In the 3rd century ad the Sarmatians were defeated by the Goths,2 a Germanic tribe that came from the west.

The Greek Colonies in Ukraine

By about 1000 BC Greece had become overpopulated. That caused many brave and adventurous people to emigrate and establish colonies along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. In the late 7^th and early 6^th centuries BC, they founded several colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea.

The richest of the Greek cities on the Ukrainian coast was Olvia. Situated at the mouth of the Buh River, it became the chief center of the grain trade that developed between the Greek homeland and its Black Sea colonies. The famous Greek historian Herodotus visited this city in the 5^th century BC. Other important centers were Chersonesus (near present-day Sevastopol), Tira (at the mouth of the Dniester), Theodosia (retains the same name) and Panticapeum (present-day Kerch).

In the middle of the 1^st century BC the Black Sea coast became part of the Roman Empire. Roman garrisons stayed in the Greek coastal cities until the end of the 3^rd century AD, when Rome had to withdraw its legions from the Crimea to protect Italy from the Barbarians. Left without Roman protection the Greek cities were destroyed by Barbarians (Goths, Huns, and others).

The Greco-Roman civilization on Ukrainian lands lasted about 1000 years and it had positive impact on the economy, social structure and cultural level of various inhabitants of our country.

New Barbaric Waves

The Gothic period in Ukraine lasted from AD 200 to AD 370. The Goths created in southern Ukraine the so-called State of Hermanric (named after their chief) and adopted Christianity from the Roman Empire. The Goths were defeated by the Huns around AD 370. Hermanric, stunned by the defeat, committed suicide.

The Huns came from Central Asia. They were a mixture of various Turkic-speaking people with large Mongol elements. The Huns held the territory constituting present-day Ukraine and most of present-day Moldova until their defeat in Western Europe in the mid-5^th century. After AD 453 when their leader Attila died (apparently of a stroke during sexual intercourse with his new young wife) the Huns union disintegrated.

The next nomadic tribal unions that dominated southern Ukraine in various times from the 6^th to the 13^th centuries consisted again of Asiatic, Mongol- and Turkic-speaking peoples: Avars, Magyars, Bulgarians, Khazars, Pechenegs, and Polovtsians.

The East Slavs

The origin of the Slavs is a complicated problem. Nobody knows for sure where they came from. Some scholars claim that they came from the Baltic coast, others – from Czechia or the Balkans. Most scholars place their motherland between the Order River (Poland) and Dnieper River (Ukraine). They suppose that the Slavs originated in the area in the first half of the 1^st millennium AD, and then from about AD 500 began to expand in all directions. The Slavs can be divided into three major groups: the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians); the Western Slavs (Czechs, Poles, Slovaks); the Southern Slavs (Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Serbs, Slovenes).

According to Byzantine chronicles the Slavs were handsome people. They were tall and had blond hair and blue eyes. With time, however, due to numerous nomadic invasions the Slavs’ appearance changed. They are still handsome but the percentage of the blond people among the Slavs is not as high as it was long time ago.

The East Slavs consisted of about fourteen large tribal unions that inhabited Ukraine, Russia, and Belorussia. Of these, the most prominent were the Polianians who lived in central Ukraine, on the banks of the Dnieper. Their administrative centre was Kiev.

According to ancient foreign chronicles, the East Slavs were known to be tough, stubborn fighters who could endure extremes of cold and heat and survive with a minimum of provisions. The World War II proved that the East Slavs still have these qualities. The Slavs were not nomads; the basis of their economy was farming.

Eastern Slavs’ religion was pagan polytheism, a belief in existence of many gods, in contrast to monotheism, a belief in the existence of a single god. The most revered deity was Perun, the god of thunder, lightning, and war.