevant names and essential concepts. After finishing the course, you will know:
- The basic characteristics of Russian history in different epochs
- The 54 most important rulers and 106 historical persons in Russian history
- 126 key dates and events in Russian history
- The basic terms and concepts of Russian history
The text is accompanied by numerous online resources:
- 20,000 pictures
- 700 videos
- 3,500 songs
- 100 podcast episodes
All that is available via the smarthistories.com website.
Narrated by: Sammi Bold
Written by: Tanel Vahisalu
Edited by: Madis Maasing and Kerry Kubilius
Proofread by: Tony Burnett
Graphic Art by: Mehak Zaib Suddle
Video:
Alexander Nevsky by Sergey Eisenstein (1938)
Footage of the Times and Epochs Historical Re-Enactment Festival (2012)
Music:
Tchaikovsky (Part II) and Crocodile Ghena's Song (1995) by J.M.K.E.
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EARLY RUSSIA
SUMMARY
The history of the Russian people began with the Slavic tribes. As the West Slavs settled in Eastern Europe, and the South Slavs settled in the Balkans, the East Slavs inhabited the forests and steppes of present-day Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
PREHISTORY
The first humans arrived in today’s territory of Russia around 40,000 BC. Remains of some of their earliest settlements have been found in the Kostenki archeological site, near Voronezh, and the Sungir site, near Vladimir.
SCYTHIANS, GOTHS, HUNS, KHAZARS AND FINNO-UGRIC PEOPLES
In the 5th century BC, the famous Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote about the Scythians of the Black Sea. They probably originated from the Altai region of Siberia and Mongolia, and inhabited the steppes of today’s Ukraine and Southern Russia. The Scythians were fierce fighters, also making occasional raids into Europe.
During the Great Migration around 200 AD, the Goths plundered Russian territory from the Black Sea all the way to the west. Around 400 AD, the mighty Hunnic Empire stretched from the Ural Mountains to the Rhine River. It was ruled by the legendary leader, Attila the Hun.
From the 7th to the 11th centuries, much of Southern Russia was dominated by the Khazars, who, probably, also ruled over some Slavic tribes. Present-day Northern Russia was inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples, who did not have states, but traded actively with Scandinavians, and later also with East Slavs.
SLAVS
The direct roots of Russian people go back to the Slavs. Their origins are not clear. According to the most common theory, the West Slavs (Poles, Czechs), the South Slavs (Serbs, Bulgarians), and the East Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), all originate from the vast swamplands, called Pripet Marshes, that can be found in current Belarus and Northern Ukraine.
EAST SLAVS
The East Slavs arrived in two waves: One moved from Kiev to present-day Suzdal, and the other from Polotsk to the Novgorod region. These people inhabited the steppes, and the woodland belt of Central Russia, and, from the 7th to the 9th centuries, formed the majority of the Western Russian inhabitants.
The East Slavs were tall, fair-skinned hunters and farmers who lived in log houses, spoke Slavonic languages, and slowly began to adapt to Christianity.
The Russian Sungir burials and skull reconstructions (between 30,000 and 26,000 years ago)
30 000 years ago Sungir people — European early modern humans — were living on the territory of Central Russia. In the hostile conditions of Ice Age they reached an amazingly high level of craftsmanship and left more than 80 000 cultural and household artifacts at the site. Sungir, which has been a seasonal hunting camp, is considered the northernmost Paleolithic settlement of Homo sapiens on the European continent. Sungir inhabitants are believed to be ancestors of today’s Northern and Eastern Europeans.
The Burials
The Sunghir site is well known because of the style of the burials. The deceased were buried wearing very heavily beaded clothing.
The burial of the male. Counted in the grave were 2,936 ivory beads. He is also wearing armlets of ivory, that showed traces of red and black paint. An artists reconstruction of his outfit below.
And the double burial of the children, buried head to head. It’s thought they were siblings. They were aged 8 and 13, and they were even more heavily beaded than the man: the boy had 4,903 beads, the girl 5,274 beads.
