Romanian origins: a dual-ethnogenesis hypothesis (part I)
The return of calumny!
In prior poasts on Romania I adduced statistically significant support (p = < 0.00000000000001) for the hypothesis that Napoleon would never, even apocryphally, have referred to the Romanians as ‘a nation of shopkeepers’.
Through unstinting and exhaustive interrogation of Wikipedia, in conjunction with two or three secondary sources written in the last few years and indifferently translated into English, I demonstrated incontrovertibly that the Romanian Lands didn’t even have a Middle Ages.
I dismissed as pure Occidentalist fancy the procrustean straining of Romanian historians to ‘situate’ the national agon within the EUropean ‘story’.
I ground cruelly into the dust their implied thesis that Romania EIN NEUES DEUTSCHLAND IMMINENT IST, just a few years behind and a bit further east than the original BECAUSE COMMUNISM KEPT US DOWN MANG
Could I have been wrong?
In no way was I wrong: One doesn’t (not) spend years (not) in painstaking toil (not) at the Romanian National Archives only to come up with nothing.
So we now know the Romanians never experienced a Medieval phase in the same way as did the peoples of Western Europe—particularly those of the North Sea littoral, and more particularly still the English. There never arose in Romania a mass middle-class phenotype to create individualistic institutions founded on mutual compromise, frugality, low time preference and trust. Thus is Romania today free of the Western tragedy: a hegemonic petit bourgeois culture autistically prioritising civility and fairness at all costs, even as free-riding collectivists exploit this ethos to destroy the social body from within.
That’s my story so far and I stand by it.
Here I explore what *was* happening in Romania at approximately the same time as Western Europe was enmired in its long but ultimately revolutionary Middle Ages (c. 500-1500 AD). In order that THE reader—I hope there will be more than one—may fully apprehend the significance of the events in question, I first investigate goings on in Romania in antiquity. Of overriding interest here is the question:
RACIALLY (sorry ahaha I meant of course *ethnically*), who are the Romanians of to-day, and how did they come to be?
In this two-part MEGAPOAST I make out the argument that the Romanians underwent two ethnogeneses. The first occurred in late antiquity, under Roman rule—probably on Romanian soil but possibly elsewhere. The second happened while the English High Middle Ages were heedlessly but busily engendering a market-oriented mass middle class. This second Romanian ethnogenesis came about when a militaristic steppe ruling class imposed itself on the previously unwarlike Vlachs, leading them at last into the light of history.
(By the way: Vlachs = early Romanians)
First let us first look first at the first ethnogenesis; and first let us do so first, because it happened first.
The (first) ethnogenesis
This is a fraught topic, having to do with ‘issues’ of ‘indigeneity’ (or at least prior claims), inferiority complexes, irredentism and other typically BALKANIK neuroses. For the sake of simplicity I will sketch only three broad accounts—the last patently insane—of Romanian ethnogenesis:
(1) the continuity theory (¡NO MOVIMOS NUNCA!)
(2) the immigrationist theory (‘Romanians are Latinised Albanians/Slavs/some other piebald Balkanoid muck idk’)
(3) ‘Protocronism’ (WE WUZ ONLY EVER DACIANS!)
Note that, for reasons that will become apparent, all three of these theories chiefly concern Romanian origins in and rights (or the lack of them) to that part of modern Romania called Transylvania—and to a lesser extent the southwestern region known as the Banat.
Where do I stand?
The continuity theory is the best-known account of Romanian ethnogenesis. You probably already know something about it. It’s also the version most Romanians prefer; nobody wants to be seen as a foreigner in their own country, even at a remove of more than 1,000 years (well do they Anglo!?)
As somebody who *is* a foreigner in their own country (if you follow me) I myself am not certain which story is more likely to be true, except obviously I know Protocronism is preposterous. Familial affiliations by matrimony dictate that I should declare myself unreservedly for the continuity theory—or, for the sake of utter and unquestioning fidelity, Protocronism—even though the missus and her family have no particular opinion on the subject and couldn’t care less.
I would nonetheless say that on balance I’m a vacillating subscriber to the continuity theory (a *free* subscriber, if you catch my drift; speaking of which, you know what to do if you haven’t already).
