Romanian ethnogenesis - North or South of Danube?

[The Glorious Moldovan]

Romanian history books actually use the term "Romanian-Bulgarian Tsarsdom" for the first bulgarian empire. And they teach kids at school that the kingdom was also part romanian, this is to support not only a cultural continuity, but a political one as well. That is, to try and prove the argument that romanians disappeared from history until their states formed. The romanian communist cultural "revolution" in the 70s, aside this interpretation, also somehow suggested Romania was the absolute oldest state in Europe during the cold war. This is why i'd take whatever romanian historiography teaches, whether it's the ethnogenesis theory or the political mish mash with the bulgarians with a big pinch of salt

[NikeBG]

Romanian history books actually use the term "Romanian-Bulgarian Tsarsdom" for the first bulgarian empire.

For the Second Bulgarian Empire, not the First. And I personally could agree with it, at least in regards to the period of the early Asenids. Though, of course, Niketas Choniates' "the Moesians, who are now called Vlachs" could serve as material for an intriguing interpretation in regards to the First Empire as well. It wouldn't make much sense, but it could be quite intriguing nonetheless...
Otherwise, it's also interesting that the first mention of the Vlachs was exactly in relation to the FBE (the assassination of David, Samuil's oldest brother, by "wandering Vlachs" near Kastoria). I wonder where and when did the Vlach ethnonym (for that particular group of people, not the Roman people in general) first appear and when did the Balkan Slavs start using it. Did they get it from the Germans? Or maybe they got it from the medieval Romans themselves, who earlier got it from the Germans? Did they (the Slavs) distinguish between these people calling themselves Romane and those other people calling themselves Romaioi (thank goodness the Gypsies hadn't started calling themselves Roma as well back then - that would have been a mess)? As I said, the Vlach question is quite fascinating, how they've preserved their language and name throughout obscurity, how they've spread all over the place (is it possible, btw, that the Balkan Vlachs and the Dacian ones would not be directly related, but both evolved in their areas independently, out of a similar Romanized Daco-Thracian basis?).

Btw, in regards to a question of yours from before, namely about why the Middle Eastern populations didn't get Romanized, I think the answer is quite simple, so I'll post it with one word before the others get to it: Hellenism.

Also, in regards, to Balkan national historiographies, especially the ones from the communist period (but certainly not restricted to it), you'd do right to take them with a grain of salt. The Bulgarian one is definitely horrible enough and from what I've seen, those of (all) our neighbours aren't far behind (and some are even ahead *looking south-west*). Add to that the general lack of serious foreign/Western research into this area (very few Western historians do extensive and, most of all, unbiased independent research of their own; they mostly just reuse what the national historiographies have managed to spread out, not to mention they are forced to rely on local archaeology as well). Hence why the Balkan threads in the VV are such an interesting place - it's not only panem et circenses, but for a good observer it can also be a quite informative lesson.

[Dromikaites]

Are you sure? In Bulgarian 23 is "dvadeset i tri" (or the more modern, shortened form "dvayse i tri"). And while "dvadeset" consists of "two/twice" + "ten" (so, indeed, it could be seen as "two-tens" or "twice-tens"), it is also the actual word for "twenty". So "dvadeset i tri" is indeed also "twenty and three", as Fanest said.

Twenty is said differently depending on the language. In Bulgarian (which you may remember that I speak) the formal way is "two ten" while the modern, colloquial way has indeed evolved into dvayse, which would be the English twenty.

So if we study the pattern of al the Slavic languages we see the original format/pattern (as spoken by the North Slavs) has been systematically altered twice: one alteration is by German, and it is visible in Czech and Slovenian.

The other alteration is common to those Slavs who had spend some 2-3 centuries on the territory of Dacia.

That's interesting. Especially since the sources speak of massive (outright apocalyptic) migrations of Uzes/Torkils and Pechenegs, but for the Vlachs... sorry, but it seems rather "meh". Also, it's even more interesting that this Vlach migration is supposedly more groundbreaking than all those migrations before that - Slavs, Bulgars, Avars, Huns, Goths and whatnot. Migrations which were recorded in the sources and shown by archaeology and which were indeed big.

I think my English wording was not clear enough: I was saying the genetic data from those studies indicates a massive amount of population moving over the Danube coming from the North, more precisely from both Pannonia and Dacia.

I then used the example of the well documented resettlement of thousands of Bulgarians into Wallachia to show that in order for 20-50 new common genetic ancestors to show up after 500 AD, that would require the population which migrated into the Balkans back then to be extremely large compared to what had existed in the Balkans prior to that.

Thanks to Kekaumenos and Ana Comnena we know what that large population was made of. It was not only the Slavs (everybody knows about them) but also the Vlachs (only people who actually read the primary sources know about them).

The point Kekaumenos explicitly makes is the Vlachs are aliens to the Balkans, killing right then (in the 11th century) and there (in the Balkans, where he was a Byzantine high official) the garbage story that the Vlachs originated in the Balkans and from there they later spread into Romania.

Only Stalin's propaganda could come up with an idiocy which was disproved as early as the 11th century. And then killed again by the most recent genetic studies.

Of course, this was all explained by sumskilz in the same thread you linked (especially of the way you count the roles of the common genetic ancestors). Actually, it's funny, considering sumskilz (who is an actual geneticist and I personally trust him on such matters more than anybody else) even exclaimed that those results seem to disprove the continuity theory:

He did say that before carefully reading the studies.

If you pay attention to that thread he later admitted he was tired when he first red it.

I took great care in that thread to make sure we can clearly establish the points of contention between the two of us and then I have worked them out one by one until the contention disappeared.

He nonetheless agreed to concede to the possibility of the continuity "basing that on my historical understanding however, because the data can't say".

The data says "a large influx of population came from the North of Danube at the time of the Hungarian invasion of Pannonia and then again at the time of the Hungarian invasion of Transylvania".

It is the historical written sources (Priscus, Procopius, Kekaumenos, Ana Comnena) and archaeology who tell us who those people were: the Slavs and the Vlachs.

Priscus and Procopius are relevant because they confirm the presence of Latin speakers north of the Danube after the withdrawal of the Roman army from Dacia.

Kekaumenos and Ana Comnena are relevant because they show that the Vlachs came into the Balkans from Romania, not the other way around.

So, while I personally don't care about which possibility is true (although I personally incline a bit towards the continuity theory as well), I'd suggest not using sources which actually don't support your thesis all that well.

Well, if you read in the original thread how the points of contention are cleared one by one you will see the continuity thesis is actually fully backed by the two studies.

The origin of that contention was simply a matter of "diagonal reading", skipping the methodology section of those studies.

I've often wondered about it myself, especially after digging deeper in the early Asenids period and the whole debacle of whether they were "Romanian" Vlachs or simply "Moesian" Vlachs.

I think it is actually beyond dispute the early Asenids were Balkan Vlachs.

They can only be considered "Romanian" in the sense the Vlachs had come from what is now Romania some 100 years before. At that time the Romance language spoken North and South of the Danube quite likely had not diverged yet, as it is the case today.

However just like it was the case with the Turkic Bulgars before them, the Asenid tsars quickly adopted the language of the dominant population. Ivan Asen II even dropped the "Vlachs" from his title and replaced it with "Greeks" (so he was officially "Emperor of Bulgarians and Greeks" instead of "Bulgarians and Vlachs" like his predecessors).

[NikeBG]

Twenty is said differently depending on the language. In Bulgarian (which you may remember that I speak) the formal way is "two ten" while the modern, colloquial way has indeed evolved into dvayse, which would be the English twenty.

So if we study the pattern of al the Slavic languages we see the original format/pattern (as spoken by the North Slavs) has been systematically altered twice: one alteration is by German, and it is visible in Czech and Slovenian.

The other alteration is common to those Slavs who had spend some 2-3 centuries on the territory of Dacia.

Eh, as I already said, both dvadeset and dvayse mean exactly and absolutely the same thing - twenty. Dvadeset is simply the official form, while dvayse is its colloquial evolution.
Also, before we come to any conclusions, we should first eliminate all other possible factors. F.e. the South Slavs have certainly received a great cultural influence from Greece and the Greek language, including in the sphere of numbering (f.e. in Bulgaria we now use the Greek hiliada instead of the old Slavic tisyachi for "thousand").

I think my English wording was not clear enough: I was saying the genetic data from those studies indicates a massive amount of population moving over the Danube coming from the North, more precisely from both Pannonia and Dacia.

I then used the example of the well documented resettlement of thousands of Bulgarians into Wallachia to show that in order for 20-50 new common genetic ancestors to show up after 500 AD, that would require the population which migrated into the Balkans back then to be extremely large compared to what had existed in the Balkans prior to that.

Now, I'm not sumskilz, so it would be more certain if we ask him directly, but from what I remember (after a quick re-checking of the thread), he corrected you that those were not "new" CGAs, as you continue to put it, but latest points of divergence. Hence his example of you having two parents, four grandparents and so on.

Also, aren't you contradicting with yourself with your posts from that thread?

The study does capture the displacement of the Slavs during that period. The Latin speakers, being genetically almost identical to the natives of the Balkans, can't show up in the genetic investigation, but do get mentioned in the Byzantine chronicle.

If you mean by "Vlach migration theory" what Kekaumenos wrote, meaning that the Vlachs invaded the Balkans coming from Romania in the 10th century, then such migration cannot leave any genetic traces, since those Latin-speaking people would be basically Romanized Thracians, just like a large section of the people from Bulgaria around that time.

But in spite of being impossible to detect it in the genes, we do have contemporary written sources (Kekaumenos) or well informed sources (Byzantine princess Ana Comnena, writing similar things some 100 years later).

Thanks to Kekaumenos and Ana Comnena we know what that large population was made of. It was not only the Slavs (everybody knows about them) but also the Vlachs (only people who actually read the primary sources know about them).

The point Kekaumenos explicitly makes is the Vlachs are aliens to the Balkans, killing right then (in the 11th century) and there (in the Balkans, where he was a Byzantine high official) the garbage story that the Vlachs originated in the Balkans and from there they later spread into Romania.

As for Kekaumenos, could you please provide me with the respective quotes of his saying the Vlachs came to the Balkans in the 10th century? Because from the part where he talks about the nature of the Vlachs, I can only find him mentioning how Trajan fought them, how their king Decebal was killed, how they were earlier called Dacians and Bessi (the Bessi being a Thracian tribe in the Rhodopes, hence why I asked about the interesting possibility of whether the Balkan and Romanian Vlachs could have evolved/Romanized independently in their own regions), how they lived near the Danube and Sava rivers "where the Serbs now live" (i.e. either alluding rather to the later Balkan provinces of Dacia or maybe Kekaumenos was simply confused in his geography) and how they were a riotous bunch and kept plundering the nearer Roman provinces until the central authorities eventually had enough, crushed them and dispersed them across Epirus, Macedonia and especially Hellas. Of course, as you can see, I'm using the GIBI, which generally only uses the chapters relevant to Bulgarian history, so the part you quote (about them invading the Balkans in the 10th c.) is probably from some chapter I don't have access to.

Only Stalin's propaganda could come up with an idiocy which was disproved as early as the 11th century. And then killed again by the most recent genetic studies.

I hope you have more genetic studied than the one in that thread, btw, considering that one was shown to put 14 Romanian samples and 1 Bulgarian one in the same group, thus making it highly irrelevant for comparing the two populations between themselves.

He did say that before carefully reading the studies.

If you pay attention to that thread he later admitted he was tired when he first red it.

Yes, he did:

Maybe so, based on what you're saying. I was pretty tired at the time. I'll check it out when I'm more coherent.

And an hour later he said:

No, it actually is as I said...

I took great care in that thread to make sure we can clearly establish the points of contention between the two of us and then I have worked them out one by one until the contention disappeared.

Not quite exactly. Even his last paragraph there started with "The data can't really speak to that." After that he simply stopped arguing.

Priscus and Procopius are relevant because they confirm the presence of Latin speakers north of the Danube after the withdrawal of the Roman army from Dacia.

Priscus was already shown as not supporting your theory (unless there's more than his mentioning of Hunnic subjects who traded with the western Romans and thus also spoke Latin). Care to remind me what Procopius said?

Kekaumenos and Ana Comnena are relevant because they show that the Vlachs came into the Balkans from Romania, not the other way around.

