Re: Fw: Farzoi's chief racket and his northern boys.

--- On Thu, 9/10/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> The Veneti of France were Celtic-speaking,

You don't know that.

****GK: Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_(Gaul)
Which is in line with Caesar's account.****

> Tacitus' Venedi were Proto-Slavs in that they were an important
> component of emerging Slavdom (and here Shchukin's thesis is an
> excellent contribution) .

Ref.?

****GK: His excellent essay on Slavic origins I've already referred to a number of times. Find it in the archives.****

> The fact remains that it is after the disintegration of the
> Zarubinian culture in the 50's CE and the dispersion of its
> carriers "from the Bastarnians to the Finns" (proven
> archaeologically beyond all doubt) that Slavdom arose in its first
> historical culture, the Kyivan culture, which, in Tacitus' time,
> was in statu nascendi (50-200CE).* ****

Which would be why he didn't mention it.

****GK: He doesn't mention much re east of the Vistula
anyway****

> > and there's nothing in the text that implies that they trade in
> > Slaves.
> >
> > GK: In context it's pretty certain. The practice antedated them
>
> Antedated who?
>
> GK: Pliny's Tacitus' and Ptolemy's Venedi
>
> > and persisted into the middle ages (cf. the accounts of Arabic
> > geographers about the raiding Scandinavian Rus').
>
> The Scandinavians were slave trades, and therefore the Veneti a
> thousand years earlier were too?
>
> ****GK: Not "therefore", just "were".*****

You had no independent evidence the Veneti, nor for that matter the Slavs were slave traders, so if it's not 'therefore', why bring it up at all?

****GK: I've just given it to you. Tacitus doesn't say that the Sarmatians were slave traders, but Strabo does, clearly, so that's established. What Tacitus says is that the Venedi (the proto-Slavs) "multum ex moribus traxerunt" i.e. behaved as the Sarmatians (which is the only reason he wondered whether they ought to be classified as Sarmatians). And he exemplifies this "behaviour" thus:"nam quidquid inter Peucinos Fennosque silvarum ac montium erigitur latrociniis pererrant." The Venedi are raiders, just as the Sarmatians are raiders.****

> > Svyatoslav asserted as much in his pre-Bulgarian campaign speech
> > of 969 as recorded in "The tale of bygone years"
>
> How is that relevant to what the Veneti did 800 years earlier?
>
> GK: Slave raiding was a continuous occupation here from
> Scythian times onwards, up to Svyatoslav and beyond.
>
> > (read it)
>
> Got it.
>
>
> GK: good.
>
> > At Tacitus' time they would have been on their last legs, those
> > former traders on the Amber Road being squeezed out from east and
> > west, reduced to living by brigandage.
> >
> > GK: I don't agree with your Venetic theories.
>
> Nor with Wikipedia's nor with Gol/a,b's.
>
> > Tacitus' text considers the Venedi an important population (this
> > is confirmed in Jordanes when he talks about Hermanaric)

He doesn't. He considers them to be brigands.

****GK: For Tacitus, the Venedi are a "natio", like the Bastarnae. And his characterization of them as "brigands" is a "national" characteristic, borrowed by them, he surmises, from the Sarmatians. So the Sarmatians were "brigands". They both raided for slaves, if we apply Strabo's info. And for Jordanes, the Venedi were a great multitude in Hermanaric's time (he twice makes a point of their numbers), some two and a half centuries after Tacitus.****

> >
> How is this relevant?
>
> GK: It indicates that the 1rst c. Venedi raiders were hardly
> on their last legs. And Tacitus indicates their raiding
> proclivities were in imitation of the Sarmatians.

> BTW the Late Zarubinians were joined in their raids by Germanic
> elements from Przeworsk and Baltic elements from the Stroked
> Ceramic culture of Belarus and the Yuchnov culture of northeastern
> Ukraine(this too is archaeologically proved). The former were also
> "Farzoi's boys" (at least their eastern elements), while the
> Strokers came in because of pressure against them by the Balts
> further West. The Venedi predominated at the leadership level, but
> there were more Balts (or Baltoslavs acc. to some incl. Shchukin)
> which explains the emergence of Slavic as the lingua franca rather
> than any other. In the time of Ptolemy this mixed group was
> recorded as the "Stavani" (cf. Trubachev's interesting analysis of
> this as the Iranic term "glorious ones". But debate on this
> continues. A recent Polish scholar has suggested that "Slav" is a
> religious concept ("worshippers of...") The Slavic term for "God"
> is not the same as the Baltic (which retains the old IE word (as
> does Latin etc.) We know that "Bagha" was not a prime Scythian
> deity. Perhaps it was that of Farzoi and the Venedi got their "Bog"
> from his group. God as the "rich one". "Rich in slaves"....But this
> is purely speculative. ****

So they were 'Pharzoios' boys', but Pharzoios' people, the Sarmatians were never part of this mixed crowd?

****GK: The legend about ispolins and other things (stray finds) certainly suggests that Sarmatians participated in these northern slave hunts. But the only group more closely associated with the Late Zarubinians as the Kyivan culture was emerging were the Aukhata Scythians who occupied the area between Ros' and Stuhna south of Kyiv, and had intimate economic dealings with the Zarubinians to their north and to those who had been relocated to their southwest in the middle Bog (the old Hypanis) basin. The Aukhata archaeology persists into the 2nd century (it includes that bi-turned trident I mentioned, n. 123). One of the questions which has not been answered is whether they fused with other components into the Kyivan culture (which occupied their area when the Goths arrived) or whether they left. I'll try to see if there is any evidence available. I don't have (as yet) Yatsenko chief work: which would state what object that bi/trident was found on. He
dates the gakk as of 150-250, which is later than what other archaeologists give for the end of the Aukhata culture of the Ros' river basin. If the object is clearly "Kyivan culture" then this would back up Aukhata assimilation into Slavdom.****

Torsten