Why is their little known history of the ancient Slavic and Germanic Tribes?

Question

You can trace the history of the ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks and Persians to 1000's of years before Christ, but the Ancient Germanic and Slavic population is little know or written about? why is that? what is their history? Especially the Ancient Slavs of Russia?

Answer 1

Because "history" is conceived as all about kings and conflicts. Societies with written records leave names of their kings and results of their conflicts in readable form. There is simply less information, and perhaps less conflict, to go on for the ancient Teutons and Slavs. There were many fewer of them than the more southerly peoples you mentioned, and until after c300AD they didn't come much into contact or conflict with other peoples.

The study of non-literate past societies is mostly about the finding and interpretation of (1) their artefacts and (2) where possible, their legends. So there is just less info to go on than where there are documents.

Also they lived in a context where wood was the primary building material, and although we can measure ancient wooden structures in some circumstances it is not tangibly durable like stone and therefore harder to get people interested in.

Answer 2

it is because there arent any documents going back that far. i think the earliest recorded history was the goths or something similar and that is not going far back at all. i hate to say this but they werent very civilized. they mostly lived in the forest. i guess it was a peaceful life, but it wasnt one with cities. but the mesopotamians/greeks/persians have a lot of recorded history/art/architecture. they are old civilizations.

Answer 3

You have to know the old names: Gog, Magog, Rosh,Tubal,Gomer,Tarshish.  These date back to the Mesopotamian Era. Hope that helps.

Answer 4

My suspicion is that wcaroline is right.  We only know about the Goths because of what the Romans said and because they left a Bible in Gothic.  Bibles are good because you can compare them with other texts.  The earliest Slavonic writing comes from the 9th century although it is known from the Romans and Greeks that they were around  earlier than that

I have seen a Bulgarian calendar which charted the origin of the Bulgars (who are not Slavs) from the Hindu Kush/Pamir mountains through Asia and into Europe (see also Wikipedia).  Certainly they were known by the 6th century.  They do have a very celebrated calendar (see below)

The Romans Greeks Egyptians and Mesopotamians all left lots of writing.  So have we. . . . though we don't write on stone so much and even worse I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of the stuff we write now is on the internet.  I guess stone might be more durable.