Ancient Peoples (RPG)

The Arameans

The ancestor of the Arameans in the biblical tradition is considered to be the son of Shem Aram. They are first mentioned in the middle of the III millennium BC; in the XIV century BC nomadic tribes of the Arameans settled in the Syrian desert, penetrating from there to the middle Euphrates; at the turn of the XII-XI centuries BC, they flooded almost all of the Near East. In a number of places (e.g., east of the Jordan River) the Arameans became a settled population. By the beginning of the Common Era, Aramaic had become the main spoken language of Central Asia. The descendants of the Arameans are considered to be the modern Syrians, since Strabo calls the Syrians by the Greek name of the Arameans. The present-day Arameans- are mainly Christians of the Western Syrian rite (mainly Maronites). It is found in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Israel.

Balts

The Balts (Baltic peoples) are a group of peoples speaking the Baltic languages. They originate from the cord-making culture, which was widespread in the Bronze Age in the vast territories of Central and Eastern Europe. They brought agriculture to Eastern Europe. Today's Baltic peoples include Latvians and Lithuanians. Both peoples belong to the so-called East Baltic peoples. The Western Baltic peoples, such as the Prussians, had already disappeared. Previously, in addition to the modern territories of Lithuania and Latvia, the Balts inhabited the territories of Belarus, Poland (Suvalkia, southern Prussia) and Russia (Kaliningrad region, part of Moscow, Kaluga, Smolensk, Bryansk and some nearby regions).

The Germans

The Germans (Lat. Germani cousins, Γερμανοί) a group of related tribes (numbering dozens of tribes), whose language belonged to the Indo-European language family and inhabited the territory of modern: Denmark, the southern coast of Norway and Sweden (usually this period of history is called "the Teutonic"). Originally "Germans"- was the name of the inhabitants of the forested mountains of Germany; then it was extended first by Caesar, and after generally by all the Romans to all the tribes of the Germanic peoples. Brockhaus and Efron's dictionary indicates that in the late 1st century CE, the Germanic peoples may have been divided by rivers into three groups. By the 5th century AD, Germanic tribes had settled the vast territory between the Rhine and the Vistula from west to east, the Danube in the south, and the Dnieper and Maeot Sea in the southeast. The ethnonym "Germans" is used to designate the peoples who spoke predominantly Germanic languages, in the period from the Bronze Age to the end of the Great Migration. By the 7th century, after migrations, the ancient Germanic peoples had mixed with other peoples and formed many European nations.

The Greeks

The Greeks (Greek Έλληνες - Hellenes, pronounced as Hellenes) are a people formed in the extreme southeast of Europe in the first millennium BC. e., currently constitutes the main population of Greece and Cyprus. They speak Greek, which is part of the Greek subgroup of the Paleo-Balkan languages of the Indo-European language family.

The Huns

The Huns (Greek Ούννοι, lat. Hunni) are an ancient people who formed in the steppes of Eastern Europe in the 2nd-5th centuries, presumably on the basis of the Huns [6] who migrated from Central Asia with the participation of local Ugrians and Sarmatians. Their attack on the Black Sea Goths served as the impetus for the Great Migration of Peoples[7]. Mentions of the Huns are found both in the works of ancient authors (Ammianus Marcellinus, Priscus, Jordanes, etc.) and in the German epic (Song of the Nibelungs, Elder Edda). During the reign of Attila (434–453), the Hunnic unification, centered in Pannonia, reached its maximum expansion, defeating the kingdom of the Burgundians on the Rhine (435) and challenging the Roman Empire. After Attila's death in 453, the Hunnic Empire collapsed and the Huns were absorbed by new groups of nomads arriving from the east. Hungary claims Hunnic heritage

Scythians

Scythians (ancient Greek Σκύθης, Σκύθαι, self-name: Skolot) are an ancient nomadic Iranian-speaking people, which existed in the 8th century. BC e. - IV century n. e.. The Scythians did not have a written language, more than two hundred words are known from the Scythian language, as well as personal names, toponyms and glosses in ancient and cuneiform sources. Scythians in a broad sense are nomadic peoples in the territory from the Black Sea steppes (east of the Danube) to the territory of modern China (Xinjiang province), whose common cultural markers are an animal style in art, a set of weapons (a short sword “akinak”, a small composite bow with thin arrows), typical equipment for riding. Some of the Scythians lived in the steppe zone of the Northern Black Sea region from the Danube to the Don, called Scythia in ancient Greek sources. Many tribes and peoples were both in alliance with the Scythians and hostile to them. The Scythians are known from the writings of ancient authors (such as Herodotus, Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder.

Karns

Karns, lat. Carni, Greek Καρνίοι - a tribe that lived in the classical ancient period in the Eastern Alps, in the mountainous area separating Norik and Venice, then migrated further to the northeast. They are probably of Indo-European origin. From them come the names: the historical and geographical region of Carnia [English] (Italian: Carnia) in Italy, the mountains of the Carnic Alps, the Duchy of Carniola, the historical region of Carniola (Latin: Carnia, Italian: Carniola) in Slovenia, as well as the Duchy of Carinthia, land Carinthia in Austria. There is no general opinion about their ethnicity: some historians attribute them to the Gauls[1], some to the Adriatic Veneti, whose language was distantly related to. The earliest historical mention of the Karni dates back to 186 B.C.E., when about 50,000 Karni (armed men, women, and children) descended into the plains (where they had previously wintered) and founded the fortified settlement of Akilei on the hill. The Romans forced the Carni to retreat back into the mountains and destroyed their settlement. Publius Scipion Nazic, Gaius Flaminius, and Lucius Manlius Acidin founded a new defensive settlement on the northeastern border of the republic. The Roman settlement was named Aquileia after the name of the former settlement of the Carni.