This is one of the sites where it’s thouight the people were possibly wearing woven cloth as well as hides. The children were also buried with decorated ivory spears. A small horse pendant can be seen next to the boys shoulder.
These people seemed heavily into beaded decoration, and it’s estimated that each bead, using a production line technique, took more than an hour to complete. I can’t help wondering if possibly beads could have been used as a form of currency. A predictable number of hours labour went into them, this could have made their use as a currency possible.
A great place for more artists impressions of the Sunghir people and more detailed information on the artifacts and bead making process, Dons Maps. there is also another good visual page here.
In interesting snippet on how they lived..
Palaeozoologic analysis of the osteologic material from the Sunghir site revealed clear hunting specialisation – hunt for fur-bearing animals. Apparently, cold climate made it necessary to intensify this type of hunt to obtain materials for clothing. The reconstructed cloth makes it possible to see how adequate the fur was used and how ergologic the cloth was. Proceeding from the results of the biological indicators, it can be supposed that adult and subadult (preadolescent) males of the group participated in hunts. The Sunghirians’ clothes ornamented with thousands of beads show how labour-consuming this work was. This type of locomotive activity is revealed in girl’s skeleton. It allows us to suppose that the work was done by females. Besides this, carrying of the weights on the head was the work of the female part of the community also, because nor juvenile, neither man possessed this indicator.
Fire pits, tens of fireplaces, agglomerations of bones, the places of bone and flint processing show high human activity at the site. Nevertheless, the fact that only surface dwellings existed across the site can be considered as the evidence of its seasonal use. Placed on the surface or slightly deepened dwellings of Anosov-Mesin type with the socle of large mammoth bones or more complex constructions of Kostjonky-Avdeevo type reveals long usage duration, and consequently a settled life of the groups. Opposite to them, the Sunghir inhabitants were mobile, ready to move in one or another direction, following the needs of night’s lodging, preys’ processing and obtaining necessary tools. The fact is notable, that the settlement was located on height eminence, far from natural streams. Probably there were springs, serving as sources of drinking water. The tools with the traces of their usage in gathering were found at the site.
Apparently, the Sunghirian group utterly used the patterns of the landscape and was actively adapted to the climatic factors of the environment.
The Oldest Known Spoon and Spatula (Gravettian 21,000 years ago)
Avdeevo - a Paleolithic site with strong links to Kostenki
Avdeevo is located on the Sejm River near the city of Kursk, Russia. Two oval living areas surrounded by semisubterranean lodges and pits have been identified at Avdeevo. Both were occupied between 21 000 and 20 000 BP. The tool inventory consists of Kostenki knives, shouldered points, and leaf points on blades.
The oldest know Spatula and Spoon
Noticias de Prehistoria-Prehistoria al Día mentions this week two quite impressive archaeological findings that illustrate the richness of the lives of our remote ancestors.
Ardales petrified rope
A petrified rope as found in the cave of Ardales (Andalusia). The rope now transformed into stone by the same mechanism that forms stalactites was apparently tended to allow access to a remote section of the cave rich in rock art.
Other findings are several fixed lamps created by the breaking of stalagmites, as well as several portable lamps found earlier in the research. In these lamps marrow or wax was burned.
The rope has been indirectly dated to c. 30 Ka BP, what in Southern Iberia would still be the Aurignacian period.
Evidences of ropes of slightly more recent age are also known from Moravia (Gravettian) thanks to patterns left on their famous terracotta figurines.
The other not less spectacular finding comes from Russia, where an ivory spoon was found in Avdeevo cave, near Kursk. It belongs to the Gravettian period and is dated c. 23-22 Ka BP.
The same site also provided a beautiful spatula almost identical to another one previously found in Kostenki, as well as other materials including a Venus figurine.
These findings illustrate the wealth of creativity displayed by the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, not so different from ours after all.
