Re: [tied] The "lost" Slavic homeland

ehlsmith wrote:

>
> ***NS-From the context I suspect that it may be a case of
> misinterpreting "whence" to mean "to which" rather than "from which",
> but I guess Alex may clarify this.

I guess I explained it, if still questions, please feel free to ask.

> ***NS- For awhile it might not even mean permanent change of
> residence by individuals but only temporary.
>
> If the Romanian speakers were shepherds, as I've been led to believe
> many were, they may have had a regular routine of herding their
> flocks north during the summer and back south during the winter.

and these routes are wellknown and unchanged for as far as we can record
these routes.

> Based on experiences observed in other pastoral peoples such seasonal
> moves may have been both quite extensive and quite regular. As the
> shepherds became familiar with their northern haunts, and if
> circumstances were right, some may have even been able to gather
> enough fodder and secure shelter, and decide to save themselves a
> trip one year, and stay through the winter. At first it may not have
> been a permanent move; perhaps an individual group only intended to
> do it for a year or two, and hope to move back home with extra-
> fattened herds at the end. But by the time they left others may have
> been ready to take their place. Thus, it could lead to more or less
> permanent settlements, even though the individual residents at any
> one time were short-termers. People in the settlements south of the
> Danube would be familiar with the northern settlements, probably know
> some friends or kin who were staying at one. Gradually, over several
> generations, more and more settlers became more rooted to the
> northern settlements, and fewer returned south.

It is a very wise idea and it should work if we won't have the
practicaly experience of what happen when some groups goes too far away
from their akins. The valahians who expanded in Polen, Czech, Slovakei,
Ukraine, all became assimilated. In some generation they have been
disspaiered, lettign traces in the languages where tehy have been,
letting traces in the way to bread the sheeps. But they could not
assimilate the sedentar Slavic population found there. They became
assimilate by Slavs.

>
> I don't know how close to reality this hypothesis really was, but I
> believe it very plausible, and it clearly demonstrates that a simple
> "stay" or "migrate" scenario is not the only option to consider.

Just a practical question here. Do you know something about sheeps? I
advice not to read in a book but to ask a shepherd how he will get his
sheeps over a fluvium as Danube:-) I will tell you that in the XVI-XVIII
century the foreigns travelers have been amased in Balcan seeing the
aromanians (not dacoromanians) coming down from the mountains with their
herds of over 1000 horses and 50.000 sheeps. And that was just the
property of a "falce" ( not a tribe, but a bigger family).

Now, why I specified aromanians? Because the routes took in sommer and
winter are well known. I am not aware of any transhumation of aromanians
north of Danube and back in South. The routes are other way. The
aromanians allways went down from mountain just South of Danube, in
Thrace, but never in Dacia. As for North, the sheeps have been driven
from mountains of dacian Charpatian to the valley of Thies (this was a
big problem in the time of Dacians, this was the reason for making the
war against jazyges and driving them out in 103/104 AC) . On the another
part of Carpathians, the sheeps are driving down to dobrudcha's and
wallachian's plains.This have been traditionaly routes and it is very
hard to change them but, not imposible. A theoreticaly migration on
this basis is not excluded even if very improbable.

Alex