Not Even Wrong

Piotr Kaczanowski, was the head of the Jagiellonian University’s history department (though himself an archeologist – we guess, he was a man of many interests).

He was a student of the unlamented Kazimierz Godłowski and the apple did not fall far from the tree.  In one of the more recent articles whose translation was forwarded to us, Kaczanowski wrote the following about a recent archaeology conference designed to prove, once and for all, that Slavs (Poles and others) must have come from somewhere else and that Poland was previously populated by Vandals…  Given our recent investigation of the matter, we found such a definitive conclusion to be troubling.  It appeared to be based on no evidence known to us (or anyone else, it seems).  So we were curious about this article.  We review portions of it here.

Vandalizing Polish History

We give voice to Kaczanowski (commentary, as always, in red):

“The Lugii are identified [by whom he does not say] with the Przeworsk culture which existed in southern and central Poland for over 600 years…”

Not sure where he got the 600 years but let’s not quibble – so far so good…

“The name of the Lugii is assumed [by whom?] to come from the Celtic language because of Celtic names of towns such as Lugudunum, Lugidunum or the Celtic God Lug.”

But where were these towns?  Also, why is “dunum” an exclusively Celtic name?  Was Go-dunum, then a Celtic town?  Do we have Celts at the Baltic?  Or did the Goths live in Celtic towns?  Or, are we simply dealing with a situation where the name of the town is known second-hand from another tribe?)

And why stop there!  There is always the Russian river Luga – were Celtic Lugii all the way up there too? 

Also, what is the evidence for the existence of the Celtic God Lug?  Well, there is the God Lugh – a trickster (Loki?) – in Ireland.  Is there any reason to believe that the Celtic God Lugh was worshipped in Poland?  Would it not be simpler to assume that Lugii simply meant what the word still means in Croatian – groves?  

And if we assume Celts in Poland and Celts in Ireland, why can’t we assume, as the same people, Veneti in Poland, Veneti on the Adriatic and Veneti in county Gwynedd? (one might be a touch snide and point out that Wales is closer to Poland than Ireland…) 

But then he says what he really wants to say (i.e., the Celts are not really good enough for him):

“The Przeworsk culture, however, cannot be seen as a Celtic culture.  It arose, it is true among other cultures based on their contributions [really!?], but its people were certainly part of some other, non-Celtic ethnic group.  The written sources mention too other peoples, which lived in the basins of the Odra and the Vistula in the first two centuries after christ. Based on the information conveyed by Ptolemy one can judge that, in the basin of the Odra there lived the Burgundians.  Their presence in the Polish lands is confirmed by a later author, the sixth century Ostrogoth Jordanes, in a passage,  probably relating to the events of the third century.”

Ptolemy does place the Burgundians somewhere along the Oder – possibly extending to the Vistula.  But Jordanes does not mention where the Burgundians lived. The incident that Kaczanowski is referring to is (we think) the incident of the attack on the Burgundians by the Gepids  who, as per Jordanes, dwelt on an island at the mouth of the Vistula.  But no such islands currently exist so it is not clear what this means.  And, as we have argued before, it is at least possible, that the names of the Vistula and Oder have been mixed up by ancient writers.  And, elsewhere when discussing the Gepid embassy to the Goths, Jordanes states that the Gepid king complains of the need for more Lebensraum since he is “hemmed in by rugged mountains and dense forests.”  No such mountains exist anywhere near the Baltic.  Were the Gepids claiming all of Central Europe then, hemmed in by the Carpathians?  The Alps?  

All that notwithstanding, Jordanes does not say anywhere where the Burgundians then dwelt when they were attacked by the Gepids.  Or who the Burgundians were (though apparently not kin to the Gepids or Goths – and Romans, apparently, also used this term in a non-ethnic sense of “city dwellers”).  

Not to mention that Jordanes may have been of Alan not Goth heritage, ahem – but why quibble.

“According to other information of Ptolemy’s one can assume that, there lived along the Oder, most likely in Silesia, another Germanic tribe, the Silingae.”

