Let's remember how our ancestors lived, what they ate and what they dressed in.
If someone thinks that life was sweet at that time, then they are greatly mistaken.
Before that, the life of a simple Russian peasant was completely different.
Usually a person lived to be 40-45 years old and died already an old man. He was considered an adult man with a family and children at the age of 14-15, and she was even earlier. They did not get married for love, the father went to woo the bride to his son.
There was no time for idle rest. In summer, absolutely all the time was occupied by work in the field, in winter, harvesting firewood and Homework tool making and household utensils, hunting.
Let's look at the Russian village of the 10th century, which, however, is not much different from the village of both the 5th century and the 17th century...
We got to the Lubytino historical and cultural complex as part of a motor rally dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Avtomir group of companies. It is not for nothing that it is called "One-storied Russia" - it was very interesting and informative to see how our ancestors lived.
In Lyubytino, at the place of residence of the ancient Slavs, among the mounds and burials, a real village of the 10th century was recreated, with all outbuildings and necessary utensils.
Let's start with an ordinary Slavic hut. The hut is cut from logs and covered with birch bark and turf. In some regions, the roofs of the same huts were covered with straw, and somewhere with wood chips. Surprisingly, the service life of such a roof is only slightly less than the service life of the entire house, 25-30 years, and the house itself served 40 years. Considering the lifetime at that time, the house was just enough for a person’s life.
By the way, in front of the entrance to the house there is a covered area - these are the very canopies from the song about "the canopy is new, maple."
The hut is heated in black, that is, the stove does not have a chimney, the smoke comes out through a small window under the roof and through the door. normal windows neither, and the door is only about a meter high. This is done in order not to release heat from the hut.
When the stove is fired, soot settles on the walls and roof. There is one big plus in the "black" firebox - there are no rodents and insects in such a house.
Of course, the house stands on the ground without any foundation, the lower crowns simply rest on several large stones.
This is how the roof is made
And here is the oven. A stone hearth mounted on a pedestal made of logs smeared with clay. The stove was lit from early morning. When the stove is heated, it is impossible to stay in the hut, only the hostess remained there, preparing food, all the rest went outside to do business, in any weather. After the stove was heated, the stones gave off heat until the next morning. Food was cooked in the oven.
This is what the cabin looks like from the inside. They slept on benches placed along the walls, they also sat on them while eating. The children slept on the beds, they are not visible in this photo, they are on top, above the head. In winter, young livestock were taken into the hut so that they would not die from frost. They also washed in the hut. You can imagine what kind of air was there, how warm and comfortable it was there. It immediately becomes clear why life expectancy was so short.
In order not to heat the hut in the summer, when this is not necessary, there was a separate small building in the village - a bread oven. Bread was baked and cooked there.
Grain was stored in a barn - a building raised on poles from the surface of the earth to protect products from rodents.
Barrels were arranged in the barn, remember - "I scratched the bottom of the barn ..."? These are special board boxes in which grain was poured from above, and taken from below. So the grain was not stale.
Also, a glacier was tripled in the village - a cellar in which ice was laid in the spring, sprinkled with hay and lay there almost until the next winter.
Clothes, skins, not needed in this moment utensils and weapons were kept in a cage. The crate was also used when the husband and wife needed to retire.
Barn - this building served for drying sheaves and threshing grain. Heated stones were piled into the hearth, sheaves were laid on the poles, and the peasant dried them, constantly turning them over. Then the grains were threshed and winnowed.
Cooking in an oven involves a special temperature regime - languor. So, for example, gray cabbage soup is prepared. They are called gray because of their gray color. How to cook them?
To begin with, green cabbage leaves are taken, those that did not enter the head of cabbage are finely chopped, salted and placed under oppression for a week, for fermentation. Still needed for cabbage soup pearl barley, meat, onion, carrot. The ingredients are placed in a pot, and it is placed in the oven, where it will spend several hours. By the evening, a very hearty and thick dish will be ready.
Let's remember how our ancestors lived, what they ate and what they dressed in. If someone thinks that life was sweet at that time, then they are greatly mistaken.
