The Thracian people and language

[Voltron]

Originally Posted by Soldier of Macedon

You would argue that the language was completely foreign and sprang up from some distant unknown place and spread as a result of a massive population boom. Unlikely and unparalleled, but whatever.

Somewhat, I dont know the language good enough to know if it was completely foreign or not. Your reasoning may hold some weight as well but for the most part I believe it was a result of a migration shift during that time period. Could even be somewhere down the middle of both.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Originally Posted by Voltron

I dont know the language good enough to know if it was completely foreign or not.

It was far from 'completely' foreign. If you aren't aware then you should take the time to research it. Things may change slow in the academic world, but they will eventually change after more linguists give serious consideration to a common Balto-Slavic/Paleo-Balkan family.

[Nexus]

I don't usually use Wikipedia, but look what it says about the thracians and their origins :

"The Thracians lived on a large European territory between the Black Sea (Euxine bridge) to the east, the river Struma (Strymon) to the west, the northern Carpathians in the north (Dacians), the Aegean Sea, and in the south-west of Asia Minor (Phrygian perhaps Thyniens and Bythiniens surely). The ancient Greek authors report in Central Asia peoples with names similar to those of the Thracians, such as Bactria, or the Massagetae Dahes of Iranian languages ​​(or they were related to Thracian-illyriennes languages​​). The Thracians were extended in the history of the following regions: Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Turkey (European part and western Asia Minor), Austria, Hungary, Germany , Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine (to the Dnieper), lower Volga and Tajikistan."

And :

"As in the case of the Etruscans and many other peoples, the opinions of historians differ about the origins of the Thracians, exogenous and aborigines. One hypothesis, which focuses on Aboriginal origins, considers that the Thracians are present in the Balkan region more than 5000 years before our era: there would have been no real break from the Neolithic to the people and their society would be more complex in as. The second hypothesis focuses on exogenous inputs, namely Indo-European, and asserts that the Thracians came from the Ukrainian steppe to the beginning of the second millennium BC."

The first theory, the aboriginal origins of thracians, i think, is more solid. But the second theory is interesting too, but i have no informations about this one, does anyone have heard of this theory ?

Here a map that i found in a other thread in this forum, posted by the member Epirot :



And a quote from Soldier of Macedon :

"Indeed it does, and just looking at their living space indicates clearly that most of it is inhabited by Balto-Slavic peoples today."

The thracians might be the key of the mystery about today's slavic peoples and their unknow origins.

[Toska]

the whole key to the Slavic Question whether there was a so called "slavic invasion" on a mass scale, which has been proven systemically impossible by dozens of scholars, lays in the question of the Thracians, the Thracians occupy the same lands as the people that speak or spoke the Southern Slavic Dialect, for a ancient civillization that where so powerful and stood up to powerful ancient empires, nothing has really survived of theirs that has left real evidence to who they really where, except for a few coins and ancient burials, that have a hellenic text, but make nosense in any ancient or current greek dialect, ancient scholars have written about them, how they were related to the Macedonians,(because they spoke a similar Language,(Macedonian and Bulgarian) also saying illyrians spoke a similar dialect(SerboCroatian), much of the evidence has been systemically swept under the rug to further dilute and squander the people of the south slavic speaking nations by the west as they have undermined the balkans since the break up of the Eastern and Western Churches

[George S.]

I read somewhere about the thracian origins from the sumerians in sumeria mesopotamia..They crossed to the caspian area & became slavic some crossed to Thrace becoming thracians with their 24 different tribes.There were strong connections with the macedonian.After a while these 24 tribes dispersed all the way to sweden.What made the move on is probably wars etc where people simply vanished or moved out.?

[George S.]

Thracians: Ancestors of the Swedes

The origins of the Thracians, and thus the Swedes, can be traced back to secular and biblical history. Chapters 9 and 10 of Genesis describe how the nations developed from Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Recorded history continually verifies the biblical account of the spread of nations.

