Maps of 6th Century Europe

[Chakalarov]

I started this map as an experiment for myself so I could better visualize the "boundaries" of people and cultures right before the Slavic invasions, so as to gain a clearer perspective. Using many maps and sources, I compiled this map to show the scene right before the emergence of the Sklabenoi. There are many things represented in this over modern-day borders:

1: the boundary of the Eastern Roman Empire during the period in question, represented by the red. (*Note, I only included the regions relevant to our study)

2: the green represents lands historically occupied by the Thracians (Dacians, Getae, Goths, etc.) This was obtained through a documentary on the Thracians and many primary source documents.

3. the purple represents the extent of the Veneti, which is essentially linked with the Urnfield Culture.

4. the yellow outline represents the extent of Scythia and Sarmatia into Europe.

5. The yellow "spray paint" is an interesting phenomena. I theorized that given that this was the overlap of many ethnicities (Venetic, Getae, Sarmatian) it would be a logical place to assume the term "Sloveni" was first used, as a relation term. However, what's more interesting is that this area is exactly where Florin Curta pinpoints the origin of the Sklabenoi in his book.

Map

http://s100.photobucket.com/user/MarioMacedon/media/newmap_zpsdf80352d.png.html?sort=3&o=1

Curtas theory:

http://s100.photobucket.com/user/MarioMacedon/media/SlavOrigins1_zps7ccb2204.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Let me know what your thoughts on this new "look" are.

And finally, I was hoping we can use this thread to post any relevant maps or visualizations related to the time period.

[George S.]

maybe admin can make it a sticky.well done great stuff keep it up.

[Chakalarov]

So this is what I have compiled regarding Vindelicia as it relates to the Veneti:

Here is a map that I have found that matched the descriptions of Germania being bounded to the south by Vindelicia, to north by the Vindili and to the east the Vandals (Lygii)

Map 1: http://s100.photobucket.com/user/Mar...tml?sort=3&o=2

The next map is where I have found cities and toponyms based on the term "Veneti" in Germany and parts of France and England:

Map 2: http://s100.photobucket.com/user/Mar...tml?sort=3&o=1

It is also important to note that the map I created it a bit misleading, since I did not include Pannonia and Noricum as lands part of Venetia. The map I used was simply the map of the spread of the Uhrnfield Culture, imposed over modern-day boundaries.

With these maps, I concluded that the Veneti were largely confined to Central Europe. S as I stated before, there had to have been a historical circumstance for the Getae/Sarmatians to aquire the term Sklabenoi. In other words, I believe given the geographic distribution of the Veneti, the term "Sloveni" was a relational term between. I have not found any evidence to indicate the Balkan populations, despite speaking a related language also used this term before the 6th century. Any places in the Balkans associated with the Veneti in the Balkans I have yet to find. The closest I have found is Homer stating that the Enetoi moved to Thrace after the Trojan War. However, there are no more references to them afterwards.

As for the Getae, I envision them immediately on the other side of the Danube border, and confined to the area around the cost of the Black Sea in Sarmatia. Perhaps this is where I am mistaken. Where the Getae more outspread than this? Like I stated above, I believe they had to have contact with the Venetic groups for them to acquire the name Sklabenoi.

[Sovius]

Map of Sarmatia Europa and Sarmatia Asiatica

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Sarmatia_Antiqua.jpg

Map of Haplogroup M458

http://rafzen.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/sc582owianie-od-zawsze.jpg

This is partially carried over from our previous discussion regarding the Serbian Geography book.


Reference site: r1a.org

Haplogroup M458 is presently regarded as having originated in Sarmatia Europa in what is now modern day Poland and still maintains some of its highest frequencies in Sarmatia Asiatica. M458 is a descendent group of populations carrying Z283, which is also prevalent throughout the same two regions. Z284 populations in Scandinavia are descended from Z283 populations in Central Europe, in addition to populations carrying other haplogroups, as defined by the Corded Ware horizon.

The zone you highlighted on your map is in what was once part of the Linear Pottery Culture around 7,000 years before the present. This region features the overlap of three different archeologically defined cultures: the Balkan Painted and Impressed Pottery cultures (Illyrian (Illyro-Macedonian)), the Linear Pottery Cultures and the Tripolye-Cucuteni Cultures to the East, an excellent spot for the consideration of the' sloveni' term coming into being as a way of identifying people who had an easier go of speaking with one another than with other people outside these regions.

