[gothic-l] Re: Sarmatians and Goths in Poland

[andreas.schwarcz at UNIVIE.AC.AT]

Xoxana,
you misspelled Schwarcz. Sorry for the error in "nonsense", but my
mother tongue is German and in German it is spelled that way and it
means the same. I suppose you know that the human genome was
deciphered lately. Although we are not yet able to read it and to give
meaning to all parts of it, we know that the genetic variants between
all members of the species homo sapiens sapiens (what
presumptous and erraneous name!) are smaller than those of a herd
of fifty shimpanzees. I have no quarrel, however, with the physical
descriptions of ancient peoples in our sources. If Procopius coins
the term "xantha ethne" for Goths, Heruls and Vandals, I suppose he
knew what he was writing about. But your concept of ethnicity based
on race is outdated. You should read some of the modern literature
on it, f.i. the books of Wenskus, Wolfram and Pohl. As you may
have noticed in my contributions, I am a professional historian and a
specialist in early medieval history. That is why I am interested in
the Goths and my knowledge about them may be checked in my
publications and not in anonymous email contributions.
                              Andreas Schwarcz
ao.Univ.Prof.Dr.Andreas Schwarcz
Institut fuer oesterreichische Geschichtsforschung
Universitaet Wien
Dr.Karl-Lueger-Ring 1
A 1010 Wien
Oesterreich
tel.0043/1/42-77/272-16
fax 0043/1/42-77/92-72
email andreas.schwarcz at univie.ac.at

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