> That is interesting, but what on earth can be the relevance of a text
> on that subject written eighty years ago? Nobody reads that stuff any
> more except for historical reasons.
Exactly, for historical reasons. (OTOH, not everything which is old is
100% old-fashioned, outdated, ie, discardable stuff.)
> Yes, and both for the same reason: agriculture cannot be practiced in
> such regions (for various reasons),
Even if it can, for various reasons animal breeding can be more
feasible for certain groups of people (certain cultures). Besides,
nomad people also always had some degrees of knowledge in agriculture
(their vocabulary illustrates this; e.g. the Hungarian vocabulary shows
that Hungarians must've known some agriculture when they moved from the
Russian-Ukrainian plains to Slovacia, Pannonia and Northern Serbia;
some terms are even of Turkic origin, e.g. cereals, if I remember
correctly, such as <búza>['bu:zO] and <árpa> ['a:rpO]).
> The consequence is that society has to be organized in such a way
> to make possible the movements of the sheep, because otherwise you're
> dead. A big difference between mountains and the steppe is that the
> latter offers better possibilities for long-range communication, so
> that suitably talented and ruthless individuals can put together
> enormous empires.
I by and large agree. The only thing that seems to bother me a li'l bit
is the stubborn insistence on the nexus Vlachs-sheep, whereas anywhere
else nomadism is okay with cattle and horses as well.
(Again: in the Alps region the "Almauftrieb" of cattle is up to such
high levels for which there is no comparation in the Carpathians (and I
guess neither in the Yugo+Albanian+Bulgarian+Greek mountains.)
Moreover, the kind of Germanhood that is put on display as folklore and
show way into the Midwest plains of America (e.g. Wisconsin) is that of
the Alps Area (Bavarian, Austrian, Alemanian - the latter both of
Germany and Switzerland). However, by and large, the general bias (or
knowledge) is of Germans as a people rather of plains (die Heide) and
hillocks, and not of mountains. Methinks something similar applies to
the area between France and Spain or to the Apenin range. So, in this
respect/context, the image of Vlachs isolated in the mountains is quite
relative (actually, in order to get the adequate degree of isolation
and virtually unbothered periphery, early medieval Vlachs didn't need
the highest mountains: regions as high as about 1000m were enough. And
1000m is practically... nothing - compared, say, with the Caucasus,
where many and various Iranid and Turkic tribes have stood for good, up
to day, despite the fact that waves of their ancestors had preferred
eurasian plains; in both cases those populations' occupation has
remained animal breeding economy).
> I agree, but note the word "constrained". And I'm sure I would make a
> pretty lousy cowboy.
Of course: it was the invasions of other (semi-)nomads. But there is
another aspect: everything that the invaders and new ruling class
(tribes) needed and didn't produce/procure themselves (out of lack of
time/reluctance/lack of knowledge) it was procured from the
autochtonous rests of populations that were more or less integrated
into the kaganates' loose systems. (I ad-hoc remember the parts of the
account by the Greek diplomat and chronicler who describes his journey
to Atilla's court - which must've been either in the Tissa plains or in
what's today's South-Western plains of RO (roughly in the Banat region
or perhaps in Oltenia). Those who served them with food and mead and
"services" seem to have been non-Hunic, perhaps local, people.)
> Because it has rarely given good profits.
Yes, if compared with later times (not to mention making comparisons
with our, UE-subsidized farming!).
> The constant movement of people from the mountains
> into the valleys is as eloquent as anything.
This also looks different if one includes in this... equation a
component of tremendous importance: the custom of transhumance
("Almauf- & Almabtrieb"). What I myself find interesting in that T.
Peiskers chapter referring in the 1920s to the Turanic impact in the
European and Middle East (as well as Chinese) history is that he tries
to explain that even within the Turkic-Mongolian movements (under
pressures caused by climatic changes; and let's note in this respect
the most recent speculation that a Krakatau erruption in the 6th
century may in the end have been the primordial cause for the entire
Asian waves of people that moved in such a short time to the West - as
well as for the extinction of the Maya culture), so, that even within
the TurMon movements the transhumance played an enormous role: during
warm periods as well as in summer, the mounted hordes "visited" regions
located in the North (hence, the bitribal Magyars were ripped from the
bulk of their Ugrian brethren who have remained in what's now called
Komi or farther South in what's today's Mordovia and Ba$kortostan). In
colder periods vice-versa, towards the southern areas of Asia (e.g. for
millennia in collision with PIE populations of the Iranid branch; and
indeed: look even today at the ethnic "carpet" of the Caucasus, Iran,
Afghanistan, Tadjikistan).
I wouldn't neglect the "Turanic" impact during the migrations of
peoples; all those populations were some time absorbed by the
autochtonous ones (ie, they adopted the european languages and customs.
Only Hungarian survived as a distinct linguistic entity; although even
this entity can be seen as a merely... displaced one: taken almost
against its will from its Fino-Ugric "Urheimat" and put in Ukraine and
then chased by the Petchenegs to their today's Heimat (all the while
under the leadership of other inheritors of the... "Scythians", namely
Turks who were dissidents in Itil, the capital of the Khazar kagan).
