It's the fringe area between forested northern Russia and the steppes. It's not in the Taiga itself, but in the semi-forested zone inhabited mainly by settled peoples. Which an unusual place for steppe nomads to try and settle in.
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Bulgars mixed with local population so in that regard they are not much different from "Bulgarian" Bulgars. Also, a sizeable part of controlled territory is forest-steppe, not something unreasonable for nomads. After all, late nomads had no problem in these lands.
The early Germanic tribes were mainly found in Scandinavia and northern Germany before they started expanding properly, and they have been in Europe pretty long. Aside from the ancestors of the Germanic people most people know of today (Englishmen, Germans, Scandinavians, the groups from the low countries) there were east Germanics like the Goths and Vandals, who are said to have crossed the baltic sea and who lived farther east than the rest (Poland for Vandals, as far away as Crimea for the Goths where Gothic actually survived as a minority language until something like the 18th century I believe) until the migration age when Germanic and other tribes started moving in larger numbers. Goths who didn't feel like staying and face the Huns marched west and in the end Goths ended up controlling much of Iberia, Italy, parts of France and so on. Vandals ruled north Africa and pushed into the Italian peninsula from the south. There are also accounts of how Scandinavians like Rodwulf from the Ranricii (western Sweden or Norway) went to aid Gothic kings like Theoderic, and also how some Goths returned to what was called Scandza (Scandinavia) after defeat by the Romans.
However, some tribes or sub-tribes among peoples like the Goths stayed and fought and/or joined the Huns, and as far as I'm aware the Hunnic army ended up having a large portion of Germanic warriors by the time they had started getting deeper into Europe. Aside from that there isn't much kinship between the two groups though, most likely. Like others have said who the Huns really were is a matter of debate, and they probably didn't make up that large a part of the horde if they were a distinct group to begin with, rather than just a confederacy of steppe nomads. But if we are to trust the more common theories then it's at least likely they may have been Turkic in origin.
Bulgarians (if we are not talking about the Bolgars in Russia that converted to Islam and who were Turkic) however probably share some ancestry with Germanics, at least from the European part of their ancestry (Slavic, Thracian, et cetera) since Europeans stem from a pretty small original population, but I'm not that knowledgeable about Bulgarians so I won't go any deeper than that.
However, some tribes or sub-tribes among peoples like the Goths stayed and fought and/or joined the Huns, and as far as I'm aware the Hunnic army ended up having a large portion of Germanic warriors by the time they had started getting deeper into Europe. Aside from that there isn't much kinship between the two groups though, most likely. Like others have said who the Huns really were is a matter of debate, and they probably didn't make up that large a part of the horde if they were a distinct group to begin with, rather than just a confederacy of steppe nomads. But if we are to trust the more common theories then it's at least likely they may have been Turkic in origin.
Bulgarians (if we are not talking about the Bolgars in Russia that converted to Islam and who were Turkic) however probably share some ancestry with Germanics, at least from the European part of their ancestry (Slavic, Thracian, et cetera) since Europeans stem from a pretty small original population, but I'm not that knowledgeable about Bulgarians so I won't go any deeper than that.
If the East-Germanic tribes did come from Scandinavia they were already a couple of centuries removed when the oldest source material in Gothic shows up in the 4th century, Old-Norse source material then takes a few hundred years more to materialize so basically we have about a 600-1000 year divide between the two languages at the point where we can start making comparisons between two language complexes that shares a common origin at a point in time when differences between germanic languages overall were rather modest. Going by linguistics is not really usefull in this case. Gothic and East-Germanic in general is closer to Proto-Germanic than to West- or North-Germanic which isn't that peculiar since their ancestors would have spoken Proto-Germanic when the split occured, there was simply no North- or West-Germanic to be descended from.
What is a bit more intresting is the archeological record, the Wielbark material culture which is associated with the East Germanic tribes including the Goths shows definitive similarities with Southern Scandinavian material culture and with some customs (bautastones and stone circles) that has most in common with burial practices in Götaland and on the island of Gotland in particular while not shared with other Germanic areas.
That and more anecdotally there is the famous synergy between Jordanes account of the origin of the Goths and the legendary Gutasaga, aswell as the obvoius similarity betwen the ethnonyms; Gautar (old norse for "Geat"), Gutar ("Gotlanders" in old norse and present day Gutnish) and Gutans or Gut-þiuda ("Goths" in Gothic, the addition of "þiuda" in the second example meaning "people" so really the "Gut" is the ethnonym in that).
The etymology is the same for all three, it comes from Proto-Germanic "Gutô" meaning "to pour" and shares etymology with the Swedish word "Gjuta" (meaning "to pour" or "to cast").