Before that, the life of a simple Russian peasant was completely different.
Usually a person lived to be 40-45 years old and died already an old man. He was considered an adult man with a family and children at the age of 14-15, and she was even earlier. They did not get married for love, the father went to woo the bride to his son.
There was no time for idle rest. In the summer, absolutely all the time was occupied by work in the field, in winter, logging and homework for the manufacture of tools and household utensils, hunting.
Let's look at the Russian village of the 10th century, which, however, is not much different from the village of both the 5th century and the 17th century...
We got to the Lubytino historical and cultural complex as part of a motor rally dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Avtomir group of companies. It is not for nothing that it is called "One-storied Russia" - it was very interesting and informative to see how our ancestors lived.
In Lyubytino, at the place of residence of the ancient Slavs, among the mounds and burials, a real village of the 10th century was recreated, with all outbuildings and necessary utensils.
Let's start with an ordinary Slavic hut. The hut is cut from logs and covered with birch bark and turf. In some regions, the roofs of the same huts were covered with straw, and somewhere with wood chips. Surprisingly, the service life of such a roof is only slightly less than the service life of the entire house, 25-30 years, and the house itself served 40 years. Considering the lifetime at that time, the house was just enough for a person’s life.
By the way, in front of the entrance to the house there is a covered area - these are the very canopies from the song about "the canopy is new, maple."
The hut is heated in black, that is, the stove does not have a chimney, the smoke comes out through a small window under the roof and through the door. There are no normal windows either, and the door is only about a meter high. This is done in order not to release heat from the hut.
When the stove is fired, soot settles on the walls and roof. There is one big plus in the "black" firebox - there are no rodents and insects in such a house.
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In the barn, the bottom of the barrel was arranged, remember - "I scratched the bottom of the bottom of the barn ..."? These are special board boxes in which grain was poured from above, and taken from below. So the grain was not stale.
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When defending from the enemy, the main equipment of a warrior was chain mail, a shield, and a helmet. From the weapon - a spear, an ax, a sword. Chain mail is not to say that it is light, but unlike armor, you can run in it. Well, we ran a little.
Before that, the life of a simple Russian peasant was completely different.
Usually a person lived to be 40-45 years old and died already an old man. He was considered an adult man with a family and children at the age of 14-15, and she was even earlier. They did not get married for love, the father went to woo the bride to his son.
There was no time for idle rest. In the summer, absolutely all the time was occupied by work in the field, in winter, logging and homework for the manufacture of tools and household utensils, hunting.
Let's look at the Russian village of the 10th century, which, however, is not much different from the village of both the 5th century and the 17th century...
We got to the Lubytino historical and cultural complex as part of a motor rally dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Avtomir group of companies. It is not for nothing that it is called "One-storied Russia" - it was very interesting and informative to see how our ancestors lived.
In Lyubytino, at the place of residence of the ancient Slavs, among the mounds and burials, a real village of the 10th century was recreated, with all outbuildings and necessary utensils.
Let's start with an ordinary Slavic hut. The hut is cut from logs and covered with birch bark and turf. In some regions, the roofs of the same huts were covered with straw, and somewhere with wood chips. Surprisingly, the service life of such a roof is only slightly less than the service life of the entire house, 25-30 years, and the house itself served 40 years. Considering the lifetime at that time, the house was just enough for a person’s life.
By the way, in front of the entrance to the house there is a covered area - these are the very canopies from the song about "the canopy is new, maple."
The hut is heated in black, that is, the stove does not have a chimney, the smoke comes out through a small window under the roof and through the door. There are no normal windows either, and the door is only about a meter high. This is done in order not to release heat from the hut.
When the stove is fired, soot settles on the walls and roof. There is one big plus in the "black" firebox - there are no rodents and insects in such a house.
Of course, the house stands on the ground without any foundation, the lower crowns simply rest on several large stones.
