25,000 BP

• Late Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies first ventured beyond the Arctic Circle in northern Russia and Siberia during the milder interstadial climate phase

• "A single giant freshwater lake covering most of the West Siberian Plain at around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. Stretching some 1500 km from north to south, and a similar distance east to west at its widest points, at its maximum extent it would have had a surface area at least twice that of the Caspian

Sea." "Formed by the damming of the Yenisei and Ob rivers by an eastward lobe of the Ural and Putorana ice sheets, this mega-lake appears, from the available dates, to have reached its maximum extent by around 24,000 years ago, and to have existed in some form up until around 12,000 or 13,000 radiocarbon years ago." "The lake which existed would have covered most of western Siberia, stretching about 1500 km from north to south (see map Fig.3), with several large islands of higher ground emerging from it." Complete (unfinished) article by E. U. Lioubimtseva, S. P. Gorshkov and Jonathan Adams.

• late glacial tundra period in Scandinavia
• Final Upper Paleolithic represented by many sites in western Siberia

• Allerød, Norway: Deglaciation of Scandinavia begins and people begin moving north following reindeer

• Mesolithic Hunters of the Inland Boreal Forests; lived along rivers and lake shores of forested flatland that occupied contemporary southern part of the North Sea laid bare by melting ice sheets
• Earliest evidence of settlement of Norway
• to 5,500 BP, birch forests covered most of the Nordkinn Peninsula in northern Fennoscandia. Forest development started as extensive birch forests established between 11,200-10,000 cal BP. (source)

• Ice recedes to Central Scandinavian Peninsula; the ocean broke through and joined the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, creating the Yoldia Sea

• Deglaciation reveals wide peninsula extending northward from European continent to Scandinavia

to 6,000 BP, Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic) in Norway: Hunters and fishers. Rock carvings. Milder climate.
• "Gradual migration of pine started more than 10,000 cal BP; Pine migrated southwards from the coastal areas of the Arctic Ocean and it took more than 3,000 y to invade over northern Fennoscandia." (source)

• Isostatic rebound creates a freshwater lake, the Ancylus Sea, in the area of the present Baltic Sea
• Colonization of deglaciated lands by plants and animals: larch, poplar, linden, beech, spruce, primitive grains, elk, reindeer, beaver, aurochs, swine and dogs
• Early Neolithic Period in western Siberia; elk hunters and fishers; some pottery in Baikal region and in the Syalakh culture of Yakutia
• First peoples arrived in the Torne River valley of northern Sweden. (Kiruna Municipality, Lapland, Sweden History)

• Earliest settlement of south and west coastal areas of Sweden; Mesolithic Coastal Fishers and Hunters of the Atlantic Period; hunting and fishing subsistence lifestyles
• Human migration northward via the Danish islands

• Ancylus Lake is invaded by the ocean and becomes saline, known the Litorina Sea

• Scandinavian Peninsula and the Baltic region has assumed the look it has today, though the land continues to rise in isostatic rebound, changing the shapes of river mouths and shorelines

• New Stone Age (Neolithic) in Norway; Livestock. Early agriculture.

• Neolithic Forest Farmers, Denmark; swidden agriculture and livestock husbandry; megalithic burials become common; in central Sweden and south Norway the Pitted Ware (hunter-gatherer with some agriculture) culture formed and spread into southern Sweden and parts of Denmark

• Late Neolithic Farmers and Stock Herders; appearance of Corded Ware tradition marked changes in the agricultural societies of Scandinavia; evidence of tokens of manhood; small, dispersed settlements

• Independence Culture I - Peary Land, Northeast Greenland

• Bronze Age in Sweden; evidence of trade with Britain and continent; class structure becomes more profound in the southern part of Sweden
• Bronze Age in Norway, characterized by agricultural tools, jewellery, glass, weapons and foreign trade.

• "the powerful Andronovo culture appeared on the southern edge of the taiga in search of pastures and were the first horsemen of the Asiatic steppe" (Oxford Companion to Archaeology 644).

