It is common knowledge that much of the place names in eastern Germany are of Slavic origin.  In general, such names are characterized by endings such as -in (e.g., Berlin), -en (e.g., Dresden, Bremen), -an (Doberan), –ow (e.g., Guestrow) or -itz (e.g., Chemnitz). [1]  Here is a map of northeastern Germany:

So even in this small area we have: Berkenthin, Dobbertin, Kroepelin, Tessin, Penzlin, Murchin, Rambin, Warin, Dahmen, Demen, Gnoien, Goeren, Bad Doberan, Lassan, Buetzow, Ducherow, Krakow (!) am See, Neubukow, Rastow, Marlow, Malchow, Wustrow, Sassnitz, Zinnowitz, Crivitz, Ribnitz, etc.

And, of course, there are others of different types, e.g., Jatznick, Woldegk, Blowatz, Velgast or, in the south, Leipzig or Cottbus, etc.

None of this is surprising given the Slavic presence in those parts since, at least, the middle ages.

Since we were talking about Paphlagonia the prior time, let’s move to the opposite side of Europe now and ask a question.  This is the question.  Let’s say there were Slavic settlements in France and let’s say their endings would have been the same as the above types in Germany, i.e., -in, -en (call these group 1), -ow (call these group 2) and -itz (group 3), what would they look like in French?

We, of course, can’t be sure but we can guess.  Here are our guesses and you can tell us, of course, that we are way off.  We think the suffixes are likely to be the following: -in, -en  or -an as the first group; –off or -iff as the second group; and -ic or -ec corresponding to the third group.  Here is a map of a portion of France, specifically a part of Bretagne west of Vannes:

Here are some group 1s: Primelin, Plomelin, Goulien, Esquibien,  Plovan, Pluguffan;

Group 2: Plogoff;

Group 3: Plouhinec, Landudec, Plogonnec, Pouldreuzic;

And what of Douarnenez, Plozevet, Pouldergat, Guengat, Treogat (-gast?).  (Throwing in -on, you also get Gourlizon and Mahalon.  Adding in -oc, you get Tremeoc).

This pattern continues throughout Bretagne, particularly in its southern and southeastern portion (though not exclusively).  E.g., Meslin, Treffrin, Naizin, Credin, Quintin, Gourin, Penestin, Plerin, Goudelin, Lesneven, Pleven, Pleslin, Goven, Seglien, Plaudren, Pledran, Lehon, Guiscriff, Quistinic, Pourdic, Pornic, Binic, Briec, Ploubazlanec, Plouezec, Tredarzec, Landrevarzec, Locquirec, Severac, Plouagat, Pleumergat, Langast, Plouguenast. We also get other places that have vaguely Slavic names. E.g., Bubry, Bieuzy, Plesse, Plesidy, Plouisy, Plouha.  And near the town of Fougerges we have Vendel.  Much further south we have a few others.

Some of these suffixes are, occasionally, found outside of Bretagne (e.g, Hourtin) and there are many other names in Bretagne.  We must also point out that many of the above names ought to have clear French or Celtic etymologies.  So, of course, we are not suggesting that Bretagne is some sort of lost Slavic colony…

Though you will notice the Namnetes (Nemcy?) nearby.  And, of course, there are the Ossismi – they are, apparently, also known as Ostimioi – a name meaning “the last” – see, ost, last?  Of course, that name is actually closer to, e.g., the Polish ostatni (the last).   We could not resist…

Nevertheless, given the mention of the Venethi there during Ceasar’s times (after whom the town of Vannes is named) we must point out that nowhere else in Europe do we find so many Slavic-like (let’s call them that) names outside of areas that had previously been clearly settled by Slavs (i.e., Slavic countries and portions of Germany and Austria).  We must also remember that it has been two thousand years since the days of Ceasar…

When the Venethi with their neighbors fought the Romans they were referred to as Gauls.  What was that rebel leader’s name again?  Oh  yes, Viridovix say the learned books – Viridovix of the Venelli.

Except, funny, that the below says Viridovic…  maybe it’s just the particular case …or maybe it’s his Croatian brother…

“Multae res ad hoc consilium Gallos hortabantur: superiorum dierum Sabini cunctatio, perfugae confirmatio, inopia cibariorum, cui rei paum diligenter ab iis erat provisum, spes Venetici belli, et quod fere libenter. homines id quod volunt credunt. His rebus adducti non prius Viridovicem reliquosque duces ex concilio dimittunt quam ab iis sit concessum arma uti capiant et ad castra contendant. Qua re concessa laeti, ut explorata victoria, sarmentis virgultisque collectis, quibus fossas Romanorum compleant, ad castra pergunt.”