This is how the roof is made
And here is the oven. A stone hearth mounted on a pedestal made of logs smeared with clay. The stove was lit from early morning. When the stove is heated, it is impossible to stay in the hut, only the hostess remained there, preparing food, all the rest went outside to do business, in any weather. After the stove was heated, the stones gave off heat until the next morning. Food was cooked in the oven.
This is what the cabin looks like from the inside. They slept on benches placed along the walls, they also sat on them while eating. The children slept on the beds, they are not visible in this photo, they are on top, above the head. In winter, young livestock were taken into the hut so that they would not die from frost. They also washed in the hut. You can imagine what kind of air was there, how warm and comfortable it was there. It immediately becomes clear why life expectancy was so short.
In order not to heat the hut in the summer, when this is not necessary, there was a separate small building in the village - a bread oven. Bread was baked and cooked there.
Grain was stored in a barn - a building raised on poles from the surface of the earth to protect products from rodents.
Barrels were arranged in the barn, remember - "I scratched the bottom of the barn ..."? These are special board boxes in which grain was poured from above, and taken from below. So the grain was not stale.
Also, a glacier was tripled in the village - a cellar in which ice was laid in the spring, sprinkled with hay and lay there almost until the next winter.
Clothes, skins, utensils and weapons that were not needed at the moment were stored in a crate. The crate was also used when the husband and wife needed to retire.
Barn - this building served for drying sheaves and threshing grain. Heated stones were piled into the hearth, sheaves were laid on the poles, and the peasant dried them, constantly turning them over. Then the grains were threshed and winnowed.
Cooking in an oven involves a special temperature regime - languor. So, for example, gray cabbage soup is prepared. They are called gray because of their gray color. How to cook them?
The life of the peasants consisted not only of the labors of the righteous. The village knew how to relax. They prepared for the holidays ahead of time, not only adults, but also children were waiting for it. Children - even especially. And not only for the sake of gifts or plentiful treats, although it is probably appropriate to say here that any festive table due to frequent and long exhausting fasts. For a peasant, many, if not all, folk and church customs, traditions, rituals naturally and naturally fit into his circle. economic activity and spiritual life, serving as a kind of reward for difficult, sometimes exhausting everyday life.
How did our ancestors relax?
Girls came to parties with spinning wheels, but they did it, as they say, to divert eyes: how much can you spin if the accordion is so flooded that the legs themselves ask to dance. They danced most often a four-knee quadrille. During breaks, they sang songs, ditties, had conversations, cracking nuts (later seeds appeared). Guys used to indulge in wine at parties, but they indulged, not got drunk. Having spent an evening or two in this way, they moved to another village, got to know each other, got accustomed to neighbors and neighbors, lingering where they found personal interest for themselves.
Festive, and indeed any ordinary parties, usually dragged on well after midnight.
Visit the open-air museum Small Karely on a weekend or a holiday, and you will see firsthand how our ancestors rested.
However, the youth did not get bored during the day either. They arranged ice slides and rode from them in special sleds-chunks. The slides were built on the high bank of the river, the sleds flew from them over the ice for 300-400 meters. Every guy, if he started to get married, had to roll his girlfriend down such a hill. That was some kind of game - with a squeal, laughter, if a couple flew into a snowdrift, which was sometimes done intentionally.
Celebrations on Maslenitsa
And on Maslenitsa, in addition to riding on chunks, sleigh rides around the village were arranged, and not alone, by whole trains. It was a wonderful sight. In the village - there was a real amateur holiday, your own action, in which you are both a spectator and an artist, you yourself have fun and amuse others. Their owners wove bright ribbons into the mane of each horse, a ringing Valdai bell was attached to the arc, and the sleigh was decorated - whoever was on what. Such a train rushes through the village - thirty or forty sleighs at a time - it takes your breath away! Look at this fun even feeble old people went out. And the train flew over the village, stopping for some time at the ice hill, where they again rode in chunks, and rushed to the next village of the society. And so on - until it travels around the whole district, it jumps with noise, ringing, uproar, with songs and merry music. An unforgettable sight...