Yet, as I will demonstrate at enormous length, there is much aporia surrounding both the continuity and the immigrationist theories of Romanian origins.
Introduction: historical summary of pre-Roman and Roman Dacia
Most of present-day Romania—that is, the entirety of Transylvania unto the eastern Carpathian mountain-wall and, on the flats, Moldavia, Oltenia, Crișana and the Banat—was conquered in successive campaigns by the emperors Augustus, Domitian and Trajan (plz refer to map below)1. The final pacification of this ethnohistoric region, known as Dacia, occurred in 106 AD, upon the defeat and suicide of Decebal, the last Dacian king.
The imperial campaign in Dacia and its victorious conclusion are commemorated in Rome, most notably in the frieze group on Trajan’s column, as well as in monumental statues of Dacian captives re-erected two hundred years later on the arch of Constantine. The Dacians revolted several times against Roman dominion before largely giving up at the end of the second decade of the 3rd century AD.
Diversity was their strength: Dacians, Getae, Scythians, Celts, Iazyges, Bastarnae, Greeks
Like their putative Romanian descendants, the Dacians were a numerous, assertive and factious (though, unlike the Romanians, still at intervals relatively well-organised) people. They experienced phases of late unity under the over-kings Burebista (82-44 BC)—scourger of Celts and uprooter of vines2—and Decebal (87-106 AD).
Their war-standard was the Dacian Draco.
Much earlier than Burebista and Decebal, a shadowy high-king called Dromichaetes (c. 300 BC) is said to have ruled, from his centre in Muntenia (eastern Wallachia), over the Dacians and their Thracianoid kin the Getae, who inhabited both the northern and the southern banks of the Danube. PLIZ YOU VISIT HIS TOMB IN BULGARISTAN AND RESPEK
It’s thought—based on a single extant unitary inscription, as well as toponyms and personal names—that the Dacians spoke a language closely related to the Thracian tongues common to most of the peoples south of the Danube. The Dacians believed, as did the Thracians, in the transmigration of souls.
The principal god of the Dacians was Zalmoxis. He was likely a skyfather deity, though some believe his identity was instead chthonic. Because he is the only Dacian god mentioned in ancient sources, it is sometimes averred by ‘Protocronists’ that the Dacians were monotheists: doctrine of transmigration of souls + monotheism = Christianity este religie perennial românilor!
Owing to Romania’s proximity to the Indo-European urheimat on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, the ancestors of the Dacians were among the first ARYANS—there, I said the quiet part out loud—to establish themselves in Europe west of the River Dniester. This probably occurred near the onset of the Bronze Age (c. 3300-3000 BC).
Unlike Central and Western European peoples, whose origins lie in the later, secondary Corded Ware or tertiary Bell Beaker expansions, the Dacians appear to have descended direct from the Yamnaya folk, intermingled with the undifferentiated ant-hill swarm of swarthy hen-pecked agriculturalists who preceded them on the rich chernozem of (future) Romania, such as those belonging to the Cucuteni-Trypillya culture, c. 5500 to 2750 BC. This was perhaps the most fully realised longhouse society in European pre-history. Çatalhöyük, a much earlier (c. 7100–c.5000 BC) Neolithic cultural assemblage in Asia Minor, probably had the edge in the ‘Mammy’s watching’ stakes, however.
More than 2,000 years after having fought, fornicated and fused with these graincucks, the Dacians underwent much needed re-fortification via co-mingling with new ARYAN peoples.
In eastern Wallachia and southern Moldavia, they were re-barbarised by invasive splinter groups of Iranoid Scythian tribesmen (from the 8th century BC). Later, beginning in the 4th century BC and chiefly in Transylvania, they were re-invigorated by congress both peaceful and bellicose with La Tene Celts.
Some 200 years later these Celts, of the same lusty lineage as those who sacked Delphi and conquered much of central Asia Minor, are said to have been mastered or expelled by Burebista (HE WUZ CROMWELL), who from the Dacian volksheim in Transylvania brought all of present-day Romania under Dacian control.