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Why all the theories? I mean hasn't someone done genetic testing to confirm their origins scientifically instead using spotty old historical records, legend and myth?
When discussing such matters, one should be cautious when using cathegories that only make sense within a contemporary mindframe. If we want to talk about the origins of Germany as a nation, then we can go back no further than the late XVIII / early XIX centuries, if we want to talk about the start of Germany as a distinct, more or less unified and self-conscious political entity, again we can go back no further than the death of Louis the Pious in 843. Earlier than that, the only thing we can talk about (barely a bit above guessing) is about the probable evolution of Germanic languages, and that keeping in mind that other than Ulfilas' Gospel, some liturgical hymns and some runic graffiti, we have to rely entirely on isolated words transcripted by Roman or Greek authors (from the I century AC onwards). Further than that, we have absolutely no way to be sure about anything, other than to trust the validity of contemporary theories about the evolution of languages.
And if that's true about the Germans, who spent a long time in direct contact with the Greco-Roman culture, it's even worse for the Huns and Bulgars, about whom we can only rely on archaeological evidence.
It's fairly dubious that the Goths, Burgundians and Vandals that invaded the Roman empire were anything like a unified, self-conscious ethnic unity, and the same can be said about the Huns and Bulgars. It's not even been completely settled if they were or not Turkic peoples, and also it's doubtful if they were really related to the Xiong-nu described in ancient Chinese chronicles. Even having the archaeological evidences provided by the "Xiong-nu" graves excavated in modern Mongolia and being able to compare them with the remains unearthed from supposedly "Hunnic" graves from the IV-VI centuries AD Eurasian steppe, professional archaeologists and historians have not been able to reach a consensus.
And if that's true about the Germans, who spent a long time in direct contact with the Greco-Roman culture, it's even worse for the Huns and Bulgars, about whom we can only rely on archaeological evidence.
It's fairly dubious that the Goths, Burgundians and Vandals that invaded the Roman empire were anything like a unified, self-conscious ethnic unity, and the same can be said about the Huns and Bulgars. It's not even been completely settled if they were or not Turkic peoples, and also it's doubtful if they were really related to the Xiong-nu described in ancient Chinese chronicles. Even having the archaeological evidences provided by the "Xiong-nu" graves excavated in modern Mongolia and being able to compare them with the remains unearthed from supposedly "Hunnic" graves from the IV-VI centuries AD Eurasian steppe, professional archaeologists and historians have not been able to reach a consensus.
Kutrigurs
Utigurs
and Onogurs.. can't find the Onogurs there, probably #27
These are allegedly the ancestors of the original Hungarians and Bulgarians. And they are Turkic people, related to the Gokturks(who are allegedly the ancestors of the original Turks)
Doubt that the Germanic people are related to them. I'd say that those are indigenous Europeans.
How would you go about that?
Say you want to see if the Huns were mongoloid or caucasian, first you would need to find the remains of someone who you are sure is a Hun and not an Avar, Magyar, or Alan, or Ostrogoth or Bulgar, but how do you do that when you are not sure what a Hun actually is? How do determine what remains are Hunnic if you don't know what to look for?
Quite often, genetic testing testing just ends up confusing matters even more. Just think about all the genetic testing that has been done in recent years in Britain in order to determine the origins of its population. Apart from confirming that the dominant genetic stock in today's Britain has been prevalent in the British Isles since the end of the last Ice Age, it has settled nothing else.
And if we take into account that (excluding descendants of individuals who have settled there from the second half of the XX century onwards) the British Isles have been an extremely stable and isolated cul-de-sac from a migratory point of view, imagine how things are in the middle of the Eurasian landmass, where the Huns and Bulgars supposedly came from.
We know about those peoples mainly because they appear in some East Roman/Byzantine chronicles. But we have absolutely no way to know where to find them and how to recognize them if we somehow manage to bump into them. Imagine we discover and dig out a grave in the steppe, say between the lower Dnieper and the Don, and we can be fairly sure thanks to radiocarbon testing and some fortunately datable artifacts found in it (for example, coins issued during the reign of a certain East Roman emperor) that it can be located in the right timeframe (VI-VIII centuries AD). How can be sure about the ethnicity of the deceased? (of course, there's also the possibility of asking a medium for help or bring the "ouija" out onto the table :laugh
. There's a reason why archaeologists and historians always end up using terms like "steppe cultures" and "Tengriist worship": because basically, all cultures across the steppe belt from the Carpathians to Mongolia shared very similar material cultural traits (weapons, horse equipment, dress, burial customs, etc).Perhaps the best known and excavated of these cultures is that of the Avars in the Pannonian plain. In their case, specialists have been quite sure that those were Avar graves, and so it made sense to do some genetic testing to the remains they contained. The results? A hodgepodge of Caucasian and "Altaic/steppe" genetic and physiologic traits; in fact it's been even pointless to try to determine if the highest amount of "Asian" traits occurred among the oldest remains (meaning that they had been originally "Mongoloid" and that they mixed over time with local populations).
