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Post by Dienekes on Jan 2, 2004 8:12:17 GMT -5
Proto-Slavic is unrelated to Proto-Indo-European except in the sense that it is one of its very late descendants. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European was centum, while Slavic is satem. The ancestors of the Slavs split off much later than the PIE unity.
The closest living relatives to PIE are Greek and Armenian.
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Andrea
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IM ROY JE DA JEST TO VESNIYO - May they all have a paradise this springtime
Posts: 119
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Post by Andrea on Jan 2, 2004 17:45:16 GMT -5
Artemidoros and Dienekes, It is O.K.. I did not post the above foreword with aim to start a discussion on the Proto IE language (in that case a would start a new thread). I just used it to show that the Venetic is classified as a Slavic language and to show some examples to corroborate that claim as well to show a case where it is italized. Also, I like to appologize to Artemidoros. Obviously I have missunderstood his critics. With respect to the topic of the IE languages (e.g. their origin etc.) I prefer Mario Alinei's Theory of continuity, so I disagree with any theory of mass migrations after the Neolithic, including the one that Tareq Ismael talks about (it is not his own theory). I stated that explicitely several times in this and other threads. About the Vinca culture and it's script I offer you the following two sites: www.prehistory.it/fase2/madonna.htmgroups.msn.com/AncientWisdomCulturesPeople/vincaculture1.msnwThere are much more, of course. Please, do a search on Yahoo. It is not a surprise for me that the Vinca script is not known in the world as it deserves. If such script was found elsewhere, BBC should announce it on all drums. However since it is located on the Balkans....it can not be true.....it must be some kind of mistake ;D. However Maria Gimbutas talks a lot about it. She classifies Vinca culture as the center of Old Europe during the Neolithic.
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Post by Artemidoros on Jan 3, 2004 17:35:29 GMT -5
No hard feelings. I should have taken more trouble in explaining myself.
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Post by Agrippa on Jan 16, 2004 18:55:14 GMT -5
This is just not true.
Just think about the situation in which the romanized mainly farming people were. They lived under a highly organized state and then generation after generation foreigner came in with better weapons and organisation than the peasants.
I think the Slavs probably came with other conquerors (it is proven that they often came together with Asiatic or Germanic tribes like the Avars) but the others went on or just disappeared, but the Slavs settled and used the already established organization of the other more warrior-like groups.
Just think about 1000 Slavs, Clans which come in and rule now over 5000. Some may say they were culturally inferior, but were they? Was there such a high culture IN THAT TIME and under these peasants?
After the collapse the most of them just want to survive in small structures and the Slavic form of living and organization is very good adapted for such a situation.
Its based on small clans, on kinship and a quite simple style of living. This wouldnt have been that attractive when Rome was on its height, but after the collapse it was.
People gathered around such stabilized small communities of Slavs and if they "converted" 5000 Romanized natives, they were not just 1000 but already 6000.
Who said the assimilation happened in a year?
The more they "converted" to the simple living style with kinship, self-defence and autonomous economy the more people they had to go further.
I have absolut no problem to see lets say maybe even mainly men and just 8-15 percent of the population at work as primary Slavs UNDER THIS CONDITIONS.
(They came with warriors like the Avars or Germanics, they met disorganized almost helpless masses of Romanized peasants, they had an alternative living style and organization which was in this situation advantageous.
People who want to affiliate themselves with the newcomers to survive and to be secure or just because they couldnt defend themselves properly against them under this conditions (after the collapse) adopted Slavic customs and on the long run they just turned into Slavs...
This happened after the collapse of the Roman empire and its administration in this region.
I read some literature and was in lectures about how this people, the average Roman(ized) peasants, citizens lived then. Even small groups could have a major impact, thats for sure.