In the 3rd or 2nd century BC, the Iazyges came as horse-borne invaders usually did: from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the northeast. Relatives of the Scythians, they were likewise an Iranic-speaking people with an equestrian military culture. At some juncture they established a nucleus of settlement in the westerly plains of the Banat and Crișana, ranging freely and muderously on horseback to pillage present-day Romania, Hungary and the Ukraine.
Under Burebista the Dacians expanded west into the Iazygic staging grounds, bringing the Iranoid despoilers temporarily to heel. The Iazyges endured, however, as a frequent source of trouble for the Dacians—and later for the Romans. The Moldavian regional capital, Iași, is named after the Iazyges.
In the hinterland of the northwestern Black Sea coast dwelt the Bastarnae, who may have been Celts, Germans, Iranians or even Slavs. They too were temporarily pacified by Burebista.
Between the 8th and the 6th centuries BC, Milesians from Ionia led a long-enduring Hellenic colonisation of parts of the (now) Romanian Black Sea coast. The population inland, with which the Greeks traded, remained Dacian or Scythian/Roxolani (another horse-riding Iranic people closely akin to the Scythians), or some amalgam of Dacian, Scythian and Celt.
Growing our GDP and securing our pension plans: the Roman colonisation of Dacia
After Trajan’s victory over Decebel’s Dacians in 106 AD, Roman settler colonies were set up—the majority of them in Transylvania, with its abundance of precious metals and tractable farmland. The inhabitants were mostly Dinaroid bulbheads from Illyria, Med longskulls from Greece/Asia Minor and even Semites from Syria. There was some additional human miscellany from Central and Western Europe. Few or none were from Italy itself.
The capital and religious centre of the united Dacians had been at Samizegetusa Regie, as it is now known, high in the shifting mists of the western Carpathians. The capital of the Roman province of Dacia was built at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, on the sunny west Transylvanian plateau below.
Full Roman occupation of Dacia lasted only from 106 to about 275 AD, a mere 170-odd years, until the emperor Aurelian3 abandoned the province under insuperable pressure from marauding Goths, Sarmatians and others.
None of the above is contested: it’s the SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS. It’s what happened afterwards—and where—that is controversial.
(1) The continuity theory
The continuity theory has it that the Dacians interbred with the imperial colonists. They remained in Dacia, eventually forming—after a degree of subsequent additional fusion with Slavs and others—the ‘Daco-Roman’ ethnos from which descend the Romanians of to-day, with their ‘Eastern Romance’ language.
The Daco-Romans then survived a millennium of lowland invasions by retreating into forested uplands of Transylvania and northern Wallachia. There they adopted a way of life centred on sheep and goat herding, all the while maintaining, through the also Romanised Getae4, an enduring ethnolinguistic signal in the Danubian lowlands.
Then, towards the end of the (Western) High Middle Ages, with the lowlands cleared by the recession of the Mongol menace, the Daco-Romans (best now referred to as the Vlachs, for reasons that will become apparent in the second part of this poast) irrupted from the Carpathian highlands in their multitudes to accomplish a long-delayed reunion with their Geto-Roman cousins in the plains. This is known in Romanian historiography as the ‘Dismounting’. I come back to it in part II.
Above all, the message of the continuity theory is this: ¡NO MOVIMOS NUNCA! (or, in the Daco-Gaeto-Illyrian-Thracian-Latin language, Nu ne-am miscat niciodată!)
(2) The immigrationist theory (*theories* ackchewally)
Traditionally, the immigrationist theory of Vlach ethnogenesis is preferred by revanchist Hungarians. ‘Immigrationists’ (as I will intermittently refer to them from now on) usually locate the Vlach homeland somewhere within or adjoining modern Albania. From there the Vlachs are said to have travelled north, after many wanderings, to occupy former Dacia Traiana.
There is another, slightly more concessionary immigrationist theory that involves a secondary Vlach homeland in Bulgaria. In this version, the early Vlachs repaired south of the Danube after the departure of the legions from Dacia Traiana. They re-crossed the great river, augmented by other Romanised elements (cis-Danubian Getae, other Thracians, maybe some Slavs), sometime during the Dark Ages, eventually to become the Romanians of to-day. This folk movement may have taken place when the recurrent tide of invasion from the east had temporarily receded, perhaps after the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire (680 AD) had brought some measure of stability to the lands on both sides of the Danube.
