Thanks to the hard work of scientists engaged in the search for traces and the study of the life of ancient people, one can imagine the distant ancestors of different peoples inhabiting the modern world. Each nationality had its own unique culture. The surviving archaeological monuments of the past, material sources serve as material for historians.
Instructions
Step 1
Numerous tribes of the ancient Slavs, originally called the Wends, lived on the lands between the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea. Archaeologists believe that the Wends are the original European inhabitants, whose descendants lived here already in the ancient Stone Age.
Agriculture and cattle breeding were well known to the Slavs. Their state did not exist, the Slavic tribes were divided into numerous independent groups, headed by the leaders of the tribe. The Byzantines celebrated the courage, military art, love of freedom of the ancient Slavs. The ancestors of the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples, depending on their habitat, had different names: for example, the Krivichi lived in the vicinity of the Baltic tribes, the Drevlyans lived in modern Polesie, the Vyatichi tribes in the Oka River basin, and Ilmen Slovenes lived in Lake Ilmen.
Step 2
Steep slopes, ravines, lakes and rivers surrounded the settlements of the ancient Slavs. People, defending themselves from enemies, erected earthen ramparts, dug deep ditches. The ancient Slavs lived in a community of relatives in dugouts. Agriculture, representing the very hard work of people, was considered the main occupation of the Slavic peoples. Common agricultural crops were millet and turnip. The ancient Slavs raised livestock, hunted, fished, and housed beehives. Men made tools and weapons from iron smelted from ore. Slavic women were engaged in sewing clothes, weaving, molded clay dishes. The Slavs had an active trade with their neighbors, the place of money was taken by the skins of fur animals, cattle, grain, honey. The ancient Slavs were pagans. The dead were burned, burial mounds were. The ancient Slavic tribes constantly had to defend themselves against the nomadic steppe peoples who ravaged their lands.
Step 3
With the development of handicrafts and agriculture among the Slavic peoples, inequality began to develop: the rich and the poor appeared. Communal relations were replaced by small peasant farms. The end of the first millennium was marked by the emergence of cities. Tribal relations among the Slavs grew into a class society, in connection with this, a state began to take shape.
Step 4
Tribes of ancient Germans settled in vast territories from the Baltic and North Seas to the Danube River. Warlike and enterprising people followed a rather harsh lifestyle, were tall, blue-eyed and reddish. In their free time from wars, the Germans hunted, played dice and feasted. The economy lay on the shoulders of women, helped by the elderly and children. Women also took part in the battles: they helped the wounded, strengthened the courage of the warrior husbands, settling down behind the fighting. Families of the ancient Germans lived on separate farmsteads; relatives who jointly owned the land represented the community. The People's Assembly, consisting of members of one or several communities, decided the issues of concluding peace and declaring war, held elections, dealt with court cases, and endowed young men with weapons.
Step 5
The Germans have divided into the main estates since antiquity: the edshsing were called noble people, freelings - free Germans, and lases - semi-free. German kings, called kings, appeared as a result of enrichment during the military campaigns of the leaders, surrounded by a brave retinue, which helped them to seize the main power. The squad was formed on the basis of voluntary devotion to the leader, its creator could be any free enterprising German who decided to enrich himself with the help of robbery and war with neighboring tribes.
The ancient Germans knew how to make tools and weapons, make leather, process wood, extract gold, silver, iron, and actively traded with Ancient Rome.
Step 6
Scientists attribute the Mayan tribes to one of the developed communities of people of the ancient world. The territories occupied by the Mayan tribes included the modern Mexican states, Guatemala, the western states of Honduras and El Salvador, Belize. In the first millennium AD, the Maya had about twenty city-states. Unique architectural structures were created: on the flat tops of the pyramid-shaped hills and platforms of various heights and sizes, there were stone buildings of temples, palaces and residences of the nobility. The dwellings of the Maya rank and file were built on low faced stone platforms, were wooden or clay, covered with reeds. Several large family houses were located in rectangular courtyards (patios), families united in larger groups with adjacent patios.
Step 7
Monumental sculpture and painting of the ancient Indian people reached their heyday in the 6-10th centuries. There were special sculptural schools that were able to achieve a harmonious composition, natural reproduction of postures and movements. Scenes of tribal rituals, ceremonies, hostilities are reflected in the famous frescoes, made already in the 8th century. The Maya invented a complex system of hieroglyphic writing; they created manuscript libraries at palaces and temples. Until now, scientists admire the complexity of the Mayan calendar. During the Spanish conquests, the pagan culture of the Indian tribes was destroyed, the ancient hieroglyphic writing was lost.