The Genesis account, as a historical document, is fully corroborated by an overwhelming richness of documentary and other historical evidence so vast that it is unique in recorded history. No other manuscript enjoys such a wealth of detailed corroboration from such a wide-ranging variety of sources. The Indo-European peoples were all too aware of their historic and ethnic descent from the line of Japheth, Noah's 3rd son. These peoples, through carefully preserved records, could trace their lineage and race back to the time of Babel and the dispersal of the nations from the plain of Shinar. Noah's flood is generally agreed to have occurred about 2350 BC, and from here we find the beginnings of nations and empires (Egypt, Persia, Greek, etc). The evidence is striking from those early post-Flood nations of the Mesopotamian valley, who had direct contact with one another, and who preserved in written records those names that are explicitly mentioned in the Genesis record.
The records that have come down to us lend their weight to the already vast body of documentary evidence that can only convince us that the Genesis record is a true and faithful historical account of the early history of mankind. What is remarkable about these records is that they mostly come from ancient historians and writers of various nationalities who had not the least intention, either consciously or otherwise, of lending support to the Genesis record. Most of them were nurtured within pagan systems that were openly antagonistic to the knowledge of God, and who had labored over many centuries to darken, if not totally erase that knowledge altogether. Their verification is therefore all the more valuable.

Japheth is considered the father of Indo-European people groups (several royal European genealogies confirm this). Japheth's 7th son, Tiras, was the progenitor of the Tiracians. Historians note they probably first settled in the area of Asia Minor (present day Turkey) about 1900 BC. The transfer of words through nations and languages is prevalent in every people group. Merenptah of Egypt, who reigned during the 13th century BC, provides us with what is so far our earliest reference to the people of Tiras, recording their name as the Tursha (or Tarusha), and referring to them as invaders from the north. Herodotus (425 BC Greek historian) wrote: "The Thracian people are the most numerous of the world; the Thracians have several names, according to their specific regions, but their habits are more or less the same...and only their chronic disunity prevented them from being the most powerful of all nations."
History attests that they were indeed a most savage race, given over to a perpetual state of "tipsy excess", more likely to be in battle than laying in their beds. They are also described as a "ruddy and blue-eyed, people", fighting with their own tribal factions. In the 3rd century BC, the Thracians were noted as having numerous tribes that rarely united, most having their own kings. Thracian dress was well known. Several descriptions were given, including illustrations on Greek vase paintings. Basic dress was tunic, cloak, cap and boots. Thracian warriors carried a shield and spears, plus a small sword (dagger) as a secondary weapon. Their mode of dress and armaments continued with their descendents, the Vikings, though modified. Thracians are mentioned by many rulers in the region they lived. After the Greek victory over the Persians (449 BC), the Persian king Xerxes (486-465 BC) established for himself a large army among whose soldiers Herodotus mentions Thracians from northwest Asia Minor, who are described as follows:

"The Thracians joined the expedition wearing fox caps, wearing long coats under their vivid colored capes. Their calf-high footwear was made of deerskin. They were equipped with spears, light shields and small daggers."
Josephus (1st century AD Jewish & Roman historian) identifies them as the tribes who were known to the Romans as Thirasians, and to the Greeks as Thracians, whom they feared as marauding pirates. Dio Cassius, Roman historian in the 2nd century AD, wrote "let us not forget that a Trajan was a true-born Thracian."
Tiras himself was worshipped by his descendants as Thuras (Thor), the god of war. The river Athyras was also named after him, and the ancient city of Troas (Troi, Troy - the Trajans or Trojans) perpetuates his name, as also does the Taunrus mountain range. Thracian lands stretched from southwestern Europe to Asia Minor, a vast area historically known as Thracia. The historical Thracian genealogical tree counts over 200 tribes which had several names, according to their specific regions. Some of their tribal names were Trajans, Etruscans, Dacians, Luwians, Ramantes, Pelasgians, Besins, Odrisi, Serdoi, Maidoi and Dentheletoi. The Trajans (Trojans) founded the city of Troy which existed approximately 2400 years (about 1900 BC to 500 AD), which was destroyed and rebuilt several times. Thousands of Trojan warriors left the city of Troy during the 11th century BC. They came north and captured land along the banks of the river Don (southwestern Russia), a major trade route. The locals named the Trojan conquerors the "Aes," meaning "Iron People," for their superior weaponry. The tribes of Trojan Aes would eventually move north, settling in present-day Scandinavia. The Aes or Aesar (plural), subsequently became known as the Svear, and then Swedes. Historians refer to the Aes people as "Thraco-Cimmerians" due to their Trojan ancestry. Other tribes of Thracians remained a culture in Asia Minor and southern Europe until the 5th century AD. Many present-day Bulgarians claim to be direct descendants of ancient Thracians (different from the Slavs who arrived that region in the 6th century AD).

