Extension to South of the Proto-Slavic homeland Trubachev’s main thesis is that prehistoric Slavs occupied not only the middle area of Central Europe, but also the Danube basin. Several arguments, to be added to mine, have led him to this conclusion 1) “The version about the Slavs coming from ‘somewhere’ originated long time ago ina misunderstanding of the silence of the Greek and Roman authors about the Slavs as such” (Trubaþev 1985, 227). Trubaþev here refers to the old version of the traditional theory, according to which Slavs would have ‘arrived’ in the 6th century. 30(2) The absence of any memory of the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs in the Slavic written or oral record “may be an indication of their (and their ancestors!) original stay in Central Oriental Europe in large numbers” (idem, 206). (3) Both in the oldest, 12th century Russian chronicle (the so called “Narration of the past times”) (Conte 1990, 9), and in the oral tradition represented by Russian byliny, the permanence of Slavs on the Danube is remembered (Trubachev 1985, 204-5). “What else, if not a memory of the old stay on the Danube, appears [...] in the old songs about the Danube among the Eastern Slavs who, it should be remembered, never lived on the Danube [...] during their written history and never took part in the Balcanic invasions of the Early Middle Ages” (ibidem). More over, already B.A. Rybakov had maintained that the history of Eastern Slavs began in the South (idem, 225). The Middle Dneper area remains important, but “it is not excluded that in some previous period [...] [it] was only a [peripheral] part of a greater and otherwise shaped territory”. This would be also confirmed y the high percentage of anthropological Mediterranean types among Eastern Slavs and Poles (idem, 225, n. 20). In fact, in the middle of the first millennium the Right Bank Ukraine must already be a part of the periphery of the ancient Slavic area(idem, 242).(4) Many scholars have anticipated Trubaþev’s thesis: Budimir, supported by numerousex-Yugoslavian scholars, claimed a greater proximity of Ancient Slavs to the Balkanic region than traditionally thought; Kopitar sought the Proto-Slavic homeland on the Danube and in Pannonia; Niederle admitted the existence of Slavic enclaves in Thracia and in Illyiria already at the beginning of our era; and both Niederle and Šafárik considered as Slavic terms like Vulka, Vrbas, Tsierna e Pathissus (s. further) (idem,223, 227, 229).(5) According to Trubaþev, even the historian Jordanes’ collocation of the Veneti to the North of the Sclaveni, and Anti to their East, implies the Slavic presence in the South(idem, 228).(6) Hungarian place names, in Pannonia and on the Tisza, are Slavic, as J. Stanislav has demonstrated (idem, 228). The region’s river names, such as Tisza (Rum. Tisa, Germ.Theiss, to be compared with Plinius’ place name Pathissus, composed with the Slavic prefix po-; Maros (Rum. Mureú, in Herodotus Máris, from PIE *mori ‘sea’, but with aSlavic suffix); the suffix -s, common to river names such as Szamos (Rum. Someú) and Temes, certainly derives from a Slavic suffix -sjo- (idem, 228-9).(7) Trubaþev then underlines the importance of the contacts between common Slavic and the different IE linguistic groups, and of the respective isoglosses (often, however,without being able to exploit them owing to the traditional chronology!)
a) The Slavo-Latin isoglosses, appearing in the social sphere (Lat. hospes ~ Slav.*gospodƱ, Lat. favere ~ Slav. *govČti), in the construction terminology (Lat. struere ~Slav. *strojiti), in that of landscape (Lat. paludes ~ Slav. *pola voda); of agriculture(Lat. pomum < *po-emom ~ Slav. *pojmo (Russ. pojmo ‘handful’) (idem, 216. And seealso 217: gǎrnǎ, kladivo, molty). Within the PCT these isoglosses can be dated, at thelatest, to the beginning of Neolithic, when the contacts between the ‘Italid’ culture ofthe Cardial/Impresso Ware on the Adriatic Eastern coast and the South Slavic Starþevo culture were certainly very close.(b) The Slavo-Illyrian isoglosses (Doksy, Czech place name, Daksa, Adriatic island, andHesichius’ gloss: Epirotic dáksa; Dukla, mountain pass in the Carpatians, Duklja in Montenegro, Doklea (Ptolemy); Licicaviki, Polish tribal name, to be compared to Illyr.*Liccavici (Illyr. anthroponym Liccavus, Liccavius) and Southern Slavic place name Lika (Trubaþev 1985, 217-8).(c) Slavo-Iranian contacts, which, as we have seen, according to Trubaþev should not precede the middle of the 1st millennium (idem, 241).(8) Criticizing the excessive restriction of the earliest Slavic area Trubaþev finally recalls Brückner’s humorous warning: “Don’t do to anybody what would not please you. The German scholars would love to drown all the Slavs in the Pripet swamps, and the Slavic scholars all the Germans in the Dollart […] – a quite pointless endeavour:there would not be enough room for them; better drop the matter and don’t spare God’slight for either of them” (idem, 206).