[gothic-l] Re: Gothic race?

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "hrafnsnest" <wulfsligrs at c...> wrote:
> Hails Alle,
>
> Dirk wrote:
> "The Goths were certainly not a race. They were a polity."
>
> Hi Dirk,
> ** While I'm not disagreeing with this point, after all Dr. Edgar
> Polome wrote:
>
> "Iranians were often traveling companions of the EGmc. hosts during
> the migration age: when the Gothic Kingdom in the Pontic area was
> destroyed by the Huns in the 4th cent. CE, Alans, led be Safrax,
> accompanied the Goths on their migration to territories controlled
by
> the Romans, and helped defeat the latter at Andrinopolis in 378 and
> 406, the same Alans crossed the Rhine with the invading GMC tribes;
> they followed the Vandals though Spain in 409, all the way to North
> Africa in 428-430 CE.  When Albuin, King of the Langobards,
conquered
> Italy in 568 CE, he was accompanied by Sarmatians and Turkish
> Bulgarians."
> 	Ermanaric, Greutungian-Ostrogothic King, ruled from the
> Ukraine.  Under his rule were Finns, Slavs, Antes, Heruli, Alans,
> Huns, Sarmatians, and Aesti.  Many of these tribes will be pushed
> West into the region of Hungary.  This is important to our view of
> the EGmc. tribes, as it means they were exposed to all sorts of
> Turkish and Iranian customs such as shamanism, religion, different
> scripts, forms of warfare, and dress.  It has been conjectured that
> the eagle style fibula worn by Gothic chieftains may have
originated
> from the Sassanian (Persian) royal vestments.
> 	And there is this from Jordanes (IX.58): "Let no one say that
> this name (Getae) is quite foreign to the Gothic tongue, and let no
> one who is ignorant cavil at the fact that the tribes of men make
use
> of many names, even as the Romans borrow from the Macedonians, the
> Greeks from the Romans, the Sarmatians from the Germans, and the
> Goths frequently from the Huns".


>
> ** I think a bit of clarification may be in order though.  If we
> consider that fact that a Scando/Baltic "race", speaking a Germanic
> language, migrates from the lower Vistula region to the Black Sea,






I think we have to be more precice with the terminology. To identify
the forefathers of the Goths we use a linguistic/cultural definition.
Thus, the forefathers of the Goths, like the Goths themselves were
Germanic. Hence, they were certainly not Baltic. More precicely, they
were East Germanic not North Germanic, which may have justified the
use 'Scando-'. Hence, instead of considering that
a 'Scando/Baltic 'race' speaking Gemanic' migrated from the Vistula
to the Black Sea, we know that a predominantely East-Germanic
speaking group or groups made this migration.







> and "conquers", "assimilates", or absorbs those they came into
> contact with, then of course they would be considered a "polity".



I am not sure if you understand the word 'polity' correctly. A polity
is a politically defined unit, like a tribe, a nation, a kingdom etc.
A polity can be based on one ethic group or can be multi-ethnic. The
key thing here is that the Goths were not 'racially' defined. I.e.
along phycical characteristics, but along political
(tradition/history) and linguistic lines.







> However, then the same argument could be applied to any such
Germanic
> tribe (or any other conquering "race").
> At what point does one loose their racial identity?



The original point was that there is only one human race on the
planet, since the demise of the Neanderthals. Hence, you can loose
your ethnic identity based on language, traditions, names etc, but
you cannot really lose your racial identity since all humans are
considered to belong to the same race.






 Granted, today
> we are made up of many different ethnic genes, but initially, the
> people who left their Baltic homeland,



.... where also made up of many different genetic influences, which
had mixed and combined over millennia.




were what many consider to be
> a Gothic tribe.



And such a Gothic tribe would have been a polity, i.e. a politically
defined group.







Therein, I believe, lies the key.  They were
> a "tribe" that was part of the Germanic "race".
>




You only have to replace 'race' with linguistic or ethnic group. The
early Goths were a tribe/kingdom (tribal kingdom), who were part of a
linguistically defined Germanic people or ethnos.

Cheers
Dirk







> Best,
> Valulfr



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