The name Tiras perpetuated through different languages, as in this list of names from Noah to the present-day Swedes.

1. Noah
2. Japheth
3. Tiras
4. Tarusha
5. Thirasian
6. Thracian
7. Troi
8. Trojan
9. Aes
10. Aesar
11. Svear
12. Svenonian
13. Sverige
14. Swede
<---------------------4,000+ years--------------------->

Japheth's first born son was Gomer. Gomer is perpetuated through the names of Gamir, Gimmer, Gomeria, Gotarna and Goth. The tribes of Gomer are mentioned by the Jews in the 7th century BC as the tribes that dwelt in the "uppermost parts of the north". The Assyrians in the 7th century referred to them as the Gimirraya. Other names used throughout history include Gimmerai, Crimea, Chomari, Cimmer, Cimmerian. Cimmerians populated areas of the north of the Caucasus & Black Sea in southern Russia. Linguistically they are usually regarded as Thracian, which suggests a close relationship. "Thraco-Cimmerian" remains of the 8th-7th century BC found in the southwestern Ukraine and in central Europe are associated with the Aes people.

[Carlin]

Slavs of Muslim Spain

The earliest Arabic-Slavic contacts can probably be traced all the way to the 500's, and most likely occured on or near the territory of the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The earliest Arabic sources describe the Slavs as a people with pale skin, that turns "red" while under the sun, and blond hair. The Arabs even referred to a certain kind of a white coloured bean as Saqalibiya (Slavic), as we learn from the Kitab al-Filaha, a treatise on agriculture written by Ibn al-'Avvam at the end of the 12th century; the bean's colour apparently reminded them of the colour of the Slavs' hair. The first confirmed instance of the Slavs meeting the Arabs is mentioned by the Byzantine chronicler Teofanes (Teophanes), who wrote in the early 9th century; according to him in 664 a group of 5 000 Slavic (Sklavinoi) mercenaries in the Byzantine service joined the victorious army of the Omayyad (Umayyad) Caliph Mu'avyi I (reigned 661-680) who was returning from a campaign in Asia Minor. The caliph settled these Slavs in an area near the city of Apamea in northern Syria.

The Arabic name for the Slavs, Saqaliba (or as-Saqaliba with the Arabic "the"), which later also acquired at least a few dialectical variations, is a Greaco-Byzantine loanword; this word is the regular Arabic plural form of the word Saqlab, Siqlab, Saqlabi, which itself is a corruption of the word Sklav- or the Greek and Middle Latin singular form of the Sklavinoi mentioned by the Byzantines. Albeit the Slavs were probably the first northern European race to be encountered by the Arabs who called them Saqaliba, and in some rare cases it is also used in reference to some non-Slavic northern European peoples by later Arabs, it originally was exlusively used to refer to the Slavs by the early Arabs, and in the vast majority of cases that was also the case with the later Arabs. Therefore, the claim often put forward by many chauvinistic Western scholars that the Arabs usually called as "Slavs" all northern Europeans does not reflect reality. This is clearly seen in the early medieval accounts of such Arabic writers like al-Ya'qubi, Ibn Hurdadbeha, and many others.

