Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The medieval and early modern Margraviate of Moravia was a crown land of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown from 1348 to 1918, an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire from 1004 to 1806, a crown land of the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867, and a part of Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918. Moravia was one of the five lands of Czechoslovakia founded in 1918. In 1928 it was merged with Czech Silesia, and then dissolved in 1948 during the abolition of the land system following the communist coup d'état.
Its area of 22,623.41 km2 is home to about 3.0 million of the Czech Republic's 10.9 million inhabitants. The people are historically named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs, the other group being called Bohemians. The land takes its name from the Morava river, which runs from its north to south, being its principal watercourse. Moravia's largest city and historical capital is Brno. Before being sacked by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War, Olomouc served as the Moravian capital, and it is still the seat of the Archdiocese of Olomouc. Until the expulsions after 1945, significant parts of Moravia were German speaking.
Toponymy
The region and former margraviate of Moravia, Morava, in Czech, is named after its principal river Morava.The German name for Moravia is Mähren, from the river's German name March. This could have a different etymology, as march is a term used in the medieval times for an outlying territory, a border or a frontier. In Latin, the name Moravia was used.
Geography
Moravia occupies most of the eastern part of the Czech Republic. Moravian territory is naturally strongly determined, in fact, as the Morava river basin, with strong effect of mountains in the west and partly in the east, where all the rivers rise.Moravia occupies an exceptional position in Central Europe. All the highlands in the west and east of this part of Europe run west–east, and therefore form a kind of filter, making north–south or south–north movement more difficult. Only Moravia with the depression of the westernmost Outer Subcarpathia, wide, between the Bohemian Massif and the Outer Western Carpathians, provides a comfortable connection between the Danubian and Polish regions, and this area is thus of great importance in terms of the possible migration routes of large mammals – both as regards periodically recurring seasonal migrations triggered by climatic oscillations in the prehistory, when permanent settlement started.
File:Kralicky-Sneznik-03.jpg|thumb|Rolling hills of the Králický Sněžník massif, Horní Morava, near the border with Bohemia
File:Smrk a rameno Šance 1.jpg|thumb|Šance Reservoir on the Ostravice River in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids; the river forms the border with Silesia.
Moravia borders Bohemia in the west, Lower Austria in the southwest, Slovakia in the southeast, Poland for a short distance in the north, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Its natural boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains in the north, the Carpathians in the east and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in the west. The Thaya river meanders along the border with Austria, and the tripoint of Moravia, Austria and Slovakia is at the confluence of the Thaya and Morava rivers. The northeast border with Silesia runs partly along the Moravice, Oder and Ostravice rivers. Between 1782 and 1850, Moravia also included a small portion of the former province of Silesia – the Austrian Silesia.
Today Moravia includes the South Moravian and Zlín regions, the vast majority of the Olomouc Region, the southeastern half of the Vysočina Region and parts of the Moravian-Silesian, Pardubice and South Bohemian regions.
Geologically, Moravia covers an area between the Bohemian Massif and the Carpathians, and between the Danube basin and the North European Plain. Its core geomorphological features are three wide valleys, namely the Dyje-Svratka Valley, the Upper Morava Valley and the Lower Morava Valley. The first two form the westernmost part of the Outer Subcarpathia; the last is the northernmost part of the Vienna Basin. The valleys surround the low range of Central Moravian Carpathians. The highest mountains of Moravia are situated on its northern border in Hrubý Jeseník; the highest peak is Praděd. Second highest is the massif of Králický Sněžník the third are the Moravian-Silesian Beskids at the extreme east, with Smrk, and then south from here Javorníky. The White Carpathians along the southeastern border rise up to 970 m at Velká Javořina. The Bohemian-Moravian Highlands on the west reach 837 m at Javořice.
The river system of Moravia is very cohesive, as the region's border closely follows the watershed of the Morava river, and thus almost the entire area is drained exclusively by a single stream. Easily the Morava's biggest tributaries are Thaya from the right and Bečva. The Morava and the Thaya meet at the southernmost and lowest point of Moravia. Small peripheral parts of Moravia belong to the catchment areas of Elbe, Váh and especially Oder. The watershed line running along Moravia's border from west to north and east is part of the European Watershed. For centuries, there have been plans to build a waterway across Moravia to join the Danube and Oder river systems, using the natural route through the Moravian Gate.
History
Pre-history
Evidence of the presence of members of the human genus, Homo, dates back more than 600,000 years in the paleontological area of Stránská skála.Attracted by suitable living conditions, early modern humans had settled in the region by the Paleolithic period. The Předmostí archeological site in Moravia is dated to between 27,000 and 24,000 years old. Caves in Moravian Karst were used by mammoth hunters. Venus of Dolní Věstonice, the oldest ceramic figure in the world, was found in the excavation of Dolní Věstonice by Karel Absolon. In November 2024 a new discovery was made on the outskirts of Brno, where bones of at least three mammoths were found along with other animals and human stone tools dating back 15,000 years.
Bronze Age
During the Bronze Age, people of various cultures settled in Moravia. Notably the Nitra culture which emerged from the tradition of the Neolithic Corded Ware culture and was spread in western Slovakia, eastern Moravia and southern Poland. The largest burial site of Nitra culture in Moravia was discovered in Holešov in the 1960s.The most recent discovery unearthed two settlements and two burial grounds near Olomouc, one of them of the Nitra culture dating between the years 2100–1800 BC and was published in October 2024. This discovery adds to other Bronze Age discoveries, such as a sword found near the city of Přerov, dubbed ‘the Excalibur of the Late Bronze Age’.
Roman era
Around 60 BC, the Celtic Volcae people withdrew from the region and were succeeded by the Germanic Quadi. Some of the events of the Marcomannic Wars took place in Moravia in AD 169–180. After the war exposed the weakness of Rome's northern frontier, half of the Roman legions were stationed along the Danube. In response to increasing numbers of Germanic settlers in frontier regions like Pannonia, Dacia, Rome established two new frontier provinces on the left shore of the Danube, Marcomannia and Sarmatia, including today's Moravia and western Slovakia.In the 2nd century AD, a Roman fortress stood on the vineyards hill known as and , situated above the former village Mušov and above today's beach resort at Pasohlávky. During the reign of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the 10th Legion was assigned to control the Germanic tribes who had been defeated in the Marcomannic Wars. In 1927, the archeologist Gnirs, with the support of president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, began research on the site, located 80 km from Vindobona and 22 km to the south of Brno. The researchers found remnants of two masonry buildings, a praetorium and a balneum, including a hypocaustum. The discovery of bricks with the stamp of the Legio X Gemina and coins from the period of the emperors Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus facilitated dating of the locality.