Japodians

Yapoda, Greek. The Ιάποδες, also known as the Iapids, were an ancient Indo-European people who lived in the eastern Adriatic north of the territory of the Liburnians and Istrians, in a triangle formed by the rivers Colapis (now Kupa) and Oineo (now Una), as well as the mountainous heights of Mons Baebius (Velebit), which separated them from the coastal Liburnians. They lived in the territory of modern central Croatia and the Una River valley in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Archaeological evidence indicates their presence in the region since at least the 9th century. BC e. and for more than a millennium. There are a few scant mentions of the Japods in ancient sources, as a rule, together with their neighbors (Liburnians, Dalmatians, etc.), with whom the Greeks and Romans came into contact during the period of expansion. In the VIII-IV centuries. BC e. The Japodians flourished and reached their maximum territorial expansion - at this time they occupied most of the valleys surrounded by the mountains of Pannonia and the coastal part of the Adriatic, which was disputed with the neighboring Liburnians. Among the Japods there are names of Celtic, Illyrian (Pannonian) and Venetian origin; Strabo believed that they were a mixed Gallo-Illyrian people with a strong Venetian element. In a later era, the Yapods were completely Celticized.

Tanguts

Tanguts (self-name: 𘚜𗧻 *lhjwịj dźjɨ, *lhwe ; 𗼎𗾧 *mjɨ nja̱, *my na; *mji dzjwo, *mi dzwo[6][7 ]; other names: Tib. མི་ཉག, Chinese 党項 Danxiang or Fan, Mong. Tangad?, ᠲᠠᠩᠭᠤᠳ?) - people of the Tibeto-Burman group who spoke the Tangut language. Culturally and linguistically they were assimilated by the Mongols, Chinese, and related Tibetans

Rouran

Rouran, Zhuanzhuan, Juan-Zhuan, Rouran, Nirun (Mong. Nirun, Chinese 柔然, Pinyin róurán, Pall. Zhouran) - an ancient Mongol tribe that founded the Rouran Khaganate (330-555).

Xiongnu

Xiongnu (Latin hunni; Sogd. hwn; Chinese 匈奴 pinyin Xiōngnú Pall. Xiongnu, pron. **qʰoŋ - naː) - an ancient nomadic people, from 220 BC. e. to 2nd century AD e. inhabited the steppes north of China[2]. To protect against their attacks, Qin Shi Huandi built the Great Wall of China. The Xiongnu waged active wars with the Chinese Han Empire, during which they consolidated into a single power that subjugated the tribes of neighboring nomads. Later, as a result of wars with China and the Xianbei tribes, as well as civil strife, the Xiongnu power collapsed. The Xiongnu are known from ancient Chinese sources and from archaeological excavations of their monuments, the first of which were carried out at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century by Yu. D. Talko-Grintsevich (Sudzha burial grounds near the city of Kyakhta), and then the most significant finds were made at the beginning of the 20th century century by P.K. Kozlov (Noin-Ula mounds in the Selenga valley).

The East Slavs

The East Slavs are a cultural-linguistic, ethno-historical community of Slavs speaking East Slavic languages. It has linguistic and ethnographic features that distinguish it from the rest of the Slavic world. The Eastern Slavs are not a geographical, but an ethnohistorical concept. It is believed that the history of the Eastern Slavs begins with the period when an independent East Slavic language began to emerge from the Common Slavic (Proto-Slavic) language - according to linguistic data in the 7th-8th centuries. The East Slavic tribes, which, according to most scientists, managed to merge into a single nation, made up the main population of Kievan Rus. As a result of the subsequent political stratification of the Eastern Slavs, by the 17th century three peoples had formed (in descending order of numbers): Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. Sometimes the Rusyns are identified as the fourth East Slavic ethnic group. Some early researchers also used the designation Russian Slavs.

The West Slavs

The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages. They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries. The West Slavic languages diversified into their historically attested forms over the 10th to 14th centuries. Today, groups which speak West Slavic languages include the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Silesians, Kashubians, and Sorbs. From the ninth century onwards, most West Slavs converted to Roman Catholicism, thus coming under the cultural influence of the Latin Church, adopting the Latin alphabet, and tending to be more closely integrated into cultural and intellectual developments in western Europe than the East Slavs, who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and adopted the Cyrillic alphabet.[ Linguistically, the West Slavic group can be divided into three subgroups: Lechitic, including Polish, Silesian, Kashubian, and the extinct Polabian and Pomeranian languages; Sorbian in the region of Lusatia; and Czecho–Slovak in the Czech lands.

South Slavs

South Slavs are Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, Hungary, Romania, and the Black Sea, the South Slavs today include Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonia In the 20th century, the country of Yugoslavia (from Serbo-Croatian, literally meaning "South Slavia" or "South Slavdom") united a majority of the South Slavic peoples and lands—with the exception of Bulgarians and Bulgaria—into a single state. The Pan-Slavic concept of Yugoslavia emerged in late 17th-century Croatia, at the time part of the Habsburg monarchy, and gained prominence through the 19th-century Illyrian movement. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, was proclaimed on 1 December 1918, following the unification of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. With the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, several independent sovereign states were formed.

Celts

Celts (Greek Κελτοί, lat. Celtae) are tribes of Indo-European origin close in language and material culture, who in ancient times, at the turn of BC, inhabited a vast territory in Western and Central Europe.