The first wave of the Slavic settlement among the Arabs started in 664, but more was to come; in 692 another group of Slavic soldiers-settlers in Byzantine service, under their Prince Nevulos, voluntarily went-over to the Arabs; when the Arabs raided Asia Minor, the local Slavic soldiers-settlers whom the Byzantines intended to use against their enemies, joined the Arabs. Most of these were the Macedonian Slavs, but also apperently included some Serbs, who were originally resettled in large numbers from Macedonia to Bithynia in 686 by the Byzantines, during the reign of Emperor Justinian II (reigned 685-695 and 705-711). This second groups of Slavs was also settled within the borders of the Caliphate: in northern Syria (near the cities of Antioch and Kyrrhos). Since the 8th century new groups of Slavs appear on the territory of the Caliphate, settled by the last Omayyad Caliph Marvan ibn Muhammad (or Marvan II, reigned 744-750); these Slavs are also known to have been settled in northern Syria, Cilicia (Cylicia), Commagene, Armenia or northern Mesopotamia, and Georgia. But there were also still some Slavs left on the Byzantine side of the border; Arabic writers mention a certain Hisn as-Saqaliba (Fortress of the Slavs) located on the road leading from Tarsus to the "Cilician Gates".

Arabic sources also mention Slavic settlements in Arabic-ruled Sicily. One of them called Sclafani is mentioned in 939. Another one is Harat as-Saqaliba (Slavic Quarter), a Slavic-inhabited district of Palermo located close to the city's port, in the capital of the emirs of Sicily. The origin of these Slavs is disputed; according to conflicting claims they go back all the way to 535 AD when the Byzantine General Belisarius presumably left a Slavic garrison in the city, or to the 10th century when the Fatimids conquered Sicily and likewise left a Slavic garrison there. The Italian historian Amari probably came with the most plausible explanation for their origin; he points out that Abu'l Fida'y, an Arabic historian and geographer from the 1300's, states that in 928/9 off the coast of Maghreb and Sicily there appeared a Slavic piratical fleet of 30 ships which, together with the Arabs, pillaged Calabria, Corsica, and Sardinia. After some time these very Slavic pirates decided to permanently settle in a quarter of Palermo which was named after them. These were most certainly South Slavic pirates from the Adriatic littoral who were quite active sea rovers during the period in question. We cannot be certain as to how many Slavs settled there, but judging from that Constantine Porfirogenetus (Porphirogenetus) estimated that a large ship (sagena) of the Southern (Balkan) Croats contained about 40 men, and using this number as a general reference, when multiplied by 30 ships should give us about 1 200 men. These Sicilian Slavs are mentioned by Ibn Hauqal, an Arabic geographer and traveler from the second half of the 10th century, as well as by Yaqut, who also mentions a different quarter of Palermo whose name was "The Quarter of the Slavic Mosque". It must also be added that the total number of Slavs who settled in Palermo was probably larger than the one calculated above since we should also add the Slavs from the "The Quarter of the Slavic Mosque" and also possible later arrivals to both quarters. Eventually, the Sicilian Slavs become completely assimilated; the name Harat as-Saqaliba disappears with time and in the Latin-written documents of the 12-13th century it is displaced with the designation of Seralcadi (< ar. Shari' al-qadi "Street of the Judge").