As we have repeatedly stated, Ptolemy does not say anything of the sort.  Kaczanowski wants Ptolemy to say that but that is about it.   Also, Ptolemy does not say anywhere that the Burgundians were a Germanic tribe in the sense that Kaczanowski is using the name.  Unless, of course, one thinks that the Amerikaner are also a Germanic “tribe” because their name comes from Amerigo Vespucci.

“Archaeology delivers data indicating that, within the Przeworsk culture, there existed also Vandalic tribes.  And written sources confirm that around the year 170, during the Marcomannic Wars… Vandal tribes of Hasdings, Lacrings and Victofals, journeying somewhere from the North, reached the borders of Dacia.”

This is just BS with, likely, a healthy mix of “untruths.”

First, archaeology is not a Goddess – it is an academic discipline.  Archeologists may or may not believe something but, if they do, they should own up to their beliefs rather than pretending that some unbiased “Archeology” necessitates some findings.  Moreover, on the archeology of Przeworsk see here.

Second, there is nothing Vandalic about pots and pans discovered in Poland or Moravia.  And, if there is or should be, Kaczanowski does not say what it is.  Nor does he say what he means by that statement.  Who are his Vandals?  Would he answer: “the people who made this pottery”?  If so then the circle closes.  If not, then we need something more to designate these as “Vandalic”.  

(Note also that people have problem questioning whether a pot is “Slavic” but if the assertion is “it’s Germanic” – no one questions that.  After all, Germanic tribes lived in those areas so these pots must be Germanic.  And how do we know that Germanic tribes lived there if we do not have any written evidence of it?  Why, it’s the pots and pans of course!  Didn’t we just say they were Germanic!?)

Third, the written sources, say nothing about a “journey” of the Vandals or about the Vandals “reaching” Dacia.  They merely state that certain tribes – some (not all) of whom were – centuries later – “identified” as Vandals invaded the Roman province of Dacia (and not around 170 but in 171… but ok).

(Note that here we move from BS to what seem to be Kaczanowski’s ‘untruths’ (we would say ‘lies’ although we admit the possibility that, notwithstanding him being the head of Jagiellonian University’s history department, he was ignorant of the written sources – maybe their history department is just not very good)).

On the Veneti

After having concluded that the Celts – but especially the Vandals – most assuredly did live in Poland, Kaczanowski goes on also to inform us that the Veneti, were – maybe – located in northern Poland, on the lower Vistula, but, “most probably” were not Slavs.  Instead, they were:

“some other Indoeuropean people whose expansion must have covered enormous parts of Europe, the witness to which fact may be the names of that people strewn among greatly separated lands.  Further, the written sources of the first and second century clearly indicate, that in Central and Eastern Europe there were two separate peoples called by the name Veneti/  One, according to Pliny and Ptolemy on the shore of the Baltic, representing probably a people of Western Baltic stock, that is the future Prussians.  The second, known from Tacitus, located by this author to the East of our [oddly, he seems to mean “Polish” by this] lands.”

“The Slavs appear on the pages of history relatively late.  For the first time they are mentioned, without a doubt, by Jordanes who lived in the sixth century.  His report deal with events occurring in the fourth century when the Slavs had been conquered by the Goths.  This fact allows us to assume that they lived somewhere in Eastern Europe…”

The problems with this half-assed argument are so huge that one could write an essay just on these few paragraphs.

Enormous Spaces

Kaczanowski seems to assume that the Slavs could not have been the Veneti because there were different mentions of the Veneti all over the map of Europe, i.e., Venetis’ expansion, in Kaczanowski’s words, “covered enormous parts of Europe.”

Assuming, however, that the Veneti were a single people, and that single people did cover vast swaths of Europe at a time one has to ask why must it follow that this could not have been Slavs?

(BTW this is not, a priori, necessary, a single wandering people could also pop up in different places – the English were in India and in Gibraltar but not everywhere in between).

Indeed, just below that paragraph, Kaczanowski actually quotes Jordanes’ to assert that the Slavs themselves covered “enormous spaces” – but assumes this was only in really, really Eastern Europe.