This theory is inclined to ring ze bell of (some) Bulgarian nationalists. They are understandably less enamoured of the idea that Asen and Peter, the fraternal founders of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), were Vlachs—i.e. Romanian speakers.
In the interests of succinctness (yeah in a 10,000 word sperg-out) I put aside the Bulgarian thesis for the rest of this poast, even though—compared to the ‘main’ immigrationist theory I'm about to summarise—it has the merit at least of relative causal parsimony. I will return to this theme.
The ‘main’ immigrationist theory is more trenchant and more insulting to Romanian honour, as well as much more frequently argued, than the Bulgaria-centric hypothesis. It holds that the Vlachs are not the descendants of the Romans intermixed with Dacians, the latter of whom Trajan is said to have practically annihilated even before intermixture could occur. Rather they are the spawn of intrusive sheep- and goat-herding Illyrianoids, of which present-day Albanians are the sole modern linguistic representatives. Hungarian irredentists, who want to reverse the 1920 Treaty of Trianon and restore Nagy-Magyarország, are the main enjoyers of this one.
Told in closer detail, the story goes that the early Vlachs adopted a Latin patois during the Roman supremacy in the southwest Balkans (i.e. in Illyria), shifted to the highlands thereabouts as imperial control faltered in the lowlands under Slav-Avar pressure, and then came very slowly and opportunistically—mountain-chain by mountain-chain—north of the Danube to former Dacia Traiana, sometime after the Magyars (i.e. the Hungarians) had first arrived in Transylvania.
Once in place in the Carpathian uplands, the early Vlachs mostly maintained their transhumant lifeways while blending with sedentary populations—principally Slavs—who inhabited ex-Roman Dacia Traiana, some of them having been in situ since at least the 5th century AD. This last part is not widely disputed, though claims are made at the margins that Romanians are themselves in origin early-arriving Slavs who then experienced Latinisation.
Implications
It should be fairly obvious from the above that chronology is of capital importance.5 If the Romanians did not originate in Dacia Traiana and are really de-natured Illyrian intruders, they have no prior claim to Transylvania (temporal or racial) over the Hungarians and their Szekler cousins.6
The Hungarians probably first set hoof to Transylvanian soil sometime in the 9th century, though a paucity of Magyar material culture in Transylvania until a century or so later makes it seem as though they were just passing through. For their part, the Vlachs arrived…sometime afterwards who cares doesn’t matter as long as it was ÄFTËËËËËËËR ŰŰŰŰS (NB: that's a direct quote from a Hungarian irrendentist).
Conversely, if the Romanians are the descendants of the Daco-Romans, they were in Transylvania first and therefore—assuming naively that Third Worldist ‘rights of prior occupation’ consistently apply also to off-white Second Worlders—have the decisive claim to ‘indigeneity’ and SOVEREIGNTY OF OUR LANDS STOLEN FROM US BY WHITE IMPERIALIST COLONIAL SETLLERS BRUDAH
(3) ‘Protocronism’
This totally irrational origin story, promulgated in the 1970s under Ceaușescu but never really taken seriously by the temperamentally pragmatic Romanian masses, posits that the Romanians descend directly from the Daco-Getae, unmediated by a Roman element. I won’t go into detail about how all this is supposed to have happened.
Briefly stated, the idea animating Protocronism is that the Daco-Getae were a Pelasgian people whose unique and glorious ‘civilisation’ is the root of all culture, from the Atlantic to India (to which the Dacians brought the doctrine of Transmigration of Souls).
Protocronism is aggressively nationalist and anti-Western, with both of which I have some sympathy in the right context. It’s also ‘Zalmoxist’ (recall what I said earlier about Dacian Zalmoxis-worshippers allegedly being the first monotheists = preternaturally Christian 3,000 years before Christ).
Above all Protocronism exposes a profound and IQ-sapping sense of national inferiority. Among ‘non-aligned/’socially progressive’ states (eg Iraq, Albania, Iran), similarly over-compensatory national origin stories emerged—possibly, in refracted form, out of Third-Worldist currents prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s.