The Slavic pirates on the Mediterrenean Sea were not uncommon in during the 10th century. Ibn Hauqal mentions Slavic pirates plundering the coast of Muslim Spain, and al-Masudi who mentions that against the inhabitants of al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) fight the Jalaliqa (Galicians), Ifranja (Franks), Nukabard (Lombards) and Saqaliba (Slavs). We also know that Croat and Dalmatian Slavs fought in the Byzantine fleet operating on the Adriatic and Yonian Sea, like it was the case in the expedition to Bari in the mid-9th century against the Arabs, who tried to establish a foothold there. The Slavic activity on the southern seas starts quite early; already in 526 a Slavic fleet attacks Constantinople from the sea, in 626 light Slavic boats appear on the Black Sea fighting on the side of the Avars against the Byzantine navy, in the 7th century Slavic pirates appear on both the Adriatic and Aegean Sea. Light Slavic ships control the northern coast of the Aegean Sea in the second half of the 7th century, attacking the Byzantine vessels transporting food from Saloniki to Constantinople; they even besieged Saloniki from the sea, the largest Byzantine port in the Aegean, and they laid waste to the Cyclades. In 623 Slavic pirates attack Crete (at about this time in the western part of which Slavs are known to have settled) and Asia Minor, and in 642 Apulia (the latter probably by Slavs from Dalmatia, where Slavic naval art developed very early). The alliance of the Slavic pirates with the Arabs mentioned by Abu'l-Fida'y was by no means the first one of its kind; Constantine Porphirogenetus reports that during the reign of Emperor Nicopherus in 805 or 807 Slavs attacked the city of Patras in the Peleponessus, together with "Saracens and Africans". The Slavs living on the shores of the Adriatic also displayed maritime inclanations; during a period of at least about 50 years during the 900's the Venetian Republic was reduced to a status of a virtual tributary of the Slavic pirates from the Adriatic littoral. The Croats and Neretvans fought most frequently against the Venetians; one Venetian Doge is known to have been killed in a battle against the latter. The Slavic raids on Italy also took place by land; these were pillaging raids launched on the north-estern part of the Lombard Kingdom, or military interventions made at the request of some Lombard factions involved in civil wars. For example, Arnefrit, the son of the late Lupus, Duke of Friulia, fled to the Slovenes (also knowns at that time as Garotans, Horutans, or Karantans, from Garota "cave" therefore Garotans would mean "inhabitants of lands with caves" - a very accurate description since there are numerous caves in southern Austria and Slovenia, where they lived at that time) after the Lombard King Grimoald refused to give him his deceased father's duchy. He returned to Friulia with a Slavic army, but was quickly killed in a clash with the Lombards. Not long after the Slavs again attacked Friulia but were defeated. In 701 Slavic raiders attack Friulian shepherds; a subsquent Lombard pursuit fails to catch them. Just a few days later, when new Slovene detachments enter Friulia, Duke Fergulf, along with the flower of the Friulian nobility, attacks them, but he is killed, together with most of his troops, while storming the Slavs' camp located on a hill. During the reign of King Liutprand (reigned 712-744), Duke Pemmo tried to eject a Slavic detachment from Friulia, but was forced to cease fighting and make peace. Just as it was the case in Sicily, Crete, and elsewhere, the Slavs sometimes combined raiding with permanent settlement; a few Slavic enclaves appear at about this time in north-eastern Italy. As we can see, during this age the Slavs were active raiders on both land and sea.

Read full article here:
http://michalw.narod.ru/SlavicSpain.html

[momce]

This is fascinating. Any research on relation to Etruscan or Italic languages like Messapian(apparently Illyrian bridge)?

[George S.]

eutruscan,italic languages can be traced to the veneti,eneti,Some consider that eutruscan is a direct derivation from macedonia alphabet.If any one knows latin one sees quite a number of words that are similar to macedonia.Starri decisis.Let the old decision stand.
Cst stoj kaj trust.Everything stays in trust.etc there are quite a number of words.

[Carlin]

DNA Boosts Herodotus’ Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy

- Because Italians take pride in the Roman empire and the Etruscan state that preceded it, asserting a foreign origin for the Etruscans has long been politically controversial in Italy. Massimo Pallottino, the dean of modern Etruscan studies in Italy who died in 1995, held that because no one questioned that the French, say, developed in France, the same assumption should be made about the Etruscans. “Someone who had a different position didn’t get a job in archaeology,” said Antonio Torroni, a geneticist at the University of Pavia.

- Three new and independent sources of genetic data all point to the conclusion that Etruscan culture was imported to Italy from somewhere in the Near East.

- In Tuscany as a whole, part of the ancient Etruscan region of Etruria, the Torroni team found 11 minor mitochondrial DNA lineages that occur nowhere else in Europe and are shared only with Near Eastern people. These findings, the teams says, “support a direct and rather recent genetic input from the Near East, a scenario in agreement with the Lydian origin of the Etruscans.”

- But at least on the matter of Etruscan origins, it seems that Herodotus may yet enjoy the last laugh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/sc...nted=all&_r=1&