Nimeni Altul 2019.06.26 19:24:22

@Blogger Géza: Overall, i would say there are things we agree upon, the tihngs we don't see eye to eye is population shifts, identity, ethnic makeup and changes. This is i believe because of old misconception that are now changing day by day. I did asked myself, what happened to all these ancient peoples? why does an area change a kingdom so fast? well, after i learned about the conquest of latin america, after i read about the celts, about the franks and the making of europe, i started to realise some things about language and ethnicty. language and culture can migrate, it can replace autochtonous religion, language culture, but replacing a group of people with another, especialy over a large territory, is far more difficult. we think of the celts as those funny people who dress in kilts or green and sing on bagpipes, but the original celts lived in the alpine mountains of austria, and genetic tests showed the people of wales for example are pretty much unchaged since the early settlers in britain. the celts even had representatives in the iberian peninsula and even turkey. turkish has representatives in asian, semitic, and even european populations. All this taught me, you have to be careful when dealing with questions of ethnicity, culture and language. you gave me some examples on how basque, albanian and other managed to survive, how this language couldn't change or it didn't had enough time, as if there are written dogmatic rules on how language works, but let me tell you, even if an expert in languages would be brought on, i'd still be skeptical, because these questiones seem to have no clear answer and even scholars debate amongst themselves, what do we, simple people know?

some things i forgot to include in my last replies: I do know we are called romanians because of the roman empire, and it's true, the mainstream romanian population isn't aware of it, but can you blame them when even in those times people saw themselves as romans?
i think what is bothering here, is that when romanians united in the 19th century and made a sudden shift towards modernization lots of information came in and lots of it was misinterprated. does nationalism stretches reality? yes it does, but romania is not the sole place where this phenomena happens, and even the occident starts to question its own history, such as, was richard the lionheart french?

Overall, i would say that a large part of balcanic folklore, and i refer here mostly to romanians, bulgarians and serbians, does come from the daco-thracians. it's hard for me to see where do these balcanic peculiarities come from, be it lingusitic, music, clothing etc. So like i said, from this point of view, there is a continuity, not to mention i honestly do not believe at all these ancient people died off, they are the people who contributed the most to the genetic makeshift and the phenotype of balcanic people, so from this point of view also, there is a continuity. In regards to language, we do speak a latin language, and roman settlers were present not only in dacia, but present in the balkans for a very long time as well. some people think that daco-thracian was a language similar to greek, which was somewhat similar to latin, making the ''romanization'' process easier. now, whatever the truth, the conquered daco-thracians did have to speak latin, not only with the administration, but also with people who came in, most notably the slavs, they probably spoke latin to understand eachother, which facilitated the spread of latin, and i imagine places like the market, latin was probably the only language in use. the mix between these peoples gave birth to the new balcanic populations, those who spoke latin as mother tongue gave birth to vlachs, or proto-romanians, and those who spoke slavic gave birth to bulgarians and serbians. And i imagine also there had to be bilingual places, especialy south of danube. But when i think of the ethnogenesis of romanians, serbs and bulgarians, this is what i think of.
Does this ethnogenesis take place in transilvania? no. But like i said in my other replies, i sincerily doubt there was really no presence there, and i find it likely vlachs to be confused with bulgarians or other south slavs, since we had similar clothing, similar tools and weapons, same nobility (jupan, boyar, knyaz, voievode), and same religion and church language. we even had people in panonia, ukraine, poland, and czehia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Wallachia
i find it hard to believe these people could go into those territories from a land where their presence was supposedly barely significant. As far as moldova and wallachia goes, those had to have a romance speaking majority, the theory of the population booms we had is very stretched to be honest, if we were so virile and vigurous people, we should have taken over europe by now.
this is why i believe romanians existed in transilvania.

Nimeni Altul 2019.06.26 18:15:31

@Blogger Géza: hmmm, don't know why, but i can't post my second reply, maybe because i included link?

Nimeni Altul 2019.06.26 18:20:05

@Blogger Géza: one more thing about the vlachs, I am quite convinced vlachs are the result of the latinization of the daco-thracians. if you are to look for example at the traditional costumes of serbians, bulgarians and romanians, you will see they are very similar to dacian clothing for example as depicted on trajan's column and other statues:

(here i had links to images to compare traditonal clothing from serbia, bulgaria and romania to dacian ones, but i tried posting this reply multiple times and nothing happens, so i had to remove the links, but mainly it was about the hat, the white tunic cought with a belt in the middle, and sheepskin coat, and the 'opincă' or 'opanak' shoe)

there are more things that are presumed to come from daco-thracian, such as pastoral life, certain pre-christian traditions, distincitve bagpipes and pan flutes, sunwheel dances and rituals, and more, all of which can be found only in the balkans.
So, as far as I am concered, there is a continuity, but yes, you are correct, dacian is not the same as romanians, but they are our ancestors and the ancestors of most balcanic people, and further back in time they most likely shared the same roots as the greeks.

In regards to religion, orthodoxy, cyrillic and old church slavonic. the bulgarians formed twice an empire, and they become christians during the first one, thus spreading orthodox christianity and old church slavonic, just like the franks spread catholicism and latin in the west. It's that simple. the vlach population, be it north or south of danube, probably more so in the south, more than likely knew how to speak bulgarian. the nobility and the clergy especialy knew how to speak it, and on top of that they weren't even vlach, our early rulers were either bulgarian or cumanic.

You say, the fact that the map said cumania, or pecheneg, or second bulgarian empire, is very telling, by which i think you mean to say the vlach presence was insignificant in what was then wallachia and moldova, and so no romanians could be in transilvania.
Here's the thing, the map and the sources say plenty of thing, now you have the ostrogoths, now you have the avars, now you have the huns, now you have the pechenegs, now you have the bulghars, now you have the magyars, how is this all possible? well, simply because local autocthnous population did not matter, but the people in charge. so when the chronichlers recorded history, they didn't care who worked the lands, who fished in the ponds, who shepherd the sheep, they only cared who were the rulers of those lands what was their kingdom name. centuries later, people wrongfuly take the conclusion the entire kingdom must have had the same ethnicty as the rulers, but that's not true. the rus' gave birth to russian identity, but russians are not scandinavian. the franks gave birth to french identity, but the french are not germanic. the romans and the normans shaped english identity, but the english are not latin. spanish shaped and created mexican identity, but mexicans are not hispanic.

the reason why i believe vlachs did form a majority in wallachia and moldova, and true, maybe at that time not a majority, but definetly a presence, putting besides any confusions that could have been made between bulgars or other slavs, is because i find it hard to people populations shifts in such large areas can happen like that. now you have the cumans, and then boom, vlachs. the cumans were a ruling warrior elite, just like the franks, the normans, who eventualy got absorbed by the people they ruled over. Another thing, it's hard for me to understand, even nowadays eastern romance speakers can be found all over the balkanms, and even from hungary to northern and eastern ukraine, how can some shepherds in the macedonian mountains lead to that? if the romance populations kept coming from the south, why are they still so representitive to this day in countries like greece and serbia? were we that numerous south of danube? If we were to be conquerors, like you, i would've understand how the language spread, but these were mere illiterate shepherds so insignificant, historical sources barely talk about, i'm surprised romanian didn't disapear altogether like dalmatian.

all those groups you mentioned did not disapear, their culture disparead, their language is dead, but they are still around, surely, maybe mixed more or less with other people, but pretty much unchanged. i gave you the mexican example, those people are mixed with europeans, and they were killed, died in famine and disease, but you can clearly see they are still around.