But the main contribution to the Protocronist intellectual pedigree may well be the mystical deep-nativist thought of the interbellum Romanian Right, cf. Corneliu Codreanu and the Legion of the Archangel Michael. An additional forerunner from around the same time is the Kemalist 'Sun Language Theory' of the 1930s: TÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜRKIŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞŞ PİĞPÖL FİĞRST TÜRDWÖRLDIST YES I TIĞNGK SÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ YES!!!!!!!
Taking sides
Leaving out Protocronism as a rank absurdity, how is the disinterested non-south-east-central-European observer to choose between the continuity and the immigrationist theories of Romanian ethnogenesis? Below I consider some of the merits and lacunae in each7. Make up your own mind.
Most of the arguments I recapitulate are broadly linguistic in nature, since studying material culture (including, as we shall see in part II, genetics) has so far availed little that is decisive in this connexion.
Also, as difficult as the matter may appear on the basis of my presentation, I have in fact had to leave out many of the complexities involved. In my own defence I can honestly say that I have *tried* to be fair.
Evaluating the continuity theory
Before I go on: in addition to (Daco-)Romanian, the Eastern Romance family comprises the following languages: Aromanian in Greek and Slavic Macedonia, Thessaly, Greek Epirus, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia; Istro-Romanian in Croatia; and Megleno-Romanian in Greek and Slavic Macedonia. The map below illustrates their far-flung pan-BALKANIK dispersal.
Economical
The continuity theory best accords with the principle ’Thou shalt not multiply causes unnecessarily’ (aka Ockham’s Razor). Put simply, it’s more economical to argue that Romanian speakers originated in the locations they occupy now. It is strange prima facie to posit, as the immigrationist theory does, a complex of multiple population movements, over a distance of about 1,500 kilometres, to demonstrate how the most numerous branch of East Romance speakers (the Romanians) arrived in their present homeland north of the Danube.
All the same, you will have noticed from the above map that the objection to the sheer distances involved simply can’t be avoided. The far-flung geographical distribution of Romanians and other Eastern Romance speakers is a hard fact that has to be accounted for by any urheimat theory, regardless of the direction(s) in which the migration(s) might have proceeded.
On one hand, the immigrationist theory has the virtue of positing a homeland roughly in the geographical centre of the Eastern Romance sphere. All else being equal, this is sound practice in historical-comparative linguistics. On the other hand, the immigrationists have not identified a series of uniquely compelling push factors (and it would have to be a series of them) which might have forced manifold independent dispersions of Eastern Romance speakers all the way from the southwestern Balkans into Romania.
As you can see in the map above, the immigrationists hold that between the 9th and 10th centuries Eastern Romance speakers first undertook a bewildering number of migrations in almost every conceivable direction, *except to former Roman Dacia*. They then embarked upon a complicated series of further migrations at last to reach the territory of erstwhile Roman Dacia.
Look at the purple arrows. You will observe that one of the many proposed original migrations took the Eastern Romance speakers to central Bulgaria—near their (theorised) southwest Balkan homeland—and another to Maramureș, in the northernmost reaches of modern Romania but *still outside* the ex-Roman province of Dacia Traiana. Note that the migration to Maramureș is reckoned to have occurred in the 10th century AD—that is, after the Hungarians had come to Europe (funny that…). Cynicism aside, it’s here that the immigrationist theory first fails the test of parsimony (very Anglo of me to care perhaps but there it is).
The immigrationists’ violation of Ockham’s Razor is further evident when it’s considered that the continuity theory maintains a maximally parsimonious and (at minimum) somewhat credible tale of Romanian ethnogenesis covering the pre-Roman to the post-Roman epochs, accompanied by reasonably persuasive archaeological findings. By contrast, as I said above, a comparably plausible account has never been elaborated by the immigrationists for elsewhere in the Balkans, where possible signs of early habitation by Eastern Romance speakers are vanishingly slight.