The Yamnaya or Yamna Cultures evolved into Catacomb Cultures and Catacomb cultures are thought to have given way to Srubna Cultures, which preceded the historically attested to Asiatic Sarmatians and Scythians, as Srubna Culture is thought to have produced Cimmerian culture.

If I recall correctly, the Gedani, the Latinized Sarmatian intranym for the 'Gothic' exonym', set up a defensive perimeter against further Roman expansion in the region in 332AD, then got wiped off the face of the planet by the Huns ( 'Hunnoi' (Ουννοι) ). Or, perhaps, they were turncoats and had allied themselves with the Romans? Attila Dragomer (also remembered as Dragomer among Uralic language speaking populations) was a Pannonian by birth, but formed his 'unia' or union of war clans and protected peoples in what would become known as Hunigard, as the region was often referred to in Old Norse Sagas, which was held by the Rus. If we recall from the Primary Chronicle of the Rus, the Rus came from Illyria and Pannonia was in Illyria. 'Unia' is still in use in Poland and continues to mean 'union'.

Notice the lower levels of M458 between the two Sarmatias. That's what defeat looks like biologically. Also note the low levels of M458 in the Balkan region. That's quite the evidence for the complete population replacement of most of the Balkans by "The Slavs". One caveat though, M458 is apparently old enough to have been left behind by the advance of populations out of Central Europe into Mycenaean territory and beyond much earlier, so more samples have to be collected before researchers can be more certain of relevant entry dates into the region. There is also the possibility of two different waves and that both events occurred out of the same region or separate regions. Other explanations could and should exist, as well.


6th Century AD References

Procopius, commenting on the people of the Unia, referred to them as Sklabenoi:

"They are rarely knavish or base, even maintaining the Hunnic characteristic of simplicity."

Anthropologically, this can be considered to be the use of the ‘Sklabenoi’ term for Scythians as an informal colloquial term, not an ethno-linguistic term, as "Huns" were formally classified as Scythians, not "Slavs".

Priscus, recorded Scythian terms in use amongst the Unia, which would likely have also been in use in the Illyrian languages during the same period. 'Strava' can be considered the most important term, as the funeral celebration was still being practiced in the regions that would become Russia and the Ukraine during the Middle Ages. Again, Western European ethnocentrists turned back the evolutionary dial in regard to historical scholarship when they decided to shade early European history with self- interested nationalism. I believe this would all be common knowledge today, if not for the academic component of the Drive East, this period of cultural negation that we’ve found ourselves in. Dragomer, in case it’s not common in Macedonia means 'one who is highly valued'. 'Attila' appears to have possibly been a title and may exist as an extralinguistic adoption of some kind. A term similar to what 'hetman' came to mean seems logical, but more research is required. Notice how no other "Huns" (Rus) had both a first name and a surname? It may have also been a nickname of some kind, I suppose, and simply tagged along for the ride throughout history. Evidence suggests that he was likely known as Dragomer of Pannonia among the Scythians, because that's how surnames developed in this part of the world when they eventually came into formal use later on in time.




A proposed date for the 'Sklavos' connotation for 'doulos':

"After the 10th century the major source of slaves, often Slavs and Bulgars, were campaigns in the Balkans and lands north of the Black Sea. Slaves were one of the main articles that Russian traders dealt in their yearly visit to Constantinople. After the 12th century, the old Greek word "δοῦλος" (doulos) obtained a synonym in "σκλάβος" (sklavos),[4] perhaps derived from the same root as "Slav".


1. Rotman, Youval (2009). Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World. Harvard University Press. p. 66. ISBN 9780674036116.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Byzantine_Empire

I haven't verified the 12th Century date independently of the internet source, but, if this is an accurate date, what did Sklabenoi mean between the 6th Century and the 11th Century within the Eastern Roman cultures, if it didn't mean slave at all? There is insurgent, rebel, someone who opposed the Roman occupation. There is also the simple interlinguistic adoption of 'sloveni' to Sklabenoi and the use of the term for people who spoke the common tongue of the area. Multilingual Thracians who supported the Roman presence would’ve been familiar with the ‘sloveni’ term and what it meant. But Iordanis treated the people he referred to as Sklavenes as an actual war clan or people separate from the Antes and the Veneti, similar, but not the same. I believe this strengthens the argument that the term was first used to describe the people of the Unia because of the derogatory nature of its use. The Scythians did deliver the most brutal of all messages to the Western Roman Empire. The Rus of Illyria used the term 'slovenskii' to describe their relatedness to other people in the area of Hunigrad and this is historically attested to. So, we have two different words with two different meanings that may have shared the same origin, but were clearly being used in different ways, as many chroniclers of Eastern Roman history would’ve been just as comfortable using a kindred language to record the history of the region and would have made note of what the term meant outside of the languages they were writing in, further clouding the issue or, perhaps providing some additional clarification and some additional paths to follow.

