Slovakia [antikvár]

Small but beautiful - that is our Slovakia. We cross it in 14 hours by train, and an airplane crosses it in one hour. The distance from the High Tatras to the Danube river is smaller still. But our Slovakia is not just another spot on the Earth. Nature has created thousands of beauties and riches in this little terrestrial garden. Over centuries, time moulded woods, peaks, steep hills, narrows, still waters and fields. But time flies, it gnaws away, disturbs, reforms, creates and recreates. And man enters at this moment on our soil. History tangles and disentangles the destiny of men and countries. Unrest boils over, then it settles down. When Roman soldiers built their camps on the Vdh river, our ancestors were hunting somewhere near the Dnepr river. At the height of the Roman empire, its colonies did not end at Gerulata, nowadays village of Rusovce, as Marcus Aurelius left behind him an engraved memory on the rock of Laugaricio, today the city of Trencin. The old Slavs came close to the Vistula, but our country was then making its mark on the world's history. It was near cultural and economic centres - no one had todiscover it.Istros - the old name for the Danube river was already mapped by Anaximandros in the year 550 B. C. Our Slovakia had no historians of its own, but its history was being written. Nations come, go, move and become extinct. But the country remains, it remains firmly in us, on its place as the statue, the monument to those who formes it and improved it. The brothers from Thesalonica - St. Cyril and St. Methodius - are coming to emboss the European spiritual dimension, they raise the old Slav language to the level of one of the most important world languages of that time. And the Slovak nation prays, ploughs, grazes, plants wine, forges swords and ploughs. We began to get nearer to the beautiful Slovak country. We began to grow in it, and when it digs us, felt us inwardly, we began to grow up with her to form a nation with all of today's characters, virtues and disorders. This is the spiritual heritage of our country - that was left to us, the citizens of Slovakia. She is our superior force and we live from her will, we suffer, cry, weare, happy and we die. Our Slovakia is firmly coded in genes of every generation. lam happy that today's generation of Slovaks have experienced these historic moments, when Slovakia matured to real statehood. The process lasted almost a thousand years. This time is presented to us in this book. It does not only pay homage to Slovakia, it also wants to show the country as it really is. She is our inseparable part, the heartbeating in every one of us.MICHAL KOVAC President of the Slovak RepublicFragment of the skull of a Neanderthal woman from SaeaAnthropomorphous vessels from Early Stone Age, Svodi'nBRIEF HISTORY OF SLOVAKIA AND OF SLOVAKSFrom the Bratislava Castle, the symbol of Slovak statehood, one can see the peaks of the Alps with naked eye - the mountain range that spans seven European countries with its 1000-km long arch following a south-west direction down to the Adriatic Coast. But the Bratislava Castle hill itself is part of the Carpathians, another majestic European mountain range that extends eastward to sink into the lowlands neighbouring the Black Sea. This position of Bratislava and of Slovakia in the centre of Europe, on the dividing line between East and West, has been and remains both important and symbolic for the country.Great empires - the Roman and the Byzantine, the Frank in the 9th century, and the Ottoman in the 16th-17th centuries, and those of Russia and Germany in the 20th century - either directly extended over a part of its territory or otherwise shaped the history of Slovakia.The history of Slovakia is thus that of a European country which - though never the centre around which historical developments evolved nor which set their direction - took part in all major movements, intellectual exploits and adventures. Slovakia also made contributions to the European and world history and tried to make its voice heard in the choir of nations. However, since aside from a few short spells, Slovakia never had an independent state of its own, these Slovak historical contributions have not been sufficiently recognized. The history of Slovakia seems to be overshadowed by that of Austria-Hungary (until 1918) and of Czecho-Slovakia after that.Venus of MoravanyWoman with a vessel. Nové VozokanyArcheological findings give evidence of the human existence in the territory of Slovakia already in the Middle Paleolithic Era (200,000 - 35,000 B.C.). The museum in Poprad houses a unique find from Gá-novce, a travertine moulding of skull of a Neanderthal Man. Visitors of Slovak National Museum in Bratislava are drawn to Venus of Moravany - a fascinating statuette of a woman whose age has been established at 22,800 years by carbon dating. During the Bronze Age (1,900 - 700 B.C.) the territory of Slovakia produced considerable quantities of this metal. The oldest stone architecture unearthed at Spissky Stvrtok - circular bastions, walls and houses - also date back to that period. Architectural finds from the Iron Age (700 - 500B.C.) bear testimony to the influence of the Greek civilization from the northern part near the Black Sea and of the Etruscan culture from the south.The Celts who came here from the West in the 5th century were the first to mint coins in this area.Shortly before the Christian era the Romans expanded their empire as far north as the Danube, while Germanic tribes started to penetrate from the nonhwest. The Danube formed the northern frontier of the Roman empire for four centuries; beyond this line the Romans had only isolated encampments and settlements.In addition to the prior population, this territory was exposed to Celtic, Dacian and Germanic elements as well during the first centuries A. D. During the Great Migration (5th-6thct.) this partof Euro-Burnt-burial grave from Baden culture, Vöelince