To sum up: it seems to me causally expensive to derive the Romanian nation from an extravagant array of initial—and then further ramified—cross-Balkan migrations in all directions by the bearers of the Eastern Romance languages, all of them *very conveniently* avoiding the rich territory of Transylvania until after the first coming of the Hungarians to that part of Europe. By contrast, the proposed location of the continuity theory’s locus centralis remains in Transylvania, the centre of Roman Dacia. It has done so for more than 100 years, since its first identification by the Liberal Boyar, Romanian president and dastardly anti-Semite Nicolae Iorga (plz u consult this poast of mine for further reflections on Romanian anti-Semitism).
The Jireček Line
Romania, but not the immigrationists’ alternative Eastern Romance urheimat somewhere in the highlands of antique Thraco-Illyria, is unambiguously north of the Jireček Line. This linguistic frontier divides the Balkan peninsula in two, based on the use of either Greek or Latin on lapidary inscriptions during the Roman imperial period.
These inscriptions are taken as evidence of the language predominantly spoken by the populations south and north of the line: Greek and Latin respectively. Latin was used in Dacia, whereas Greek was dominant in the territory where the immigrationist homeland is situated, in the southwest Balkans (but see sneaky blue line in map underneath, which shifts Roman imperial Illyria from the Latin- to the Greek-speaking zone).
Eastern Romance speakers are therefore relatively unlikely to have originated to the south of the Jireček Line. If they had, they would probably now speak some derivative of Greek—or a language compounded of many late Vulgar Latin and Byzantine/Koine Greek features—instead of a fundamentally Romance language. At the very least, if Eastern Romance had come to Romania from south of the Jireček Line, one would expect modern Romanian to evince many Koine Greek features. Yet it does not.
A further (snarky) objection: As the immigrationists have attempted to nail down the Eastern Romance urheimat in the Illyro-Thracian zone, the Jireček Line has shifted subtly south, thereby appearing—though these shifts have no doubt occurred completely in accord with findings on the ground—to better accommodate both ‘probable’ and ‘possible’ immigrationist homelands. See map below to appreciate the significance (and mutability!) of the Jireček Line.
The Slavic and Christcuck Questions
The first Vlachs are unlikely to have predominantly been Slavs. Intermarriage of Daco-Romans and Slavs must later have been common, and Slavonic has contributed a large fund of ‘deep’ lexis (including grammar) to the Romanian language (c. 10 - 20%). But both the grammar and the core vocabulary of Romanian remain essentially Latin in complexion.
The non-trivial ‘Thracian/Dacian/Illyrian’ lexical layer in the Eastern Romance languages (see below) distinguishes them from any Slavic tongue. This linguistic ‘substrate’ further indicates that the earliest Vlachs were some amalgam of Latin speakers and early, pre-Slavic Balkan Indo-Europeans.
Most tellingly, pronouns/basic morphology and words describing feelings—not facts!—as well as those denoting agricultural and religious concepts, are preeminantly derived from Latin. The problem is that in both these latter domains there are many from Slavic too.
Substantial Slavonic contributions to agricultural lexis are not, however, germane to the question of Vlach origins. These loanwords came not from Proto-Slavic (2nd millenium BC - 6th c. AD) but mainly from its descendants, South and East Slavic, meaning that they must have entered Eastern Romance after the Vlachs had undergone ethnogenesis in late Antiquity, whether in former Roman Dacia or in the southwest Balkans.
In general, the Latinate element in the religious vocabulary of Eastern Romance is temporally congruent with evidence from archaeology that some of the inhabitants of Dacia were Christian by the 3rd century, prior to the exodus of the legions from Dacia Traiana. Although some Latin-derived religious terminology came into Romanian via Slavonic, it did not come via Proto-Slavic but from its linguistic descendants of the 9th century and later, and there is no record of a mass Slavic ingression having occurred either before or immediately in the wake of the Roman abandonment of Dacia Traiana. All this indicates that the Proto-Vlachs must have became Christian under imperial suzerainty, not by contact with (or by themselves being in origin) Slavs.
Romanian does indeed contain many purely Slavic religious terms—e.g. duh, for (Holy) Spirit. But this is because Orthodox ritual came to be codified, and until at least the 17th century also conducted, in Old Church Slavonic. The Vlachs adopted Old Church Slavonic for religious purposes after the conversion of the Bulgars, under Khan Boris in 864, and the absorption of many of the Vlachs into the First Bulgarian Empire. This is a good deal later than the dates proposed for Vlach ethnogenesis by either the continuity or the immigrationist theories.