So it seems, as a matter of logistics, the Slavs, like the Veneti, could, in Kaczanowski’s view, have covered “enormous spaces” – just not in Western Europe.  Even if one believes that, that belief hardly follows from the sources Kaczanowski cites.

Single People or Many Peoples

Kaczanowski asserts that these “other Indoeuropean” Veneti people must have been a single people (and, as per above, that they were not Slavs).

Why all the Veneti must have been a single and same people is left unclear – elsewhere, for example, some historians have argued that the Veneti name was a German appellation of all Eastern European dwellers (if true, this would mean such people were not necessarily of the same ethnicity but itself has the problem of not accounting for Veneti in Paphlagonia, the Adriatic or Bretagne).

Indeed, a paragraph below that assertion, Kaczanowski goes on to say that there were two different Veneti in Eastern Europe – a portion of the Balts (the Ptolemaic Veneti) and, what he seems to think, were the Slavs (the Tacitean and Jordanian Veneti – but these were really, really East he thinks!).  Thus, he seems to then argue that the Veneti did not, in fact, mean a single people… even though a paragraph earlier he argued the opposite.

What this looks like is someone for whom the Ptolemeic Veneti of the Baltic were not East enough but the Veneti of Tacitus (and Jordanes – again, see below) were – or could be.

To the extent Kaczanowski relies on Tacitus and Jordanes against Ptolemy, such reliance is misplaced.

To give just a few regarding Tacitus:

• it is absolutely unclear where Tacitus locates the Veneti – we know that they are located “where Suevia” ends.  Where Suevia ends for Tacitus is itself not clear (that could mean as far West as the Elbe and the Oder) and it is possible that Tacitus did not know where the Veneti actually were.

• there is zero evidence that the Veneti of Tacitus were different from the Veneti of Ptolemy.

• the Veneti of Ptolemy, whose Geography is far more detailed – in matters of geography (vide name of the book) – than Tacitus’ ethnographic study, are located squarely on the Baltic Sea – e.g., he mentions the Venetic Bay – which, by the way, one could argue was the entire Baltic Sea.

Jordanes, on the other hand, describes the Veneti as being all over Central Europe, north of the Danube, but says little about how far North they reach (source of the Vistula at least).  What’s more, if the Musian Lake really is Lake Constance/Bodensee then we would have his Slavs – in the sixth century – pretty much where they were in the centuries following.

The statement that written “sources clearly indicate” that there were two Veneti peoples in Central-Eastern Europe is BS of the smelliest kind.

And creating two people out of one is hardly the simplest solution and why that should be the case is left unclear – other than the fact that Ptolemy has the Veneti on the Baltic Sea, where Kaczanowski does not want them to be…

Kaczanowski points to the Stavanoi, Suebenoi and Serbs of Ptolemy as people that could be “with high likelihood” (where that high likelihood comes from is unclear) “connected” (whatever that means)  with the Slavs.  However, the information about such peoples comes from Ptolemy and neither Tacitus nor Jordanes says anything about the Veneti being any of these people or any of these people being Veneti.  On the other hand, Ptolemy – Kaczanowski’s source for this information – locates the Veneti on the Baltic.

The silliness continues, of course:

Why are the Slavs of Jordanes “without a doubt” current Slavs?

Were the names of these Slavs really Slavic (whatever that means)?  What language did they speak?  The truth is that one can just as easily argue that these people were not the Slavs who live in most of Europe today.  They appear to have come from Eastern Europe and may have been the offspring of Eastern Slavs – but were they related to Western Slavs?  To Southern Slavs?  For the most part they seem to have colonized the approaches to the Byzantine Empire and then, largely, been absorbed into the local population.  Thus, even if they were – possibly – “brothers & sisters” they were not the ancestors of the vast majority of modern Slavs (though may have been the ancestors of some modern Greeks, Turks, Romanians and, of course Bulgarians).

Why does the assertion by Jordanes that the Veneti were conquered by the Goths mean in Kaczanowski’s view that this must have happened far away from the Baltic?