• Sarqaq Culture flourished at Disco Bay, West Greenland

• Lands north of Black Sea settled by Scythians from central Asia (mixed horde of people whose ruling element was Iranian); looking for grass for the horses and cattle on which they depended

• Independence Culture II flourished in Peary Land, Northeast Greenland

• Introduction of iron into southern Scandinavia; evidence of contact with Celtic La Tène culture

Herodotus describes the Scythians: "The Scythians had entered Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians whom they had expelled from Europe. . ." (Herodotus 84). "During the twenty-eight years of Scythian supremacy in Asia, violence and neglect of law led to absolute chaos. Apart from tribute arbitrarily imposed and forcibly extracted, they behaved like mere robbers, riding up and down the country and seizing peoples property" (Herodotus 85).

• Late in century pressure from Persian Empire, Celtic advances from the east, and Sarmatian advances from the east fatally weaken Scythian empire; Sarmatians advanced swiftly “overwhelming their foes with their heavy calvary, the likes of which the West had never seen” (Lincoln xx).

• Sarmatians gain complete control of the steppe

• Alans, last Samartian tribe to arrive, controlled steppe from the Don to the Volga and southwards over the valley of the Kuban; the Scythians moved north and pressed the Slavs north into what is now Russia

• Sarmatian and Teutonic forces crossed the Danube and attacked Dacia (modern Romania)

• "Internal changes in Chinese political situation forced Huns [Hsiung-hu] to move westward. They tried to invade India but were repulsed. They then moved with great rapidity westward and passed north of the Caspian and Black seas and down through southern Russia into the Balkans" Cantor 100).

• Ostrogoths overrun by Huns; Visigoths petitioned eastern emperor for refuge on Roman soil (Cantor 100).

• “Cruel barbarians who consecrated their treaties with toasts of human blood drunk from a human skull, Attila’s Huns followed the Sarmatians to build an empire that, by the 5thC, reached into the plains of Hungary” (Lincoln xx).

• Alan forces served in the Hunnish army under Attila; were overrun by Goths fleeing the Huns

• Viking raid on Lindisfarne recorded

Old Ladoga, first Norse settlement in Russia (Pipes 335)

Norse seal and whale hunters active in Barents Sea

Norsemen spread out along Volga and Dneiper basins and raid Constantinpole (Pipes 335)

• Collapse of Hun empire “opened the way for the Avars, the first of several new nomadic waves that struck against the edge of Europe before 1000 CE” (Lincoln xx).
• Various small states had grouped together to form Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

• Dicuil records displacement of Irish monks by Vikings

• Northeast corner of what is now Russia contacted by Vikings; imposed tribute on inhabitants of area that would become Novgorod

• Vikings invited back to Novgorod area to help impose order; Ruric and his Swedish warriors were to protect the trading cities on the Neva and the Dnieper; they and their descendants established bases at Novgorod and Kiev

• Scandinavians (Norwegians) settle in Iceland; apparently found Irish holy men settled there when they landed (Crosby 45; Diamond 371).

• Prince Oleg unites Novgorod with Kiev to form one state (Pipes 335)

• Pechenegs invade Black Sea steppe

• Prince Sviatoslav (Norse) attacks and destroys Khazar state

• Prince Sviatoslav conquers Bulgaria

• The Norseman (Viking) Erik the Red settled in Brattahlid, Greenland (the present Qassiarsuk)

• Norse from Iceland colonize Greenland (Diamond 371).

• Kiev converts to Christianity

• Prince Vladimir (980-1015) imposed Christianity on the Russians; he summoned a council of boyars (non-royal nobles) to discuss the possible adoption of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, or some other politically aligned religion; decided Russia should become Orthodox; Kiev became centre of new religion

• Polovtsy (Cumans: Turko-Mongol nomads who occupied the steppes between the Danube and the Volga) invade Black Sea steppe pushing out the Pechenegs

• The Danish kings Sweyn Forkbeard and Canute the Great rule a North Sea Empire made up of Denmark, Norway and England.

• Unification of Norway into one kingdom. Introduction of Christianity to Norway.

• Disintegration of the Danish North Sea Empire.