Does she? The closest I could find is the episode where she mentions how due to their enmity with the Dacians, the Sauromatians crossed the frozen Danube and migrated into the Balkans with their whole tribe, before being crushed by Isaac Komnenos. Which, btw, brings me back to the stark contrast between the historical sources, speaking of massive migrations of steppe peoples (Uzes, Pechenegs, Cumans) into the Balkans and your DNA interpretations for the same time period.
It's interesting, though, that she makes a clear geographical distinction between Vlachs (in the Southern Balkans) and Dacians (north of the Danube; with on one occasion speaking of Dacians and Thracians living north of the Balkan Mountains and Thracians and Macedonians living south of it).

Well, if you read in the original thread how the points of contention are cleared one by one you will see the continuity thesis is actually fully backed by the two studies.

The origin of that contention was simply a matter of "diagonal reading", skipping the methodology section of those studies.

Seriously? You continue pretending you understand genetic studies better than sumskilz?

I think it is actually beyond dispute the early Asenids were Balkan Vlachs.

It's beyond dispute only in the Romanian circles. Just as it's beyond dispute in the Bulgarian circles that they weren't Vlachs. For me, both schools are far too "certain" in their conclusions and are more than obviously driven by their own nationalistic agendas. That's why, when I was doing a research for one M&B mod on this time period, I eventually included this in my short history info for it:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

About the origins of the brothers: There have been and still are heated discussions concerning the origins of the so-called Asen brothers. From one side, the modern Romanian historians consider them purely as Vlachs and that’s indeed how they are called in practically all contemporary sources. The Bulgarian historians, on the other hand, consider them either as Bulgarians (Moesians) or Cumano-Bulgarians, based on various other arguments taken from the contemporary sources, the linguistic analyses of Asen’s name etc. The foreign historians mostly consider these discussions to be useless and sparked by modern nationalism. “As Robert Lee Wolff noted in 1947, much of this scholarship has started from particular premises which have, or have had, little to do with the northern Balkans in 1185-1186, and much to do with Bulgaria and Romania in the twentieth century” (quote taken from Paul Stephenson’s “Byzantium’s Balkan frontier”, page 288). John V. A. Fine in his “The Late Medieval Balkans”, pages 12-13, also agrees: “Though it is impossible to resolve the problem on the basis of the surviving sources, it is worth pointing out that the issue is not as important as many twentieth-century scholars think. The twelfth century was not a period of nationalism. Bulgarians and Vlachs had been living together amicably in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and northern Thessaly for years... They jointly inhabited Bulgaria, where the Bulgarian Slavs, the largest element in the population, were chiefly peasants farming the lowlands, while the Vlachs with their flocks dominated the mountains... There is no evidence of any “national” conflict or rivalry between these two people at this time. Thus the modern academic controversy, being over an issue of little relevance to the Middle Ages, is probably best dropped.” In making the research for this mod, I’ve agreed with Fine’s suggestion and have formed it accordingly.

Also, while I personally agree with the Bulgarian scholars that when the Western sources from this time speak of Wallachia and Wallachians, they are obviously referring to the lands and people between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube. However, I also agree with Ian Mladjov, who IIRC argued that in order for that name to be applied to that region in that general timeframe (12th-to-mid-13th c.), there must have been a sizeable enough population of ethnic Vlachs in those lands, which would explain why the name Moesians was replaced with Vlachs, according to Choniates.
Btw, IMO, the strongest evidence for actual/ethnic Vlach origin of the early Asenids is the incident with the priest, where they talked on the Vlach language - if that was the Bulgarian language, it would have made more sense to be called Bulgarian or Slavonic, not Vlach, since it would make no sense to divide the same language based on territorial/provincial divisions.

However just like it was the case with the Turkic Bulgars before them, the Asenid tsars quickly adopted the language of the dominant population. Ivan Asen II even dropped the "Vlachs" from his title and replaced it with "Greeks" (so he was officially "Emperor of Bulgarians and Greeks" instead of "Bulgarians and Vlachs" like his predecessors).

The what Bulgars? You do really like to get into muddy topics, don't you? Btw, the early Bulgars needed more than two full centuries to finally adopt the Slavic language, as an indirect result of the Christianization, although even for a century or two after that some of them kept their own names, calendar terms, rituals and titles (the latest case being in 1072, the rebellion against the Byzantines of Georgi Voyteh, "from the family of the kavkans"). It's also interesting, though, how for such a long time the Vlachs used predominantly Slavic names (just like we in Bulgaria even today still use Greek names, and in the same manner most Bulgarians also don't like to admit how Greek-influenced our culture is).
Btw, I also wouldn't be so sure whether Ioan Asen II dropped the Vlachs from his title, considering we know the "new" one from the native Bulgarian sources, and none of the previous Bulgarian sources had used "vlasi" in the title either. So instead of Ioan Asen II dropping anything, it seems just as likely that the mentioning of the Vlachs was done only in relation to correspondences with the West. Though what would be the reason for this, I don't know - perhaps an allusion to Pope Innocent's remark of the illustrious origin of Kaloyan "from the city of Rome"? Or, as others say, simply to show that he isn't ruling over only one people, but over many, while this was later dropped due to the already increased prestige of the crown (with the dynasty being thoroughly "Bulgarianized" by then anyway)? Or could it be somehow connected to the church unia with Rome (after all, Ioan Asen II is the one who broke it and restored the Bulgarian Orthodox Patriarchate)? As I said, this whole Vlach question and ambiguity poses some very interesting questions...

[Dromikaites]

Eh, as I already said, both dvadeset and dvayse mean exactly and absolutely the same thing - twenty. Dvadeset is simply the official form, while dvayse is its colloquial evolution.
Also, before we come to any conclusions, we should first eliminate all other possible factors. F.e. the South Slavs have certainly received a great cultural influence from Greece and the Greek language, including in the sphere of numbering (f.e. in Bulgaria we now use the Greek hiliada instead of the old Slavic tisyachi for "thousand").

By "twenty" we should understand a special word for the number 20, a word which is cannot be divided into stand-alone parts.

For instance dividing the English "twenty" would result in "tw" and "enty", neither which is a legitimate word in English.

In Bulgarian that would be the case of the modern "dvayse" because while "dva" is "two", "yse" is not "ten".

However the formal "dvadeset" can be decomposed into the stand-alaon "dva" (two) and "deset" (ten). Just like the Romanian "douazeci" cand be de decomposed into the standalone "doua" (two - feminine form) and "zeci" (tens).

Now, I'm not sumskilz, so it would be more certain if we ask him directly, but from what I remember (after a quick re-checking of the thread), he corrected you that those were not "new" CGAs, as you continue to put it, but latest points of divergence. Hence his example of you having two parents, four grandparents and so on.

And later on that was clarified, wasn't it?

In post #35 we are down to the last two disagreements.

In post #36 he brings up the "two parents, four grandparents and so on" and in post #37 I refer to the methodology as defined by the study, in order to clarify that "the arrow of time" goes indeed backward (this is why the parents of somebody would be the "most recent additions" to somebody's gene pool).

Of course he stopped arguing after that, because there wasn't anything left to argue about.

Also, aren't you contradicting with yourself with your posts from that thread?

How can I contradict myself?

The garbage peddlers claim there were no people left in Romania after the Romans withdrew their army in 271-273 AD. They must have an "empty Romania", repopulated by Goths, Huns, etc otherwise the debate about where did the Romanians come from would be dead. If the Daco-Romans never left, their Stalinist pile of manure would be hard to sell.

So how do we know the Daco-Romans never left?

There is a concept called "the genetic clock", which is what the authors of the study use in order to determine those time frames (500 AD, 1450 AD, etc).

What does the genetic clock mean?

It is known that mutations happen at a certain rate in time. To put it simply, if mankind would have truly originated from only Adam and Eve say 200,000 years ago, then due to those accidental mutations we would still have diversity between the DNAs of any two randomly chosen people.

How is that used in practice?

Say we want to know where did the Slavs originate from. The place where the Slavs originated is the the place where the "Slavic marker" shows the most diversity. Why? Because the older the Slavic population, the more mutations happened to that marker.

The Slavs who moved into say, the Balkans, would be only a fraction of the first Slavs. Given all the "true Slavs" (carriers of the R1a1a7 marker) in the Balkans originated from only that fraction, the genetic diversity among the bearers of the "Slavic marker" would be smaller. As it turns out, that is exactly the case.

Now that we understand this concept we can see how those studies kill the "Romanians come from the Balkans" garbage claim.

If the Romanians would have come from the Balkans into an empty area, or in an area where the dominant population were the Goths/Huns/Slavs, then the genetic diversity of the Romanians (on all markers - Slavic, Thracian, etc) would be smaller than in the Balkans.

In such case the studies would have identified it and would have stated "we notice a move from the Balkans into Romania around 1000 AD".

On the contrary, by looking at the "time clock" of all those markers, the conclusion is that the migrations only happened from Romania into the Balkans.

To recapitulate:

1) If the Daco-Romans would have left Dacia in 271AD and would have been replaced by Goths, Huns, Gepids, Slavs etc then the return of the "Balkan genes"/"Thracian genes" to Romania would have been detected. There is no return detected because there was no departure to begin with. The Daco-Romans stayed put;

2) At the time the Hungarians arrive into Pannonia there is a first massive population displacement, on two directions: from Pannonia into Transylvania and from Pannonia into the Balkans (the arrival of the Vlachs from Southern Pannonia into Transylvania as recorded by Kekaumenos). 100 years later the Hungarians enter Transylvania. The genetic evidence shows another massive push, from Transylvania into Southern Romania and from Southern Romania into the Balkans (the "Sarmatians" pushed by the "Dacians" into the Byzantine Empire, as mentioned by Ana Comnena)

Where is the contradiction?!

As for Kekaumenos, could you please provide me with the respective quotes of his saying the Vlachs came to the Balkans in the 10th century? Because from the part where he talks about the nature of the Vlachs, I can only find him mentioning how Trajan fought them, how their king Decebal was killed, how they were earlier called Dacians and Bessi (the Bessi being a Thracian tribe in the Rhodopes, hence why I asked about the interesting possibility of whether the Balkan and Romanian Vlachs could have evolved/Romanized independently in their own regions), how they lived near the Danube and Sava rivers "where the Serbs now live" (i.e. either alluding rather to the later Balkan provinces of Dacia or maybe Kekaumenos was simply confused in his geography) and how they were a riotous bunch and kept plundering the nearer Roman provinces until the central authorities eventually had enough, crushed them and dispersed them across Epirus, Macedonia and especially Hellas. Of course, as you can see, I'm using the GIBI, which generally only uses the chapters relevant to Bulgarian history, so the part you quote (about them invading the Balkans in the 10th c.) is probably from some chapter I don't have access to.

That is the part I was referring to.

1) Trajan fought the Dacians...in Romania. So when Kekaumenos says the Vlachs were called before Dacians and Bessi he shows that the term "Vlach" in the 11th century applied both to the "Daco-Romans"(Dacians) and "Thraco-Romans" (Bessi);

2) He mentions the invasion of the Vlachs from between the Sava and Danube into the Byzantine Empire, at the time when we know (from the genetic evidence and from the other documentary sources) that the Slavic and Latin-Speaking populations of Pannonia and Banat were withdrawing Southwards as the result of the Hungarian arrival. Sava marks the border between the Balkans and the rest of Europe, so if the Vlachs come from between Sava and Danube they are coming from outside the Balkans.

I hope you have more genetic studied than the one in that thread, btw, considering that one was shown to put 14 Romanian samples and 1 Bulgarian one in the same group, thus making it highly irrelevant for comparing the two populations between themselves.

Yes, there is a second genetic study, also mentioned in that thread. That study is the one showing how Romanians and Bulgarians diverged. That study is actually referenced by the study which opened the tread. This is why in the newer study they put 14 Romanians and 1 Bulgarian together - they knew already the differences between the two nations.

According to the more recent study the Bulgarians are in large part the descendants of the population which had lived previously in Romania (Daco-Romans + Slavs) and who were pushed over the Danube as the result of the Hungarian arrival first in Pannonia and then in Transylvania.

That is the most surprising conclusion of the newest study, because before that study the general assumption was the Bulgarians were mostly the Slavicised Thraco-Romans. However the "genetic clock" shows the only time when the Slavs actually came in great numbers in the Balkans was after the 9th century. Before that, the "true Slavs" (as in carriers of the R1a1a7 marker) weren't that many.

Priscus was already shown as not supporting your theory (unless there's more than his mentioning of Hunnic subjects who traded with the western Romans and thus also spoke Latin).

How so?

Priscus documents the presence of Latin speakers North of the Danube and he offers several explanations as to why is that. Some people speak Latin because of trade. Some are fugitives. Some are former prisoners who don't return (valid also for Greek speakers).

Care to remind me what Procopius said?

