The book tells about the daily life of our ancestors, starting with the resettlement of the Slavs in Eastern Europe in the 7th-8th centuries. and ending with the reign of Vladimir Monomakh (d. 1125). The reader will learn about how our ancestors imagined the history of the birth of Russia, how they wanted to present it and how everything really was. The development of the great trade routes that united Russia and formed the Russian people, the creation, flourishing and collapse of the Old Russian state under the pen of the author appear in the real context of material and spiritual culture. The book also introduces methods of scientific analysis of sources and for the first time clearly separates legends, including modern events, from reality, which as a result may seem new and unfamiliar to the reader, but this does not become less reliable.