As a matter of fact, the Vlachs’ adoption of Old Church Slavonic assists not at all in resolving controversies as to either their ethnolinguistic or their geographical origins. Old Church Slavonic was the sole language of liturgy among most Orthodox but non-Greek peoples, including the non-Slavic Albanians. It is no strange thing that the Eastern Romance speaking Vlachs should have employed it likewise.
In summary: The Eastern Romance languages are descended from Latin, which means (obviously) that the Proto-Vlachs must have come into being in a Latin-speaking milieu. While there is plenty of Medieval South and West Slavic linguistic influence on Romanian, there is comparatively scanty evidence of sustained input from pre-Medieval Proto-Slavic, which would be expected if the early Slavs had been a substantial element among the first Vlachs, regardless of where the latter originated.
Latin and ‘Dacian’ lexical ingredients
Romanian has retained non-core Latin vocabulary abandoned by other Eastern Romance languages (e.g. Romanian auriu, from Latin aurum, for gold, in which Transylvania is famously abundant). Northern and northwestern Transylvanian dialects of Romanian in fact cherish the richest stock of Latin lexis and morphology, unpreserved in other Eastern Romance languages. Also, in the Roman heartland of west Transylvanian Dacia, some names for upland watercourses are of unmediated Latin provenience.
Taken together with the predominantly Latin origin of Romanian grammar and religious terminology, this toponymic evidence tends to suggest an initial diffusion point in ex-Roman Transylvania for the Eastern Romance languages.
In addition, Romanian preserves words of alleged Dacian origin (e.g. brânză, meaning cheese), again taken to imply a Transylvanian radial point for the Eastern Romance languages.
Now let us state the case for the immigrationist theory.
Evaluating the immigrationist theory
Not Dacian, Illyrian
The purported Dacian substrate in the Romanian language may instead descend from common Thracian—which as I said above was spoken all over the Balkans in antiquity—or from Illyrian (i.e. the language from which Albanian is probably derived). The Dacian, Thracian and Illyrian languages are too poorly attested to tell them apart reliably. Eastern Romance might therefore have originated just about anywhere in the Balkan peninsula.
Sorry, it’s just not long enough baby
The Roman legions were in Dacia for only c. 170 years. Immigrationists argue that the resulting brief phase of Romanisation is unlikely to have been long enough to effect a thoroughgoing language shift to Vulgar Latin. In Gaul and Iberia, both of which ended up with Romance languages founded on Vulgar Latin, Roman colonists (not just Roman troops) and their successors are known to have been present for more than 500 years.
Why did they stick around?
Immigrationists ask: why would civilian settlers have remained behind in Goth-infested Dacia when the legions had fled, especially as there are records of imperial officials having extended ‘invitations to depart’ to the colonists?
Germanic deficit
Immigrationsts point out that there are no loanwords in Romanian from the East Germanic languages. This is significant because the Goth and Gepid destroyers of Dacia Traiana (and the more fleetingly abusive Vandals) spoke East Germanic. The ready counter is that the Proto-Vlachs, pre-eminently denizens of the Carpathian highlands, would have had little contact with the transitory Gepids or Vandals. The fairly short-lived Gothic occupation, chiefly of the foothills and plains, also would not necessarily have been of much concern. It began no earlier than the 230s AD and ended under assault from the Huns sometime between the late 4th and middle 5th centuries.
Did you know there was a Dark Age in Eastern Europe too?!
There are no records of Eastern Romance speakers in Dacia, even from normally scrupulous Byzantine chroniclers, until well after the Roman withdrawal (like, almost 1,000 years afterwards). On this subject, recall the immigrationist claim that the Dacians and Getae were wiped out by the Romans and/or that the imperial colonists must have withdrawn with the legions.
Retrospective mentions of Vlachs or Blakomen8 in Byzantine, Russian and Hungarian chronicles as well as a runestone from Gotland, all inscribed c. 1050 to 1200, refer to events which occurred no more than 300 years prior to their composition.