(Ceasar, About the Gallic War, Book 3).

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[1]  Other Slavic suffixes are also present in Germany though less commonly, e.g., -ast or -ost (e.g., Velgast).  And, of course, there are other Slavic places that do not contain any such suffix (e.g., Leipzig, Luebeck, Rostock).

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There are lots of Zagoras (literally “beyond the mountain”).

Some are in Poland.

Others in Croatia.

Yet others in Bulgaria (e.g., Stara Zagora).

There is one in Greece, where Slavs likely reached.

(Strangely, there is even one in Morocco (there it is likely a Berber name, see, e.g. Sahara although stories of a Moroccan Nekur/Nukur/Nakur/Nekor where the royal guard was composed of Slavs (though perhaps just slaves?) have come up in the past and it is told that after a rebellion they set up their own “village of the Slavs” though some argue it was just a “village of the slaves”).

However, what is interesting is that a Zagora has been in at least four different sources mentioned in Paphlagonia – a place where lived yet another tribe of the Venethi.  One of them is Arrian  of Nicomedia (c. AD c. 86 – c. 160) (Zagora).  The other Marcian of Heraclea (4th century) (Zagoron, p 73).  Ptolemy has his own version (Zagorum in Galatia).  Finally, the Peutinger Map shows a Zacoria.  There is also a local river, Zalecus mentioned in some of these sources (though as Halega in the Peutinger Map).  Zagora is likely the later Gazuron or Calippi.

Here is a nineteenth century version/imagining on a map by the geographer Heinrich Kiepert:

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Jews in Spain

Hasdai bin Shaprut was a vezir and maior domo to a local caliph Abd ar-Rahman in Cordoba.  The legends of his wisdom and learning are, well, legendary.  He was instrumental in curing the Christian King Sancho and helping him win back his crown (in exchange for a few border castles that went to the caliph).  He was involved in receiving embassies of Constantine Porphirogenetus (helping translate a tome of Dioskyrides) and Otto I, at that time not yet emperor (helping the ambassadors not insult the caliph).

Lastly, and in keeping with our theme here, we note that it was during Hasdai’s time in office that the famous four rabbis on the way from Bari to Sebast got themselves captured (or really the ship they traveled on was captured)  by admiral Romahis (aka Damahas) with the result that they got sold off in different ports – one, Moses, being sold in Cordoba.  It is likely that Hasdai was then Moses’ protector and sponsor.

All of which is irrelevant for our purposes here.

Except one thing.  Hasdai being in the thick of it all at the Cordoban court came across some traders who mentioned to him that there was in the East a Jewish state run by a khagan named Joseph.  Yes, it was the Khazars.  This piqued his curiosity (apparently he was tired of hearing that only the Jews can’t have their own state because they haven’t accepted Jesus as Christ – an assertion aid doff the mark in its very foundations even at the time as many stateless Slavs could testify, e.g., close to the events in question the Slavs of the Rus where the Rus ran things).   So he decide to send an emissary with the letter to the Khazars.

Which way to the Khazars?

The first attempt was unsuccessful at Constantinople as the Byzantines likely fearing some sort of alliance between the Khazars and the caliphate sent the embassy back on the apparent pretext that it was not safe to travel between Constantinople what with all the bandits, robbers and the generally deteriorating road conditions given the late season, etc, etc, etc.

Pissed, Hasdai sent another embassy but this time through the middle of the European continent.  It turned out that there were at that time in Cordoba as part of another embassy of a  two Jewish travelers – Joseph & Saul.  They came from the “country of Gebalim” who, we learn earlier from his letter, “of the Slavs” [al-sequeliba].  They told Hasdai that “iz no problem.”

“We will give your letter to the King of the Gebalim.  He will send the letter to the Israelites that live in Hungary.  Who will send it to the Rus who then will send it to the Bulgars [presumably Volga Bulgars even if those had already been driven towards the Danube by the Khazars] and from there the letter will be sent to where you want it to be sent.”