Weren’t the Goths on the Baltic before they spread to the Ukraine?  And does not Ptolemy locate the Veneti on the Baltic?  Or, if Kaczanowski really believes that the Baltic Veneti were not Slavs, why are the Veneti conquered by Goths the “Slavic” Veneti and not the Baltic ones?

There is only so much dishonest and stupid we can deal with so we won’t test the reader’s patience with the remaining portion of his writing (including an archeological survey of Vandalic trinkets).

In any event, Kaczanowski concludes that:

“the run of the [archeological] conference, the discussions that took place there, as too the substance of the published excerpts from it, indicate uniformly, that the opponents of the so-called “allochtonist” “Kraków School” do not possess any actual arguments that would speak against the Eastern European [i.e., somewhere in the Pripet Marshes?] cradle of the Slavs.”

The only thing that can qualify as even worse junk science that we came across recently is Herwig Wolfram’s description of the origins of the Vandals. (We guess, the Vandals, even after all these years, bring out the worst in people).

The Perp’s Other Affiliations

Kaczanowski was a member of the Board of an organization about whose mission, we wrote previously – let us recite what they say about themselves:

“There is urgent [sic] need for a thorough new study of the cultural, social, ethnic, demographic and environmental transition observed in Central Europe during the Migration Period… Input from our Project is expected to essentially alter views commonly accepted in archaeology, late Antiquity and early medieval history, palaeodemography and palaeobotany, especially, on the causes and course of settlement in Central Europe on the turn of Antiquity and Middle Ages, demographic and ethnic processes, the extent of colonisation, destruction and regeneration of the natural environment. We expect a significant impact on the public in and outside Poland, particularly, their sense of identity which has its roots in the Migration Period, the time of the first medieval states established over the ruins of the Roman Empire and its periphery.  The fictitious “proto-Slav past” of Poland will now be replaced with hard facts.  By broadcasting the research results, both in traditional form (conferences, publications and exhibitions) and especially, in an interactive form (e.g., presentations on the web, including social networking sites, and also, during themed picnics), and through mass media, we expect to promote interest, especially of the younger generation, in past changes in civilisation for a better understanding of the modern age.”

(this is from the National Center for Science – this center is located in Poland but which “nation” it refers to is a matter of debate)

And Why That Matters

As per today’s New York Times, the “German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, took the unusual step of publishing a 10-point action program for Europe to avoid an open rift on migration policy.  Brussels is not at fault, a senior German government official said Monday. Rather it is up to individual governments in the 28 European Union member states to persuade their publics to take in refugees and treat them well.”

In other words, the European governments are not supposed to serve their own people but rather to take on new people (the same people that other European governments do not want). Or, put differently, the low-breeding German establishment with its Lügenmedien (German compound words are second to none!) do not want anymore migrants because they fear social upheaval and plan to dump them everywhere else, including, in Central Eastern Europe.  Of course, these migrants do not really want to be in the poorer parts of the continent but once you put them in shelters and provide government assistance, the whole thing will be institutionalized.  If Polish assistance could be made higher than German, a further incentive could be created.  Of course, Central Europe can’t afford this but the German government may be willing to pay.

Given the relative birthrates and wealth gaps, was this not foreseeable?  And if it was did not the Germans foresee it (this is a rhetorical question – people have been talking about these kinds of issues for decades).  And if they have, have they acted to soften up Central European publics’ resistance to the concept?  And, if so, when did they start acting? 1989?  How was such softening done?  By putting influential historians, archeologists, etc, on the bandwagon?  How?

Reports are being made public wherein European agencies admit they cannot cope with the number of nutcases in their countries… Hardly surprising.  Central Europeans have the distinct advantage – this time – to have gotten a clear warning.  If experience of Western Europe is not something that can teach them to take care of themselves, nothing will.  And they will, likely, not get another chance.

Final Thoughts

To be clear, we are not offended by the notion of the Slavs coming from somewhere East (in fact, we have recent posts such as this one suggesting some “Eastern” connections), from America or from Mars – but – this must be based on honest review of sources and not on the perceived needs of current politics, considerations of international relations, personal biases, axes that people want to grind or other, even less savory causes.

May Lugh or Loki have mercy on Kaczanowski’s soul.

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