The idea, in other words, is that the Vlachs can't have been in Dacia *before the sources say so*. Also—you guessed it—the sources don't specify the existence of Vlachs anywhere until…after the Hungarians first got to Transylvania!
Too cynical again? Whatever…
The main point here is that this argumentum ex silentio is weak—you know it’s so because I’m using a Latin expression—since there are few or no writings from *anywhere* in eastern Europe (north or south of the Danube) dating to either the post-Roman or early Medieval periods. Moreover, the Byzantines are known to have referred to people outside their empire by archaic names (e.g. describing Germanic and Turkic speakers as Scythians). It's not impossible that they might have done similarly with the earliest Vlachs.
oh no Albanoids
Almost all the substrate, supposedly Dacian, words Romanian shares with cis-Danubian Eastern Romance languages (especially Aromanian) are shared also with Old Albanian. Moreover, Romanian has in common with Albanian a mouthwatering selection of translated proverbs and calques (try them sometime at one among your local range of incredible Albanian restaurants; they’re delicious!) In addition, there are many direct loanwords from Old Albanian to Romanian.
To my mind these linguistic markers of deep cultural contact between early Vlachs and proto-Albanians constitute very strong evidence, never adequately addressed, favouring an origin of Eastern Romance speakers in the Albanoid/Illyrian zone and a complex of subsequent migrations from south to north—just as the immigrationist theory would have it.
Yet in practical terms none of this matters one iota
Of course, Romanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians and whatever other emotionally invested east-central-south Europeans are foolish to think (as some apparently do) that any of the above makes any practical difference to the adjudication of irredentist claims. Especially where intra-European quarrels are concerned, FACTS and LOGIC do not count; great power geopolitical interests do (cf. recently The Ukraine, Kosovo etc). Hungarian grievances over the loss of Transylvania and most of the Banat by the Treaty of Trianon are not likely to be satisfied if the immigrationist theory achieves general currency.
Still, the dispute over Romanian origins is an intellectually diverting, venerable and colourful squabble accompanied by much characteristically BALKANIK hurling of amusing ethnic invective. More importantly, it is an indication of fervid and abiding national spirit—and as such it should not be discouraged9.
As you will see in part II, the location of the Romanian homeland doesn’t matter much to history either, because the Vlachs experienced a second ethnogenesis in the 13th century AD—and it is only since then that their collective deeds have been revealed to the world.
Anyway, so much for all that…
What’s your favourite theory of Romanian ethnogenesis? Comment below!
Traian used to be a fairly common first name in Romania, until recently supplanted in popularity by something like…Ianis.
Burebista was not only high-king of the Dacians and Getae; he was also first president of the Romanian Temperance Society (WE WUZ PURITAYNZ). Legendarily, in order to increase the Dacians’ fighting efficiency and end domestic violence he ordered the destruction of all vineyards in his kingdom. Lamentably, the chairmanship of the Romanian Temperance Society remained vacant from Burebista’s death until its brief occupation by the anti-Semite A.C. Cuza, after whose tenure it reverted to its long-accustomed desuetude.
Aurelian was also, strangely, once quite a popular Romanian name, before being superseded by names like…Patrick and…Aris.
The Getae were kindred of or identical with the Dacians and, according to Herodotus, "the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes".
Transylvania and the majority of the Banat were taken from Hungary and, I believe wrongly, given to Romania by the Treaty of Trianon (1920). The Hungarians understandably long for a return to the fold of more than a million Szeklers and other Hungarians, and of the stolen lands constituting the largest part of Greater Hungary. The Hungarians do not normally claim the rest of Romania as irredenta.
The Szeklers (sőőőőőőőőőőőőőőrry Lászlóóóóóóóóóóóóóó; I meant Székely) are an historically fecund Magyaroid offshoot who have inhabited the eastern marches of Transylvania since at least the mid-12th century, once upon a time as border wardens and now as a pestilential fifth column of the ORBAN DICTATORSHIP.
These names—from an old Germanic word for foreigner, with which the ethonyms Welsh and Walloon are also cognate—were of yore used by Germanoids and Slavs to denote all Eastern Romance speakers.
except in politics, where it is a diversion from matters of real and urgent import.
Great stuff. Good lessons :)