,
Tula Oblast The name
Don could stem from the
Avestan word
dānu- ("river, stream"). According to the
Kurgan hypothesis, the Volga-Don river region was the homeland of the
Proto-Indo-Europeans around 4,000 BC. The Don river functioned as a fertile cradle of civilization where the Neolithic farmer culture of the Near East fused with the hunter-gatherer culture of Siberian groups, resulting in the nomadic pastoralism of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The east Slavic tribe of the
Antes inhabited the Don and other areas of
Southern and
Central Russia. The area around the Don was influenced by the
Byzantine Empire because the river was important for traders from Byzantium. In antiquity, the river was viewed as the border between Europe and Asia by some ancient Greek geographers. In the
Book of Jubilees, it is mentioned as being part of the border, beginning with its easternmost point up to its mouth, between the allotments of the
sons of Noah, that of
Japheth to the north and that of
Shem to the south. During the times of the old
Scythians it was known in
Greek as the
Tanaïs () and has been a major trading route ever since.
Tanais appears in ancient Greek sources as both the name of the river and of a city on it, situated in the
Maeotian marshes. Greeks also called the river
Iazartes (). Pliny gives the Scythian name of the Tanais as
Silys. According to an anonymous Greek source, which historically (but not certainly) has been attributed to
Plutarch, the Don was home to the legendary
Amazons of
Greek mythology. The area around the estuary has been speculated to be the source of the
Black Death in the mid-14th century. While the lower Don was well known to ancient geographers, its middle and upper reaches were not mapped with any accuracy before the gradual conquest of the area by the
Tsardom of Russia in the 16th century. The
Don Cossacks, who settled the fertile valley of the river in the 16th and 17th centuries, were named after the river. The fort of
Donkov was founded by the princes of
Ryazan in the late 14th century. The fort stood on the left bank of the Don, about from the modern town of
Dankov, until 1568, when it was destroyed by the
Crimean Tatars, but was soon restored at a better fortified location. It is shown as
Donko in
Mercator's
Atlas (1596). Donkov was again relocated in 1618, appearing as
Donkagorod in
Joan Blaeu's map of 1645. Both Blaeu and Mercator follow the 16th-century cartographic tradition of letting the Don originate in a great lake, labeled
Resanskoy ozera by Blaeu. Mercator follows Giacomo Gastaldo (1551) in showing a waterway connecting this lake (by Gastaldo labeled
Ioanis Lago, by Mercator
Odoium lac. Iwanowo et Jeztoro) to Ryazan and the Oka River. Mercator shows
Mtsensk (
Msczene) as a great city on this waterway, suggesting a system of canals connecting the Don with the
Zusha (
Schat) and
Upa (
Uppa) centered on a settlement
Odoium, reported as
Odoium lacum (
Juanow ozero) in the map made by Baron
Augustin von Mayerberg, leader of an embassy to the Tsardom of Russia in 1661. In modern literature, the Don region was featured in the work
And Quiet Flows the Don by
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, a Nobel-prize winning writer from the
stanitsa of
Veshenskaya. ==Dams and canals==