Encounters of the Third Kind

[Tamas]

I still don't have a handle on Alex.  Is that a full on troll, or a deeply held belief?

Has to be trolling.  Nobody would take pride in Romanian fighting abilities.

Indeed. I admire Romania's historical diplomacy skills, the way you admire a skillful backstabber, but the highpoint of their military prowess was breaking through a Hungarian army which desintegrated before their offensive begun.

[Alexandru H.]

I still don't have a handle on Alex.  Is that a full on troll, or a deeply held belief?

Has to be trolling.  Nobody would take pride in Romanian fighting abilities.

Indeed. I admire Romania's historical diplomacy skills, the way you admire a skillful backstabber, but the highpoint of their military prowess was breaking through a Hungarian army which desintegrated before their offensive begun.

I prefer native Moldavia and ancestor Germany...

Btw, there are other highpoints... like the participation in the Second Balkanic War (1913) when we didn't even shoot any bullets (all our deaths happened because cholera, not enemy fire) and annexed Southern Dobrudja. Or the Crimeean War when Moldavia received part of Russia while being occupied for three years by Russia and later Austria.

[Winkelried]

What, you didn't get one?

I got one of the green ones with the picture of the Mahdi in it. Their "battle banners" are either green or black, with some chicken scratch in it saying something about the Mahdi coming soon, and how he is going to lead the faithful to conquer the infidels, with a drawing of the face of the mahdi.

You need to raid a few JAM houses to get one. While you conduct SSE (sensitive site exploitation), if you see more than one, put one in your cargo pocket.

Seigey, I don't intend to be mean or insulting, but isn't that, you know, stealing?

Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges.   

[The Minsky Moment]

The Roxolani fought against Trajan. They, together with the Carpians, are the true ancestors of the people around here.

In what possible sense are they the "true ancestors" of modern Romanians ??

Roxolani is just a name the Greeks gave to some steppe nomads that fought the King of Pontus.  The attribution is from Strabo, who uses terms like Sarmatian and Scythian interchangably, to give an idea about how concerned he was about precisely identifying the cultural distinctions between and among masses of cattle-raiding, tent-dwelling, nomadic barbarians.

Two hundred years later, Trajan is fighting in Dacia and encounters what appear to be fighting bands of steppe nomads.  I think it is safe to say that the Romans did not stop to conduct a careful ethographic survey and cultural analysis.  Rather being practical Romans, they simply labelled their adversaries with names they pulled from Strabo.  Other than the fact of possibly speaking an Indo-Iranian language, riding horses and utilizing tents, is there any reason to believe there is some cultural or political continuity between Strabo's Roxolani and Trajan's Roxolani?  No it is pure speculation.  Is there any basis for concluding that "Roxolani" refers to some coherent ethnicity or clear separate cultural identity as opposed to simply being a label attached to semi-organized warrior band by its opponents?  Again no. 

What we do know is that when the Huns arrive on the scene 250 years after Trajan we stop hearing about "Roxolani".  So if the Roxolani really were a coherent ethno-political and cultural entity as opposed to a Roman label for intermittant warrior bands arising from a certain area, then they got wiped out over 1600 years ago, and it makes no sense to call them "true ancestors" of anything.

Except balderdash.

[Ed Anger]

My ancestors invented the question mark.

[Razgovory]

My ancestors invented the question mark.

My ancestors were trolls.  They ran the Trolleys.

[Alexandru H.]

The Roxolani fought against Trajan. They, together with the Carpians, are the true ancestors of the people around here.

In what possible sense are they the "true ancestors" of modern Romanians ??

Roxolani is just a name the Greeks gave to some steppe nomads that fought the King of Pontus.  The attribution is from Strabo, who uses terms like Sarmatian and Scythian interchangably, to give an idea about how concerned he was about precisely identifying the cultural distinctions between and among masses of cattle-raiding, tent-dwelling, nomadic barbarians.