Since they came from Scythia, they (Byzantine slave traders) would've called the slaves ‘sklabenoi’, the people who fought under Dragomer's banner, because they already were informally referred to as Sklabenoi. (They were a part of a union of different peoples who spoke languages that were fairly similar to one another) Sklavos then, if the scholar is correct with his dating and has used the correct terminology, must have been an adoption of the "Sklabenoi" exonym, a mechanical contraction of the older term.



From istoria Salonitana by Thomas the Archdeacon, 13th Century

"From the Polish territories called Lingonia seven or eight tribal clans arrived under Totilo. When they saw that the Croatian land would be suitable for habitation because in it there were few Roman colonies, they sought and obtained for their duke…The people called Croats…Many call them Goths, and likewise Slavs, according to the particular name of those who arrived from Poland and Bohemia ."


If this was originally written in the Illyrian language or translated from Illyrian into Latin, it actually reads in English something closer to this:

"The people called Hrvati. . .Many call them Gedani, and likewise, people of a kindred tongue, according to the particular name of those who arrived from Poland and Bohemia." E. G. The Hrvati and the Gedani spoke languages similar to the Illyrian language, but were called differently by their places of origin.

The Archdeacon was born in Split and ‘Slav’ does not exist as an ethnic or tribal designation in the languages that were reclassified as Slavic by Victorian Model scholars.

If the 'Sklabenoi' term came into popular use among Eastern Roman loyalists during or around the 6th Century AD, then, again, it seems likely that it was the Scythians who first came to be referred to as Sklabenoi, as, even during the 13th Century, there appears to have been a distinction between the Gedani and the Sklabenoi. Polish culture was still considered the continuation of Sarmatian culture. Simocatta applied the term to the Dacians during the 7th Century, I believe, demonstrating its use had expanded to different populations (who had allied themselves with the Unia), indicating a political usage from within the Roman sphere of culture. So, when we look at maps based on the Victorian Age Model of historical interpretation, this is why we now supposedly see “The Slavs” to the East, instead Scythians. Yes, “The Slavs” came from the East and probably a few of them even stayed to enjoy the more moderate winters and pensions the area offered. They just weren’t Slavs. “Sklavos” was based on a Byzantine slang word for Scythians and other peoples who sought freedom from monarchic oppression and territorial encroachment, but does not fully explain the ‘sloveni’ term.

Professor Curta's regional analysis of brooch discoveries is interesting in light of the discovery of M458, but it would seem he inadvertently "re-discovered" the Sarmatians and the Scythians, not "The Slavs".

From the back cover of his book:

"Slavic ethnicity is therefore shown to be a Byzantine invention."

Not quite. "The idea that "Slavic" is somehow a relevant ethnic or linguistic classification is therefore shown to be a Western European re-imaging of the past around the 19th Century AD." He's anachronistically applying a contemporary term to Scythian, Sarmatian and Thracian hordes and calling them "Slavic" and reinforcing the false notion that 'Sklabenoi' carried any kind of meaning whatsoever among these diverse groups of people as a result of their interactions with the Romans. What Thracian stood up back then in his town square and renounced his Thracian ethnicity saying," to hell with it, I'm a Slav"? (Because some scholar from the 21st Century said I was!) It’s a Romanesque filtering of the past that blurs the other side of the story and it stems from Victorian Age Romanticism. Archeologically speaking in relation to structural linguistic evidence, the Thracians would’ve likely regarded the Scythians as ‘sloveni’. As Eastern Roman loyalists continued to use some form of the “Thracian” term, ‘Sklabenoi’ during that period could not have been synonymous with Thracian, but must have been used to refer to a specific group of Thracians amongst other peoples.

It’s really quite simple; people whose ancestors razed Western Roman civilization to the ground and resisted assimilation into the Frankish Empire, weren't highly regarded by either the Romans or the Franks, as evidenced by the derogatory generalization they began using for populations they once showed more respect for, regardless of what the term was based on; it was how it was used, when it was used and the actual names of ethnic groups and war clans it was used in place of during later periods in time. Who began plundering, crucifying and kidnapping who first? They got what they deserved.

