In ancient Paleolithic times, similar cultures existed in Altai, the North Caucasus, Siberia, in the foothills of the Urals (on the Chusovaya River, according to one version, the birthplace of Zarathustra), the Irtysh River and others. An ancient peculiar Paleolithic culture, traces of which were found throughout the whole of North Asia, originated somewhere in the center of Asia, most likely in northern Mongolia, where its remains are most found, and then spread from there southeast to the Yellow River, north to Yakutia and west to the Urals, and towards the top Yam Irtysh. It is possible to assume that towards the ancient tribes of Asia, gradually moving in separate groups from east to west, other groups were moving, maybe even ahead of them on the shores of Lake Baikal at the end of Solutrean and at the beginning of the Madeleine time.
The Baltic nations knew the use of bronze and iron before the beginning of our era. But metals have not yet played a big role in their daily lives. Although during excavations they find individual tools made of bronze and iron and molds for casting bronze, the vast majority of the tools were still made of stone, bone and wood. Primitive metal things came mainly from the tribes of the South-West and the Middle Dnieper. These were bronze and iron axes, bronze spearheads, iron sickle-shaped knives. Agriculture was still underdeveloped. The main source of subsistence was cattle breeding, which had already overshadowed hunting, fishing, and animal flight. Needing first of all good pastures for cattle, the population of the Baltic states at the end of the first millennium don. e. mastered only river valleys. Here archaeologists find mounds made of stone and earth above burial urns located in several tiers or stone boxes standing on the ground. Members of the same clan were buried in these mounds. Entire tribal communities lived in settlements surrounded by earthen ramparts and log fences. Dwellings with woven branches and clay-clad round walls and conical roofs held on pillars were placed inside a space surrounded by a rampart, which was supposed to serve as protection during clashes between clans and tribes that arose due to the possession of cattle and pastures.
In the first centuries of our era, the picture is completely changing. Particularly fast is the development of the tribes of Southern Latvia and Lithuania, drawn into trade with the Roman Empire and the Slavs, who lived along the banks of the Dnieper and the Vistula. Roman merchants traveled through their territory, buying up Baltic amber, which was in great demand in Italy and the provinces. Daugava connected the Baltic states with the Slavs of the Dnieper. In her pool are found Roman metal and jewelry, Roman coins, enamelled items from the Middle Dnieper. At the same time, the import of iron is increasing, and at the same time the processing of local iron – bog ores. Iron products displace bone and stone. Specialist smiths appear. In the grave of a blacksmith found his tools – pincers, hammer, chisel. For the processing of wood, an iron bracket was already used.
Improvement of production tools allowed the development of agriculture, which is becoming the leading branch of the economy. Sickles, hoes, knives, and then braids appear in the burials of the first centuries of our era. By the beginning of our era, wooden plow was introduced into use. Agriculture is becoming arable, obviously, the draft force of cattle is beginning to be applied. Under arable land, forests are cleared. The cultures of rye, oats, barley, flax, turnips, and peas are being developed. The reinforced tribal settlements are replaced by settlements of large and then small families, which, thanks to the development of agriculture, have made it possible to settle in larger territories.
Thus, the decomposition of the clan takes place, and due to the development of the exchange, individual families, in particular clan elders, accumulate certain wealth. The tribes living south of the Daugava create a special material culture that covered the territory of modern Latvia, Lithuania and the Kaliningrad region. At that time, the Leto-Lithuanian tribes that were the ancestors of the Latvian and Lithuanian peoples were forming.
To the north of the Daugava, Estonian-Livian tribes take shape, somewhat lagging behind the southern tribes in their development. True, here too, at the beginning of our era, the number of imported and local products from bronze and iron is increasing, but the technique for processing the latter is much lower. Agriculture has become predominant here, but not arable, but slaughter system dominated. In addition to the hoe, only light wooden plow was used as the main agricultural tool, which people dragged themselves. Slash agriculture, which required considerable efforts of a large number of people, hindered the decomposition of the clan. In some places large patriarchal families stand out from the clan, but the separation of small families has not yet begun. For a long time, common burial grounds and fortified graying sites are preserved, which, with the development of productive forces and population growth, spread to an increasingly large territory.
Barrow burial ground Latgals II – V centuries. n e. Latvia. View after excavation. World History, T. II, M., Politizdat, ch. ed. EAT. Zhukov, 1956, p. 711—712.
Archaeological sites of the 9—12th centuries reflect the presence of the feudal system in Lithuania: rich burials of warrior warriors along with war horses, well-fortified hillforts (Apuole, Ipiltis, Medvegalis). This testifies to the process of unification of tribal unions and the formation of semi-feudal semi-patriarchal state associations – “lands”. By the 12th century a number of “lands” (principalities) were already known on the territory of Lithuania: емemaitija (Zhmud), Knetuva, Karshuva, Dyaltuva and others. They were headed by large landowners – princes (kunigasy).
Like the Mesolithic tribes in the north of Western Europe, the inhabitants of the Urals and neighboring areas at that time existed by hunting for wild animals and birds, as well as fishing in lakes and rivers. At the places of their settlements there were many implements of bone and horn that served the simple economic needs of hunters and fishermen. The shapes of these products are so similar to those found in northwestern Russia, in Karelia, partly in Finland, Estonia and Latvia, that there are no doubts about the presence of ties between the tribes that populated all this vast space from the Urals to the shores of the Baltic Sea.
Therefore, the assumption about what was happening at that time the resettlement of tribes from the Urals to the west – to Europe.
While the glaciers of the last glaciation slowly disappeared in the north of Europe and there was a successive change in the climatic stages, in the southern regions of Western Europe there were no such sharp fluctuations in natural conditions. The most significant event here was a change in the harsh climate of the end of the ice age, first relatively warmer and drier, and then humid forest climate.
In the Urals, Neolithic monuments of the 4th millennium BC were discovered, which belonged to the tribes of hunters and fishermen who began to develop pottery. Pile-type constructions are developing in the Urals, the remains of which are found everywhere – and in Northern Italy, Southern Germany, the Balkans, Northern Europe, Switzerland, northern Russia and other territories. The houses were located on stilts, cut down and pointed hundreds and thousands of trees driven into marshy soil. Let us recall Russian fairy tales, which tell about a hut on chicken legs – the figurative name of those wooden log cabins that, in the old days, to protect them from decay, were placed on stumps with chopped roots and fumigated with smoke from insects. One of the wooden churches in old Moscow, put on such stumps, in view of the marsiness of the