Who was this “King of the Gebalim”?  We will likely never know though there are some papers on the topic.  Perhaps a Croat king or one Serb?  But maybe a Czech potentate?  That would certainly be the simplest explanation for the path being suggested by the ambassadors.   (whether the letter and/or the response were opened and read by the Gebalim is not mentioned in the literature but it seems improbable that they would not be).

And no the letter was obviously not in German.  We are showing a German translation from 1840 by Joseph Zedner in his “Auswahl historischer Stuecke aus Hebraeischen Schriftstellern (2Jh – Gegenwart)” (Selection of historical pieces of Hebrew writers from the 2nd century to the present).

PS The source documents were apparently discovered in the year 1562 by Isaac ben Abraham (ben Yehuda Akrish) on his trip from Constantinople to Egypt. He then published a 32 page book in Constantinople about the year 1577.  The book has four parts with the Hasdai letter and King Joseph’s reply being on pp 16-23 and 23-26, respectively.  (We are not currently in possession of it).  A reprint in Latin followed in 1660 in Basel by Johann Buxtorf.  A printing in Cracow also occurred.  After Zedner a French version was published by Carmoly in Brussels in 1847 and a German one (different from Zedner apparently) came out by Seeling Cassel in Berlin in 1848 (this one with the reply only).

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Of all the theories of Slavic origins none has been so convoluted as the “beech” theory and none has proven more resilient.  We will consider it in a few separate postings.

At the root(s) of the problem

The beech theory goes back to the speculations of Jozef Rostafinski in his 1908 article “O perwotnych siedzibach i gospodarstwie Slowian w przedhistorycznych czasach” (or “About the Prehistoric Dwellings of the Slavs”).

Rostafinski was neither a linguist nor an archeologist nor a historian but, appropriately for the theory, a botanist.  Undeterred by the apparent lack of relation between his chosen pursuit and the question of the Slavic homeland, he proudly decided to stake out a claim for the botanists in this debate.

We might begin by stating that he started off rather ambitiously by first taking a position on the name “Lach/Lech” and its etymology.  Having firmly established where that was from (we will not bore you with that part except to say he claims it is from “lenda” or “lyada” which meant an empty space later for cultivation – perhaps due to fire farming), he proceeded to locate the Slavic homeland by analyzing bushes and shrubs.  That was, however, not enough for him so, now really reaching, he stepped onto the ornithologists’ feet (claws?) and also analyzed bird names (vultures, storks, egrets).  With that done he proceeded to analyze the etymologies of the Slavic names for iron (concluding it had a Scythian origin but that that was ok because even the Greeks learned some iron making from the Scythians).  He then concluded that the name of the turnip has a Slavic root (repa) and that turnips made their way to the Greeks from the Slavs about five centuries before Christ (which, among other things, according to him, demonstrates conclusively that the Slavs were way ahead of the Germans at that time civilizationally).    Then it was onto grains and cereals (conclusion: initially Slavs did not know rye or wheat).  Then a discussion of the pastoral lifestyle of the Slavs and the circle the wagons origin of the stable (conclusion: Slavic stables were freestanding – Germanic part of the house).  In between Rosafinski threw in an etymology of the word “vend” – he claims it meant smoking (as in fish) (e.g., Polish word “wedzenie”).

Oh, we almost forgot, as to those shrubs and bushes.  Rostafinski was of the opinion that the Slavs did not know (originally) the following trees: beech (fagus silvatica), larch (larix), fir (abies) and yew (taxis baccata) (or at least some of their subtypes).  Incidentally, he makes the same claim about Balts.

Since, he reasoned, these trees did not (at his time) extend east past the so-called (made up) Koeningsberg-Odessa line and since the Slavs did not have their own names for these trees, they must not have originally lived in the areas where those trees grew.  Therefore in his map he places the Slavs east of this line. The map follows:

Rostafinski, based on other evidence (see above), specifically places the Slavs at the edge for the steppe-forest zone somewhere in Russia – in contact with the Greeks until the Scythians came in between them.  Note that most of the other points that Rostafinski made to support his thesis (see above) has been ignored but the tree stuff entered the mainstream of Slavic homeland research.  (All other beech theories are derivative of Rostafinski’s).

The argument is thus based on a number of premises (one might venture, principally, that a few tree names can be highly instructive in establishing the origins of entire peoples but let’s let that one lie).  Let’s list some of the more obvious ones:

1) The beech zone in antiquity was the same as the beech zone today.

