[tom hyle]

Slavia is a later name, Slavs arrived in Balkans in 6th century A.D.
What Tartastan has to do here???? It is thousand miles north east. Also Tartars is a very late population that never established in the area.[/QUOTE]

I am construing the term Tartar, as I always do, and have explained and justified exhaustively many times, much more broadly than that. Scythians (which I also tend to construe more widely than the kingdom of that name, much as with Sudan) were for instance a proto-Tartar related people (yeah, I get tired of writing the proto, OK?). Tartar is not a racial term. It is cultural and arguably linguistic (there is a Tartar or "Turkic" language group, but not speaking it doesn't make someone who has a lot of other Tartar traits a nonTartar, neccessarily). The Eurasian steppes, and arguably their frontiers, are Tartarstan. in my book, and in a lot of old maps and writings, too.
Thanks for the Greek words; they might be helpful.
Fifty years ago there were no doubts at all about a lot of things; some of them have even been PROVEN wrong. The older belief can as easily be political or otherwise wrong as the new one. The language is a meaningful point, but does not address other factors of Norhern/plains influence. Just as I was saying about Americans; they speak English, but they are not English, and much in their culture (largely unacknowledgedly) is American Indian......Everyone all around was worshipping the same gods, BTW, with minor variations, mostly in name. Actually, I find animism (which broadly construed includes both the structured ancient Mediterranean religions, and for instance, "Hinduism") to be pretty universal and startlingly homogenous in many ways. The idea that each animist culture has/had its own religion is not entirely valid; to me they all have/had the same religion. This is not even a very controversial idea when applied to IndoEuropeans; though spreading it worldwide typically raises eyebrows.
I don't think you're right about the knucklebow; I think the name falcatta is a regional/tribal thing, and the knucklebow an occasional (and very oddly not passed down; humans rarely let go of an invention that way.) variation, seen perhaps only on falcatta, but not always.

BTW, I was reading the forum guidelines, and I think they are unrealistic. It is impossible to have a meaningful or useful discussion of the evolution and travel of weapon forms without discussing the politics, philosophy, religion, etc. of the peoples involved; quite impossible; this whole thread could not exist if we tightly constued those guidelines. The important thing, I would say, is to try extra hard to not be offensive about these sensitive matters.....I try, perhaps not always successfully to be unemotionally historical/logical about these things, but it often seems that is not enough to prevent offense.