The ‘sloveni’ term, as far as how earlier researchers assumed it came to be used among speakers of the kindred languages during the fall of the Roman Empire, may have developed during a much later period among Pan-Slavicist scholars, themselves, in an effort to paint an imagined sense of solidarity in line with a common struggle (proto-Marxism?), similar to the ‘slava’ term, but speculation like that can often prompt researchers to claim a loss as a win. Western Romans would’ve heard the ‘sloveni’ term in use among Illyrians to describe Thracians and from Thracians to describe Scythians and Venetians and so on, so we have only the fact that it was secondary to primary classifications and, therefore, disqualified according to the tenets of Aristotelian logic as a relevant anthropological term to describe ethnicity or language, as the designation came about centuries upon centuries after the Romans first began interacting with populations who would supposedly fall over a thousand years later under this contrived umbrella term. There is no history of “The slavs”. There are Scythian and Thracian histories. There is the history of the Macedonians. There is the future of the Macedonians.

[Chakalarov]

Here is an interesting map I found of the region in question. This map (albeit difficult to interpret) shows the region of European Sarmatia and Germania:

https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/enlarge/25249

I took the liberty of highlighting various people on the map that are of interest to us:

http://s100.photobucket.com/user/MarioMacedon/media/editedmap_zps0628c08d.jpg.html

What I have highlighted in the red:

Dacia
Venedi
Stavani (interpreted by some as an early mention to Slavs by Ptolemy)
Lygii (another name for the Vandals)

***There is also a group of people called the "Bodeni" immediately below the lake towards the center of the map that I circled. Considering their proximity to the lake, their name is logical. Only problem is, I am having trouble locating the lake in question today.

To me, this map indicates what I knew had to be true. The region of the "Sklabenoi" did contain numerous people speaking in similar tongues, among them Venetic groups. That's the most plausible way, I believe, the Byzantines first heard the term "Sloveni" used in that region.

[George S.]

chak if you look at the different threads on slavs you'll see maps of where the slvs came from .apparently there are different types only some migrated to the Balkans.Your map seems to be roman.

[Chakalarov]

I've looked at the other threads extensively, and we are in agreement that the first Sklabenoi were actually the Thracian Getae. This thread looks at why they were called "Sklabenoi", a term coming from "Sloveni", which was mostly used by the Venetic Western Slavs. As you can see from the above maps, the Getae in the region of Sarmatia, also consisted of various Vandals/Vindili/Vindelci. It's logical that these various people speaking in related languages would refer to themselves as "Sloveni"

So, I think you mean to say the origin of the "Sklabenoi", since the Slavs have origins only in the 19th century. As Sovius said, there is no Slav history, rather Scythian and Thracian history.

[George S.]

you know the thracians were originally from Mesopotamia,they were sumerians who went over towards the Caspian sea etc.
It's interesting of how have the various influences.The romans called the slavs Slaves sklaveni.

[Redsun]

Where did you get the source from, "Mesopotamian origin of the Thracian's".

Were they not a Caucasian people?

I apologize for my poor knowledge on history, I once thought they were the descendants of Hittites.

[George S.]

stop apologising its in the wikipaedias check it out.They were originating from Mesopotamia they were sumeians.The hittites were Anatolian & spoke that language.

[Sovius]

It might be a good idea to step away from all the carnage and mayhem surrounding the first appearances of the ‘Sclabenoi’ term for a moment, as it can be a bit confusing, and look at the problem through the eyes of the Macedonians and other cultural groups that made up the Eastern Empire. It was one of the most advanced civilizations in the world. Macedonians were designing and building engineering and architectural feats and creating a cultural legacy that continues to this day. The people who the Western Romans had originally conquered became the Eastern Romans and, therefore, we see their world through their eyes when we study Eastern Roman history.

The autochthonous model maintains that Illyrians, Thracians and Macedonians spoke a similar language to the people from across the Danube. That means that a number of Eastern Roman chroniclers, unless raised apart from the masses amongst the more isolated classes understood the Dacians fairly well or at least good enough to get by. The model demonstrates that ‘sloveni’ was being used for ‘sloveni’ and then preserved in the administrative language of the era as ‘Sklabenoi’. What was a “barbarian” to the Eastern Romans during this period in time? (Probably a Turkic speaker, but not a Sclabenoi) A Sklabenoi then, along this path of development was an enemy of the Eastern Romans, but more culturally similar to the Eastern Romans. (Barbarians we can understand, so to speak) To a uni-lingual Greek speaker, of course, you would get your typical run of the mill barbarian, thus a potential kind of pseudo ethnos in the eyes of those who had abandoned the Renaissance Period Model with the uni-lingual accounts and treatments of the term, a catalyst for obfuscation.