That this is not true was supposedly shown already by Henrik Birnbaum in 1979 who placed the reach of the beech, so to speak, only up to the Elbe.

On the other hand, Bukovina is a historic country in Ukraine and Moldova.  What that specific part of the world was called during Roman times, we do not know nor do we know whether there were any beeches growing there.

More recent studies show that the current reach of the beech was reached only between 500-1000 A.D. (Giesecke, et al.).  This would be possibly consistent with Birnbaum.  (On the other hand, beech pollen has also been found in the Pripyet area – which would, no doubt, suggest to some that the homeland of the Slavs is in Siberia…)

2) The etymology of the above tree names is not Slavic and, in fact, is Germanic.  For example, the Germans must not have borrowed the name from the Slavs.  Nor can this be a common Indo-European name (or at least not one that the Slavs could partake in).

However, the reasons for asserting this word as German are less than clear.  The Gothic word is posited to be bok or boka.  It has been stated that, in some cases, the German o, corresponds to the Slavic u (e.g., Donau <> Dunaj).  This is obviously true except that (A) it is true in some cases only, (B) this argument says absolutely nothing about the necessary direction of the borrowing (if there were any) in the general case nor in the specific case of buk.

Alternatively, it has been stated that the old German word was buohha, i.e., with a u and that the k (as in book) shows that the Slavic is a borrowing (the u is not a problem here because the Slavic and the AHDeutsch both feature a u – now the h vs k is the problem).  In this context, it is worth noting that, as per the Elbing dictionary, the old Prussian name for the tree was bucus or bukus.  Now the old Prussians lived within the Kaliningrad-Odessa line so the question would have to be asked whether these forest dwellers also learned the name buk (maybe some late borrowing?) or whether they learned from the Slavs who first learned it from the Germans… (BTW German authors actually make this claim for Lithuanian – but a bit harder to do so for Old Prussian).

Incidentally, the beech is also part of an argument made by Johannes Hoops that Indo-Europeans originated in Germany precisely because the beech does not grow east of the Kaliningrad-Odessa line and because they had their own word for it.  It is not clear if that would make Slavs live next to the Germans or simply not Indo Europeans (we suspect the latter).

3) The Germans lived in the “beech zone” throughout antiquity.

We can assume that this is true for some though, possibly, not all Germanics (e.g., Goths in the Ukraine).

4) Had they been able to, the Slavs would have (before they met the Germans) taken their time to distinguish and name these trees.

The German-Polish historian Brueckner, however, claimed that the Slavs have called the beech tree grab, i.e., the hornbeam.  That is they either did not differentiate between the two trees or transferred grab to the hornbeam from the beech.

5) The Slavs did not, for example, have their own names for these trees which they then only changed to the German names.

See above.

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Travelers from far off places, if they manage to have their travels recorded, are a real boon to historians.  Thousands of gallons of ink have been spilled and many an academic post obtained and maintained thanks to a fortuitous turn at a fork taken by a few strangers from a strange country or by a couple of sailors way out of their depth.  We tell now some of their stories as they relate (perhaps) to the story of the peoples discussed here.

Indian (?) Sailors in Gaul 

“…there is Cornelius Nepos, who is more dependable as an authority because he is modern.  Nepos… adduces Quintus Metellus Celer as witness of the fact, and records, that Metellus reported it as follows.  When Celer was proconsul of Gaul, certain Indians were presented to him as a gift by the king of the Boii.  By asking what route they had followed to reach there, Celer learned  that they had been snatched by storm from Indian waters, that they and traverse the intervening region, and that finally they had arrived on the shores of Germany.“

Venethi?