Patronal feasts
Noted old village holidays and summer, even in the days of suffering. These were mostly patronal feasts - in honor of one or another saint, to whom the village church was dedicated. So every village, if it had a temple of God, had its own patronal feast. 
On patronal days, beer was brewed in every house, snacks were prepared and feasted for two or three days. Adults usually spent holidays at home, while young people chose a place for themselves in a meadow by the river. As a rule, guys and girls from four or five surrounding villages gathered for such parties. They danced the same quadrille to the discordant accordion, sang songs in companies, in a row, walked through the meadow. The festivities began at noon and ended late in the evening, but it often continued the next day. Older people also came to the meadow in the evening, but not to sing and dance, but, above all, to look after a bride for their son.
Christmas holidays
But the main holidays are joy and decoration village life dropped out for the winter. And the first among them in terms of seniority and reverence was Christmas. It was some kind of bright and joyful holiday, expected by the whole family. Of course, a religious beginning gave it an unusually strong, capital, one might say, coloring: after all, the date of the birth of Christ is still the starting point of our chronology. But at the same time, the popular consciousness, guided by the echoes of some vague, even more ancient ritual customs, associated with this day the completion by the peasant of the eternal cycle of laborious work on earth, and the desire to predict whether next year favorable to the farmer or not.
On this day (or the eve of it), the peasant took note of many things in natural phenomena: is there frost on the trees, is it a clear day or is a snowstorm blowing, is the sky starry, is the sledge track good, believing that thick frost promises abundant bread, snowstorm - swarming bees , and the stars are the harvest for peas. This whole system of signs and beliefs endowed Christmas with a special meaning - mysterious, enigmatic, going back to inexpressibly hoary antiquity and full of obscure hopes.
But on the other hand, the general desire to finally have a tasty meal and take a walk after a dull, boring and exhausting fast completely deprived him of any mysticism, made him close and understandable in an earthly way, and even how close and understandable.
Try it, sit week after week on jelly and zatiruha, if you don’t want to, remember how your grandmother kept you: “Wait, fasting, he will tighten your tail!”
What is true is true, the post was running out of tails, although both the barn and the crate were not empty. But with the onset of the holiday, both yesterday's bread on the table and the boring potatoes in the pot came to an end. The meat conspiracy allowed everything: the long-awaited cabbage soup with meat, and buttered lush pies, shangi. But before you sit down at the table, you had to go to church, take communion.
Village weddings
Weddings in the countryside were most often played in spring or autumn. In order to ensure the happiness of the young, resistance was shown throughout the wedding. Until the very wedding day, the bride resisted what was happening, even if she married with her own desire. Hence her lamentations, which have always been an improvisation that does not violate strict traditional forms. Lamenting, the betrothed girl “shouted loudly”, flailing her hands on the bench and the floor. And everyone took it for granted, they told her: “you won’t cry at the table, you’ll cry at the post.”
The resistance to the wedding came not only from the bride, but also from the "comers" - fellow villagers, who on the wedding day saw off the bride from native village. They blocked the road for the wedding train, sang the so-called reproachful songs, in which they reproached the “groom, scolded and ridiculed the “matchmaker” (or the “master”, if he rode a horse, leading the wedding train”).
matchmaker, matchmaker
Yes, the sly devil matchmaker,
Yes, the sly devil matchmaker,
Everyone went and was cunning,
Not by way, not by way,Oh, not by way, not by road -
Sidewall,
Sidewall,
Yes, dog pathsOh, all dog paths,
Yes, animal standards
All animal burrows
Everyone went and praisedEveryone went and praised
Alien far side
Alien far side.
All the villain is unfamiliar,
Oh, evil - the miracle of the father's son
It is impossible to imagine an old village without songs. There were a great many songs: round dance, play, love, wedding. Under lullabies they rocked a cradle with a baby, under funeral services they said goodbye to the deceased.
Used sources:
(According to the books by Plotnikov N. “Exhibition Restrictions” and Arinian E.I. “Religion Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow”, as well as the memoirs of old-timers).