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Post by Artemidoros on Jan 16, 2004 20:35:25 GMT -5
This is just not true. Just think about the situation in which the romanized mainly farming people were. They lived under a highly organized state and then generation after generation foreigner came in with better weapons and organisation than the peasants. I think the Slavs probably came with other conquerors (it is proven that they often came together with Asiatic or Germanic tribes like the Avars) but the others went on or just disappeared, but the Slavs settled and used the already established organization of the other more warrior-like groups. Just think about 1000 Slavs, Clans which come in and rule now over 5000. Some may say they were culturally inferior, but were they? Was there such a high culture IN THAT TIME and under these peasants? After the collapse the most of them just want to survive in small structures and the Slavic form of living and organization is very good adapted for such a situation. Its based on small clans, on kinship and a quite simple style of living. This wouldnt have been that attractive when Rome was on its height, but after the collapse it was. People gathered around such stabilized small communities of Slavs and if they "converted" 5000 Romanized natives, they were not just 1000 but already 6000. Who said the assimilation happened in a year? The more they "converted" to the simple living style with kinship, self-defence and autonomous economy the more people they had to go further. I have absolut no problem to see lets say maybe even mainly men and just 8-15 percent of the population at work as primary Slavs UNDER THIS CONDITIONS. (They came with warriors like the Avars or Germanics, they met disorganized almost helpless masses of Romanized peasants, they had an alternative living style and organization which was in this situation advantageous. People who want to affiliate themselves with the newcomers to survive and to be secure or just because they couldnt defend themselves properly against them under this conditions (after the collapse) adopted Slavic customs and on the long run they just turned into Slavs... This happened after the collapse of the Roman empire and its administration in this region. I read some literature and was in lectures about how this people, the average Roman(ized) peasants, citizens lived then. Even small groups could have a major impact, thats for sure. All available genetic evidence points to the fact that the Southern Slavs are for the biggest part descendants of the ancient (pre-medieval) populations of the area. A new theory is proposed by Slaven and Andrea. According to this theory the ancient populations spoke Slavic languages. If this theory is accepted then all theories about their Slavicization (including mine and yours) are irrelevant. If for a minute we stick to the old theory of Slavicization then I am afraid I have some serious issues with your explanation as to how it happened. The population of north-eastern Europe was way less civilized than south-eastern Europe. Not only because they could not read or wright but for a great variety of reasons. For example the Russians did not know how to build stone or brick buildings and were taught by the Byzantines (Byzantine methods had to be adapted to the climatic conditions). Their arms were not superior and the only weapon of any value some of them possessed (under Asiatic influence) was the composite bow. The composite bow was also used by the Byzantines though and it was called tzagra. The Roman empire was not collapsing in the Balkans. It was the most powerful state in Europe at least until the 11th century in the form of the Byzantine empire. By that time there is evidence that the populations of the central Balkans were Slavic speakers.
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Post by AWAR on Jan 16, 2004 20:34:56 GMT -5
I think that when discussing history, the first thing you got to do is rid yourself of stereotypes regarding a certain age.
For example, the Roman or east Roman empire may have been extremely well developed and civilized, but not ALL of it's parts were like that.
When someone mentions rome, people immediately think about hollywood movies depicting Rome, the city. Rome didn't have an exactly homogenous culture EVERYWHERE.
Also, you have to forget borders between nations, languages and ethnicities, and of course the sense of belonging to a nation.
Romans in the capital may have been nationalistic about their state, but that doesn't mean that a Roman citizen from the Balkans really gave a damn about his citizenship, nationality, language etc.
Finally, there were no exact borders that could be kept like today. Today we have official languages in every state, official records of every bit of teritory, but in those times, there was much that was unknown and uncertain.
Today it'd be unimaginable for a group of 1000 Bulgars to spontaneously migrate into Greece, but in those times, people migrated when they had to. Tribes lived and migrated throughout Europe and Balkans. There was no fixed name for larger groups of some tribes etc. Historians made notes of some tribes they encountered, other historians at the same time made different notes etc.
The particular subject here is the Dark Ages, and it'd be clearly stupid to think we shed much light on the events in this age. ( pun intended )
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Dean
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Truth Before Ego
Posts: 245
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Post by Dean on Jan 17, 2004 0:59:08 GMT -5
All available genetic evidence points to the fact that the Southern Slavs are for the biggest part descendants of the ancient (pre-medieval) populations of the area. Sorry to strike a deceased equine, but genetic studies seem to show stable, old patterns. Two major studies by eminent population geneticists (Semino et al. and Cavalli-Sforza et al.) seem to concur. One question I have is how much of the apparent Neolithic genetic contribution to the southern Balkans is Neolithic and how much was brought in recent times. Y DNA haplogroup J2 is widespread in the eastern Mediterranean area and southwest Asia and includes many ethnic groups. What is the proportion of J2 brought by Ottoman invaders, who I imagine were in part east Mediterraneans/Southwest Asians who were descended from further south and east of the Balkans, and others? Are some, few or many of these people descended from people who were united as moslems and served in the Ottoman Empire and not related to central Asiatic Turkish speakers and and other people with central Asiatic Mongoloid admixture? It seems clear to me that some in the Balkans are descended from indigenous paleolithic populations. In Croatia, there is a high frequency of a certain mutation of haplogroup I; these people have been theorized to be remnants of a major ice age refugium. As far as I know, these people were never prominent politically and have had no known empires or other political structures. This may be why they were Romanized and Slavicized.