This is from Pomponius Mela‘s Description of the World Book 3, par 45 – section on Scythia (written about AD 43).  Mela was using this anecdote (as related by Nepos c110 BC – c25 BC originating from, ultimately, proconsul Celer c103 BC – c59 BC) to illustrate that beyond the Caspian Sea there was also the same Ocean as surrounded the rest of the world (since Indians came from that direction) and not some frozen land instead (“without a border and without end”).  Later some Slavicists used the same story to argue that these Indians were really Vindians or Venethi.  Others argued against that interpretation.  It seems to us that the story is more likely to refer to the Venethi than true Indians from India (although it’s more likely to refer to a number of peoples than to Indians).  On the other hand, Celer was consul in Cisalpine Gaul (Italy, really), not even Narbonensis (the province in the south of France) and that is presumably where he met the Celtic (?) Boii gift givers of humans (the Boii who gave their name to Bohemia were also at times located in Cisalpine Gaul) so where these gentle sailors got caught, where they came ashore, where they were from and, ultimately, who they were, is anyone’s guess.  Nonetheless, whatever the truth as to that matter, such a truth bears no light on the question of the identity of the Venethi as nothing more is said by Mela of these travelers, their customs, their language or anything else relating to them for at all that matter.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Pliny retells the same story but with Suevi as the gift givers of the “Indians”.  Does that mean that the Boii were Suevi? (like Bohemians are now Slavs?)

Slavic Hippies (?) in Constantinople

“Three men, Sclavenes by race, who were not wearing any iron or military equipment, were captured by the emperor’s [Heraclius’] bodyguards.  Lyres [or, perhaps, the Slavic gusle] were their baggage, and they were not carrying anything else at all; and so the emperor enquired what was their nation, where was their allotted abode, and the cause of their presence in the Roman [i.e., Byzantine] lands.  They replied that they were Sclavenes by nation and that they lived at the boundary of the western ocean, the kagan had dispatched ambassadors to their parts to levy a military force ad had lavished many gifts on their nation’s rulers; and so they accepted the gifts but refused him the alliance, asserting that the length of the journey daunted them, while they sent back to the kagan for the purpose of making a defence these same men who had been captured;  they had completed the journey in fifteen months; but the kagan had forgotten the law of ambassadors and had decreed a ban on their return; since they had heard that the Roman nation was much the most famous… for wealth and clemency, they had exploited the opportunity and retired to Thrace; they carried lyres [or gusle?] since it was not their practice to fire weapons ohm their bodies, because their country was ignorant of iron and thereby provided them with a peaceful and trouble free life; they made music on lyres because they did no know how to sound forth on trumpets.  Because for whoever finds war foreign, it is said that such a person should take up musical exercises.  Listening to this the sovereign, liked this nation, welcomed them warmly, and them alone among all the other barbarians who came into contact with him, admiring their height and the bountifulness of their members, he sent on to Heraclea.”

The story comes from Theophylact Simocatta‘s Histories (at 160).  A substantially similar tale is relayed also by Theophanes in his Chronographia (226) except that here the trip took place in 18 months, the Slavs never made it to the kagan but went straight to the Byzantines and the emperor admired their age/youth (?) (not their height) and their bodybuild (not their members). The story seems curious on a number of levels.

Slavic Hippie becomes temporarily agitated as he recounts his experience with Khan

For one, if the Slavs were not familiar with ironmaking, why bring them in as allies as the kagan intended apparently?  Further, whether the trip to the kagan was 15 or 18 months, it seems exceedingly long unless the Slavs were traveling  from Ireland or Siberia.  That any people, hippies, beatniks, peaceniks or whatever, would willingly travel to anyone styling himself a kagan (the etymology proposed being that of “khan of khans”) to tell him basically “Here we are to give you word from our leaders.  Ok, you ready?  Here it is: fuck off”, seems slightly doubtful (though stranger things have, on occasion, happened; on this at least Theophanes seems more convincing since in his telling the Slavs went straight to the Romans).

One thing is, of course, for sure: Byzantine emperor Heraclius (reigning in 610-640) was way flaming gay (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Rus Spies (?) in the Frankish Lands

“[Emperor Theophilius] sent with them some men who called themselves, that is the people to which they belonged, Rhos; according to them, their king, called kagan, sent them to [Theophilius] in friendship.  [Theophilius] asked in [his] letter that the emperor graciously give them permission and help to return to their country through his empire because the roads by which they had travelled to Constantinople fell into the hands of barbarian and exceedingly wild trines and would not wish to expose them to great danger.  Having diligently investigated the reasons for their arrival, the emperor [Louis the Pious] established that they belonged to the people of the Sueoni [Swedes].“

This little juicy tidbit comes from the Annals of Saint Bertin and describes a Byzantine embassy out of Constantinople to the Franks bringing with it these “Rhos”.  The Byzantine emperor is  Theophilus (ruling 829-842) and the Frankish emperor is Louis the Pious (in power 814-840) with the incident taking place in the year 839 at Ingelheim on Rhein (where Louis held court).