Usually Slavic settlements settled in those places where it was possible to engage in agriculture. They chose the banks of the rivers as their favorite places for conducting the main activity and life. In the fields, this people cultivated a variety of cereal crops, grew flax and bred many vegetable crops.
And those peoples that lived in the territories covered with forests could only be engaged in agriculture in a way that was called slash-and-burn. With this option of plowing and pre-treatment of the fertile layer of the earth, in the first year it was necessary to cut down the forest, then wait until it dries well, and then it was necessary to uproot all the stumps and everything that could not be used as firewood was burned to ashes. The ash was carefully collected, as it was a good fertilizer. During sowing operations, which are usually carried out on next season, after clearing the territory from green spaces, it was mixed with the ground. Such a plot could be planted for at least 3-5 years, and then the communities were forced to turn off their parking lot and look for new uninhabited lands and again clear them of vegetation. Naturally, this method of farming required large areas and so the Slavs settled in small groups.
Social relations and the development of agriculture
Relations between people changed as cultivation of fertile lands developed. Due to slash-and-burn cultivation, which required collective labor and frequent change of place of residence, the beginning of the decay tribal settlements. In those centuries, families were very large and mostly close relatives. The male staff was engaged in labor-intensive types of agriculture, and the women led a common subsidiary farm. So it was until the moment when the tribal common economy began to be divided into small private plots, which passed into the hands of individual families or couples. Now, only land plots could be owned by the community, but they were also divided among all those living in this territory. Naturally, the formation of property concentrated in private hands inevitably led to the emergence of a different class of people. Some became richer and some became poorer.
Housing mainly consisted of wooden huts, surrounded by a palisade, or as it was called at that time tyn. And such fortification areas, surrounded by high wooden pointed stakes, were called settlements.
Life and activities of the Slavs living on the warm southern plains
The economy of the Eastern Slavs living in the southern lands was fundamentally different from the cultivation of arable land of their northern relatives, due to the warm climate and a large portion of precipitation. The most advanced method of excavation in these places was fallow. Under this option, land was sown for several years in a row, and when the resources of fertile soil were depleted, they moved to new uninhabited places. To facilitate heavy rural labor, a plow (plow) was used, but this tool was not known to the inhabitants of the northern regions.
But not only the plowing of land and the cultivation of crops were engaged in the Eastern Slavs. Along with the main type of life, they were good at breeding pets. This fact became known during excavations at the settlement sites of this people, where archaeologists managed to find the bones of horses, cows, pigs, sheep, as well as the remains of bird skeletons. Horses were used for heavy sowing work, and their meat, after the animal had outlived its life, was eaten.
Territory of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages it was covered with dense forests, in which various animals were found in abundance. Rivers, as well as forest plantations, were in most of this region. They had different kinds of fish. Therefore, the enterprising inhabitants of these places often hunted large and medium-sized animals and were engaged in fishing. The hunter's weapons were spears and arrows, but the fishermen took with them nets, nets and hooks. In the course of people who were engaged in fishing, there were special wicker devices.
Also historical facts indicate that the economy of the Eastern Slavs was supplemented by an activity called beekeeping - collecting honey from the hives of wild bees. Our ancestors called a hollow in a tree a board, and it was this name that formed the basis of the type of activity. By the way, both honey and wax in those days sold well and had a good price.
Where did our ancestors live, and how did the division of this people take place
The boundless steppe plains between the Dnieper and the Oder were originally inhabited by the distant ancestors of the Slavs. Later, some of these settlers moved south to the Balkans and left only small group southern relatives (the territory of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia). The rest of the population, as a result of migration to the northwestern lands, constituted a group of Western peoples. Their composition is mostly represented by Poles, Czechs and Slovaks. The remaining small third part advanced to the northeastern territories, and its population was made up of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.
So, gradually year after year in the Middle Ages, the Eastern Slavs settled on the ground and equipped their life and, improving the types of tribal farming, were divided into different communal systems. Moreover, many of them did not live in isolation, but in close contact with their neighbors.