Two hundred years later, Trajan is fighting in Dacia and encounters what appear to be fighting bands of steppe nomads.  I think it is safe to say that the Romans did not stop to conduct a careful ethographic survey and cultural analysis.  Rather being practical Romans, they simply labelled their adversaries with names they pulled from Strabo.  Other than the fact of possibly speaking an Indo-Iranian language, riding horses and utilizing tents, is there any reason to believe there is some cultural or political continuity between Strabo's Roxolani and Trajan's Roxolani?  No it is pure speculation.  Is there any basis for concluding that "Roxolani" refers to some coherent ethnicity or clear separate cultural identity as opposed to simply being a label attached to semi-organized warrior band by its opponents?  Again no. 

What we do know is that when the Huns arrive on the scene 250 years after Trajan we stop hearing about "Roxolani".  So if the Roxolani really were a coherent ethno-political and cultural entity as opposed to a Roman label for intermittant warrior bands arising from a certain area, then they got wiped out over 1600 years ago, and it makes no sense to call them "true ancestors" of anything.

Except balderdash.

Oh, yeah, discussion 

From what I gather reading Tacitus, who refers to the roxolani as the main threat, along the basternae (germanic) and iazyges, against the Roman possesions in Moesia, the roxolani are a Sarmatian branch living in what we call now Bassarabia or Northern Dobrudja. Now, he also identifies the sarmatians living in the area between Danube and Tisa as iazyges. We could say that his identification is shaky: he simply differentiates between the different sarmatian tribes by using the geographical factor.

But it seems that this is not enough. In "Germania", Tacitus explicitly says that the roxolani practice a way of life different of that of the sarmatians, who, as he puts it, are living on horse and in carriage (in plaustro equoque uiuentibus). Of course, as any good Roman historian, he does not explain in what way are they different...  At first glance, I would say that the Romans simply named the Sarmatian tribes that had a direct border to the empire, creating the illusion that the roxolani and the iazyges are something else than sarmatians. Of course, I'm still puzzled by that observation of Tacitus...

Ammianus Marcellinus is even more interesting. He speaks of a conflict between the two branches of the sarmatians in Banat (in which we can easily recognise the classic roxolani-iazyges), ended with the defeat of the roxolani and their flight towards the Moldavian lands, from where they had arrived 100 years prior to the events. Now, the remaining Sarmatians, very close to the political capital of the Huns, must have become allies of Rugila and Attila. The fleeing Roxolani... I'm not so sure. In 334, they were caught between the victorious Yaziges, the Goths in Pannonia and the first waves of the Huns. Their only choice would have been the Carpathians.

Btw, when I say "roxolani are our ancestors", it pretty much means "sarmatians are our ancestors", in the same vein as the Polish claim of the 16th century.

[Queequeg]

I haven't seen any convincing genetic or linguistic evidence of special Indo-Iranian heritage of the Romanians.  I have, however, seen it for the Slavs.  Besides, what is far more likely is that the Iranian-speaking nomads mixed with incoming Turkic and Magyar nomads, especially as most of the sources I have read speak of the last remaining Indo-Iranian people of the area, the Jassic people of Hungarian, being counted as allies/kin of the Cumanians, another washed-up Steppe people.  Far more likely that most were Turkified, as the Turkic nomads had been assimilating Indo-Iranian nomads for centuries, and the two lifestyles and cultures were very similar.  I've seen far more convincing evidence that Christianized Turks were important in the early Bulgarian and Vlach states (in that most of the early rulers have Turkic names, including Basaraba, whose name I can understand with what little Turkish I know)  than some fantasy remnant Iranian group.

It is rather hilarious that you are so firm in this belief, though, considering that Romania has probably about as much ethnic diversity as any place in the old world, and that there are probably 10 full-fledged settlements of "Romania" after the practical absorption of the Sarmatians.  Also find it funny that, while almost every expert on the Slavic invasions can't tell the difference between Vlach and Slav materially, and there is really no discernible genetic distinction, you seem to think that you belong to two different species.