(In the new Heimat they encountered and defeated chiefly "cousins",
local Turkic-Iranic chieftains who ruled over preponderent Slavic
populations. For this reason, I wouldn't be shocked by the fact that
all over Hungary and Romania Slavic topo-/hydronymy is so strong; but
in some cases one can assume a Slavic adaption of earlier satem terms,
such as in the case of the river Cherna that parts Banat and Oltenia in
SW Romania. Weren't for Ptolemy's Tsierna and Dierna from other
sources, everybody would've been sure that the hydronym is some
pan-Slavic [c^erna] "the black (river)".)
> I've heard TV interviews with Hercegovinian pastoralists. They hated
> it.
It depends on mentalities, that... change. But still today, in the era
of UE-subsidised farming, there are such and such. So, there are owners
of big flocks of sheep earning much more money as entrepreneurs of this
kind (plus their families), in a (for them) pleasant way than their
kinship working in factories or in agricultures in neighboring areas.
(And we should remember that without pastoralism there wouldn't have
been the pre-industrial "revolution" of the cloth industry in England.
:-).
> I've read the first volume of Milovan Djilas's memoires ("Land without
> justice",
> beautiful book). His family was by no means poor, they ate from
> plates and were in a sense even prominent, but they were always
> hungry all the same. Of course these are twentieth-century reactions.
Similar situations could be encountered in central and W-Europe as well
in
the 1st half of the 20th century. Afer all, the western european
countries
continued in this period to contribute with emigrants who settled down
in
N-Amer, Australia and S-Amer. The exodus didn't stop with WW1 and wasn't
limited to Eastern Europe (which was always poorer). One of the reasons
was
exactly that hard rural and/or pastoral life... (In E-Eur it is in vast
areas
almost the same - now in the aftermath of the collapse of that weird
experiment called communism (collectivistic agriculture &c.).)
> (But it's the reverse: in most mountains breeding sheep is the only
> option.)
Yeah, but die Fleckvieh-/Milchkuhwirtschaft (to use some German
specialized terminology) in the Alpine countries is as developed as in
any Heide-region from Holland's West coast way into Denmark and
Pommerania. That in spite of the high altitudes. (I live only 60 km
North
of the 1st ranges of these mountains.) The whole area is a problem of...
European magnitude within the billions that Bruxelles doles out in order
to subsidize this kind of farming, which, simply put, means
overproduction.
(More and more, subsidizing will be reduced, coz otherwise the new
candidates in the East won't have any chance.)
> You shouldn't think for a moment that anybody takes that stuff
> seriously.
I know. But this aspect is also important: average "consumers" don't
have real possibilities to chaff what's good/bad; this is only the
privilege of a tiny social stratum - that of the professionals,
scholars.
That's the problem.
> Hungarian is a regular member of the Uralic family of
> languages and its past is as well understood as can be expected given
> the circumstances.
Yes, but if Sumerians had something in common with the Altaic
branch, then automatically, part of the Hungarian heritage must
have something in common too. :^)
> I suspect that he would not allow himself to do that if he were a
> Romanian or Albanian. Because my impression of Romanian and Albanian
> historical linguistics is that not only the amateurs but also the
> most knowledgeable professionals have been hijacked by national myths
> that cannot be substantiated by regular means and hence have to be
> sustained by hook or by crook.
That's typical of the whole area - of course, today to a lesser extent
than 60-80 or 120 years ago. Western Europe didn't stay on a much
better position. (I happen to live in the "Hauptstadt der Bewegung",
so I know what I'm talking about. :))
> Put differently: in the case of Albanian and Romanian it is my
> impression that even the most serious scholars are put in a position
> comparable with that of the cranks who write Hungarian-Sumerian
> comparative dictionaries.
With the difference that the former do have some traces of substance
in their fancy concoctions. Whereas the latter are even able to make
"easy" adaptions so that even Japanese words fit Hungarian; in some
NGs I, a few years ago, read postings by some afficionados who
explained Nippon (Nihon) as being perfectly translatable in Hungarian
as <naphon> "Sun's home". (At the same time, there are cranks able
to "demonstrate" that Hungarian is a perfect... Scythian. The most
recent thing I discovered in some web pages belong to a Hungarian
who "demonstrates" that the Hungarian Szeklers are... Dacians and
various Dacian anthroponyms and toponyms are Hungarian and that
even the totemic symbol of the Dacians, the wolf-head-dragon-body
banner is Hungarian. The providence must've been then that led me
to find in the web that Budapest's flag is identical with the Romanian
and Moldavian one. Only the position of the colours is that of...
Mecklenburg. :-))
IMHO, all these start to become a problem only when members of
the acknowledged scientific community entertain links to the...
lunatic fringe and especially when the political establishment needs
unscientific stuff and cultivates it for today's purposes.
> That was normal. Andrej Amalrik was removed from the university for
> writing some quite innocuous stuff about the Scandinavian presence.
But it's exactly the situation when the polit class constrains hist.
scholars to deliver distorted or fake statements. (In this case, the
Scandinavian, i.e. Germanic, inception of the statehood of the
East Slavs had to be obscured, out of nationalist impulses.)
> And there was much else. E.g. you weren't allowed to say or think
> that the Igor tale is an eignteenth-century forgery (which, by the
> way, it isn't).
Neither I was told in school in Romania that Igor was in fact some
Ingwar from Scandza, and . (BTW, in the 19th c., there were German
scholars who thought the name of the Dacian king Decebalus
would sound today, according to all the sound change stuff, like
this: Dietwald. :^))
> But all that has changed and nowadays anything can be published.
For how long? I'm a pessimistic one. :-)
> Willem
g