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Post by Agrippa on Jan 17, 2004 11:04:59 GMT -5
First of all, the Slavs came in when other tribes and groups destroyed already the power of the Byzantines more or less in that region. Maybe Slavs came with them or later.
Secondly what had the simple peasants of this region to defend themselves without Roman/Byzantine legions?
Do you think this peasants were so much better fighters than Slavs who fought together with the Avars and some Germanic tribes f.e.?
And furthermore they didnt make up a comlex state immediately, they just changed the local social and ethnic structure on the country.
As I said above their way of living and thinking was superior under this circumstances! Their living in self-defending, self-organizing social and kinship structures was better in times when the higher hierarchy and the state was lost.
That was happening in this part of the world no matter what was in other parts. The Byzantines lost the control over many parts of the Balkans, there was enough space to be conquered and "converted"/assimilated by the Slavs and the local peasants were not superior.
The similarities between Southern and Northern (West+East) Slavs are so big that you can have just assume that the split couldnt happen for to long...
So what would be the consequence of saying the Southern Slavs lived in this region maybe even before the Romans? That all Slavs are descendents of the Southern ones which is absurd! Under Roman rule there could be no stable connection between the North and South and social structure, language, family structure etc are too similar for a long time split. The idea of native Slavs maybe even before the Romans on a big scale which would explain Southern Slavs is just a fantasy.
And again, there are proofs enough that there is North-Eastern admixture in Southern Slavs, its just on low levels and thats because of the process I described above.
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Post by Artemidoros on Jan 17, 2004 18:55:02 GMT -5
Sorry to strike a deceased equine, but genetic studies seem to show stable, old patterns. Two major studies by eminent population geneticists (Semino et al. and Cavalli-Sforza et al.) seem to concur. One question I have is how much of the apparent Neolithic genetic contribution to the southern Balkans is Neolithic and how much was brought in recent times. Y DNA haplogroup J2 is widespread in the eastern Mediterranean area and southwest Asia and includes many ethnic groups. What is the proportion of J2 brought by Ottoman invaders, who I imagine were in part east Mediterraneans/Southwest Asians who were descended from further south and east of the Balkans, and others? Are some, few or many of these people descended from people who were united as moslems and served in the Ottoman Empire and not related to central Asiatic Turkish speakers and and other people with central Asiatic Mongoloid admixture? It seems clear to me that some in the Balkans are descended from indigenous paleolithic populations. In Croatia, there is a high frequency of a certain mutation of haplogroup I; these people have been theorized to be remnants of a major ice age refugium. As far as I know, these people were never prominent politically and have had no known empires or other political structures. This may be why they were Romanized and Slavicized. This is one for Dienekes or someone of his calibre but I will attempt an answer. J2 has indeed a very strong presence in Turkey, something like 43%. In Greece its percentage is more like 25%. It shows strongly north of Greece too. Although some of it is undoubtedly Post-Neolithic (there has been an awful lot of coming and going between the Balkans and Anatolia in the past 8,000 years) the big bulk of it is Neolithic. I could not put any figures to it but probably no more than 5% is Post-Neolithic. The reason I am saying this is that if its percentage was any higher, then the overall Neolithic contribution to the area would be unbelievably low. AFAIK the only geneticist that has tried to give values to Post-Neolithic geneflow to Europe is Martin Richards and his team, using mt-DNA instead of Y-chromosomes. IMO his results are mostly wrong. He gives Neolithic contribution in Greece and Albania 10% and Post-Neolithic 20% That could have been acceptable if he had not found Neolithic of 20% in Britain or Neolithic in Scandinavia roughly equal to that of Greece I can not buy that, given the location of Greece and the routes of Neolithic expansion. If you want to find out my thoughts in more detail, as well as other peoples check this one www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=275625&messageid=1073370131To the question whether this Post-Neolithic gene flow can be attributed to the Turks my opinion is no. It is older than that. Also the correct medium for uncovering Ottoman gene flow would be the Y-chromosomes. The Ottoman conquest put up a barrier to geneflow in the area and made it one way, from the Christians to the Muslims. Any geneflow to the Balkans from the Ottomans would be confined to Muslim populations almost exclusively. Of course there were people who re-converted to Christianity, we have examples in southern Greece (it never happened in the north and I have no idea whether it happened in other Balkan countries) but it was localised and minimal. The other possibility is rape but given the extreme lengths the Balkanians went to in order to protect their "honour" (mass suicides etc) it could not have happened much and it is not very likely the rape victim and/or the baby would have survived. To the question of the specific origin of whatever Ottoman genes there are, well, it is anybody's guess. They used troops from all over the empire and local Muslims and even Christians in large numbers.