In those times and places, human groups coalesced around successful warlords, who, if they were successful, could hope to form a dinasty. In the 410s, "Goths" were those who followed Alaric, independently if they were ethnically or culturally East Germanic, Iranian or Roman. Other than the prestige and military success of the leader, there was little more to keep them united, and because of it those "peoples" appear and disappear from the chronicles so abruptly.
I don't think we should take that line of thought too far, there is a difference between tribal confederations and the individual tribes even though the lines sometimes are blurred. Wheareas a tribal confederacy is often quite multiethnic tribal units really don't need to be, the Goths were not really a multiethnic retinue of some individual warchief but a specific ethnic group that however did join in confederations with different tribes at different times.
A fraction of the eastern Goths remained an ethnic unit on the Crimea, speaking a Gothic language up until the 18th century and it does seem as if the Goths in southern/western Europe continued to speak Gothic and having Gothic names for a long time and in Spain they even made laws against intermarriage between Goths and the local Romans which speaks against the interpretation that the tribe itself was simply a warrior band rather than a people.
The problem is that Jordanes is several hundred years prior to the Gutasaga: It's entirely possible the authors of the saga cribbed bits from him.
Yes, it's possible. Of course there were "Goths" in the ethnic sense of the word, but I'm not so sure if all the groups that came be labelled as "Goths" were really ethnically so. In the case of Alaric's Goths, although it's true that the royalty and aristocracy kept using Germanic names until the end, it's probably unrealistic to consider the mass of followers that his successors settled in southern Gaul and Hispania as ethnically homogeneous, and probably by then they had already lost much of the cultural heritage they'd once shared with those parts of the Gothic "gens" that still lived in the Balkans or the Pontic steppe.
To continue with the case of the Goths which finally settled in Hispania (it's the case I'm most familiar with), although they kept using Gothic names until the end of their kingdom, there are virtually no Gothic loanwords in any of the Romanic languages of the peninsula, up to the point that there are far more loanwords derived from other Germanic languages (other than modern loanwords from English, of course) than from Gothic. If you compare it with the impact that Frankish had on the "langue d'oeil" (not to speak about the disparition of Latin in Anglo-Saxon England), it's quite clear that something doesn't add up there. Even in the legal codes issued by the Visigothic kings both in the Toulose and Toledo periods (and they loved to legislate, by far they were the most prolifical lawmakers among the Germanic kingdoms), Germanic influence is very weak, with almost all laws (including the ones that were written especifically for the "Goths" among their subjects) being based on Roman legal precedent and jurisprudence.
Of course, some Germanic traditions were also preserved until the Islamic invasion (the sacred/symbolical role of the royal "thesaurus", the long manes for those of noble blood, personal onomastics, the elective character of the kingship, etc), but among the written records that have arrived to this day from Gothic Hispania (not as abundant as during the Roman Empire, but more than for other parts of Western Europe during the same timeframe), there's virtually no trace neither of Germanic language, nor of Germanic cultural influence of any other kind (laws, customs, etc).
It's true that perhaps extending this example to other situations is a bit over-the-top. but especially in the case of the peoples of the Eurasian steppe, extreme fluidity in the social and political realities was the everyday reality (and the "ethnogenesis" of the Goths as a recognizable, separate group happened in the western extreme of that world).
Just to confuse the debate with some of that pesky genetics, here's some modern genetic data. This is from the Genographic Project (website here, and interesting map here)
Wikipedia has some of their results data (from 43 modern reference populations, with a 2% margin or error), so a while ago I decided to put that info into a map. (The colours were simply chosen by me) I used the VIC2 blank map (showing modern borders) and it ends up looking like this:
(Link to full sized image)
What those nine regional genetic groups are called is fairly arbitrary (I think the name is based on where they believe the groups originated).
There are some interesting features, like just how mixed Europe and the middle east is. I assume that the large Mediterranean and Southwest Asian genes in Europe comes from the Neolithic farmers. About the Steppe peoples, there are three groups listed that were nomadic (Tatars, Altays and Mongolians) and you can see that all of them are quite mixed groups (which is probably what you would expect from peoples who moved around and mingled widely). Note also the small Northeast Asian influences in Russians, Romanians and Bulgarians, which again, is what you might expect from migrations of small numbers of Steppe warrior elites into those areas.