• people from Novgorod reached White Sea littoral and moved eastward overland

• Denmark, Norway and Sweden’s borders fixed at Kungahälla

• First elected governor (posadnik) in Novgorod

• The first missionaries arrive in Finland from Sweden (source)

• Temuchin, son of Lady Oelun-eke and Esugai born; later became Chingis Khan

• Kiev sacked and capital moved to Vladimir by Prince Andrew Bogliuski

• Lady Oelun-eke, her three sons and two stepsons banished in Transbaikal region after poisoning death of her husband Esugai

• Temuchin becomes vassal to one of Mongolia’s most powerful lords

• Polovsty (Cumans) cut Kiev-Constantinople trade route

• Temuchin convenes an assembly (a Great Kuriltai) of “all the people living in felt tents” to decide their destiny. "Consolidation of Mongol tribes." The Kuriltai proclaimed Temuchin Chingis Khan; aided by four generals: Jebe, Kubilai, Jelme, and Subudei, who lived for the thrill of combat

• Mongols turn their attention to the domains of the emperors of north China; not an easy conquest because of gorges, mountains and the Gobi Desert
• Time Magazine (Jan 1999) called Ghengis Khan's empire the 29th most important event of the last millennium.

• Mongols cross the Great Wall

• May; Mongols sack Peking
• Main Mongol force turned westward; remnant force fights on in China for some 20 years

• Chingis overruns kingdom of the Kara-Kitans, west of Lake Issyk-Kul (now Ysyk-Köl in Kyrgyzstan)
• CK led his armies (ca 200K) and Chinese siege engines into western Turkestan, where the Muslim Khorezm Empire flourished (nowUzbekistan)

• CK split his force into smaller units that ravaged the countryside and assembled hordes of captives to storm the walls of the better defended cities

• February, the scattered forces reunited at Bukhara (still a town in a region of the same name in Uzbekistan); city fell March
• Captives from Bukhara were used to storm Samarkand (still a town (Samarqand) in a region of the same name in Uzbekistan), thought to have the stoutest defenses in Central Asia; lost advantage in a sortie that was routed with an ambush; Chingis’s youngest son slaughtered 750K people at Merv (now Mary, Turkmenistan) because a defender had killed CK’s brother-in-law; razed Nishapur (Neyshabur in Khorasan province in northeastern Iran); beseiged and destroyed Bamian (central Afganistan); more towns taken; slaughter carried into Persian Iraq; two of the generals, Jebe and Subudei and 20K horsemen chased an escaping sultan Muhammad II, Ali ad-Din (who died impoverished January 1221) around the bottom of the Caspian Sea; marched into Azerbaijan, into the Mugan steppes, and invaded Georgia (on east coast of Black Sea);

• all of the major Khorezm cities had fallen; the two generals had withdrawn into Persia to fight a year-long campaign
• February: Mongol reconnaissance of Europe began (Chambers 19); Europeans thought the Mongols were just a bunch of pillaging bandits

• The two generals, Jebe and Subudei and their 20K horsemen, turned north again, crossed the Derbent Pass through the Caucasus Mountains, on the west shore of the Caspian Sea, [apparently George IV of Georgia tried to stop them there] and headed up into the steppes of present-day Stavropol’, entered the southern lands of Russia, chased and defeated large band of Cumans; Subedei signed a secret treaty with Venetian merchants which would give the Mongols detailed information about European powers and spread propaganda in exchange for Mongol protection of Venetian trading stations (Chambers 25); forces joined again and rode up the Dneister to cover for scouting parties

• (date according to Merriam-Webster) and the two generals smashed a small Russian army on the banks of the Kalka River in the extreme southeast corner of the Ukraine; crossed the Volga River near the site of present-day Volgograd (used to be Stalingrad) and circled the north end of the Caspian Sea to rejoin Chingis in Khorezm; they didn’t tell him about it until later because CK was planning a new war against China
• Russians continue with the dynastic squabbles “that had kept their land in turmoil for the better part of two hundred years” (Lincoln 15); don’t bother to find out where the “evil Tartars” came from or went (15).

