Re: That old Ariovistus scenario.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "neckfil" <neckfil@...> wrote:

>
>
> The Sarmatians are an intriguing ethnicity. The Romans are known to
> hire, as mercenaries, nomadic skilful fighters from the east,
> sometime around 0 AD.

If the search function had functioned properly, I could have asked you to search 'vang', 'wang', 'vakh' in the archives for an old discussion of the possible eastern provenance of the Vangiones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vangiones
But it doesn't. I would like to use the opportunity to once again draw the attention of the moderators to the possiblity of getting this fixed.

> These people then settled between Hungary and
> Poland, with military ties to the Roman Empire. The name pop ups in
> England, where the Romans used the Sarmatians to fight Gallic
> tribes. Before that, the Romans had been exploring northern coast
> of the black sea, where they stumbled upon nomadic people, fought
> against them, and, being impressed by their fighting skills,
> brought them to Europe. With time, the Sarmatians, who thanks to
> having been in alliance with the Romans, reinforced their new
> country in Eastern Europe, gained a good geopolitical knowledge;
> much better than that of surrounding them tribes, and created an
> independent mostly military nation. Meantime, the alliance with the
> empire had been broken. Now, there is no convincing evidence of the
> language spoken in this new kingdom, but someone was responsible
> for spreading Slavic languages across EE, and, for me, the
> Sarmatians are a good candidate, the more so that there is no other
> in view.
>

More likely they established some symbiotic relationship with the Slavs, permitting the Slavs to move into the lands the Sarmatians had occupied.


Torsten