Using DNA to find Goths

[Arthur Jones]

Hails galaibeis gutsokjandans!
   
  Please, let's at least limit the intermarriages of the fourth and fifth centuries to those that are variously attested. Theodoric was not attested to have had a Roman mother. Instead, he was an Amaling, which royal family was at that time not in the business of marrying their young off to Romans because they had a "cult" leadership to maintain, even after the conversion to Arian Christianism. Instead, Thiudareiks was sent as a royal hostage --a common practice in those days as a "security" for enforcing a major treaty-- to Byzantium (Constantinople) at the age of ten. He was sent to school for ten years, where he learned Latin,Greek, history, mathematics, literature, and other academic pursuits. But he was, as far as we know, pure Goth.
   
  As to Wulfila, his paternal grandparents were "captured" by Goths on a raiding party in Cappadocia in or around 278 a.d. But his mother was a Goth. Wulfila was sent to Byzantium as part of a diplomatic delegation to the Eastern Roman Empire when he was a young man, where he, too, was educated.
   
  But there is also evidence that thousands of Roman Empire citizens (themselves a rich mixture of ethnicities) fled periodically to the Goths when they became persecuted for one policy or another of the relatively unpredictable Romans. The Goths were known for their attributes of tolerance, even of religious minorities, and their willingness to accept outsiders provided the newcomers adhered strictly to garaihteis or "fairness, justice, honesty, integrity". 
   
  Still, I believe we should not underestimate the analytic power of mitrochondrial DNA samples and the complex processes used to establish singularities of sequences, wherever they are found. Nor should we fear to be ambitious and imaginative in our applications, as long as the science and methodology remain strictly practiced.
   
  Arthur
   
  arthur.jones at yahoo.com
    

<Francisc Czobor <fericzobor at yahoo.com> wrote:
          >Dirk is right, since the Goths have absorbed and assimilated many 
>people of other origins, such a DNA research could be misleading.
>Beside Jordanes and Theoderic, another famous example is bishop 
>Wulfila: although he was born among the Visigoths, both his parents 
>were Cappadocian Greeks, so his DNA would be linked to that of the 
>Hellenized populations of Asia Minor, not to that of the North-
>Europeans...

>Francisc

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <d.faltin at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> Hi Sturla,
> 
> could you explain this project in a bit more detail please?
> 
> I think one big problem that you need to bear in mind is that Goths 
> are not a biological grouping, but a political grouping. We know, 
for 
> example, that the Visigoths who arrived in Gaul and Spain included 
> many Roman provincials, runaway slaves and disgruntled miners. 
> 
> If you look back at Gothic individuals about whom we know a little 
> bit about their family background it is striking that most of them 
> had mixed ethnic backgrounds. Jordanes was apprently partly of 
Alanic 
> origin, Theoderic´s mother seems to have been a Roman woman. For a 
> migrant group like the Goths this was probably a typical feature. 
> When the Goths appeared first in the wars agains Philip I Arabs, 
they 
> seemed to have been allies of the Carpi, a people that then 
> disappeared from the records. The Carpi, an Illyrian or Thrakian 
> people were like absorbed into the Goths and there are probably 
more 
> small non-Germanic groups that were absorbed by the Goths. 
> 
> In fact, historians believe if the Goths hadn't had the ability and 
> the attraction to absorbe other ethnic and political groups they 
> would have vanished long before the 5th century. 
> 
> In this sense, I would be interested to know what exactly Gothic 
DNA 
> should be like? Even if you extracted DNA from a skeleton that was 
> buried with Gothic or East Germanic grave goods, how can you know 
> what political identity this person once had. It would be fantastic 
> if what you propose is possible, but so far I have my doubts.
> 
> Cheers
> Dirk
> 
> 



         


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