This would’ve allowed Victorian Era Cultural Negationist scholars quite a bit of license to “Slav” things up.

‘Sporoi’= Dacian exile, refugee

‘Sklabenoi’= uprooted people living largely outside the Roman sphere that still had ties and political and military interests to the south of the Danube (Northern Dacians, populations in Scythia Minor).

Sklabenoi= “Similar to us, but not the same.” (in the context of the early accounts) A recognized relatedness for many Romans, but quite often, a very hostile presence. (A people who wanted the rest of their country back with interest)

The Victorian Age developmental path allowed the Ostrogothic kingdom across the way on the Roman Peninsula to remain “unslavicized” (and suitable for “Germanizing” post mortem), while the folks back over on the Macedonian Peninsula got the Slavic slam dunk from Hell via the use of the Germanic ‘Slav’ generalization in an anachronistic manner and misapplying the term as a universal designation.

[Chakalarov]

Sovius, we've actually been in agreement about the difference between "Sloveni" and "Sklabenoi". I however focus on the emergence of Sklabenoi because I see it as giving rise to the 19th century historical revisionism.

Like you, I see Sloveni as a relational term used by people speaking similar languages north of the Danube. As I stated previously, I hypothesize that while the Illyrians, Thracians, and Macedonians spoke similar languages, they simply did not use this term amongst themselves. If they did, it certainly wasn't used as much as by the Central European Slavic-speakers, since no foreign historians ever noted it. I believe if they too used it extensively, it would have been documented.

Why do I believe this? Well, Veneti and its derivatives is simply the the Latin/German exonyms for Slo-venьci or Slo-ventь'i. This seems to indicate that the term was widely in use by the Central European Slav-speakers well into ancient times. However, I have not found any sources extending the use of the term into the Balkans.

6th Century

By the time various groups of Dacians, Getae, Vandals, etc. had amassed by the border of the Eastern Roman Empire, their relational term of Sloveni had been transcribed as "Sklabenoi" by the chroniclers of the empire. As you said, they would have recognized their speech as similar to the everyday speech of the various Balkan inhabitants, but because they were still outsiders, the term implied they were different.

When they started attacking the empire, and gained momentum from pockets of indigenous Balkan populations, the term "Sklabenoi" changed meaning to signify rebel, or the opposite of Roman. It was at this period, I believe, that the Balkan populations began to use the term between themselves.

Comparison
An analogy I draw to the Slav use today is the use of the word Hispanic in Meso/South America. The term signifies a speaker of Spanish, regardless of ethnicity or culture. However, many in the U.S refer to Hispanics by the derogatory term "Spics" because of years of conflict and prejudice. So we have Sloveni/Slavs and Hispanics/Spics. Both are terms that have been deformed by foreigners to denote completely different things. The absurdity of Slavic-speakers being called "ethnic-Slavs" and having common descent, makes as much sense as saying the numerous Hispanic-speakers being called "ethnic-Spics" in a thousand years, and being told they too are of one ethnic group. I apologize for the use of a derogatory term, but I believe it serves its purpose in illustrating the parallel.

[Sovius]

Berziti

All very astute observations and sound argumentation. We are in agreement on almost all of the elements that you’ve outlined. Our views differ in that I believe you're standing on the wrong side of the Danube, so to speak, focusing on the equal sign, rather than what comes before it. The Renaissance Period Model started at the beginning and moved forward. The Victorian Age Model began at the end and walked backwards. It's possible to do the same with the terms in question in relation to the chronology. Has the evidence for my views truly eluded us?

Let's consider this,

The Berziti were the so called Sklavenes who had settled along the shores of Lake Ohrid for some duration who, according to the Victorian Age Model, also settled in what would become known as Brest, Belarus, as well.

Brsjaci, I believe, was the term as it was preserved in the Macedonian language.

Brześć is how Brest is referred to in Polish, a city along the shores of God's River.

Brzeg means shoreline in Polish.

This is a descriptive term that, oddly enough, describes where the so-called 'Slavs' were residing, not the actual name of this clan or group of people. Besides clearly demonstrating what idiots historians can be (two different groups of turtle shell slinging nose pickers from the same tribe walking thousands of miles in different directions just to find another shore to live by? Come on!), it had to have entered the Eastern Roman lingua franca in some way. Who was recording Eastern Roman history at the time? What was the average IQ of a German historical linguist during the 19th Century? If a Greek speaking author heard the name from the Macedonians, what does that mean? If it was a Macedonian language thinker writing in the Greek language, what does that mean?

