Proto-Ukrainians

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In Ukrainian Romantic nationalism, the ancient Ukrs or Proto-Ukrs (Ukrainian: протоукри) are a mythical people, putative ancestors of the Ukrainian people. The term was introduced by Tadeusz Czacki in his monograph "O nazwisku Ukrainy i początku kozaków" (Warsaw, 1801, reprint 1843). Czacki claimed that the "ancient Ukrs" were a nomadic horde that migrated to the Dnieper basin from across the Volga in the 7th century AD.^[1] The name of Ukraine is in reality derived from a Proto-Slavic *kraj- "region" or "borderland" and not from an ethnonym.

Some émigré Ukrainian historians of the 20th century updated the unscientific term "Proto-Ukrs" to the pseudo-scientific derivation Proto-Ukrainians (Ukrainian: протоукраїнці, праукраїнці),^[2] employed to refer to the Trypillians,^[3] an archaeological culture that flourished on the territory of modern Romania and Ukraine in the 5th millennium BC. The Scythians and Sarmatians were also declared "the direct predecessors of [the inhabitants of] Kievan Rus".^[3]

[edit] Proto-Ukrainian theories

• The idea has been advanced that the "Proto-Ukrs" were related to the tribe of "uchri" mentioned by Widukind of Corvey in the third part of the Res gestae saxonicae sive annalium libri tres as part of the tribal union of the Polabian Slavs.^[4].
• Prof. Petro Kononenko sought to identify Kyi, an apocryphal co-founder of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, with Attila the Hun.^[5] Indeed, the Huns are held by some Ukrainian authors to have been a tribe of "proto-Ukrainians", or, more specifically, "the local Slav population from around the river Dnieper".^[3]
• In 1993, Serhiy Plachynda published the "Dictionary of Ancient Ukrainian Mythology" where he enlarged upon the subject of "Proto-Ukrainians and Ancient Ukrainians of the Stone Age, Neolithic, Copper Age, and Bronze Age".^[6]
• In his book "The Ukrs-Aryans" (2003), Oleksandr Chaichenko argues that the Ukrs were a "Pelasgo-Etruscan tribe" whose Aryan ancestors created the Rigveda.^[7]
• There have been controversial attempts to connect the archaeological site of Kamyana Mohyla in Eastern Ukraine with the genesis of the Sumerian cuneiform script. The issue spawned sensationalist headlines to the effect of "Ukraine as the urheimat of the Sumerians".[1]

[edit] References