There was something about the leader of the Rus that made Louis the Pious suspicious

It seems, at least from today’s perspective (thus far), strange that such a long detour would have been advisable to return the Rhos back to the “kagan”.  Of course, much here is rivetingly strange.  First, again the kagan (see the story of the Slavenes above)?  What’s up with that guy?Why did the kagan send these tokens of his friendship to the Byzantine emperor?  Did they have any special talents?  Why did the emperor decide to send them back?  Why is the Rhos leader called a kagan?  Were the Rhos under the Khazars then?

The French/German emperor was also confused it seems.  Seeing as Germany was at the time being raided by Vikings, knowing that such Vikings were Swedes and suspecting these ones may well be spies, the Frankish emperor thought better of aiding these particular Rhos and decided to keep them around explaining to the Byzantine embassy that he would aid them should they turn out to be ok.

However, Louis the Pious died the next year at Ingelheim and the Frankish country fell into a civil war resulting in the creation of future France, Germany and an in-between land (disputed territory).  It is not clear, whether the poor (or not so poor) Swedes were able to make it back home or whether they perished of hunger in some dungeon once their jailer fell in the fighting.

So that’s for Part 1 of this mini-series.

Next up, Histories of the World Part 2, the long-awaited, much-demanded, Jews in Space!

Oh, wait, actually Jews in Spain but it’s almost as good!

But this blog is about Slavs!?  What gives?  Stay tuned!

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We have not dealt with the archeological evidence regarding the transition of the Venethi lands to Slavic lands thus far and for good reason.

Archeology is necessarily a study of material culture and material culture is, well, not necessarily biological or ancestral.  Were a hypothetical modern homo sapiens to leave this earth for the prairies of Manitou and were he to be buried with his “stuff”, an archeologist, call him A, doing a dig 1,000 years from now – pretty much anywhere in the Western (and not only) world would have to conclude that our hypothetical Billy Bob was, in fact, Chinese.  The copious “Made in China” labels would clearly attest to that fact.  If one were to look beyond mere labels and instead insist on examining the “substance” of the finds – as an academic competitor of our future archeologist might claim we should – this latter (and, of course, latter day) archeologist, let’s call him B, might conclude that by the early 21st century we were all firmly American all over the world, what with our Old Navy clothing, our Katie Perry music albums and our Hollywood movies.  Both A and B would be, of course, wrong.

Archeology, as can thus be readily seen, cannot tell us much about the people who lived in a given place if the question that we are asking it to answer for us is of the specific biological identity of the owners of the material in question and where we otherwise know little of such owners.  It would be perfectly acceptable to adjudge an archeological dig as more “Olmec” or more “Indian” – there we are dealing with two separately identified (and geographically dispersed) cultures, each rich in findings also separate and independent from the dig in question.  But how does one determine whether something material is Slavic where one has not defined what objects can be undoubtedly associated with Slavs (and, in some cases, where one has not been able to even come up with the definition of what is a Slav – as some historians and other academics have failed to do).  How does one determine what belongs to culture A vs culture B where both live right next to each other?  How does one determine whether a sample is, e.g., Venethic, where one is unable even to answer who the Venethi were?  For all these reasons, we have been reluctant to tread in this area (similar arguments apply to linguistics which we will tackle but not now).

Nevertheless, one argument that is frequently made about the Venethi to Slav transition is of interest and we feel may be brought up at this juncture because it is both so utterly typical of similar such arguments and because it conjures a counterexample which comes to us, curiously, out of the same time in question but out of another part of the “Venethic world.”

The argument involves a wheel.  More precisely, the argument involves a potter’s wheel.  Sometime at the time of or shortly after the migration of the various Germanic warrior bands (maybe, in some cases, tribes) into the Roman Empire, the area in question suffered a “cultural collapse” which when it began to be reversed it began to be reversed slowly and from a lower civilizational niveau.  The collapse has been associated with the departure of these Germanic bands (or tribes).  The slow reversal with the alleged arrival, settling down and picking up the pieces of what was left by the Slavs.

One of the first and most striking effects of culture collapse typically is the loss of access to the razorblade

In this respect we see a disappearance of sophisticated wheel-based pottery and then a reappearance of simple, hand-made pottery.  The potter’s wheel does not reappear in Central Europe until much later in time.

