Re: Side issue: the Yastorf Gubin group

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 56739
Date: 2008-04-05

--- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

. . .
>
> "It would probably also be wrong to take
> overpopulation in the central
> European area as explanation for these events. In
> the course of the
> last pre-Christian century a number of landscapes in
> central Europe
> lost almost their entire population, thus the area
> between the mouths
> of the Weser and Elbe, the Altmark [around Stendal],
> southern Mark
> Brandenburg, the Lausitz and Lower Silesia 82;
> overpopulation can not
> have been the reason for that. Also exhaustion of
> the fields cannot
> have been the case at least in those cases where
> settled areas in the
> neighborhood, comparable wrt their character and
> quality, kept their
> population constant. Also the label Wanderlust is
> probably imprecise.
> Many population groups only took to wandering due to
> calamity. Their
> expressed wish for areas to settle, again and again
> remarked on by the
> Romans, sounds genuine, their permanence in newly
> won areas of
> settlement testifies against any inborn impulse to
> wander. Finally
> also a "Drang nach Süden" have played an although
> minor role. While
> namely on the Rhine Suebian and Lugian groups
> appear, while central
> Germany becomes riddled with Lugian Settlers, while
> in Northeast
> Bohemia and even in Eastern Romania groups from the
> North settle and
> while Marbod transfers his Marcomanni to Bohemia,
> begins slowly in
> Scandinavia a settling of the country, progressing
> from the South
> towards the North, and from the coast to the
> interior 83.
>
>
Wouldn't the presence of the Roman Empire be an
obvious magnet --trading and raiding possibilities,
the chance to be intermediaries between the city
slickers and the exotic goods they desire such as
amber, furs, slaves, etc,?
Something similar happened in Mesoamerica where time
and time again groups moved south to centers of
civilization --from Teotlalli (the desert) to Anahuac,
from Campeche to Guatemala and Yucatan
from Chiapas to El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guanacaste


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