Procopius said the Slavs tried to pass a Latin-speaking Slav for a Byzantine general (a certain Chilbudos), who had been captured many years before while campaigning North of the Danube. According to the Byzantine investigation which followed, the fake Chilbudos had learned Latin from the people who lived North of the Danube together with the Slavs. So Procopius testifies there were Latin Speakers living side-by-side with the Slavs (also confirmed by archaeology, which shows joint cemeteries).

Does she? The closest I could find is the episode where she mentions how due to their enmity with the Dacians, the Sauromatians crossed the frozen Danube and migrated into the Balkans with their whole tribe, before being crushed by Isaac Komnenos. Which, btw, brings me back to the stark contrast between the historical sources, speaking of massive migrations of steppe peoples (Uzes, Pechenegs, Cumans) into the Balkans and your DNA interpretations for the same time period.

Kekaumenos, living 100 years before her, mentioned the Vlachs as being the Romanized Dacians and Bessi.

1) Guess who her Dacians were? (Answer: Romanians and Slavs from Transylvania)

2) Guess who her Sarmatians were? (Answer: Romanians, Slavs and Turkic people from Wallachia)

It's interesting, though, that she makes a clear geographical distinction between Vlachs (in the Southern Balkans) and Dacians (north of the Danube; with on one occasion speaking of Dacians and Thracians living north of the Balkan Mountains and Thracians and Macedonians living south of it).

Well, many of those distinctions are of political nature, meaning the Vlachs were [rebelious and unruly] Byzantine subjects while the "Dacians" and the "Sarmatians" weren't Byzantine subjects at all.

Seriously? You continue pretending you understand genetic studies better than sumskilz?

I continue to claim I read that article better than he first did. Having been an academic myself before going into private practice might have helped. Old habits die hard.

About the origins of the brothers: There have been and still are heated discussions concerning the origins of the so-called Asen brothers. From one side, the modern Romanian historians consider them purely as Vlachs and that’s indeed how they are called in practically all contemporary sources. The Bulgarian historians, on the other hand, consider them either as Bulgarians (Moesians) or Cumano-Bulgarians, based on various other arguments taken from the contemporary sources, the linguistic analyses of Asen’s name etc. The foreign historians mostly consider these discussions to be useless and sparked by modern nationalism. “As Robert Lee Wolff noted in 1947, much of this scholarship has started from particular premises which have, or have had, little to do with the northern Balkans in 1185-1186, and much to do with Bulgaria and Romania in the twentieth century” (quote taken from Paul Stephenson’s “Byzantium’s Balkan frontier”, page 288). John V. A. Fine in his “The Late Medieval Balkans”, pages 12-13, also agrees: “Though it is impossible to resolve the problem on the basis of the surviving sources, it is worth pointing out that the issue is not as important as many twentieth-century scholars think. The twelfth century was not a period of nationalism. Bulgarians and Vlachs had been living together amicably in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and northern Thessaly for years... They jointly inhabited Bulgaria, where the Bulgarian Slavs, the largest element in the population, were chiefly peasants farming the lowlands, while the Vlachs with their flocks dominated the mountains... There is no evidence of any “national” conflict or rivalry between these two people at this time. Thus the modern academic controversy, being over an issue of little relevance to the Middle Ages, is probably best dropped.” In making the research for this mod, I’ve agreed with Fine’s suggestion and have formed it accordingly.

This is also my understanding. At the time, it truly didn't matter.

Also, while I personally agree with the Bulgarian scholars that when the Western sources from this time speak of Wallachia and Wallachians, they are obviously referring to the lands and people between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube. However, I also agree with Ian Mladjov, who IIRC argued that in order for that name to be applied to that region in that general timeframe (12th-to-mid-13th c.), there must have been a sizeable enough population of ethnic Vlachs in those lands, which would explain why the name Moesians was replaced with Vlachs, according to Choniates.
Btw, IMO, the strongest evidence for actual/ethnic Vlach origin of the early Asenids is the incident with the priest, where they talked on the Vlach language - if that was the Bulgarian language, it would have made more sense to be called Bulgarian or Slavonic, not Vlach, since it would make no sense to divide the same language based on territorial/provincial divisions.

Yes, but in the grand scheme of things, neither the Bulgarians of that time nor the Vlachs cared about the ethnicity of the Asenids. Both nations cared more about kicking Byzantine butt.

The what Bulgars? You do really like to get into muddy topics, don't you? Btw, the early Bulgars needed more than two full centuries to finally adopt the Slavic language, as an indirect result of the Christianization, although even for a century or two after that some of them kept their own names, calendar terms, rituals and titles (the latest case being in 1072, the rebellion against the Byzantines of Georgi Voyteh, "from the family of the kavkans"). It's also interesting, though, how for such a long time the Vlachs used predominantly Slavic names (just like we in Bulgaria even today still use Greek names, and in the same manner most Bulgarians also don't like to admit how Greek-influenced our culture is).
Btw, I also wouldn't be so sure whether Ioan Asen II dropped the Vlachs from his title, considering we know the "new" one from the native Bulgarian sources, and none of the previous Bulgarian sources had used "vlasi" in the title either. So instead of Ioan Asen II dropping anything, it seems just as likely that the mentioning of the Vlachs was done only in relation to correspondences with the West. Though what would be the reason for this, I don't know - perhaps an allusion to Pope Innocent's remark of the illustrious origin of Kaloyan "from the city of Rome"? Or, as others say, simply to show that he isn't ruling over only one people, but over many, while this was later dropped due to the already increased prestige of the crown (with the dynasty being thoroughly "Bulgarianized" by then anyway)? Or could it be somehow connected to the church unia with Rome (after all, Ioan Asen II is the one who broke it and restored the Bulgarian Orthodox Patriarchate)? As I said, this whole Vlach question and ambiguity poses some very interesting questions...

Ioan Asen II might have had a very personal reason to feel less Vlach than his father: his mother might have been Serbian. If that is true, given at that time the two languages (Serbian and Bulgarian) were much closer than nowadays, it is likely he didn't speak Vlach much (if at all). Why should he, when both his mother and almost everybody in the palace was speaking a Slavic language?

[NikeBG]

In Bulgarian that would be the case of the modern "dvayse" because while "dva" is "two", "yse" is not "ten".

However the formal "dvadeset" can be decomposed into the stand-alaon "dva" (two) and "deset" (ten). Just like the Romanian "douazeci" cand be de decomposed into the standalone "doua" (two - feminine form) and "zeci" (tens).

But "dvayse" is a quite modern phenomenon (only a few decades old), so even if we assume... Actually, sorry, I'm completely lost as to what we were arguing about on this one.

And later on that was clarified, wasn't it?

In post #35 we are down to the last two disagreements.

As I said in that thread, I don't understand anything from genetics, so fair enough for me. I'd still ask sumskilz about whether the points of contention were settled though, as he is the specialist on the matter, after all... But fair enough indeed.

How can I contradict myself?

I was referring to you claiming in that thread that the Vlach migration to the south of the Danube can't be noticed by genetics, due to being similar/identical to the population to the south as well. Unless, of course, you now think it was the Balkans which were depopulated (which was indeed the usual stance of our archaeologists and historians from the older times)?

The garbage peddlers claim there were no people left in Romania after the Romans withdrew their army in 271-273 AD. They must have an "empty Romania", repopulated by Goths, Huns, etc otherwise the debate about where did the Romanians come from would be dead. If the Daco-Romans never left, their Stalinist pile of manure would be hard to sell.

Garbage peddlers?

1) Trajan fought the Dacians...in Romania. So when Kekaumenos says the Vlachs were called before Dacians and Bessi he shows that the term "Vlach" in the 11th century applied both to the "Daco-Romans"(Dacians) and "Thraco-Romans" (Bessi);

So, does that mean that the Balkan Vlachs evolved independently from the Dacian Vlachs, as I suggested? (Although Kekaumenos thus also contradicts himself)

2) He mentions the invasion of the Vlachs from between the Sava and Danube into the Byzantine Empire, at the time when we know (from the genetic evidence and from the other documentary sources) that the Slavic and Latin-Speaking populations of Pannonia and Banat were withdrawing Southwards as the result of the Hungarian arrival. Sava marks the border between the Balkans and the rest of Europe, so if the Vlachs come from between Sava and Danube they are coming from outside the Balkans.

Eh, no, he doesn't really give any specific timeframe for when they were dispersed by the imperial authorities. Although the context (the conquest of Dacia, eventually the creation of the Balkan Dacian provinces) suggests something closer to Late Antiquity rather than the High Middle Ages (or late Early ones).

According to the more recent study the Bulgarians are in large part the descendants of the population which had lived previously in Romania (Daco-Romans + Slavs) and who were pushed over the Danube as the result of the Hungarian arrival first in Pannonia and then in Transylvania.

That is the most surprising conclusion of the newest study, because before that study the general assumption was the Bulgarians were mostly the Slavicised Thraco-Romans. However the "genetic clock" shows the only time when the Slavs actually came in great numbers in the Balkans was after the 9th century. Before that, the "true Slavs" (as in carriers of the R1a1a7 marker) weren't that many.

Ok, that seems even less believable, unless of course if the Balkans had indeed been wiped clean by the previous barbarian invasions (though that would require the Balkans being depopulated, while Dacia still thriving, although it being the launching point of those same invasions).

Btw, that still doesn't answer my question about the stark contrast with the historical sources which speak of great invasions of the steppe peoples of modern Romania, while, as we see, the contemporary reports of the purported Vlach (or Vlacho-Slav) migrations south of the Danube are flimsy at best. I also wonder what archaeology has to say on those migrations (I remember reading some time back about the archaeological identification of several waves of new Bulgar immigrants from Black Bulgaria (in the Khazar Khaganate) and the Avar Khaganate to the FBE throughout the centuries, so it should surely be possible to notice other, even bigger waves; Pecheneg and later Cuman settlements also being reported).

How so?

Priscus documents the presence of Latin speakers North of the Danube and he offers several explanations as to why is that. Some people speak Latin because of trade. Some are fugitives. Some are former prisoners who don't return (valid also for Greek speakers).

That's why I said "unless there's more...". Though all I could find was the same quote: "I was surprised at a Scythian speaking Greek. For the subjects of the Huns, swept together from various lands, speak, besides their own barbarous tongues, either Hunnic or Gothic, or--as many as have commercial dealings with the western Romans--Latin; but none of them easily speak Greek, except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian sea-coast;", where the only mention of Latin is in regards to the commercial dealings with the western Romans, while the others reportedly speak their own barbarous tongues, in addition to Hunnic or Gothic. Also, all three options you point out (trade; Roman fugitives (or some other fugitives?); Roman freed prisoners, like the "Scythian" in question, who turns out to be Greek) are irrelevant to the local population, with the exception of the trading case.

Procopius said the Slavs tried to pass a Latin-speaking Slav for a Byzantine general (a certain Chilbudos), who had been captured many years before while campaigning North of the Danube. According to the Byzantine investigation which followed, the fake Chilbudos had learned Latin from the people who lived North of the Danube together with the Slavs. So Procopius testifies there were Latin Speakers living side-by-side with the Slavs (also confirmed by archaeology, which shows joint cemeteries).

Again, the only thing I can find about this is the mention that after Narses captured this Pseudo-Chilbudius, "he found he was an impostor, even if he could speak Latin and had learned many of Chilbudius' manners". There's no mention of where he learned Latin, unless that's mentioned in some quite different chapter (btw, thanks - I had completely forgotten where Procopius' physical description of the Slavs was (the "not too blond, but not really dark-haired either" part), so now I saved the whole page for future references when I forget again).

Kekaumenos, living 100 years before her, mentioned the Vlachs as being the Romanized Dacians and Bessi.

He doesn't actually mention whether they were Romanized or not, although I agree that's quite likely. Unless, of course, if they were the Carpi you were talking about in this thread before, which would be another interesting possibility (esp. in regards to the mentioned "Albanian connection").

1) Guess who her Dacians were? (Answer: Romanians and Slavs from Transylvania)

2) Guess who her Sarmatians were? (Answer: Romanians, Slavs and Turkic people from Wallachia)

So you claim "Dacians" and "Sauromatae" are regionalities in this context, which include all the people in those regions? Kinda like how our historians claim the same for the Asenid period "Vlachs" (not that I disagree with you, though).

Yes, but in the grand scheme of things, neither the Bulgarians of that time nor the Vlachs cared about the ethnicity of the Asenids. Both nations cared more about kicking Byzantine butt.

That is likely true. Just as the later SBE dynasties are also of Cuman origin, without that raising any eyebrows, according to the records.

Ioan Asen II might have had a very personal reason to feel less Vlach than his father: his mother might have been Serbian. If that is true, given at that time the two languages (Serbian and Bulgarian) were much closer than nowadays, it is likely he didn't speak Vlach much (if at all). Why should he, when both his mother and almost everybody in the palace was speaking a Slavic language?

There are no sources claiming that Elena/Evgeniya was a daughter of Stefan Nemanja, as some postulate, and that seems quite unlikely, given the circumstances. Though it's indeed quite likely that he didn't speak Vlach much (if at all), considering from the very beginning the Asenids were highly "Bulgarianized" - all their domestic documents are on clear Bulgarian; they claimed descent not only from the FBE and its culture (and books), but also directly from its most famous tsars; even their symbolism and policies (like the immediate attempt to free Preslav and Teodor-Petar's later capital there) are very "Bulgarian-oriented" right from the start. Besides, Ioan Asen II and his brother Alexander were from a relatively early age raised in a Slavic-speaking environment - first in the Bulgarian court, but then especially in his exile in Russia where he purportedly even married his first wife (and came back with a band of Russian mercenaries to win the throne). So, indeed, while even Boril was probably from this first generation, the rebellious one, Ioan Asen is the first "purple-born" one. Anyway, we've seriously digressed from the original topic...

[Dromikaites]

But "dvayse" is a quite modern phenomenon (only a few decades old), so even if we assume... Actually, sorry, I'm completely lost as to what we were arguing about on this one.

I was clarifying why "dvayse" is similar to the English "twenty" while "dvadeset" would be literally "two-ten" (of course the meaning is still "twenty" but the format is "two-ten" and we were discussing how the 200-300 years of contact with the Daco-Romans have altered the format of the numbers).

I was referring to you claiming in that thread that the Vlach migration to the south of the Danube can't be noticed by genetics, due to being similar/identical to the population to the south as well. Unless, of course, you now think it was the Balkans which were depopulated (which was indeed the usual stance of our archaeologists and historians from the older times)?

We know that the population of what is now Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia had suffered large scale loses, both due to the archaeology (layers showing total destruction of cities and villages) and from various written sources of the time.

The difference between Moesia, Illyria on one hand and Dacia on the other hand is those who were ravaging Illyria and Moesia were based in Dacia. More than that, while they were devastating the lands South of the Danube, they were often bringing lots of captives North of the Danube, where their bases were (we also know that from written sources).

If the raids and slave capturing happens often enough, in the genes of the people North of the river it would look like Danube river never existed. For the people South of the river, if the area was considerably depleted prior to the 9th century, the arrival of the Daco-Romans would also go unnoticed, if those arrive in large numbers (meaning with enough diversity among themselves).

What "large numbers" mean, we can judge by the episode of Vlad III Dracula and Michael the Brave relocating some 3-10% of the population each time, and those events registering as about 5 common genetic ancestors. For 50 genetic ancestors we would expect something like the Slavs + "Vlachs" crossing from Romania into the Balkans in the 9th and 10th century to have represented more than 50% of the population.

Garbage peddlers?

How else can be properly called the Stalinist propagandists?!

So, does that mean that the Balkan Vlachs evolved independently from the Dacian Vlachs, as I suggested? (Although Kekaumenos thus also contradicts himself)

In the absence of the recent genetic evidence, that was what everybody assumed. Now it seems most of the Vlachs originated from North of the Balkan peninsula (from Pannonia and Dacia).

Eh, no, he doesn't really give any specific timeframe for when they were dispersed by the imperial authorities. Although the context (the conquest of Dacia, eventually the creation of the Balkan Dacian provinces) suggests something closer to Late Antiquity rather than the High Middle Ages (or late Early ones).

He was a high Byzantine official in the late 11th century. The context in which that conversation of his with the Vlachs took place seems to indicate relatively recent events. Beside his father-in-law had been involved in a Vlach uprising against the Byzantines, so he might have had some personal angle into dealing with the issue.

It's just like Ana Comnena's "the Dacians pushed the Sarmatians into the Balkans". That was something which had happened during the time of her grandfather.

Ok, that seems even less believable, unless of course if the Balkans had indeed been wiped clean by the previous barbarian invasions (though that would require the Balkans being depopulated, while Dacia still thriving, although it being the launching point of those same invasions).

Well, all it needs is for the population to be severely depleted, not wiped out.

As for Dacia thriving, of course it was (in that context) since Dacia was the base from where those invasions were launched. All that plunder and all those slaves must have helped the local economy. And we do know that economic life never ceased in Dacia, both because artifacts continued to be manufactured (same with Latin inscriptions) and because Byzantine coins are spread all over the territory, indicating the local trade was flourishing under the barbarian rule.

Btw, that still doesn't answer my question about the stark contrast with the historical sources which speak of great invasions of the steppe peoples of modern Romania, while, as we see, the contemporary reports of the purported Vlach (or Vlacho-Slav) migrations south of the Danube are flimsy at best.

The practice of the time was to mention the leading party of any invasion. When say, the Huns are mentioned, it was not only the Turkic warriors who were invading but also their Iranian and Germanic allies/subjects.

I also wonder what archaeology has to say on those migrations (I remember reading some time back about the archaeological identification of several waves of new Bulgar immigrants from Black Bulgaria (in the Khazar Khaganate) and the Avar Khaganate to the FBE throughout the centuries, so it should surely be possible to notice other, even bigger waves; Pecheneg and later Cuman settlements also being reported).

Given the Slavs were closely mixed with the Daco-Romans (common cemeteries, mixed villages) and that the Slavs were eager to mix with whoever they found living in Moesia(hence the shared cemeteries and villages found there as well), it is less likely to see a distinct Daco-Roman migration than it is to see a Cuman or Pecheneg archaeological trace.

This is why those genetic studies are bringing completely new insights into what until now was pictured only form archaeology and written sources. The overall picture does not change: Slavs populated the Balkans and changed the political and linguistic situation, just like we knew before. What changes are the details, namely that the decisive invasions were the late ones.

That's why I said "unless there's more...". Though all I could find was the same quote: "I was surprised at a Scythian speaking Greek. For the subjects of the Huns, swept together from various lands, speak, besides their own barbarous tongues, either Hunnic or Gothic, or--as many as have commercial dealings with the western Romans--Latin; but none of them easily speak Greek, except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian sea-coast;", where the only mention of Latin is in regards to the commercial dealings with the western Romans, while the others reportedly speak their own barbarous tongues, in addition to Hunnic or Gothic. Also, all three options you point out (trade; Roman fugitives (or some other fugitives?); Roman freed prisoners, like the "Scythian" in question, who turns out to be Greek) are irrelevant to the local population, with the exception of the trading case.

There is another episode, the dinner in Attila's tent, where somebody who was a high "Hun" official was seated next to him and was translating for him in Latin.

Again, the only thing I can find about this is the mention that after Narses captured this Pseudo-Chilbudius, "he found he was an impostor, even if he could speak Latin and had learned many of Chilbudius' manners". There's no mention of where he learned Latin, unless that's mentioned in some quite different chapter (btw, thanks - I had completely forgotten where Procopius' physical description of the Slavs was (the "not too blond, but not really dark-haired either" part), so now I saved the whole page for future references when I forget again).

He had learned Lating among the Antes. Else Narses, upon "enhanced interrogation" (the guy ended up in prison), would have established he was a former deserter or something similar.

Also Narses noticed he imitated Chilbudius' manners quite convincingly, meaning he had quite likely spent time with the real general. The most likely scenario is the captured general was given to the care of the native Latin speakers North of the Danube (the impostor's Latin was good enough to fool the initial Latin-speakers in the Byzantine army). Too bad for him Narses had known the man in person, else the Antes might have successfully planted a mole high up in the Byzantine military hierarchy.

The fragment is also revealing for the degree of sophistication of the "intelligence operations" performed by the Antes.

He doesn't actually mention whether they were Romanized or not, although I agree that's quite likely. Unless, of course, if they were the Carpi you were talking about in this thread before, which would be another interesting possibility (esp. in regards to the mentioned "Albanian connection").

I think it is highly unlikely Kekaumenos would go 700 years back in time with his story, when in general the Byzantine writers connect their stories only one or two generations back.

So you claim "Dacians" and "Sauromatae" are regionalities in this context, which include all the people in those regions? Kinda like how our historians claim the same for the Asenid period "Vlachs" (not that I disagree with you, though).

That is the most likely explanation I can find, because both Kekaumenos and Ana Comenena were highly educated and would have known who the real Dacians or Sauromate were.

That is likely true. Just as the later SBE dynasties are also of Cuman origin, without that raising any eyebrows, according to the records.

Same North of the Danube, with the first Wallachian kings bearing Cuman names.

There are no sources claiming that Elena/Evgeniya was a daughter of Stefan Nemanja, as some postulate, and that seems quite unlikely, given the circumstances. Though it's indeed quite likely that he didn't speak Vlach much (if at all), considering from the very beginning the Asenids were highly "Bulgarianized" - all their domestic documents are on clear Bulgarian; they claimed descent not only from the FBE and its culture (and books), but also directly from its most famous tsars; even their symbolism and policies (like the immediate attempt to free Preslav and Teodor-Petar's later capital there) are very "Bulgarian-oriented" right from the start. Besides, Ioan Asen II and his brother Alexander were from a relatively early age raised in a Slavic-speaking environment - first in the Bulgarian court, but then especially in his exile in Russia where he purportedly even married his first wife (and came back with a band of Russian mercenaries to win the throne). So, indeed, while even Boril was probably from this first generation, the rebellious one, Ioan Asen is the first "purple-born" one. Anyway, we've seriously digressed from the original topic...

The idea is that it would have been highly unlikely for Ivan/Ioan Asen II to speak much "Vlach" unless he had purposefully learned it (some rulers did learn the languages of their subjects for having extra leverage while dealing with them). As such, he was less inclined to identify himself with the Vlachs, who were anyway a smaller group among his subjects compared to the Bulgarians and Greeks.

[NikeBG]

I don't have time to check your reply for the moment (will edit this post when I can, if there aren't any new ones), but I just wanted to say "Happy Vlasovden (on a 5-minute crook atm)!" A British-Bulgarian storytelling FB page reminded me of this and pointed to an interesting possible connection with the Slavic god Veles.


Edit:

I was clarifying why "dvayse" is similar to the English "twenty" while "dvadeset" would be literally "two-ten" (of course the meaning is still "twenty" but the format is "two-ten" and we were discussing how the 200-300 years of contact with the Daco-Romans have altered the format of the numbers).

But, first, we don't know if any such changes are due to contact with the "Daco-Romans" (or Thraco-Romans for that matter) or whether it's through Greek, Bulgar or even Gothic etc. Second, it would be altered from what? The dvadeset-to-dvayse is a recent change from only a few decades ago, long after any eventual influence from the Daco-Romans, while I don't think there's an attested change from something-to-dvadeset (i.e. I think dvadeset is the earliest attested form in the Slavic writings). If you regard the difference with Russian (if we assume their current forms are the original Slavic form) f.e., then again we should make sure there aren't any other factors influencing those other groups instead.

What "large numbers" mean, we can judge by the episode of Vlad III Dracula and Michael the Brave relocating some 3-10% of the population each time, and those events registering as about 5 common genetic ancestors. For 50 genetic ancestors we would expect something like the Slavs + "Vlachs" crossing from Romania into the Balkans in the 9th and 10th century to have represented more than 50% of the population.

That's placing a whole lot of faith both on your DNA interpretations and on the numbers of the resettled populations by Vlad III and Michael the Brave.

How else can be properly called the Stalinist propagandists?!

In mature ways they can be called many things ("Stalinist propagandists" seems accurate enough, though I'd personally expand it to "communist-era propaganda"). There are many view I've disagreed with, including and especially from that same source and era, but I personally would try not to use such epithets.

He was a high Byzantine official in the late 11th century. The context in which that conversation of his with the Vlachs took place seems to indicate relatively recent events. Beside his father-in-law had been involved in a Vlach uprising against the Byzantines, so he might have had some personal angle into dealing with the issue.

It's just like Ana Comnena's "the Dacians pushed the Sarmatians into the Balkans". That was something which had happened during the time of her grandfather.

No, not really. That's why I posted the link with the source for you, as you reminded me (though I hadn't forgotten) that you can read Bulgarian. You can see there that the context in which he's speaking about the dispersal of those people is rather that of the Late Antiquity. Here, I'll translate the whole paragraph, just in case:
"The tribe of the Vlachs... has never kept its loyalty to anyone, not even the Roman emperors of old. Trajan warred against them and they were completely overcome and taken to captivity by him; and their king, named Decebalus, was killed and his head was placed on a pike in the city of Rome. They are actually the so-called Dacians and Bessi. Earlier they lived near the river Danube and to Saos, which we now call the Sava river, in naturally fortified and inaccessible places, where the Serbs now live. Trusting on them, they showed only a seeming loyalty and obedience to the Roman emperors of old and whenever they would go out of their fortifications, they plundered the Roman lands. Thus the Romans became indignant with them, as was already said, and destroyed them. And they left those places and scattered across the whole of Epirus and Macedonia and the bigger part of them settled in Hellas. They are very cowardly, they have hare's hearts... (etc)"

Actually, now that I translated it and thus paid more attention to it, it seems that the dispersal wasn't even about the Late Antiquity, but in relation to Trajan's conquest itself (or at least it's the conquest that's the context (which also means he definitely mixed the location of the original Dacia and the later Balkan Dacias, as well as the region of the Bessi)) - "the Romans became indignant with them, as was already said, and destroyed them." So, again, maybe you have some other episode from his writings in mind?

Well, all it needs is for the population to be severely depleted, not wiped out.

As for Dacia thriving, of course it was (in that context) since Dacia was the base from where those invasions were launched. All that plunder and all those slaves must have helped the local economy. And we do know that economic life never ceased in Dacia, both because artifacts continued to be manufactured (same with Latin inscriptions) and because Byzantine coins are spread all over the territory, indicating the local trade was flourishing under the barbarian rule.

Ah, so Dacia seems to have been thriving pretty much the same way the Balkans were thriving during the Gothic wars. That's definitely an interesting view on what it means to thrive...

The practice of the time was to mention the leading party of any invasion. When say, the Huns are mentioned, it was not only the Turkic warriors who were invading but also their Iranian and Germanic allies/subjects.

Your point being? Are you suggesting the bulk of the Uzes, Pechenegs and Cumans were actually Vlachs and Slavs?

Given the Slavs were closely mixed with the Daco-Romans (common cemeteries, mixed villages) and that the Slavs were eager to mix with whoever they found living in Moesia(hence the shared cemeteries and villages found there as well), it is less likely to see a distinct Daco-Roman migration than it is to see a Cuman or Pecheneg archaeological trace.

The bi-ritual burials in Moesia that I've previously spoken about are between Slavs and Bulgars, actually.

This is why those genetic studies are bringing completely new insights into what until now was pictured only form archaeology and written sources. The overall picture does not change: Slavs populated the Balkans and changed the political and linguistic situation, just like we knew before. What changes are the details, namely that the decisive invasions were the late ones.

Which late ones? Are we calling the supposed massive Vlach migration an invasion now? If that's the case, what's so decisive about it, considering both the historical sources and archaeology barely even detect it, while on your side you have only your own interpretations of some DNA research? Mind you, I did message sumskilz as I said, and if I may quote him and sum it up (I hope he won't mind me posting a small part of our private correspondence): "I still think the study can’t answer the question he wants it to answer, but I also don’t think it falsifies his hypothesis." In other words, the Balkans are too messy of a region to make any actual conclusions for now.

There is another episode, the dinner in Attila's tent, where somebody who was a high "Hun" official was seated next to him and was translating for him in Latin.

Fair enough. I presume you don't have that segment at your disposal? Though, of course, that hardly serves to prove the existence of a native Latin-speaking population there, especially in regards to the possible Latin-speakers you already mentioned as existing (actual (former) Roman citizens and people who have dealings with them).

He had learned Lating among the Antes. Else Narses, upon "enhanced interrogation" (the guy ended up in prison), would have established he was a former deserter or something similar.

That's pure speculation. Narses may or may have not indeed established such a thing - the source is completely neutral in regards to where this person (Pseudo-Chilbudius) knew Latin from. And it certainly doesn't mention that "According to the Byzantine investigation which followed, the fake Chilbudos had learned Latin from the people who lived North of the Danube together with the Slavs. So Procopius testifies there were Latin Speakers living side-by-side with the Slavs (also confirmed by archaeology, which shows joint cemeteries).", as you originally claimed.

Also Narses noticed he imitated Chilbudius' manners quite convincingly, meaning he had quite likely spent time with the real general. The most likely scenario is the captured general was given to the care of the native Latin speakers North of the Danube (the impostor's Latin was good enough to fool the initial Latin-speakers in the Byzantine army). Too bad for him Narses had known the man in person, else the Antes might have successfully planted a mole high up in the Byzantine military hierarchy.

That's stretching things beyond breaking point. First, if the Pseudo-Chilbudius knew and imitated the real Chilbudius' manners, it's just as possible that indeed the fake one could have been "a former deserter or something similar", as you mentioned, as it would be possible that he learned them from the potentially captive Chilbudius. Further, even if he learned them from the captured general, then the very same thing can be true of his Latin as well and there's nothing that would indicate or even suggest that the supposedly captured general (the real general's fate, according to the primary source, is that he perished in battle nearly a decade earlier) was given to the care of some unmentioned Latin speakers north of the Danube. Of course, even if we assume that was so (and that's a purely speculative if), then we'd have to explain how the real Chilbudius, who is mentioned as perished fighting the Slavs, eventually made his way into the hands of the Antes, considering the Pseudo-Chilbudius was in fact an Antean, who was later captured by the Slavs. Unless, of course, if the fake "Chilbudius the Antean" found himself in the hands of the same (supposedly native Latin-speakers) captors, who also still held the real Chilbudius, which is, of course, not mentioned (actually, the captor who held Pseudo-Chilbudius is clearly defined as a Slav). But, still, let's go on - the Pseudo-Chilbudius' Latin (I'll call him P-C for short, btw) wasn't really "good enough to fool the initial Latin-speakers in the Byzantine army". It was good enough to fool the Anteans, perhaps, but there's no mention in the primary source of him fooling the Byzantine army - P-C's first reported contact with them was with Narses: "They [the Anteans] claimed that the one [P-C], as they wished him to be, was the real Chilbudius. And he, being carried away by such hopes, now wished the same himself and claimed he is the Roman general Chilbudius. When he was sent for this reason to Byzantion, Narses captured him on the way. And as he entered into a conversation with him, he found he was an impostor, even if he could speak Latin and had learned many of Chilbudius' manners, which he mimicked a lot - he closed him and forced him to reveal everything. Thus he took him with himself to Byzantion."

The fragment is also revealing for the degree of sophistication of the "intelligence operations" performed by the Antes.

Indeed, namely - no sophistication at all. "Hey, we have an Antean, who claimed to be Chilbudius (possibly at the instigation of a Roman captive of ours), so he could be bought by one of our wealthier folk, so he [P-C] could return to our and his own land where he could claim his true person and become a freedman again. So, you know what, we convinced him instead to continue playing the charade and send him to the Romans, so he would become a high-ranking general there, even though he's even visibly younger than the real general [he's mentioned earlier as having recently come of age, whereas the real Chilbudius had already spent years on the front by the time he was killed]."

Same North of the Danube, with the first Wallachian kings bearing Cuman names.

And most of the others bearing Slavic (ok, and Greko-Christian) ones.

The idea is that it would have been highly unlikely for Ivan/Ioan Asen II to speak much "Vlach" unless he had purposefully learned it (some rulers did learn the languages of their subjects for having extra leverage while dealing with them). As such, he was less inclined to identify himself with the Vlachs, who were anyway a smaller group among his subjects compared to the Bulgarians and Greeks.

Indeed, that's why I went to explain the whole thing about him growing up among the Rus and being of the second generation of the Asenids etc. Btw, it's funny, considering his cousin and actual heir to the throne, Kaloyan's son Vitleem, was even sent to Rome with one other boy to actually learn Latin, because Kaloyan reportedly had no one at disposal to translate the letters the Pope sent him (and, yes, I know the Vlachs weren't Latin-speakers anymore, at least not church Latin ones; I'm pointing out another person of the same family and same generation with a "similar problem").

[The Glorious Moldovan]

bump

[Dromikaites]

But, first, we don't know if any such changes are due to contact with the "Daco-Romans" (or Thraco-Romans for that matter) or whether it's through Greek, Bulgar or even Gothic etc. Second, it would be altered from what? The dvadeset-to-dvayse is a recent change from only a few decades ago, long after any eventual influence from the Daco-Romans, while I don't think there's an attested change from something-to-dvadeset (i.e. I think dvadeset is the earliest attested form in the Slavic writings). If you regard the difference with Russian (if we assume their current forms are the original Slavic form) f.e., then again we should make sure there aren't any other factors influencing those other groups instead.

I think Occam's Razor can be applied in this case. Everybody who has spent some time in Dacia switched from the original North Slavic format to "two ten and digit". The only exceptions are the Slavic languages influenced by Germans, which employ the Germanic format "digit and twenty".

Given Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese do not use the format "two ten and digit" (while Romanian does) the simplest explanation is that was the way Dacians were forming the numbers.

Greek or Turkish can't be among the suspects either since they do not employ the "two ten and digit" format either.

That's placing a whole lot of faith both on your DNA interpretations and on the numbers of the resettled populations by Vlad III and Michael the Brave.

There are other known cases which shows it needs a lot of people in the initial population in order for a lot of common genetic ancestors to be detected.

Here are two famous cases: the most famous involves "Eve". All humans who live outside Africa (except for those descending from African slaves or emigrants) descend from a single woman.

Of course the first group of people who had left Africa contained several tens or hundreds of women. But the descendants of those women other than "Eve" eventually died out.

The second example deals with the nowadays Hungarians, who do not have any genetic connection to "Arpad's Hungarians". The original group who arrived in Pannonia was too small compared to the local population. Given the initial small number, 1000 years have been enough for all the descendants of the original Hungarians to die out. The modern Hungarians are actually the descendants of the Daco-Romans and Slavs who had adopted the language of their overlords.

In mature ways they can be called many things ("Stalinist propagandists" seems accurate enough, though I'd personally expand it to "communist-era propaganda"). There are many view I've disagreed with, including and especially from that same source and era, but I personally would try not to use such epithets.

Wllingly peddling certified garbage makes one a garbage peddler.

No, not really. That's why I posted the link with the source for you, as you reminded me (though I hadn't forgotten) that you can read Bulgarian. You can see there that the context in which he's speaking about the dispersal of those people is rather that of the Late Antiquity. Here, I'll translate the whole paragraph, just in case:
"The tribe of the Vlachs... has never kept its loyalty to anyone, not even the Roman emperors of old. Trajan warred against them and they were completely overcome and taken to captivity by him; and their king, named Decebalus, was killed and his head was placed on a pike in the city of Rome. They are actually the so-called Dacians and Bessi. Earlier they lived near the river Danube and to Saos, which we now call the Sava river, in naturally fortified and inaccessible places, where the Serbs now live. Trusting on them, they showed only a seeming loyalty and obedience to the Roman emperors of old and whenever they would go out of their fortifications, they plundered the Roman lands. Thus the Romans became indignant with them, as was already said, and destroyed them. And they left those places and scattered across the whole of Epirus and Macedonia and the bigger part of them settled in Hellas. They are very cowardly, they have hare's hearts... (etc)"

You do notice that they have settled by themselves on the Byzantine territory.

The Roman emperors of old, Kekaumenos says, destroyed them. As in destroyed their state. The resettlement happened because the Vlachs did it, not the emperors.

Now, how likely was it that the Dacians would have resettled wherever it would have pleased them during the rule of "the Roman emperors of old"?

Let's remember that the battle of Adrianopole between the Goths and the Romans happened precisely because the Romans had settled the Goths in a place where the Goths were starving.

At that time the Romans were still powerful enough to decide who settles where. For the Vlachs to go wherever they pleased we would need a period during which the "Romans" (the Byzantines) had only nominal control over Epirus, Macedonia and Hellas. 9th and 10th centuries would fit nicely.

Actually, now that I translated it and thus paid more attention to it, it seems that the dispersal wasn't even about the Late Antiquity, but in relation to Trajan's conquest itself (or at least it's the conquest that's the context (which also means he definitely mixed the location of the original Dacia and the later Balkan Dacias, as well as the region of the Bessi)) - "the Romans became indignant with them, as was already said, and destroyed them." So, again, maybe you have some other episode from his writings in mind?

Do you picture the Dacians deciding themselves where to settle after Trajan conquered them?!

Ah, so Dacia seems to have been thriving pretty much the same way the Balkans were thriving during the Gothic wars. That's definitely an interesting view on what it means to thrive...

Thracia during the Gothic wars wasn't the base of operations for about 1000 years. A comparable situation would be Thracia after the Bulgar conquest.

Your point being? Are you suggesting the bulk of the Uzes, Pechenegs and Cumans were actually Vlachs and Slavs?

Depends on the particular customs of those people. For instance of the "Avars" who had invaded the Balkans after the Byzantine defenses on the Danube collapsed were quite likely Avars and Slavs.

The bi-ritual burials in Moesia that I've previously spoken about are between Slavs and Bulgars, actually.

Yes, and that shows neither had any problems mingling with the other.

In Romania the mixed burials are Daco-Romans and Slavs. So we have evidence that the Slavs were willing to mix. Likewise the "Vlachs" and the Turkic Bulgars. Not quite the case for the Turkic Avars, Cumans and Pechenegs.

Which late ones? Are we calling the supposed massive Vlach migration an invasion now?

It is not a Vlach-only massive migration. It is a massive Vlach and Slavic invasion. They lived together in the same villages in Romania, there's no reason for them to invade/migrate separately.

If that's the case, what's so decisive about it, considering both the historical sources and archaeology barely even detect it,

Do you think archaeology can distinguish between Romanized Moesians and Romanized Dacians?

while on your side you have only your own interpretations of some DNA research? Mind you, I did message sumskilz as I said, and if I may quote him and sum it up (I hope he won't mind me posting a small part of our private correspondence): "I still think the study can’t answer the question he wants it to answer, but I also don’t think it falsifies his hypothesis." In other words, the Balkans are too messy of a region to make any actual conclusions for now.

This is why we use archaeology, written sources and genetics. What the genetic study does bring to the table is the direction of the population move. From Dacia and Panonia into the Balkans, not the other way round.

Fair enough. I presume you don't have that segment at your disposal? Though, of course, that hardly serves to prove the existence of a native Latin-speaking population there, especially in regards to the possible Latin-speakers you already mentioned as existing (actual (former) Roman citizens and people who have dealings with them).

Here it is:

At Attila's feast a "barbarian" (=somebody not a Roman citizen) was talking to Priscus in Latin.

That's pure speculation. Narses may or may have not indeed established such a thing - the source is completely neutral in regards to where this person (Pseudo-Chilbudius) knew Latin from. And it certainly doesn't mention that "According to the Byzantine investigation which followed, the fake Chilbudos had learned Latin from the people who lived North of the Danube together with the Slavs. So Procopius testifies there were Latin Speakers living side-by-side with the Slavs (also confirmed by archaeology, which shows joint cemeteries).", as you originally claimed.

Follow your own explanations below and see the most likely conclusion (Occam's Razor again).

That's stretching things beyond breaking point. First, if the Pseudo-Chilbudius knew and imitated the real Chilbudius' manners, it's just as possible that indeed the fake one could have been "a former deserter or something similar", as you mentioned, as it would be possible that he learned them from the potentially captive Chilbudius. Further, even if he learned them from the captured general
then the very same thing can be true of his Latin as well

Except it is more likely the captives to learn the language of the captors. The captive's well being depends on that while for the captors there is little incentive to do so.

and there's nothing that would indicate or even suggest that the supposedly captured general (the real general's fate, according to the primary source, is that he perished in battle nearly a decade earlier) was given to the care of some unmentioned Latin speakers north of the Danube.

If the Romans would have known for certainty that Chilbudios had died, they would not have taken the bait.

Quite likely what had happened was he and his troops were crushed and a handful of Roman soldiers escaped and said "last time we saw him he was in the thick of the battle and nobody could have survived".

As for whom would take care of a high value prisoner, the most likely would be those who can debrief him, gain his confidence and maybe "turn him". Speaking the language would be the first step.

Of course, even if we assume that was so (and that's a purely speculative if), then we'd have to explain how the real Chilbudius, who is mentioned as perished fighting the Slavs, eventually made his way into the hands of the Antes, considering the Pseudo-Chilbudius was in fact an Antean, who was later captured by the Slavs.

The Anteans were a Slavic tribe.

Unless, of course, if the fake "Chilbudius the Antean" found himself in the hands of the same (supposedly native Latin-speakers) captors, who also still held the real Chilbudius, which is, of course, not mentioned (actually, the captor who held Pseudo-Chilbudius is clearly defined as a Slav).

The simplest hypothesis is that Chilbudos was captured fighting the Antes. After all, he had replaced Germanus, the first Roman general who had fought the Antes.

Chilbudos had held his command for 3 years, then vanished after losing a battle north of the Danube.

Later the Antes fought with another Slavic tribe, during which time the Fake Chilbudos became prisoner.

But, still, let's go on - the Pseudo-Chilbudius' Latin (I'll call him P-C for short, btw) wasn't really "good enough to fool the initial Latin-speakers in the Byzantine army". It was good enough to fool the Anteans, perhaps, but there's no mention in the primary source of him fooling the Byzantine army - P-C's first reported contact with them was with Narses: "They [the Anteans] claimed that the one [P-C], as they wished him to be, was the real Chilbudius. And he, being carried away by such hopes, now wished the same himself and claimed he is the Roman general Chilbudius. When he was sent for this reason to Byzantion, Narses captured him on the way.

How did he get past the first line of Roman forts? It not was like anybody would just cross the Danube and travel to Byzantium.

Also, since he was traveling, not raiding, Narses "capturing" him means arresting him while on the way.

And as he entered into a conversation with him, he found he was an impostor, even if he could speak Latin and had learned many of Chilbudius' manners, which he mimicked a lot - he closed him and forced him to reveal everything. Thus he took him with himself to Byzantion."

He revealed everything, and that everything is what has been written down by Procopius: that he was a Latin-speaking Antean who most-likely spent enough time with the real Chilbudius.

Indeed, namely - no sophistication at all. "Hey, we have an Antean, who claimed to be Chilbudius (possibly at the instigation of a Roman captive of ours), so he could be bought by one of our wealthier folk, so he [P-C] could return to our and his own land where he could claim his true person and become a freedman again. So, you know what, we convinced him instead to continue playing the charade and send him to the Romans, so he would become a high-ranking general there, even though he's even visibly younger than the real general [he's mentioned earlier as having recently come of age, whereas the real Chilbudius had already spent years on the front by the time he was killed]."

His true age must have been discovered after interrogation. For the first Romans who have seen him his story was plausible. Only Narses didn't buy it.

But what if Justinian would have believed him and he was send again to command some troops a the Danubian border?!

And most of the others bearing Slavic (ok, and Greko-Christian) ones.

Yes, and the fact the elites were Slavic might explain why when the Vlachs crossed the Danube together with the Slavs, only the Slavs get mentioned. Just like Charlemagne was leading the Franks, nevermind his army was mostly made of Galo-Romans.

Indeed, that's why I went to explain the whole thing about him growing up among the Rus and being of the second generation of the Asenids etc. Btw, it's funny, considering his cousin and actual heir to the throne, Kaloyan's son Vitleem, was even sent to Rome with one other boy to actually learn Latin, because Kaloyan reportedly had no one at disposal to translate the letters the Pope sent him (and, yes, I know the Vlachs weren't Latin-speakers anymore, at least not church Latin ones; I'm pointing out another person of the same family and same generation with a "similar problem").

Indeed.

What seems to have happened is only the first Asenids were native "Vlach" speakers. Their sons and grandsons were fully assimilated into the dominant culture.

[sumskilz]

It turned out that his ancestors on the paternal side were either Thracian/Dacian or Illyrian (haplogroup I2a1b).

While that haplogroup is at its highest frequency in modern Bosnians, ancient samples have been found in Mesolithic Sweden, Neolithic Spain, Neolithic Germany, and Bronze Age Hungary. It‘s a deep European lineage.

There was a paper presented at the 2012 European Human Genetics Conference that might shed some light on this question. Their analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of fifty Bronze Age and Iron Age individuals from the area of modern Romania found the following:

1) The most frequent ancient haplogroup was H.
2) Significant difference exists in haplogroup frequency between modern Romanians and the ancient samples.
3) Ancient samples exhibited less genetic diversity than modern people in the region.
4) The ancient samples were closest to modern Turks of Thracian origin.
5) Modern Romanians are closer to modern Bulgarian, Italian, Greek and Spanish populations than to the ancient samples.

As far as I can tell, they haven’t published the study yet, so I can’t say much more than that.

Two ancient Thracians from modern Bulgaria: T2G2 from near Stambolovo (850-700 BCE) had mtDNA haplogroup HV, and P192-1 from near Svilengrad (800-500 BCE) had mtDNA haplogroup U3b
Pulling out the 1%: Whole-Genome Capture for the Targeted Enrichment of Ancient DNA Sequencing Libraries

The mtDNA haplogroups of Eighth to Tenth Century proto-Bulgarians are J1b1a1, H1a2, H1r1, H2a2a1, H13a2c1, H5, HV1, T, and T2.
Mitochondrial DNA Suggests a Western Eurasian origin for Ancient (Proto-) Bulgarians

Which plots closest to modern Italians:



Some of this makes sense. Although I can't seen how any of it definitively answers the question at hand without more information.

[Dromikaites]

The proto-Bulgarians as defined by that study means Volga Bulgars. Those would be the conquerors of the population already living in Bulgaria at the time of their arrival.

And it is indeed very interesting that on the maternal side they were related to the European population.

Could it be the Turkic Bulgars had heavily intermarried with the Germanic populations which had either stayed behind after the Huns or the Germans who kept coming along the rivers? (quite likely the Rus weren't the only ones)

[sumskilz]

The proto-Bulgarians as defined by that study means Volga Bulgars. Those would be the conquerors of the population already living in Bulgaria at the time of their arrival.

Well that was what they were going for based on the style of the burials they were sampling, but the samples come from over the course of three centuries and it only takes one generation for local mtDNA to enter the conquerors gene pool. Looking at female mediated gene flow was certainly not the best study design for answering their question, but mtDNA happens to be a lot easier to extract from old remains. So the lineages could be Bulgar, or local, or picked up along the way as you suggest.

Comparing to older samples might help:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

J1b1a1 has been found in Chalcolithic Germany, Bronze Age Germany, Roman England, and Lombard Hungary.

H1a2 has been found in an individual at a La Tène Culture site in Germany c. 400 BCE.

H1r1 has been found in modern Basques, it’s rare otherwise, but it descended from H1 which arrived in Europe from the Middle East with the Neolithic farmers

H2a2a1 was found in Roman England, Anglo-Saxon England. A reasonably closely related clade (H2a2b1) was found in Lombard Italy c. 570–650 CE. Its parent H2a2 was found in Lithuania c. 908-485 BCE.

H13a2c1 is a mystery so far.

H5 has been found in Bronze Age Germany, Bronze Age Hungary, Bronze Age Greece, the Tashtyk Culture in Siberia, Iron Age Poland, Iron Age Denmark, and Roman England.

T has been found in Neolithic Germany, Neolithic France, Chalcolithic Caucasus, Bronze Age Kurgan Burials, Minoan Crete, Bronze Age western China, northern Spain c. 500-700 CE, and Lombard Italy c. 600-800 CE.

T2 has been found in Neolithic Hungary, Neolithic Czech Republic, Neolithic Spain, Neolithic Germany, Bronze Age Spain, Bronze Age Germany, Minoan Crete, northern Spain c. 500-700 CE, Lombard Hungary c. 530-600 CE

Only T is consistent with steppe origin and it could just as easily be from somewhere else.

The western end of the Yamnaya culture was in Bulgaria, and considering they are the likely source of the Indo-European languages, those burials could be the ancestors of the the Thracians and Dacians, their mtDNA haplogroups are H, K, T2a1b1a, U2e1a, and U5a1.

Now here is something more obviously relevant:

Abstract: Moldova has a rich historical and cultural heritage, which may be reflected in the current genetic makeup of its population. To date, no comprehensive studies exist about the population genetic structure of modern Moldavians. To bridge this gap with respect to paternal lineages, we analyzed 37 binary and 17 multiallelic (STRs) polymorphisms on the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome in 125 Moldavian males. In addition, 53 Ukrainians from eastern Moldova and 54 Romanians from the neighboring eastern Romania were typed using the same set of markers. In Moldavians, 19 Y chromosome haplogroups were identified, the most common being I-M423 (20.8%), R-M17* (17.6%), R-M458 (12.8%), E-v13 (8.8%), R-M269* and R-M412* (both 7.2%). In Romanians, 14 haplogroups were found including I-M423 (40.7%), R-M17* (16.7%), R-M405 (7.4%), E-v13 and R-M412* (both 5.6%). In Ukrainians, 13 haplogroups were identified including R-M17 (34.0%), I-M423 (20.8%), R-M269* (9.4%), N-M178, R-M458 and R-M73 (each 5.7%). Our results show that a significant majority of the Moldavian paternal gene pool belongs to eastern/central European and Balkan/eastern Mediterranean Y lineages. Phylogenetic and AMOVA analyses based on Y-STR loci also revealed that Moldavians are close to both eastern/central European and Balkan-Carpathian populations. The data correlate well with historical accounts and geographical location of the region and thus allow to hypothesize that extant Moldavian paternal genetic lineages arose from extensive recent admixture between genetically autochthonous populations of the Balkan-Carpathian zone and neighboring Slavic groups.