Spoon engraved in reindeer antler. Satge: Upper Magdalenian (VI), between 13500 and 12000 BP Locality: Prehistoric site of Fontalès Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, Tarn-et-Garonne – France.
There is an abundant collection of beads made from sectioned teeth of wolf and polar fox. Cylindrical beads made from long bones of small animals were found besides the beads made from sectioned teeth of polar fox and wolf.
Spoon in mammoth ivory from New Avdeevo. This artifact resembles an alder-tree leaf with a handle. The spoon is 32 mm long, 52 mm wide. The preserved part of the handle is 30 mm in length, but it is only 1-2 mm thick. The spoon is almost plano-concave in cross-section; the straight part is an external fragment of tusk. The slightly raised edges are sharpened. The external part of the artifact is almost untreated, while the internal part is hatched with small criss-cross scratches.
Fragments of tops of spatulas with oval widening of the edges, New Avdeevo. Spatula with top with oval widening of edges and widening under the head. Draw.
Genetic History of Europe
David Reich describes the three biggest discoveries about European pre-history that were revealed through genome-wide analyses of 51 ice-age-era humans.
David Reich describes the three biggest discoveries about European pre-history that were revealed through genome-wide analyses of 51 ice-age-era humans.
Read this before posting comment.. The presented stated is based on mainstream theories, no conspiracy or alternative theories. However I needed to decide .
The genetic history of Europe is complicated because European populations have a complicated demographic history, including many successive periods of .
AMHS - Anatomically Modern Homo Sapiens
Anatomically Modern Homo Sapiens
History of Russia | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
History of Russia
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
The History of Russia begins with that of the East Slavs and the Finno-Ugric peoples. The traditional beginning of Russian history is the establishment of Kievan Rus', the first united Eastern Slavic state, in 882. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Orthodox Slavic culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state due to the Mongol invasions in 1237–1240 along with the resulting deaths of about half the population of Rus'.
After the 13th century, Moscow became a cultural center, and by the 18th century, the Tsardom of Russia had grown to become the Russian Empire, stretching from eastern Poland to the Pacific Ocean. Peasant revolts were common, and all were fiercely suppressed. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, but the peasants fared poorly and often turned to revolutionary pressures. In the following decades, reform efforts such as the Stolypin reforms, the constitution of 1906, and the State Duma attempted to open and liberalize the economy and political system, but the tsars refused to relinquish autocratic rule or share their power.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a combination of economic breakdown, war-weariness, and discontent with the autocratic system of government. It initially brought to power a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists, but their failed policies led to seizure of power by the communist Bolsheviks on 25 October. Between 1922 and 1991, the history of Russia is essentially the history of the Soviet Union, effectively an ideologically based state which was roughly conterminous with the Russian Empire before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The approach to the building of socialism, however, varied over different periods in Soviet history, from the mixed economy and diverse society and culture of the 1920s to the command economy and repressions of the Joseph Stalin era to the era of stagnation in the 1980s. 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.
By the mid-1980s, with the weaknesses of its economic and political structures becoming acute, Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on major reforms, which led to the overthrow of the communist party and the breakup of the USSR, leaving Russia again on its own and marking the start of the history of post-Soviet Russia. The Russian Federation began in January 1992 as the legal successor to the USSR. Russia retained its nuclear arsenal but lost its superpower status. Scrapping the socialist central planning and state ownership of property of the socialist era, new leaders, led by President Vladimir Putin, took political and economic power after 2000 and engaged in an energetic foreign policy. Russia's recent annexation of the Crimean peninsula has led to severe economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.