If the dirt bag Slav from the other side of the river said he was a sklavene, what does that indicate? It means he wasn't a Sklavene; it meant that the author took what he said and used a word from his own range of understanding and convention to describe the person in more general terms. All we know is that the guy didn't speak Finnish. Was he a Scythian, a Sarmatian? Who knows.

'Sloveni' may have had a pleasant "feel good" connotation in Kiev, but not necessarily to the south of the Danube during that period, at least not among those who fought to defend their homelands, protect their families and the legacy of their ancestors.

If all three regions used the 'sloveni' term, then all three regions had their own unique reasons for using it. We can look back at that age and assign whatever values we want and get whatever results those values bring to light, but the ultimate solution has to lie in what is tangible and what can be pieced together in such a way so as to not contradict other forms of evidence. The only real voice that was contemporary to the first recorded uses of the term that we know about remains preserved in the records of the Eastern Romans. Structural linguists have already demonstrated that Macedonian is older than Russian or Polish many years ago. Geneticists have demonstrated that populations in Southeastern Europe are largely upstream from other populations in the rest of Europe; therefore, the use of the 'Sklavene' term among populations ancestral to numerous Macedonians, Croatians and Serbians proves the indigenous existence of the Macedonians as a continuous culture and unequivocally demonstrates that the term was born out of a relational nature, not an ethno-linguistic application, amongst Eastern Romans, themselves. Slavs never existed and Sklavenes were never Sklavenes.

Our ancestors left behind the recorded names of various peoples that came into use based on where those groups of people lived, not how those peoples identified themselves. Someone from the Drevanians didn't go up to people and say "Hey, I'm a tree person from the land of the trees.", it was the Rus identifying those people in the Scythian language by where they lived. The Berziti were identified by someone who spoke either Macedonian or Thracian who was unaffiliated with them, as a Greek would've used something along the lines of Scythian or Sarmatian, because the Berziti wouldn't have referred to themselves as Berziti, they would've known what clan they fought for. In the beginning, Eastern Roman history was written by the Western Romans and the Greeks and, as time went on, it was written by the Macedonians, Illyrians and Thracians. ‘Sklabenoi’ was how indigenous Eastern Romans said ‘sloveni’ in the Greek language. Every single instance of the term's use on every single page it was ever written on is the proof I am offering.



I rest my case.

[Chakalarov]

The difference in our views in minimal, to say the least. In fact, I would even agree with your position. My whole point is that the first time the Greek-speaking Romans ever took note of the term "Sloveni" was in the 6th century. If the term was in fact used between the Thracians, Illyrians, Macedonians, etc. before this time period, it obviously was not of importance to the Eastern Roman chroniclers. After all, why would they take note of what common people referred to themselves if they were obeying Roman laws? It was only in the 6th century when northern "Sloveni" began to attack the empire and actually gained momentum from indigenous people that it began to be noticed and was written down as "Sklabenoi". Many Macedonian, Illyrians, and Thracians also undoubtedly took part in rebelling due to economic inequality or political differences with authority. That was my whole point; either these populations used it and the Eastern Romans didn't care to record it, or they didn't use if before the 6th century. Either one seems reasonable in my opinion, and this is, in my opinion, what we may disagree on.

Slavic Tribes
As for the so-called Slavic "tribes", my research indicates that they were heterogeneous and constituted of:

1. Germanic-speaking groups
2. Turkic groups
3. Iranian groups
4. Indigenous Balkan, Slavic-speaking groups
5. Slavic-speaking groups from north of the Danube

However, as you pointed out, we cannot be sure of their true identity, as they were named by where they simply resided-even if it was local in nature. When they began to form groups to rebel against the empire, they were assigned names by our ancestors as you stated. Furthermore, almost all sources I've come accross admit we know very little about the nature of these "tribes", such as where they originated from. For example, take the Timočani tribe. Their names derives from the Timok River. We don't know where they "came" from, we just know they were called by where they lived, the river. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to assume they too were natives who formed a type of social identity when they began to revolt.

[Sweet Sixteen]

It has been hard to follow this discussion (well, nobody else does). I think it would be great if each one of you could summarize in less than five lines per answer your opinions in:

(a) What is your main point in this thread?

(b) What are your main arguments?

(c) What are your main objections towards the mainstream views on Slavs, e.g. as presented here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs