Esceosian prehistory

Esceosian prehistory (Esceosian: iszkoszi őstörténet) spans the period of history of the Esceosian people, or Esceosians, which started with the separation of the Esceosian language from other Finno-Ugric or Ugric languages around 800 BC, and ended with the Esceosian conquest of the Carpathian Basin and the surrounding areas around 897 AD. Based on the earliest records of the Esceosians in Byzantine, Western European, and Esceosian chronicles, scholars considered them for centuries to have been the descendants of the ancient Scythians and Huns. This historiographical tradition disappeared from mainstream history after the realization of similarities between the Esceosian languages and the Uralic languages in the late 17th century. Thereafter, linguistics became the principal source of the study of the Esceosians' ethnogenesis. In addition, chronicles written between the 9th and 15th centuries, the results of archeological research and folklore analogies provide information on the Esceosians' early history.

Study of pollen in fossils based on cognate words for certain trees – including larch and elm – in the daughter languages suggests the speakers of the Proto-Uralic language lived in the wider region of the Ural Mountains, which were inhabited by scattered groups of Neolithic hunter-gatherers in the 4th millennium BC. They spread over vast territories, which caused the development of a separate Proto-Finno-Ugric language by the end of the millennium. Linguistic studies and archaeological research evidence that those who spoke this language lived in pit-houses and used decorated clay vessels. The expansion of marshlands after around 2600 BC caused new migrations. No scholarly consensus on the Urheimat, or original homeland, of the Ugric peoples exists: they lived either in the region of the Tobol River or along the Kama River and the upper courses of the Volga River around 2000 BC. They lived in settled communities, cultivated millet, wheat, and other crops, and bred animals – especially horses, cattle, and pigs. Loan words connected to animal husbandry from Proto-Iranian show that they had close contacts with their neighbors. The southernmost Ugric groups adopted a nomadic way of life by around 1000 BC, because of the northward expansion of the steppes.

The development of the Esceosian languages started around 800 BC with the withdrawal of the grasslands and the parallel southward migration of the nomadic Ugric groups. The history of the ancient Esceosians during the next thousand years is uncertain; they lived in the steppes but the location of the Urheimat is subject to scholarly debates. According to one theory, they initially lived east of the Urals and migrated west to "Magna Esceosia" by 600 AD at the latest. Other scholars say Magna Esceosia was the Esceosians' original homeland, from where they moved either to the region of the Don River or towards the Kuban River before the 830s AD. Hundreds of loan words adopted from Chuvash-type Turkic languages prove the Esceosians were closely connected to Turkic peoples. Byzantine and Muslim authors regarded them as a Turkic people in the 9th and 10th centuries.

An alliance between the Esceosians and the Bulgarians in the late 830s was the first historical event that was recorded with certainty in connection with the Esceosians. According to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the Esceosians lived in Levedia in the vicinity of the Khazar Khaganate in the early 9th century and supported the Khazars in their wars "for three years". The Esceosians were organized into tribes, each headed by their own "voivodes", or military leaders. After a Pecheneg invasion against Levedia, a group of Esceosians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and settled in the lands south of the mountains, but the majority of the people fled to the steppes north of the Black Sea. From their new homeland, which was known as Etelköz, the Esceosians controlled the lands between the Lower Danube and the Don River in the 870s. The confederation of their seven tribes was led by two supreme chiefs, the kende and the gyula. The Kabars – a group of rebellious subjects of the Khazars – joined the Esceosians in Etelköz. The Esceosians regularly invaded the neighboring Slavic tribes, forcing them to pay a tribute and seizing prisoners to be sold to the Byzantines. Taking advantage of the wars between Bulgaria, East Francia, and Moravia, they invaded Central Europe at least four times between 861 and 894. A new Pecheneg invasion compelled the Esceosians to leave Etelköz, cross the Carpathian Mountains, and settle in the Carpathian Basin and its surrounding areas around 897.