The Frankish chieftain Drebo NIelsenric demonstrates the use of wheel pottery to Prislavia – a primitive but highly attractive Slav female

So, let us first note the typicality of this explanation in its depiction of the Slavs as the (relatively) more primitive people.  Once that depiction or, really, assumption is made, the story of the cultural change suggests itself, of course.

The Polish Piast unable to figure out what to do with the wheel is seen clutching the more familiar sword in hopes of mitigating his perplexions – given his moniker (Wheelwright) he may have eventually gotten “it”

Now, one might think, however, that to draw any definitive conclusions from one specific geography may be rather precarious and that if one were not inclined to examine the effects of the collapse of empires in general before opening one’s mouth, at a minimum, one ought to review the happenings around the Roman Empire at the time of its collapse.

(BTW if one ever suggests that, perhaps, just perhaps something different is at work, the word “defensive” appears on the horizon with the words “nationalistic” and “chauvinistic” close behind, at first on stand by, but clearly battle ready – try it out for yourselves – in truth, this whole experience with benevolent academic paternalism makes it easier to relate to the African experience).

We do not usually quote recent sources as we try to dig into the original records and see for ourselves “what is out there”.  However, in this case, given our archeological tangent, we think it fair (and so as to preempt any suggestions of us undertaking any digs ourselves) to make an exception.  The following comes from the article by the cherubic (if slightly more hirsute than your typical aerial baby) Bryan Ward-Perkins  “Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?” in the English Historical Review (published by the Oxford University Press in 2000).  Doctor Perkins is a member of the faculty of history at Oxford University and, as per his information stub, is both a historian and an archeologist by training.  We apologize to Doctor Ward-Perkins upfront for the inevitable flood of emails, then calls, then faxes, then letters that is destined to follow this here publication, as Doctor Ward-Perkins will be called to “recant”, “correct”, “deemphasize” or, at the very least ,”limit geographically” his findings and conclusions (in case this fails, another, more pertinent (of course) authority will be, properly incentivized and then trotted out to contest the below – wanna bet?).  In the meantime grab a beer and read on:

“[I]n Britain, and again in contrast to Gaul, Roman ways of doing things disappeared peculiarly fast, and with exceptional totality.  Towns, coinage, architecture in brick and stone, complex industries, and even basic technologies, like the use of the wheel for pottery production, all vanished during the fifth century, probably along with widespread  literacy in Latin… towns themselves disappeared and were sometimes replaced by iron-age hill-forts as political centers; almost all signs of economic sophistication (such as specialized mass-production industries and the use of coin) disappeared.”

(Oh, Professor Ward-Perkins also published “The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization”) .

But wait! (say, the Scientists of the Wheel (i.e., the SOFTWs)):

“An inferior group of invaders – this time the Anglo-Saxons playing the role of the primitive Slavs replaced the local Roman (even if, by then, sub-Roman) population!  Well, duh!  This just proves our point!”

The Professor then says: “This happened autonomously within western Britain, long before the Anglo-Saxons reached his area, even in seemingly heavily romanized regions like modern Gloucestershire.“ 

SOFTWs win the Chirping Jiminy Award for the week (straight from hands of the Jordanes Doubters). Are the Sons of Beeches the next winners?

(BTW The remaining portion of the above article will make it clear that the Professor is not exactly a crackpot fascist or Welsh (or any other) “nationalist” – attaching, for this purpose, all the vitriol that our opponents would, to that term).

And, we can add from ourselves, this too happened in the future Kingdom of Gwynedd (remember the cousins of those Venethi Ceasar drove away from Bretagne? They were, oh yes, in that other Bretagne).[1]

Does this mean that the same happened in Central Europe to the Venethi?  Maybe.  Maybe not (the Professor Doctor notes himself that Gall was different, what with the Franks looking after things).  But, one would think, it behooves the scientists who allegedly study these things (with, we suspect, passion and prejudice though) to at least examine what entails a cultural collapse and whether a cultural collapse must necessarily be indicative of a population exchange –

?

– that it must when such a population exchange is a presupposed conclusion is another matter, of course.

[1] What is the first known of the name Gwynedd?  Oh, yes, here its: “Cantiorix hic iacit/Venedotis cives fuit/consobrinos Magli magistrate“.  And by the way, Venethi may have been a Wallach-like term to denote the “Others” – not one with a German origin but rather with a Celtic one.   More on that soon.

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