[Queequeg]

. What more could the Devil ask of me than having in my body the blood of Slavism, the blood of the wild werewolf of the steppes?

So, you think that the Romanians are magically the descendants of a single ill-defined Indo-Iranian tribal confederacy from the 2nd Century AD, which makes you different from the Slavs, but the Slavs are bad  because they have "the blood of the wild werewolf of the steppe"?

I'd call this bad logic, but you don't really deserve to have the word "logic" in there.  This has about the same relationship to logic that the Venus de Milo has to a goddamn baked potato. 

EDIT: I think one of the biggest ironies here is that I've seen very convincing evidence that Eastern-Iranian (Scythian, Ossetian, Jassic) stock was of extreme importance to everyone around Romania, but not Romania in Particular.  The Serbs and Croats likely had an Iranian ruling caste for a long while, the Hungarians were always an ethnic confederation of 'Magyars', Turks and Iranian peoples, and the Jassic people later moved in, while there is a ton of material, linguistic and even written evidence of the Ukrainians-Russians mixing with them, but I can't think of any proof for the Romanians.   

[Queequeg]

Roxolani is just a word Greeks used to refer to some steppe nomads.  One might as well talk about being descended from Trojans.

The Roman claim of heritage from the Trojans is kind of interesting though, as there is some indication that Anatolian and Italic peoples of the late-Bronze/early-Iron ages had some manner of contact, and there are proven connections between the Pelasgians and Etruscans.  I can't think of anything for the Romanians-Roxolani, though.

[Alexandru H.]

Actually it's pretty much proven (not in the eyes of nationalists though) that early vlach nobility was actually cumanic at origin. In Wallachia, the strange thing is that the nobility had cumanic family names (Basarab), lived in towns named in cumanic language (Barlad, Teleorman) and employed on regular basis the "white-black" imagery of the steppe people (think of Blakia, the original name of the region); but their surnames were slavic: Litovoi, Tihomir, as well as their language, script, literature and political connections. In this sea of cumanic-slavic customs, the institutions weren't slavic or cumanic at all: the church organization had latin words and greek customs, the political organization was weird (both Wallachia and Moldavia were ruled by dynasties from Transylvania).

Now, I did not say Romanians are the descendants of the Roxolani. In fact, I'm still puzzled about their origins. The way they maintained the latin and greek ways in a slavic sea is clear, for me at least, that they stayed a longer time under the Roman and Byzantine administration. The magyar point of view is still wrong: while it's possible (and there are some good points) that the Vlach population migrated into what we call Romania, this event cannot be set later than the Magyar invasion. Every source I've read indicates that the migrations started from Transylvania towards Moldavia and Wallachia, and not the other way around. If we place this event in the 1180s, we lose the cumanic connection. My own hypothesis states that in 602, the vlachs were divided in two: the southern ones remained in their place and later formed the Vlacho-Bulgarian Empire of the Asen Brothers, the northern ones were forced by the slavic wave to go through Banat and settle in Transylvania and later on in the other two regions. Divided from the Greek world, they began employing slavic language and some institutions, while maintaining the pastoral way of life, under the avars, pechenegs and cumans. When the latter were destroyed by the Mongols, some of them did not join Bela's realm but instead retreated to the mountain fortresses of the Vlachs, creating some independent, basic realms.

I consider the MOLDAVIANS as the descendants of the Sarmatian Roxolani. Now, while most people call them also Romanians, I disagree with this fact on the basis that Medieval Moldavians were quite clearly not Wallachians. For one thing, they had a great cavalry arm. Second of all, they formed a state of their own quite late (the 1350s). The creation legend is actually similar to the other legends of the steppe people, that had to settle and live a sedentary life: a great buffalo drove the hero towards a beautiful land and he decided to settle there, with his companions. Forth of all, their religious make-up was nothing like the Wallachians: if the latter were strict Orthodox, early Medieval Moldavia had on its throne a Catholic prince (Latco), a Lithuanian pagan (Iuga Kariatovici), an Armenian (Ioan the Brave), a Jew (Aron the Tyrant), a Gipsy (Razvan), two Reformed princes (Iancu Sas and Ioan Iacob Heraclid). And this doesn't even take into cosideration that the hussites found refuge and protection in the area.

