Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[Razgovory]

I thought the Boers spoke dutch or something.  Anyway, I think if there is a conflict between white colonialists and the down trodden, indigenous people of Africa most people would pick the more righteous natives.  "This isn't happening in a vacuum" and such.

Afrikaans.

Ok what is up with that quote? Have their regularly been mass killings and ethnic cleansing happening that has been justified with "this isn't happening in a vacuum?"

Also I am not sure people are as "rah rah" about every move the ANC government, because of their inherent righteousness, makes as you seem to think.

Because that is what people said after Oct 7th.

[Jacob]

My main exposure to this whole thing are videos made by white South Africans mocking Trump and Musk's take and saying they're not oppressed.

Seems like this whole "persecution of Afrikaners" thing is highly hypothetical at this point.

Maybe Raz is right and if the ANC went all in on Zimbabwe style confiscation and redistribution the world would collectively shrug. But it doesn't seem to be happening and seems mostly to be a concern to various radical rightists interested in ramping up racial conflict to increase their own political influence.

[Razgovory]

Happily, I don't think it will happen.    The South Africans seem to have much more on the ball, and the guys who do advocate for that are a minority.

[Valmy]

Because that is what people said after Oct 7th.

Well sure. The context of an ethnic struggle. This is atrocity #20,000 since the early 20th Century.

But that isn't currently happening in South Africa.

[Razgovory]

Because that is what people said after Oct 7th.

Well sure. The context of an ethnic struggle. This is atrocity #20,000 since the early 20th Century.

But that isn't currently happening in South Africa.

Never said it was.

[grumbler]

That's true, but in the States eminent domain  is subject to the payment of fair compensation. The South African Parliament in 2017 under Zuma amended RSA's constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation. It's an important difference.

The constitutional amendment was defeated in Parliament in 2021, as far as I can tell.

In January, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed an act allowing expropriation without compensation under certain circumstances, but it is unclear if the law is lawful under the constitution, and no such expropriation has occurred.

Yes, things are potentially very unjust and the new law (if law it is) is unwise, but the situation is a far cry from ethnic cleansing or genocide.

[Valmy]

Happily, I don't think it will happen.    The South Africans seem to have much more on the ball, and the guys who do advocate for that are a minority.

Well that is the point. If the Black South Africans had risen up and killed or driven out all the White South Africans in the 1970s or something I think you would have some people thinking "this isn't happening in a vacuum".

But now? Most White South Africans have either been supportive of the new government, warts and all, over the past 30 years or left the country. There wouldn't be any context for the South African government to kill them or drive them out now.

[Syt]

Well, I know white South Africans who have left the country. But not because of oppression, but because of the economic prospects, the overall corruption, and the high crime rates. But that's purely anecdotal, obviously.

[Legbiter]

I don't know what to make of an account that starts the origins of "Germanic people" thousands of years before any Germanic languages were spoken.

Yeah that's because of the archeogentic revolution in the last 10 years. We can now minutely track the population history (who your ancestors reproduced with during the Holocene, almost) of almost any human remains since at least the Neanderthals and match the sample with the archeological culture in that area/stratum. Hence, for instance we now know almost precisely the exact geographic and ethnic composition of the settlers of Iceland. Turns out they're exactly like the Sagas and Book of Icelanders describe (mostly), a mix of Norse upper crust and slaves from mostly the British Isles. It's even possible to track how Norse ancestry in the Iceland keeps rising in the centuries following the Landnám (land-taking) due to the slightly differential reproductive success of the Norse component compared to the Irish/British.   

"Germania" was an organizing concept invented by the Romans to them help mentally structure and categorize the barbarian (i.e. non-Roman) world. They grouped together various scattered people that spoke similar sounding languages and called them Germani.  Tacticus imagined a common culture for them but like many such works it reflects the preoccupations of the intended Roman audience more than being some carefully researched ethnography.

Yes, we have all read Tacitus.

In Late Antiquity if something arguably like a "Germanic identity" forms, it did so by virtue of interaction with the Romans, and adopting that worldview.  That can fairly be argued to be a Germanic identity of a kind.  But to equate that identity with high medieval culture in German-speaking lands, or either of those with 19th century German nationalism, is a mistake.

Everyone here is aware of the ethnolinguistic complexities and the difference between Deutsch, German (as in 19th and 20th century nationalism) and Germanic (as in the linguistic sense). You're not impressing the natives here with your never-seen-before steel tools.   

What's good about his essay is the absolute Gigasperg-like overview of genetics, linguistics,archeology, weather, pollen counts, you name it.

[The Minsky Moment]

Legbiter - tracking genes across populations in space and time is not the same as tracking culture.  If certain Germanic speakers in the time of Augustus share certain genes with other populations thousands of years earlier, that doesn't make those earlier people Germanic or "proto-Germanic" or anything of relevance to the subject of the "Origins of the Germanic People".

And while "everyone here" may be aware of the difference between modern German nationalism and Germanic as a language group, that knowledge does not seem to be in the possession of Mr. Nimitz, who routinely does things like citing the origins of the modern "Drang Nach Osten" to hypothesized 300 BC "Germanic conquerors and mercenaries" overrunning and depopulating Pomerania, citing as evidence a paper (https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/server/api/core/bitstreams/120eac4c-d01e-4c23-983b-67e7387c9bd1/content) which says nothing of the sort - the paper theorizes that deforestation and over-exploitation of resources led to some level of outward migration in the early la Tene but says nothing about invading Germanic mercenaries.

[Legbiter]

Legbiter - tracking genes across populations in space and time is not the same as tracking culture.

 

Read The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

[Razgovory]

God, that book was boring, but it backs up what Minsky is saying.  In it, the author proposes a largely peaceful spread of Indo-European culture through systems of patronage and putting on big feasts rather than conquest and migration.  So genetics and culture are disconnected.  I really don't remember anything specifically about Germans.

[Legbiter]

God, that book was boring, but it backs up what Minsky is saying.  In it, the author proposes a largely peaceful spread of Indo-European culture through systems of patronage and putting on big feasts rather than conquest and migration.  So genetics and culture are disconnected.  I really don't remember anything specifically about Germans.

Thank both you and Minsky.

[The Minsky Moment]

FWIW I enjoyed that book

[Razgovory]

FWIW I enjoyed that book

The stuff about archeology got really dull.