Paleo-Balkan and Slavic Contributions to the Genetic Pool of Moldavians: Insights from the Y Chromosome

EDIT: This is interesting...

The genetic relationship between Moldavians and Romanians deserves special attention, since these two groups speak practically the same language and share many cultural features. It is reasonable to assume that Moldavians and Romanians inherited genetic lineages, shared with other Balkan populations, from Vlachs who, in turn, received them from Paleo-Balkan tribes. However, Moldavians and Romanians do not form a cluster that would have separated them from the neighboring populations. Indeed, in the space of multi-dimensional scaling based on the RST distances between STR haplotypes, Romanian populations appeared scattered among the Balkan populations and did not cluster with the Moldavians (Figure 3). According to the AMOVA analysis, the degree of within-group differentiation among Moldavian and Romanian populations was significantly greater than genetic differences between either Romanians or Moldavians and the group comprised of the Balkan populations (Table 3). Moldavians and Romanians also appear dissimilar on the diagram of binary lineages (PC plot, Figure 2). Thus, sharing nearly the same language is not accompanied by specific genetic similarity between Moldavians and Romanians. Furthermore, Italian populations that share the Romance/Latin language with Moldavians and Romanians, show little genetic similarity with them. These results agree with previous genetic studies suggesting that the genetic landscape of southeast Europe had been formed long before the modern linguistic/ethnic landscape was shaped [16], [48].

In contrast to Romanians and most other Balkan populations, Moldavians show a clear genetic similarity to western and eastern Slavs. This is strongly implied by haplogroup R-M17, which dominates the paternal lineages of the Slavs and is broadly represented in Moldavians. Stefan et al. [18] have already noticed the increased presence of R-M17 chromosomes in Moldavians and explained it as a trait inherited from ancient (prehistoric) population of the North Pontic Steppe. However, genetic continuity in this scenario is not supported by archaeological and historical records, which suggest repeated dramatic demographic changes in Moldova’s population during the 4th –14th centuries AD. Recent admixture with Slavic neighbors appears to be a more parsimonious explanation for the elevated R-M17 frequency in Moldavians. The noteworthy domination of R-M17 chromosomes in Moldavians compared to Romanians is due to the R-M458 subclade. Haplogroup R-M458 likely has its roots in western/northern Poland, where it has its greatest modern concentration and microsatellite diversity [49]. Given the geographical proximity of Moldova to the Polish and other Slavic population groups and historically attested interactions between Moldavians and Slavs [10], [12], [13], [14], it is reasonable to assume that an influx of Slavs helped elevate the frequency of R-M17 chromosomes among Moldavians to underscore the Moldavian-Romanian differentiation. Furthermore, Romanians and Moldavians also display differences in the structure of R-M17* STR haplotypes. Although our network analysis (Figure 4) primarily shows homogeneity of the diversity of R-M17 haplotypes, Moldavian R-M17 chromosomes align closer with Ukrainian (Slavic) chromosomes than with Romanian ones, further supporting the contribution from Slavic neighbors to the Moldavian paternal gene pool.

Despite repeated invasions by nomads from Asian heartlands, only two (N-P43 and Q-M242) out of 125 Moldavian Y chromosomes studied here belonged to haplogroups of apparently northern/central Asian origins. These results are in good agreement with earlier studies on Y-chromosome variation in eastern and central Europe, asserting a minimal impact of gene flow from Siberia/central Asia [25], [41], [50], [51].

In conclusion, the results presented in this report allow to hypothesize that an admixture of autochthonous populations of the Balkan-Carpathian zone with neighboring Slavic populations was likely the main factor that contributed to the diversity of the Y-chromosomal genetic pool of present-day Moldavians and, in particular, to the differences in the Y chromosomal lineage composition between Moldavian and Romanian populations. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA and genome-wide assessments of haplotype sharing between Moldavians and neighboring populations would be essential to produce a comprehensive picture of phylogeographic origins of Moldavian genetic lineages.

[Dromikaites]

Interesting differences indeed between the Moldavians from the Republic of Moldova and the Moldavians from Romania (what the study calls "Romanians from Eastern Romania").

The written sources tell that medieval Moldavia (which is nowadays shared between Romania and the Republic of Moldova) came into being as a state by being settled twice during the 14th century with Romanians from Transylvania (the expeditions of Dragos and Bogdan I).

The Eastern part of Medieval Moldavia was annexed by Russia first in 1812 and then again in 1940. On both occasions it was subjected to massive colonization. Little wonder the Slavic element (which quite likely existed anyway from before the 14th century) is prominent among the people living in the Republic of Moldova.

[The Glorious Moldovan]

Interesting differences indeed between the Moldavians from the Republic of Moldova and the Moldavians from Romania (what the study calls "Romanians from Eastern Romania").

The written sources tell that medieval Moldavia (which is nowadays shared between Romania and the Republic of Moldova) came into being as a state by being settled twice during the 14th century with Romanians from Transylvania (the expeditions of Dragos and Bogdan I).

The Eastern part of Medieval Moldavia was annexed by Russia first in 1812 and then again in 1940. On both occasions it was subjected to massive colonization. Little wonder the Slavic element (which quite likely existed anyway from before the 14th century) is prominent among the people living in the Republic of Moldova.

The slavic element continued to be imported between the period of medieval Moldova and 1812, after the initial settlement of vlachs by Dragos and Bogdan I.

Grigore Ureche for example cites in Letopisetul Moldovei, that Stephan the Great brought with him from Podolia and Halych, in the year 1498 100.000 ruthenians. And that by his time, in the first half of the 17th century, 1/3 of Moldova was russian speaking which according to him is thanks to Stephan's resettlement.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(Mulţi oameni, bărbaţi, muieri, copii, au scos în robie, mai mult de 100.000. Mulţi de aceia au aşăzat Ştefan vodă în ţara sa, de şi până astăzi trăiaşte limba rusească în Moldova, ales pre unde i-a descălecat, că mai a treia parte grăiescu ruseşteMulţi oameni, bărbaţi, muieri, copii, au scos în robie, mai mult de 100.000. Mulţi de aceia au aşăzat Ştefan vodă în ţara sa, de şi până astăzi trăiaşte limba rusească în Moldova, ales pre unde i-a descălecat, că mai a treia parte grăiescu ruseşte

Or that between the years 1585 and 1623, there were 13 royal acts enacted in which the moldovan Kings gave permission for the settlement of other peoples to colonize moldovan lands. The ruthenian peoples, among others, were mentioned 12 times, serbians 10 times and "muscovites" 3 times out of these 13 royal acts.

So we see that what the genetic study says, is most likely referring to these slavs that were resettled between the 16th and 17th centuries in Moldova. And that the slavic element did not start anew after 1812.

[Dromikaites]

The "Russians" Grigore Ureche talks about are Ukrainians which at the time were called Rusyns or Ruthenians. There were no Russians in Podolya and Halych at the time. What we call today Russians were called "Muscovites" or "Moskaly" in the 15th century.

However after 1812 and again after 1940 we get a large scale colonization of Russians both in Bassarabia and in Ukraine.

[The Glorious Moldovan]

The "ukrainians" you are referring to don't exist in that time. "Ukraine" in the 17th century was a geographical name for the border regions of the Polish commonwealth.
"Moscovia" was a geographical name for the russians living in the Muscovite Tsarsdom. Being schooled in Poland, Ureche knew that they spoke the same language and were in fact the same people, which is why he calls their language russian, and not "ukrainian".

Rusyns or Ruthenians.

"Ruthenian" is a latin translation for "Rusyn". And "Rusyn", only until very recently, simply meant Russian back then.

after 1940 we get a large scale colonization of Russians

Not really.

[NikeBG]

Greek or Turkish can't be among the suspects either since they do not employ the "two ten and digit" format either.

And that was my question. If Greek doesn't use another form - then ok (though we're still open to the question of which was the original Slavic form and whether it was the northern Slavs who may have changed it).

Wllingly peddling certified garbage makes one a garbage peddler.

The question is not about the so-called "garbage peddlers", but about falling as low as them in accusing them.

You do notice that they have settled by themselves on the Byzantine territory.

The Roman emperors of old, Kekaumenos says, destroyed them. As in destroyed their state. The resettlement happened because the Vlachs did it, not the emperors.

No, sorry, I don't notice it. The context clearly shows the resettlement is a result of them being destroyed by the Romans and there's absolutely nothing alluding to "the 9th and 10th century fitting nicely".

Do you picture the Dacians deciding themselves where to settle after Trajan conquered them?!

Whether the Dacians decided themselves, or were resettled by force or even the author himself is wrong or mixed-up (as evidenced by a few earlier contradictions in the very paragraphs I translated) - I can't say. What I can say, however, is that yet another of your sources is shown as not supporting your claim clearly (at least without some wild speculations thrown in, of course).

Depends on the particular customs of those people. For instance of the "Avars" who had invaded the Balkans after the Byzantine defenses on the Danube collapsed were quite likely Avars and Slavs.

With the notable difference that the sources explicitly mention the separate parts of the Avar-controlled armies - i.e. they make a distinction between the bulk of the Slavic auxilias (and the occasional Bulgar ones) and the Avar aristocracy controlling them and taking most of the laurels and plunders. Respectively, at the home-front, there's again the distinction between the Avars and their Slavic subjects (f.e. the mention of the Dulebi women being harnessed as oxen). Likewise, until the centralization of the state, the Bulgars and the Slavs in their Sklavinias were also relatively distinct. On the other hand, there's no such distinction about the later (and earlier) steppe hordes. Of course, I'm not saying some non-steppe Slavic tribes or Vlach clans might have joined the various hordes, which wouldn't be all that surprising anyway. But about them forming a substantial mass or even the bulk of those hordes - there's nothing to indicate that, except for wishful thinking.

Yes, and that shows neither had any problems mingling with the other.

In Romania the mixed burials are Daco-Romans and Slavs. So we have evidence that the Slavs were willing to mix. Likewise the "Vlachs" and the Turkic Bulgars. Not quite the case for the Turkic Avars, Cumans and Pechenegs.

You might want to move the Cumans out of this list - they certainly had no problems mixing with the Bulgarians during the SBE (especially after the Mongols displaced them into Hungary and Bulgaria). The Pechenegs were indeed harder to assimilate though, as some reportedly retained their culture in South Macedonia even in the 14th century.

It is not a Vlach-only massive migration. It is a massive Vlach and Slavic invasion. They lived together in the same villages in Romania, there's no reason for them to invade/migrate separately.

So which late decisive invasions are you talking about?

Do you think archaeology can distinguish between Romanized Moesians and Romanized Dacians?

Considering it notices migration waves of Black Bulgars into the Danubian Bulgars, it's not impossible. Especially if those Romanized Dacians are also Slavicized. Unless, of course, if you're talking about a migration of the Romanized Dacians into the Romanized Moesians from the times before the arrival of the Slavs (as Kekaumenos does). In that case, a systematic study should still be able to notice "the evacuation of Dacia" into the Balkans, though I don't know if such studies have been made.

This is why we use archaeology, written sources and genetics. What the genetic study does bring to the table is the direction of the population move. From Dacia and Panonia into the Balkans, not the other way round.

The genetic study doesn't really bring that to the table, considering both the written sources and archaeology have already brought that up. What your interpretations of the genetic study are bringing to the table is not the direction, but the composition of that population movement (and the indeed quite peculiar thing that the study brings is the timeframe, which is in sharp contradictions with archaeology and the written sources; although sumskilz mentioned that this might be a problem of the methodology, which can make the results seem more recent than they are).

Here it is:

At Attila's feast a "barbarian" (=somebody not a Roman citizen) was talking to Priscus in Latin.

Ah, you mean the incident with Ernakh's profecy. Good. Though, as I already said, that's hardly a proof of the presence of native Romanized Dacian population among those barbarians, considering Priscus himself had already mentioned where the barbarians who spoke Latin know it from (dealings with Romans). Still, that doesn't rule out the Vlach explanation, but it certainly doesn't support it either...

Except it is more likely the captives to learn the language of the captors. The captive's well being depends on that while for the captors there is little incentive to do so.

True.

If the Romans would have known for certainty that Chilbudios had died, they would not have taken the bait.