Wikipedia has some of their results data (from 43 modern reference populations, with a 2% margin or error), so a while ago I decided to put that info into a map. (The colours were simply chosen by me) I used the VIC2 blank map (showing modern borders) and it ends up looking like this:
(Link to full sized image)
What those nine regional genetic groups are called is fairly arbitrary (I think the name is based on where they believe the groups originated).
There are some interesting features, like just how mixed Europe and the middle east is. I assume that the large Mediterranean and Southwest Asian genes in Europe comes from the Neolithic farmers. About the Steppe peoples, there are three groups listed that were nomadic (Tatars, Altays and Mongolians) and you can see that all of them are quite mixed groups (which is probably what you would expect from peoples who moved around and mingled widely). Note also the small Northeast Asian influences in Russians, Romanians and Bulgarians, which again, is what you might expect from migrations of small numbers of Steppe warrior elites into those areas.
Doubtful considering that Gutasaga was written down by 1350 whereas Jordanes' Getica was not rediscovered in the west until 1442.
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Well no all the people that followed the Goths into Hispania were not Goths, or even Germanic, but then they also seems to have been rather separate from eachother, being allied peoples rather than being one people. And I very much agree that there was probably some intermarriage going on.
Well Visigothic power in Spain really only lasted for 200 years which is not really alot. Germanic rule over Gaul lasted far longer and I would say it's rather likely that quite a few more germanics crossed over into France than into Spain on account of how close it was to Germany, the Franks in Gaul were supplemented by Allemans and Burgundians and probably absorbed quite alot of the subjugated Gothic remnants there and ofc Germanic control lasted alot longer in Gaul.
That said the Goths in Spain had their own subject/confederated tribes consiting of the Suebi and the Sarmatic Alans. As far as I have gathered the Suebi in Galicia seems to have been the most pervasive Germanic influence in Spain, possibly they were simply given less land as a gens and so became more geographically concentrated than the Goths who enjoyed ruling much greater masses of people and land therby diluting their "cultural mass".
Are we sure about that? Do we know that ethnicity was really fluid or are we just going by crappy historical sources?
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It's that but not just that; genetics is often a very poor marker for what we mean when we talk of identity. Hungarians, for example, are linguistically this weird outlier that clearly came from somewhere else and settled in the middle of Europe. They clearly maintained their 'identity' but and so by any historical definition you want to say the modern people are descended from the Magyars. But genetically you can't do a thing to separate them from any of their neighbors.
The rare exceptions to this are pretty cool, as I believe we know that Iceland was settled mostly by Scandinavian males and Irish women (presumably Vikings and slaves.)
Goths almost certainly came from Scandinavia. This is corroborated by archeology. However Goths moved from their original homeland during the Common Germanic stage and placed themselves on the south eastern edge of Germanic world. Thus they did not participate in all those linguistic shifts that let rise to the Scandinavian language family. Instead the Gothic language shares some innovations with High German in addition to a number of unique features.
Well I agree that one could not use modern hungarian genetics to find out much about the origin of the migration period Magyar, but to my knowledge there has actually been tests done on early Magyar remains wich atleast shows a 50% prevalence of the Tat C alelle which is considered a finno-ugric marker, although the sample was very small.
When it comes to the Huns no one really knows anything with any degree of certainty, some have even argued that the Huns were Germanic, afterall Atilla, Bleda, Rugila and and a host of other names of famous Huns are Germanic (ofc that is unlikely to mean that they really were Germanic). If we found Atillas grave and some DNA it might shed some light on the question of Hunnic origin, it might still not descisively settle the question of wether the Huns were Indo-Iranian or Altaic or something else, but it would have the possibility of doing so by atleast making clear what path they had taken prior to arriving where they ended up.
The guy who finds Attila's grave will probably be the luckiest bastard in the world, having the whole Eurasian steppe to search for it (and after that, he can try his luck with Gengis Khan's one :laugh
As for Kutrigurs, Utigurs and Onoghurs being the forefathers of modern Bulgarians and Hungarians, we run again into conflicting evidence. According to the confused tales of medieval chroniclers, they were all splits from the Huns. But modern Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, related to modern Finnish, Estonian, etc. And among all the theories that I've read about the origins of the Bulgarians, I don't recall one stating them as speaking a Finno-Ugric language (maybe I'm mistaken, so if anybody knows better, please correct me). So we run again into a conundrum.
And in the case of the Avars, things are equally confused. Based on the small linguistic evidence preserved in medieval sources, historians consider Avars to have been of Turkic stock. But contemporary Avar language (spoken in the Russian republic of Daghestan) is a Northern Caucasian language.
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