[gothic-l] Ethnogenesis and more

[Bertil Haggman]

Andreas,

If the ethogenesis a political (?) process forming new
peoples out of the remnants of old peoples one wonders
how "political" is defined in an ancient perpective.

The comment underneath reveals a certain enmity to
the role of the modern study of ancient DNA. Anyway
the ethnogenesis of the Goths in northern Poland
seems open. Only the contributor underneath talks
of a "single Gothic ethnogenesis". Nobody else has
intimated that.

It is also only the contributor underneath that discusses
a "biological continuity". The deoxyribonucleic acid can
well be used for tracing human migrations. In the words
of Svante Paabo (then at the University of Munich) it is the
greatest archaelogical excavation of all rimes. An important
progress was made in the 1990s in Britain to distinguish Britons
from Anglo Saxons in the Migration Era on the basis of
skeletal material (see Richards and Sykes article "Authenticating
DNA Extracted From Ancient Skeletal Remains", Journal
of Archaelogical Science, 1995).

The ability to study the DNA through skeletal remains is a
considerable movement forward in the resarch of migrations.
There may be different views on this progress, but it will
hopefully open new possibilities for studying ancient Gothic
and other migration.

Wolfram, Heather and some others represent only one
one interpretation of at present available sources. There
is a rich research material pointing to other conclusions.
Much of this material has been presented on this list
and is available to all for study.

Wolfram is no single authority. He is one of many and
his interpretation is certainly not the "final word".  Essen,
Svennung, Hermodsson, Anderson, Rives and scores of others
are good evidence of other views. The debate is open and
free. Everybody can take his or hers stand. It is possible
to reject the oral tradition of the Goths themselves or reject
the linguistic evidence and the Gauti or the Gotlanders as
migrators to Gothiscandza. But I am sure that both Wolfram
and maybe Heather are to careful to express themselves
with any certainty.

Bertil Haggman






anyone who talks of one Gothic ethnogenesis, and moreover, of its
analysis by  research into DNA, has not understood what the
concept of ethnogenesis developed by Wenskus (and enlarged and
deepened by Wolfram and Pohl) means. Ethnogenesis is a political
process forming new peoples out of remnants of older peoples,
giving them a definite historic beginning (and sometimes also a
historic end to other peoples). It is possible to talk of an
ethnogenesis of the Gutones or Gothones, of the Tervingi, of the
Greuthungi, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Crimean Goths and
the Gauts, possibly also about an initial cultic community of
different tribes and peoples (like Ingemar Nordgren does),  but not
of a single gothic ethnogenesis continuing for a millenium. The idea
of a biological continuity behind that proposed single ethnogenesis
is one obsolete in historical research. And it does not get better if
some old and remote books not recognized by the international
community of historians and archeologists are put against the
mainstream of professional research in the field. But Dirk and
Oskar have already said everything that is necessary in this
respect. There is no end to any kind of scientific debate and
development. But to get further on the road, one has to start from
the actual state of the art and accept that and not to go back to old
and obsolete or abstruse theories.



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