Modern humans spread out of Africa relatively recently, around 50,000 years ago, and made their way to Russia, new research suggests. The research, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, describes how these early steps led to our species colonising the planet.
The first human settlement on the territory of Russia dates back to the Oldowan period in the early Lower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives of Homo erectus migrated from Western Asia to the North Caucasus (archaeological site of Kermek on the Taman Peninsula).
Historians say that the Finno-Ugric people were the first inhabitants of Russia, with many of our customs and fairytales descending from their civilization: the cult of ancestors, the love of forests and villages, our patience and communality. But what remains of the ancient civilization is contested.
The Russians were formed from East Slavic tribes, and their cultural ancestry is based in Kievan Rus'. Genetically, the majority of Russians are identical to their East and West Slavic counterparts; unlike northern Russians, who belong to the Northern European Baltic gene pool.
During the centuries before and after the birth of Christ, the 3000-mile-wide steppes of central Asia (in present-day Russia, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and several other former Soviet Republics) were inhabited by dozens of semi-nomadic peoples like the Altays, Scythians and Pazyryks.
Vikings founded Kievan Rus in the mid-9th century, but Scandanavian settlements in Eastern Europe actually date back to at least A.D. 750. This is when pre-Viking-Age Scandanavians likely settled the northwestern Russian town of Staraya Ladoga (or “Old Ladoga”), across Lake Ladoga from what is now Finland.
Both the origin of the Kievan state and that of the name Rus, which came to be applied to it, remain matters of debate among historians. According to the traditional account presented in The Russian Primary Chronicle, it was founded by the Viking Oleg, ruler of Novgorod from about 879.
Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) – with an average of 53.4% Haplogroup I (Y-DNA) – with an average of 23.5% (Central and South Russia) Haplogroup N (Y-DNA) with an average of 17.3% Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) – with an average of 5.8%
Russians are primarily descended from Slavs. However, Russia itself was created by a group of Vikings known as the Kievan Rus. Therefore, Russians have some Viking DNA in their ancestry. However, the original Vikings who founded Russia were absorbed into the native Slavic population.
The modern-day name for Russia (Rossiya) is derived from the Greek word for the Rus'. As the Kievan Rus' was evolving and separating into different states, what we now know as Russia was being called Rus' and Russkaya Zemlya (the land of the Rus').
The name Russia is derived from Rus', a medieval state populated primarily by the East Slavs. However, the proper name became more prominent in later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Rus land". This state is denoted as Kievan Rus' after its capital city by modern historiography.
Russian Alaska was the name given to Russian owned lands in North America during the years 1780-1867. Debates over who first discovered the land have been integral to the politics of Russian Alaska since its settlement. The first Russian settlements are most often dated to the seventeenth century.
As a result of this mingling, everyone with Eurasian ancestry - from Chinese to Scandinavians to the native peoples of the Americas – have some Neanderthal DNA. But the researchers found no evidence of further interbreeding even though the groups lived alongside the Neanderthals for thousands of years more.
Occupied by Russian troops since the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav, Kyiv became a part of the Tsardom of Russia from 1667 on the Truce of Andrusovo and enjoyed a degree of autonomy. None of the Polish-Russian treaties concerning Kyiv have ever been ratified.
While both Ukrainians and Russians consider themselves Orthodox Slavs, Rurik, the founding father of the Kievan Rus' dynasty, which goes back to the 9th Century, was a pagan Viking.
According to his writings, Slavic tribes belonged to the nations of Styte and Sarmatia, located north of the Black Sea by the Don, Dniester, Prut, and Danube Rivers (present-day Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria). The Venedy or Wends were also a part of the old Slavic nations.
During and after World War II, many Russian émigrés moved to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, South Africa and Australia – where many of their communities still exist in the 21st century.
A recent genetic study concluded that a good deal of the Irish population may actually have descended from ancient Russian migrants.
Race & Ethnicity
The largest Russia racial/ethnic groups are White (96.0%) followed by Two or More (2.9%) and Asian (0.4%).
Thereafter, the state was called, “Kievan Rus”. Mostly furs, slaves, and wax, were traded for Arabian silver, as well as Byzantine luxury goods.
The Swedes were known primarily as traders, who open up river routes into Russia from the 8th to 11th and helped set up the state of Kiev in the late 9th century, and traveled as far as Istanbul, Baghdad and the Caspian Sea.
Finally, in 870 the Danes attacked the only remaining independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Wessex, whose forces were commanded by King Aethelred and his younger brother Alfred. At the battle of Ashdown in 871, Alfred routed the Viking army in a fiercely fought uphill assault.
Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia's greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain.
Prehistory of Alaska
Today, early Alaskans are divided into several main groups: the Southeastern Coastal Indians (the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian), the Athabascans, the Aleut, and the two groups of Eskimos, the Inupiat and the Yup'ik.