Caucasian race | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Caucasian race
00:01:47 1 Etymology
00:02:18 2 History of the concept
00:02:27 2.1 Christoph Meiners
00:03:54 2.2 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
00:07:04 2.3 Carleton Coon
00:09:29 3 Racial anthropology
00:09:39 3.1 Physical traits
00:09:47 3.1.1 Skin
00:10:30 3.1.2 Skull and teeth
00:12:52 3.2 Cold tolerance
00:13:22 4 Classification
00:15:40 4.1 Subraces
00:16:37 5 Origin
00:20:04 6 Usage in the United States
00:22:46 7 See also
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Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid) was a grouping of human beings historically regarded as a biological taxon, which, depending on which of the historical race classifications used, usually included some or all of the ancient and modern populations of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.First introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the term denoted one of three purported major races of humankind (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid). In biological anthropology, Caucasoid has been used as an umbrella term for phenotypically similar groups from these different regions, with a focus on skeletal anatomy, and especially cranial morphology, over skin tone. Ancient and modern Caucasoid populations were thus held to have ranged in complexion from white to dark brown. Since the second half of the 20th century, physical anthropologists have moved away from a typological understanding of human biological diversity towards a genomic and population-based perspective, and have tended to understand “race” as a social classification of humans based on phenotype and ancestry as well as cultural factors, as the concept is also understood in the social sciences. Although Caucasian / Caucasoid and their counterparts Negroid and Mongoloid have been used less frequently as a biological classification in forensic anthropology (where it is sometimes used as a way to identify the ancestry of human remains based on interpretations of osteological measurements), the terms remain in use by some anthropologists.In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often been used in a different, societal context as a synonym for white or of European ancestry. Its usage in American English has been criticized.
Evolution of the wolf | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
00:01:14 1 Fossil record
00:04:54 1.1 iCanis lepophagus/i
00:06:08 1.2 iCanis priscolatrans/i
00:07:52 1.3 iCanis ambrusteri/i
00:08:44 1.4 iCanis dirus/i
00:10:55 1.4.1 idirus–lupus/i hybrids
00:12:50 1.5 iCanis mosbachensis/i
00:13:45 1.6 iCanis variabilis/i
00:14:30 1.7 iCanis chihliensis/i
00:17:11 1.8 iCanis lupus/i
00:19:09 1.9 iCanis c.f. familiaris/i (Paleolithic dog)
00:20:20 1.10 iCanis lupus familiaris/i (domestic dog)
00:29:39 2 Genetic record
00:29:48 2.1 DNA sequences
00:31:52 2.1.1 Marker issue
00:33:14 2.1.2 Timing issue
00:35:22 2.2 Wolf-like canids
00:38:58 2.2.1 Admixture with an extinct unknown canid
00:40:41 2.3 Two wolf haplogroups
00:45:51 2.3.1 Dissenting view
00:49:03 2.4 Into America and Japan
00:55:08 2.5 Divergence with the coyote
00:56:42 2.6 Domestic dog
01:02:57 2.6.1 Dingo
01:03:35 2.7 Taimyr wolf
01:08:23 2.8 iCanis variabilis/i
01:11:12 3 Rise to dominant predator
01:12:24 4 Wolf population differences
01:14:15 4.1 Ecotypes
01:19:22 4.2 Pleistocene wolves
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
Listen on Google Assistant through Extra Audio:
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Speaking Rate: 0.9805157662068684
Voice name: en-GB-Wavenet-D
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
The evolution of the wolf occurred over a geologic time scale of at least 300 thousand years.
The grey wolf Canis lupus is a highly adaptable species that is able to exist in a range of environments and which possesses a wide distribution across the Holarctic. Studies of modern grey wolves have identified distinct sub-populations that live in close proximity to each other. This variation in sub-populations is closely linked to differences in habitat – precipitation, temperature, vegetation, and prey specialization – which affect cranio-dental plasticity.The archaeological and paleontological records show grey wolf continuous presence for at least the last 300,000 years. This continuous presence contrasts with genomic analyses, which suggest that all modern wolves and dogs descend from a common ancestral wolf population that existed as recently as 20,000 years ago. These analyses indicate a population bottleneck, followed by a rapid radiation from an ancestral population at a time during, or just after, the Last Glacial Maximum. However, the geographic origin of this radiation is not known.