• August: Chingis Khan dies; he bequeaths to each of his sons an ulus (a number of tribes and the grazing lands needed to support them), but these didn’t confer right to replace Chingis; a Grand Kuriltai chose Ugedei, CK’s third son; he reigned from the Mongol capital at Karakorum, and his brothers and nephews extended conquests intoChina, Korea, western Persia, Russia, and eastern Europe

• Batu begins conquest of north-eastern Russia; sets out from Karakorum, Mongolia

• the ulus of Batu, second son of Chingis Khan’s eldest son Juchi, eventually stretched from Siberia’s borderlands to the steppes of Kazakstan (16).; the general Subedei, who’d survived Jebe, reported about the campaign on the Kalka; Batu appointed Subedei chief of staff; headed west, crushed the Bulgars, whose kingdom centred around the modern-day city of Kazan, and were ready to attack Russia in the late fall

• end of the reprieve from the Mongols or “Tartars”; rumours of “Tartar” threat began to circulate in Europe soon after New Years; Batu’s forces preferred winter fighting when ground was hard and rivers were highways; 150K cavalry crossed the Volga and attacked Bulgar Riazan (Ryazan, ca 190 km from Moscow), then moved on to Moscow, only a small provincial town at that point; not politically strong but a strategically useful target because of its proximity to rivers; then turned on Vladimir (180 km west of Moscow, and about the same north-north eastish of Ryazan) which was ruled by Grand Prince Iurii II, whose forces only slowed the advance; by 9 February no one but Mongols alive in Vladimir (Iurii escapes); Iurii manages to find some fighters but is wiped out in early March; Mongols advance on Novgorod, the greatest commercial centre in the Russian land and eastern outpost (source of candle wax and of furs (NG, Oct 1994 68) [and maybe amber, too?]) of the Hanseatic League (a trading guild with League towns in Gemany, Poland, Kaliningrad, Latvia, Estonia and sources in Scandinavia, England, France, the Netherlands and Russia); Novgorod was saved that season, spring came and the ice began to thaw; Mongols returned to the southern Russian steppes and rested and rebuilt for a couple of years

• by this year, Tatars had conquered all of Russia, with victims fleeing into Poland, Hungary and Germany (Jones and Pennick 186)
• Summer: Batu divided his forces; joined by a nephew Mongka, who would become the next great khan, and devastated the towns of southwestern Russia, then reassembled their armies near Kiev (Ukraine), then a centre of art and learning, “standing at the crossroads where caravans carrying spices and silks from the Orient intersected with the traffic that moved along the ‘Great Amber Road’ from the Baltic to Constantinople, Kiev was the ‘Mother of Russian Cities’” (Lincoln 20). Kiev also protected Krakow, Budapest, and Vienna but by middle of the 13th century, Kiev had grown weak, a victim of the internecine struggles going on among the princes of Russia; Mongka showed his ruthlessness and fitness to inherit the Mongol empire;
• Nov 19/Dec 6 Kiev fell to the Mongols; the Russians couldn’t coalesce into an effective force against them

• Palm Sunday, Tatars burned Krakow to the ground (Jones and Pennick 186); Battle of Liegnitz, Silesia: Mongols defeat Germans, invade Poland and Hungary; the death of Ugedei forces them to withdraw from Europe (TT III)
• Swedes, under Earl Birger, had landed in the mouth of the river Neva in the north; soundly defeated by Yaroslav of Novgorod's son, Prince Alexander that he was give the title Alexander Nevsky
• December, Ugedei Khan, Chingis Khan’s son and successor dies

• Tatars withdrew from Europe and rode for Karakorum, “the capital that their great khan Chingis had build south of Siberia’s Lake Baikal on the edge of Mongolia” (Lincoln 6), to choose a new leader

• Turku in Finland founded, also became the Bishop's seat.

• Kublai Khan becomes Governor of China (TT III)

• Alexander Nevskii, Great Prince of Vladimir

• Mongols conquer the Caucasus and Iran (Pipes 336)

• Mongols conduct first census of Russia (Pipes 336)

• Anti-Mongol uprisings in Novgorod (Pipes 336)

• Kublai Khan becomes Mongol ruler (to 1294) (TT III)

• Mongols take Bagdhad and overthrow caliphate (TT III); focuses attention on Japan (failed 1274) and Burma (1287)

• Acceptance of Norwegian sovereignty in Iceland (Derry 406)

• Appanage principality of Moscow carved out for Nevskii's son, Danil, who rules c. 1276-1303 (Pipes 336)

• The foundation of Viborg at the Northern outlet from Lake Ladoga. A result of a Swedish expansionist policy that aimed at gaining control over the sea routes to Novgorod. (web source)

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