The most distant periods of history are little studied, there are only archeological data that cannot cover the entire complex of interaction and development of the human race. But historical science can give exhaustive answers to questions about what tribes are, how they appeared.
Formation of races
The first centers of civilization arose in the south-east of our planet (Egypt, India, China, Mesopotamia), and this is no coincidence. There is a comfortable climate and favorable lands, allowing to receive a significant surplus product, and all this, in turn, led to the complication of relations and the formation of large unions, prototypes of states.
However, before the advent of such, the entire human race was a primitive herd. As the number of people grew, differences intensified, which were associated with the fact that people developed new areas for life. This inevitably affected the diversity of the human species.
Southerners acquired those racial characteristics that we can still observe today in the Australoid and Negroid races. The masses of people who inhabited the sandy and taiga spaces,acquired their own unique features. Today we can observe them in the Mongoloid race. And the Caucasians who settled in Europe also have their own characteristics.
Ethnic and linguistic features
What are tribes? This is a perfectly legitimate question. It would seem that the answer is simple: it is a group of related communities of people or just a group of people, it all depends on how interconnected these groups are. But the formation of tribes is more complex.
Initially, there were several large associations of ancient people, each of which represented different linguistic and cultural elements, and even within these more or less common groups there was a significant difference in linguistic and everyday characteristics.
The largest language family is Indo-European, it was she who gave rise to many tribes, and those subsequently to the peoples of Europe and Asia.
The tribes of Africa come from three language groups: Niger-Kordofanian, Khoisan and Nilo-Saharan, except for the Arabs, who belong to the Semitic-Hamitic.
Subsequently, the speakers of these language families spread throughout Africa, and only the north of the continent later becomes Arabic.
The largest tribal community
Indo-Europeans, as the name implies, occupied vast territories of Eurasia. It is believed that the ancestral home of the tribes of this group is the region of South-Eastern and Central Europe. The economic life of the tribes of this community was represented by agriculture andcattle breeding, metallurgy reaches a high level of development closer to the third millennium.
The growing number of Indo-European tribes leads to their settlement, part followed to the west and south, the other moved to the east and north of the continent. Having occupied the whole of Europe, the Indo-Europeans did not stop and rushed further to the east, up to the Urals, in the southern direction, the territory of modern India becomes the extreme point of distribution of this association.
During these global migratory movements, the unity of the group began to disintegrate. This happens in 4-3 millennia BC. It is from this environment that the ancient tribes of the Slavs stand out, although at this stage they can be designated as Proto-Slavs.
Formation of national units
Similar processes were going on in other communities of people, Altai and Turkic tribes were formed on the vast steppes of Asia. Having an idea of what tribes are and where they lived, one can assume their occupation.
As for the aforementioned Turkic-Altai tribes, it becomes clear that nomadic cattle breeding was the basis of their economy. Those groups that inhabited the fertile lands were mainly engaged in agriculture. Among them are the tribes of the Slavs. Their homeland is the middle reaches of the Vistula, Elbe and Oder rivers. From there they spread throughout southern, eastern and western Europe. There they gave rise to three groups of Slavs: eastern (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and southern (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, etc.)
However, this happened much later. According to archeology and other sources, in the first millennium BC. e. the Proto-Slavs stood out first from the general group of Germans, and then from the B alts.
Struggle for a place in the sun
Of course, such mass migrations of large groups of people could not do without conflicts. Tribal warfare was no less frequent than migration and agriculture. Nomadic tribes were the most successful in this business. They were more adapted to hardship and warfare because their existence depended on it.
The Slavs in this regard experienced whole waves of successive raids of nomads: at first they were Cimmerians and Scythians, they were replaced by Sarmatians, and then a huge mass of Huns. This continued until they created their own fighting squads.
However, from the VI century BC. e. and until the VIII century AD - this is an incessant war of tribes of various origins for the most favorable living conditions. This period is also known for the active formation of intertribal alliances.
Inter-tribal groups
Since we have already touched on the Slavs, we will use their example to consider the formation of powerful tribal groups, the last step on the way to the creation of statehood. The main written source on the history of that period is The Tale of Bygone Years.
According to the information given in this testimony, there were about 15 Slavic tribes and their associations.the community was part of a larger tribe. Which of them was the most developed economically and politically? The chronicle says that these are meadows that lived on the plains in the area of the modern city of Kyiv.
Another tribal association, which was close in terms of development to the glades, were the Ilmen Slovenes. These two inter-tribal groupings, which consisted of closely related groups, set the tone for the further development of the entire Eastern Slavs. Similar processes took place in other tribes. The strongest ethnic units and the developed included less influential neighbors, forming an intertribal alliance.
Universal historical process
Indeed, it was the Polans and the Ilmen Slovenes who formed two competing political centers - Kyiv and Novgorod. These capitals of tribal unions will subsequently clash for dominance in Russia.
If we turn to other historical examples, we can see the Burgundians and Gascons in France in the struggle for dominance in a single state. In general, this process is universal.
The tribes of Africa are no exception, where intense rivalry led to the formation of vast state formations, however, a characteristic feature of the development of these processes here was their transience and great variability, due to the early civilizational influence of Egypt and the Middle Eastern empires. This is what tribes are, their influence on further ethnic self-identification in a nutshell.