Which is why they didn't, but sent Narses to investigate the claim instead.

Quite likely what had happened was he and his troops were crushed and a handful of Roman soldiers escaped and said "last time we saw him he was in the thick of the battle and nobody could have survived".

As for whom would take care of a high value prisoner, the most likely would be those who can debrief him, gain his confidence and maybe "turn him". Speaking the language would be the first step.

"Quite likely" and "most likely" are terms of speculation (and in this case that's a very pure, unsubstantiated speculation - at the very least, you don't need a whole tribe of Latin-speakers, but just one person who knows it). As I already said, your original claim finds no basis in the source you referred to.

The Anteans were a Slavic tribe.

One of the three main Slavic tribes, actually, along with that of the Slavs proper (or Sloveni, or Sklavinoi, if you prefer) and that of the Veneti - respectively, usually referred to as the groups of the Eastern, Southern and Western Slavs. They also fought each other regularly, especially when played by the Byzantines to that goal (similarly, the main two Bulgar tribes were also instigated to fight each other in Justinian's times).

The simplest hypothesis is that Chilbudos was captured fighting the Antes. After all, he had replaced Germanus, the first Roman general who had fought the Antes.

Except the source claims he was fighting exactly the Slavs/Sloveni/Sklavinoi and not the Antes - "Three years later Chilbudius, as usual, crossed the river with a small force, but the Slavs/Sloveni/Sklavinoi met them in their full might. A fierce battle began and many of the Romans fell, along with their general Chilbudius. Then the barbarians could again cross the river any time they want... (etc)"

How did he get past the first line of Roman forts? It not was like anybody would just cross the Danube and travel to Byzantium.

Also, since he was traveling, not raiding, Narses "capturing" him means arresting him while on the way.

How he passed the border or if he passed it at all is not mentioned. It's only mentioned that Narses captured him on the way, which could be anywhere, including at the border. Although, of course, at that time the Antes and the Romans were not only at peace, but had even negotiated with Justinian, who had offered to give them the town of Touris on the (northern side of the) Danube, if the Antes would become allies of the Romans and defend their border from the Huns (to which the Antes gladly agreed and added the condition of returning "Chilbudius" to his high rank).

He revealed everything, and that everything is what has been written down by Procopius: that he was a Latin-speaking Antean who most-likely spent enough time with the real Chilbudius.

Again with the most-likely. I already translated to you what Procopius has written on the matter. If you want to add more things to that, you're free to write a historical novel. I'll be sure to read it with interest (it's a fruitful enough topic).

Though, for your reference, I'll also translate the part which leads into the whole "Fake-Chilbudius" plan (to which I had hinted a bit in one of my posts above): (starting in the same link) "At that time the Antes invaded Thrace, robbed and enslaved many of the local Romans, captured them and took them to their homes. Fate destined for one of these captives to fall into the hands of a philanthropic and good master. However, he himself [the Roman slave] was very insidious and capable of deceiving anyone nearby. As he wanted to return to the Roman land and had no chance to do so, he thought of the following. He appeared before his master, praised him for his good nature and assured him that due to this he would receive many blessings from God and that he himself wouldn't show himself not a bit ungrateful towards his most benevolent master, if the latter would wish to listen to his good advices, in which case he would soon be in possession of a lot of money. Among the Slavs [Sloveni/Sklavinoi] was located Chilbudius, a Roman general of old and currently a slave, without the barbarians knowing who he really is. Thus, if he would like to pay a ransom for Chilbudius and take him to the lands of the Romans, he would probably be honoured by the emperor with a great glory and vast wealth. With these words the Roman immediately convinced his master and together they went to the Slavs [Sloveni/Sklavinoi], as these barbarians had already made peace and were mixing with each other without fear. Then they paid a lot of money to the master of Chilbudius, bought him off and immediately left off with him. When they arrived to their places, the buyer asked him whether he's the Roman general Chilbudius. And that one [P-C] found it necessary to lay out his true predicament and to tell everything truthfully in turn; namely that he himself is an Antean by kin, that he fought alongside his clan-mates against the Slavs [Sloveni/Sklavinoi], which were then their enemies, that he was captured by one of their adversaries and now, after he had arrived on his father's soil, he himself had become again a free man according to law. Of course, the one who paid gold for him, lost his wits out of anger, as such a great hope now seemed spoiled. However, the Roman wanted to console him and hide the truth, so as to remove any hindrance for his own return to his native land. So he kept claiming that precisely this man is Chilbudius himself and that due to him being amongst the barbarians, was afraid and didn't want to reveal the whole truth. But if he would find himself in the land of the Romans, he would not only not hide the truth any more, but would, of course, be proud with that name. By the way, all this was initially being done in secret of the other barbarians. And when the rumour spread out and reached everyone, almost all Anteans gathered on this occasion and decided that this is a common work, and they thought they'd receive great rewards, as they now had in their hands the Roman general Chilbudius. These people - Slavs [Sloveni/Sklavinoi] and Antes - aren't ruled by one person, but from old times live democratically... (etc)" Then follows a description of the Slavs and their way of life, how they forced that man to admit before them that he's Chilbudius or they'd punish him otherwise, how Justinian's envoys offered them the town of Touris and the assistance of the Romans, including financial one, in exchange for an alliance and stopping the Huns who would try to attack the Roman empire, how the Anteans agreed and demanded the restoration of the rank of their Chilbudius, who had now also became inspired by this prospect and how when he was sent to Byzantion (btw, just for clarification - Byzantion isn't the empire, which we now call Byzantium, but the city of Constantinople], he was captured on the way by Narses and revealed as impostor.

His true age must have been discovered after interrogation. For the first Romans who have seen him his story was plausible. Only Narses didn't buy it.

The first Roman, who is reported to have seen him, is Narses himself. The rest is, yet again, your speculation (of a story which itself has speculation as its centre-point). It's possible that Justinian's envoys might have seen him, but it's also possible that they didn't (if he still refused to play the role of Chilbudius), so Narses is the first and only Roman we know of, who's talked with him (aside from the Roman captive, of course).

But what if Justinian would have believed him and he was send again to command some troops a the Danubian border?!

Then we'd have yet another barbarian general leading troops for the Romans. The P-C had reportedly shown himself brave enough in the service of his Slavic/Slovenic master, but how would he be able to lead troops is a different matter, especially in case the Roman-Antean alliance would be broken. Of course, it's also possible, as the Roman captive claimed, that this was indeed the real Chilbudius and Narses simply wanted to take him out of the picture. Everything's possible, though that is, again, pure speculation, this time on my behalf.

The proto-Bulgarians as defined by that study means Volga Bulgars. Those would be the conquerors of the population already living in Bulgaria at the time of their arrival.

Actually, if I'm thinking about the same study (the mtDNA one), they're certainly Danubian Bulgars, not Volga Bulgars (the samples were taken from: Devnya, Varna region and Nozharevo, Silistra region (VIII-IXc.), the monastery of Mostich in Veliki Preslav (Xc.) and Tuhovishte, Chech region, Western Rhodopes (Xc.)). I'm not even sure if there are any researched Bulgar necropolises in Volga Bulgaria (modern Russian republics of Tatarstan and Chuvashia) and I'm pretty sure they haven't made any genetic tests on them so far. In any case, the interpretations of those mtDNA results were indeed also quite flawed, as they were immediately used to describe the general origin of the Bulgars, without waiting for the Y-DNA results, which would logically be more indicative of a conquering population.


Edit: Btw, rather unrelated, but since we're on a DNA topic and sumskilz is here - in a very interesting BG Wiki article (I recommend it to Dromy - it seems very anti-patridiotic, for now, so it should be a good-enough read) about the researches on Bulgarian genetics, I noticed a reference to a new study from 2016, which supposedly shows that most Cromagnons had disappeared during the last glacial maximum about 12 000 years ago and that Europe was practically settled anew. Is that correct?

[sumskilz]

Edit: Btw, rather unrelated, but since we're on a DNA topic and sumskilz is here - in a very interesting BG Wiki article (I recommend it to Dromy - it seems very anti-patridiotic, for now, so it should be a good-enough read) about the researches on Bulgarian genetics, I noticed a reference to a new study from 2016, which supposedly shows that most Cromagnons had disappeared during the last glacial maximum about 12 000 years ago and that Europe was practically settled anew. Is that correct?

Close, the way it looks is that there was a severe bottleneck in the Cro-Magnon population and only a subset of the mtDNA lineages survived, and then around 14,500 years ago, the survivors are completely replaced by another population who were the ancestors of the Mesolithic hunter gathers. Two of the Cro-Magnon haplogroups are closer to Southeast Asians than to modern Europeans.

This pretty much sums up all the findings in one image:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[mircea]

Ohhh, joy…..this little „gem” of non-sense survived and diverged widely, although the last part with Cro-Magnon was very interesting, so first thing + rep sumskilz

I did. The claims made are substantial enough to take into consideration. Read the OP again my poor short sighted friend.

The only thing you have managed to prove is that you have a lot insolence and maybe you are not aware, but you opened this thread, and as the burden of proofs lays with the claimant, cut the crap and start presenting the academic sources substantiating your fantasies….

Lack of primal conditions
It is said the romanian ethnogenesis couldn't have happened in a mere timespan of 164 years during roman occupation of Dacia.

Who are they? Quote the exact phrases from at least one (neutral) academic source

That this isn't sufficient time for a new language and ethnicity to be born, as specially when other places of the empire were conquered and colonized for a far greater time length than Dacia, and still did not adopt the latin language.

Quote the exact phrases from at least one (neutral) academic source.
What is the minimum „sufficient time for a new language and ethnicity to be born”?

Adding this to the fact that on the territory of Roman Dacia, during the occupation, there have been an important number of dacian revolts and raids of the remaining free dacians from the carpathian basin, which would make the romanization and latinization process almost impossible.

And the academic sources saying this?

[QUOTE=The Glorious Moldovan;14827172]

Thus, it's logical to assume that the only geographical and political place, stable and economically-politically enough to create a new ethnicity, is the south of the Danube.

Please quote the academic sources which say that ethnicities may form only a in a “geographical and political place, stable and economically-politically”

which could suggest that romanians made their way northwards to present day Romania gradually, caused by the migration of the slavs in the balkans that dispersed them (…) and in large enough numbers, so they could occupy large chunks of territories in the carpathian-danubian basin later in medieval times.

Which are the sources mentioning the migration of Romanians “in large enough numbers, so they could occupy large chunks of territories in the carpathian-danubian basin later in medieval times.”?
What was the cause why (supposedly) Romanians deserted their Balkanic homeland?
Where are the archaeological evidences showing the desertion of Romanian homeland in Balkans and their intrusion North of Danube?

Similarities with albanian
The only 160 dacian words left in the romanian vocabulary for example, have 90 words which are also found in the albanian language having some common archaic root

In what period Dacian influence affected Romanian language?
In what period Dacian influence affected Albanian language?

First explain why you think creolization worked in the romanization process only for dacians but not for the rest of the empire's cultures as well.

Creolization/Romanization did not worked just for Dacians, it worked at an even larger scale in Gallia, Hispania and for a time in Britannia, Northern Balkans or Roman Africa (today Algeria, Tunisia). Roman Dacia was not a miracle, but just a simple example showing the validity of Romanization/ Creolization. And enough with this, the discussion about Romanization/ Creolization in Roman Empire (including Dacia) will be the subject of a thread, now we are discussing the fabled blitz of ubermensch Romanians from Balkans toward Romania and then how they conquered the moon

Even if i asked you to present the same thing you couldn't, because there were no elaborate ethnic censuses back then. So don't be silly. There are only historical accounts, some accurate some not, about the populations of the two sides of the Danube, the majority of which place the "vlachs" southwards.

So, practically, because of severely sparse written records, we cannot conclude that Romanians’ ancestors did not lived there.
Written records continue mentioning Balkan Vlachs during the entire Middle Ages and later during Modern Age and even nowadays?
Do this written records mention the massive migration of the Balkan Vlachs to the territories North of Danube?

Moreso when there's no gradual mention of the supposed albanian formation in roman pannonia, it's highly unlikely the albanians are descendents of any carpi.

As you are so well informed about the origin of Albanians you’ll not have any difficulty in responding to just a few simple questions:
From what ancient people are Albanians descending?
Were took place the enthogenesis of Albanians?
What populations played a major role in Albanian enthogenesis?

Romanian history books actually use the term "Romanian-Bulgarian Tsarsdom" for the first bulgarian empire

Romanian history text books use the term Vlacho-Bulgarian state of Tsardom since at least late 1990s. So, stop presenting half-truths