Transylvania History

I think I already said earlier in the thread that the term "free dacians" could be a modern one, but that doesnt mean their quality of being "free" was a modern invention also. And I mentioned that they probably felt free because they were not under Roman occupation. Moreover, as Udar pointed out, they even continued to have military clashes with the Romans.
And as a matter of curiosity, if you say the term "free dacians" is a modern one (could very well be), it should be easy to spot its appearance. When was it invented?

Off topic (?) :

Densusianu is a credible source? Because i read only one book of him and is ... incredible.

Iama

Hi Guys,

In the UK we have numerous river names which are pre-Roman that the Romans adopted and used themselves. It is also generally thought that many of these also predate the peoples who the Romans conquered. How does one distinguish a Dacian river name from one the Dacians themselves adopted from earlier peoples?

Widening the question, is there enough information on the Dacian language to specify where it fits into the Indo-Eurpean language family tree? Has it any living relatives?

On an earlier thread it was mentioned that there are thought to be about 200 words of Dacian origin still in the Romanian language. Have you any examples?

Cheers,

Sid.

Who lived here before the Dacians?And what language have they spoken?

Well,I think is enough to say Dacian is an Indo-European language.Yes,they were shown in the thread about Romanian language origins.

Dacian words?They are pretty easy to identify(manz,viezure,varza??? etc.) But the sites giving the 200-330 Dacian words have more infos about this.

Hi Zayets,

Identifying the languages and identities of resident populations before written history is extremely difficult. The names of geographical features, particularly rivers, are perhaps the only linguistic traces left of some peoples. Historically we can be sure of the Dacians, but not of any of their prehistoric predecessors.

It is presumably possible that the Dacians themselves inherited the names for some geographical features, especially rivers, from earlier populations. We know that the Danube valley was the route by which agriculture entered Europe in the 7th millenium BC and copper working in the 4th millenium BC. Both were accompanied by migrations. However, we don't know if the Dacians were already resident or part of these migrations because we have no historic trace of them before the 1st millenium BC.

Cheers,

Sid.

That's true.Isn't it amazing that Europe as we know it today,was one of the last continents to benefit from advantages of "civilization" (I exclude America although South America was pretty much a different case).We can trace back Egyptians,Assirians,Babylonians,Chineze etc. with historical artifacts/documents.Yet Europe was pretty late in these.Is not the case of Dacians only.Who lived before the Gauls?Or Romans?Or Celts?Or Vikings?Or Greeks?(Well , for the Greeks we have much more accounts but notice thier proximity with the Asian teritories,Tiger & Euphrat the so called "craddle of civilization").There's no doubt that today Europe was/is known for her driving force into what we consider today progress,still we have less information than we have about what today we call 3rd world .Isn't that ironic?

Definitely Dacians took/inherited names/words from what was supposed to be once their predecessors.But who were they?There are traces back to the neolithic age/bronze age in Romania. But I don't think everyone agrees what for language these people used.Museums in Romania hold a lot of such artifacts.And no, there's not so many writen ones,if you wonder.

I heard "Gesta Hungarorum" mention some clashes in Transylvania at their arrival. Most of the Hungarian point of view comes from a description of the Aurelian withdrawal, in which it was said that so many people left that the land remained "deserted". This is probably is just a composition style, but they are interpreted ad literam. It is hard to believe. There are no written documents that they left, but there are no documents they stayed. The fact that the romanian language is so different from what is around us, could imply some conclusions that Hungarians don't like. However if you have a mass of people on the move you would expect some traces. We will probably not know the answer for some time. I don't think the ADN is too reliable.

That line about Dacia being evacuated completely was inserted there by the roman historians because they didn't want to show emperor Aurelian as an emperor who abandoned one of the roman provinces. It would not have been apropriate for a roman emperor to look like he abandoned roman citizens, so they invented the withdrawal idea and to cover this up, Aurelian established south of the Danube 2 new provinces, Dacia Ripensis and Dacia Mediterranea. The withdrawal from Dacia was made in less than a year. Is impossible to even consider that all the population could have been moved. Only the administration and the armies were most likely withdrawn, although roman armies (and later on byzantines) still kept control of several castres north of Danube.

As for genetics, that's not a viable argument. There is not pure romanian as there is no pure hungarian.

As I know, The more important rivers origin(Mures, Olt, Somes) suggest an unknown, antic origins(posible avar, gepid, roman, dacian, even older), and the majority of the others slavic origins. The cvasi-hungarian origins, sustained by hungarian lingvist, is also speculative.
As the romanian language itself has an important range of slavic origins, we couldn't say the slavic origin of the names is not romanian. The vlachs from 19 cnt, were not the same with the vlachs in 9-10 cnt. In 9-10 cnt, at the magyars arrival, probably vlachs lived at highlands, while slavs and pecenegs lived in lowlands. hard to say who were majoritars: slavs, pechenegs, or vlachs. but, probably the number slavs+pechenegs surpassed vlachs. Anyway, as the first desired teritories by magyars were lowlands, they started to banish the slavs and pechenegs. The remaints of tehm were asimilated by both slavs and magyars.

The one who saw Cerna river, could wonder why today is a cristal-clear river. Anyway, i think is a slavic name. probaly the name has nothing to to with mud, but with reflection of the dark clouds in it. Cerna is a quite big mountain river today, and posible it was much bigger in the past.

It is not hard to believe, is imposible

It depends very much how is interpreted, how the sample are prelevated...
Anyway, is absolutely true, the genetics could be irelevant. There are few examples of today european nations, which sources suggest an asian origins, but now they look completely as europeans. Asimilation, repopulation, invasions...could have a decisive effect in an millenia, without changing the cultural traits dicisivelly.