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Post by Artemidoros on Jan 18, 2004 13:34:39 GMT -5
To my disappointment the message board to which I provided a link in the previous post was deleted by the owner a few hours later. Because I think the subject is important, even if it makes some people feel uncomfortable, I will start another thread in genetics (as this one is about the Southern Slavs).
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Dean
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Truth Before Ego
Posts: 245
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Post by Dean on Jan 18, 2004 13:39:55 GMT -5
Of course there were people who re-converted to Christianity, we have examples in southern Greece (it never happened in the north and I have no idea whether it happened in other Balkan countries) but it was localised and minimal. Are you implying that these people were once Christians who became Moslem and then reconverted, or were these people Moslems who converted to Christianity? I read that during the Greek War of Independence in the Peloponnese there were instances where Christians and Moslems were changing religions to save their lives in a time of bloody retribution.
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Post by Artemidoros on Jan 18, 2004 14:33:27 GMT -5
Are you implying that these people were once Christians who became Moslem and then reconverted, or were these people Moslems who converted to Christianity? I read that during the Greek War of Independence in the Peloponnese there were instances where Christians and Moslems were changing religions to save their lives in a time of bloody retribution. They were Greek speaking Muslims, I pressume they were at some point Christians. Yes, many people changed religion when things were tough and many changed back to the old one when things got better.
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Andrea
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IM ROY JE DA JEST TO VESNIYO - May they all have a paradise this springtime
Posts: 119
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Post by Andrea on Jan 27, 2004 11:17:17 GMT -5
Hi guys and ladies, Someone said that the inertion is the keeper of the cosmic order. Well, the inertion of the "arrival of the Slavs" model is really strong. Yes, we learned it in school. We learned it well. However, new informations are coming on the surface and those scholars who know them synthetize them in models which discard that story based on the concept of "charter flights" and the "arrival". I understand those who still stick to the good old "Slavic arrival" models. They are safe. They stabilize our world views. Like mother's embrace. We all feel warm and cosy there. The more cold the weather outside the more we are ready and willing to stick to (or maybe in) her warm body. Outside, the wind of change blows, but here, with our warm mother close to us, we think, at least we know something that can be classified as absolute truth. However, outside, the reality is much colder, unpredictable, wild and changeable. Courageous are those who are ready and willing to see straight in the eyes of the changeable reality, to leave the cosy and warm mother's embrace and enjoy alone in the wind of change .
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skord
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Post by skord on Mar 22, 2004 12:52:29 GMT -5
Bump! I still don't believe in the theory that Serbs and Croats are slavicized Illyrians. :-P "Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions of the Byzantine Empire in the fifth to seventh centuries, the northern Balkan peninsula was left sparsely-populated and became settled by Slav and Bulgar peoples. The first Slavs in the regions were vassals of the Avars, a Turkic people from Russia and they engaged in raiding the Byzantine empire. The Avars were defeated by the Byzantines and Slavic tribes of Serbs and Croats were invited by Byzantine Emporer Heraclius to settle in the Balkans..." www.phoenixcommand.com/hell1.htmIn other words, the Serbs and Croats assimilated the first Slavs and others under the Avar clan who migrated to the Balkans. Agrippa-I don't believe that North-Eastern admixture is low among southern Slavs
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Post by Artemidoros on Mar 22, 2004 19:03:02 GMT -5
I think the Avars settled in central Europe, not the Balkans.
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