Another thing to consider: Early Moldavia had only free peasants, grouped in autonomous associations, with no link towards the nobility. This is not a sign of an old society, that sold its freedom in favor of a powerful rule. It's also very aggressive (and the other way around) with Wallachia.

Ok, long post... later on I'll speak about the Roxolani-Moldavian connection in more detail.

[The Minsky Moment]

Btw, when I say "roxolani are our ancestors", it pretty much means "sarmatians are our ancestors", in the same vein as the Polish claim of the 16th century.

That is a little more reasonable.
But the reality is that steppe nomads who reached as far as the Danube were probably only a small minority of the local population at any time, even if they formed the core of a armed horde.  That was certainly the case for the Huns, a group that we know a lot more about than the "Roxolani".  By the time the reached the boundaries of the Roman Empire, the Huns were clearly a multi-ethnic warrior elite ruling over a basically little changed local population, and the steppe nomadic element of even the fighting core was almost certainly a minority, and probably not a very large one.

[The Minsky Moment]

I haven't seen any convincing genetic or linguistic evidence of special Indo-Iranian heritage of the Romanians.  I have, however, seen it for the Slavs. 

Linguistic evidence is neither here nor there - even if Indo-Iranian words or place names were absorbed by Slavs, that doesn't necessarily imply any kind of ethnic continuity or heritage.  I am unaware of any genetic evidence.

The most logical explanation for the Slavs is simply that they were just the people left behind when the Goths, Huns etc cleared out.  The most ambitious and violent individuals headed into the Empire, and the "Slavs" are just those who had been living there all along.  After the warrior chieftains and their retainers cleared out (along with their Roman subsidy payments) what was left was a simpler, less hierarchical social structure that evolves its own political culture in response to the changed political circumstances. 

[Queequeg]

Linguistic evidence is neither here nor there - even if Indo-Iranian words or place names were absorbed by Slavs, that doesn't necessarily imply any kind of ethnic continuity or heritage.

Not arguing place names; key words have Indo-Iranian etymologies, as do most of the Deities and many words regarding pastoral lifestyle.  The word Bog, God, has clear Indo-Iranian origins, as do words relating to hunting (pjos, dog, interestingly this competes with a Turkic borrowing in Russian, sobaka).  The Slavic languages also experienced Satemization, typical of areas with intense exposure to later-ur-Indo-European/early-Indo-Iranian peoples.  The Balto-Slavic languages interesting in that it seems simultaneously quite closely related to the Indo-Iranian AND the Germanic branches of the tree.   

I am unaware of any genetic evidence.

Halogroup R1A is generally associated with the Indo-Europeans, and is strongest among Indo-Iranian speakers in former Bactria and the Slavic world.
Considering that Bactrians and Scytho-Sartmatins are of the same stock, I'd take this as a given.

The most logical explanation for the Slavs is simply that they were just the people left behind when the Goths, Huns etc cleared out.

I think it is probably more complex than this.  Slavs, Goths, Proto-Vlachs and Alans were all running away from the Huns at more or less the same time, and in to the the same general area.  Besides the obvious impact of a millennium of Iranian rule followed by a few by the Goths, the Slavs were already a heterogeneous bunch by the time of the Migrations/Invasions.  Obviously the migration of the Eastern Germanic peoples made things a lot easier.

[Martinus]

I don't believe Alexandru H. is not a troll. He has a relatively good command of English and has an access to the internet - it's impossible for someone to hold so many totally insane views and factually incorrect opinions.